Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Just had a conversation with an old client at the University of Illinois in Champagne Urbana. He is a retired physicist who claims he is "crippled" by business. Consultants like me both creep him out and baffle him. That's right, baffle him. And anytime I get a chance to baffle a 75 year old particle physicist, I take it. But we've been friends for a long time and can laugh about it.

He and I were talking about the differences between his career and mine.  He a guy who spent his life pondering things he'll never get to see in his lifetime. He called it "inward analysis." I am a person who deals with marketing and technology with some emphasis on the future. I called that "forward analysis."

He excitedly stopped the conversation and asked me if I knew what the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP) was. I mistakenly said yes.

NOTE: Never tell an an old physics professors you understand a physical premise no matter how well you think you might know.

After correcting me twice and telling to to be quiet and listen, he went on to explain an interesting intersect between physics and marketing around the HUP.

In the simplest terms, the HUP is the notion that you cannot both know where a particle is and where it is going to be. The intersect is that we cannot ever know where marketing and technology or our industries are and are going to be, at the same time.  He went on to say that consulting is guessing toward a truth without the benefits of ever arriving at a truth or accepting the notion that truth governs. He called it instinct for sale.

We agreed that it could be argued that one of the central differences between science and marketing is truth. In science, truth governs. Uncertainty is okay. In business, truth is just a word. Especially in marketing. 

In science, not knowing gets a cool name like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or Plancks Constant. Unfortunately, in marketing it can get you fired. 

I think as markets become increasingly digital and networked, we need to start thinking of marketing and business like we do science--like particle physics. We need to be okay with not knowing everything. And we need to start thinking about it with more intensity.

In fact, I believe that when more people are on the giant network interacting in all possible ways, being comfortable with uncertainty will make us better at marketing. Imagine being more certain about our uncertainty in measured marketing.

I think the consultants getting paid to see the future of marketing are already embracing the science side of marketing--drawing more and more parallels between the ethereal nature of marketing or advertising and the physical sciences. They understand that there is no possible way to simultaneously know and foresee any industry or its elements. (Which is essentially what consultants do, right?)  But to the extent they can understand uncertainty in tomorrow's hyper-connected or charged environment, they will most certainly have the advantage. I think.