The grizzled veteran harrumphs rise to an eardrum shattering level whenever the trite, “you aren’t the audience” line is trotted out, typically in defense of some direct mkt tactic that 9 out of 10 experts (and dentists) will tell you “works”.   But is the expert any more the audience than the non-expert offering critique?

This chart is from System1, a market research company, whose marketing material rating system is very predictive of short and long term results.  The X axis is their Star rating, higher is better.   There are three categories of ads scored,

• Blue Line:  All US/UK ads across several consumer categories
• Pink Line:  Only those ads that won industry awards
• Orange Line: A compilation of the dud of the week ads (i.e. Turkeys) as determined by an expert

The percentage table shows numerically what you can see visually.  The expertly judged crappy ads (Turkeys, Orange line) are better than average (blue) and better than the award winning ads picked by experts.  

Yes, it seems, the you aren’t your audience line applies in spades to experts.  Mucking around in the human condition is like navigating a galaxy sized cavern with a pen light and yet we fool ourselves into thinking it’s a coat closet and we’ve got a spotlight.  The only sage who matters is the donor.   And there’s no substitute for research and pre-testing to get guidance from your sage.

This medicine isn’t easy to swallow for all us experts out there.  Hell, I write 3x a week trying to promote a personal and company brand by conveying an air of, yeah, expertise.

Occasionally the “E” title is bestowed upon me and I’m pretty certain I’ve never turn it down.  We all need a major slice of humility pie.  What I know fits in a thimble against an ocean of what I don’t know or “know” but ain’t so (thank you Mark Twain).   And there’s always someone with a bigger thimble.

The saving grace, the sherpa on our dark path is methodology and process and culture that puts a premium on user/donor research, doing it well (most is awful) and having opportunity and know-how to apply it.

Your biggest cost is not what shows up in the spreadsheet.  It’s opportunity cost, the lost revenue in sticking with what “works”, especially perhaps if an expert deemed it so.

Kevin

P.S. DonorVoice has a pretesting methodology that is conceptually similar to System1 in that it’s a reliable predictor of real-world outcomes.  Check it out if you’re curious.