Last night, I was going through my notes from the beginning of the summer, I found these quotes from Duncan Simester, who taught our Marketing class. The context for “contact lenses for chickens” is obscure, but most of his other declarations should be apparent. One repeated theme: Intuition is a dangerous thing. Always trust the data, especially real sales data.
“Losses speak louder to us than gains.”
“Most firms make pretty bad marketing decisions.”
“The challenge is to get the questions right.”
“The field of strategy is basically about resources”
“Product uniqueness is hard to maintain, especially in tech products.”
“Little startups tends to innovate in big steps”
“There’s nothing like losing money to focus your attention.”
“It’s got to be a pretty mature business to become commoditized”
“Don’t pursue innovation where there are low barriers to entry”
“There has to be substitution between them in order to be considered competitors”
“Contact lenses for chickens”
“The problem with making a decision based on intuition is you feel good about it.”
“Lots of decisions made during meetings are based on intuition, and lead to bad outcomes.”
“There’s nothing worse than engineers with money”
“You need to have a strategy that allows you to say no.”
“You really don’t want to compete with people who don’t want to make money” (referring to “lifestyle” businesses)
“Anyone can call themselves a marketing manager. A bad marketing manager can destroy your organization”
“Don’t try to write your own advertising copy”
