Koen Pauwels - Econometric models & theory vs humans & practice. Mastering measurement and context for marketing success - S3 Ep20 (part 1 of 6)

Brain-hurt scale = 9/10. Every day, we hear about new studies in the field of marketing and growth. Industry whitepapers. Academic theories. This law. That law. An industry group finds TV is better than Facebook. The next week, another group finds the exact opposite. Byron vs Binet. Galloway vs Gary V. This study vs that study. It's exhausting, now to sit here and even write about it.

Unfortunately, for the rest of us. Everyone is so busy selling their angle, what gets lost in all this radio ga ga is the truth. Then again, does anyone really care underneath?

Many famous commentators have built successful personal brands off the back of other people's work. They cherry-picking findings, write an article or two, publishing a blog, post on the socials, wrap it up into a few keynote speeches, and cash out by selling online courses on the side. And these are often very entertaining people. Talented writers and fantastic speakers. They know how to capture our attention, keep it and stay top of mind. 

And we'll admit. Some of these findings can sound really good. They can feel right. They might even reinforce our beliefs or suspicions. They're easy to understand and communicate to others. They simplify complexity.

But, if you're trying to get closer to the truth in order to make well-informed decisions, there's often just a lot of noise we have to wade through first to get to the answer.

So, what works and what doesn't? What's valid and what's just paper-pushing academia or industry lobby hogwash. What's popular thought and what's true? 

Well, we though we'd ask Koen Pauwels some of these questions. 

His career is interesting to say the least. He started as econometrician. Then mixed this knowledge with marketing and became revered for creating accurate econometric models as an early pioneer of BI dashboards. This was almost a decade before digital dashboard systems hit the mass-market.  But perhaps best of all, he's got a lot of personal experience wrapping all of these academic concepts into actions which businesses can actually use to pre-test their ideas, measure effectiveness and make better decisions. What he found, and what we also know in practice is that context, really, really matters. And the variability of different contexts is often skipped in the broader marketing industry debate. 

What works for one business in one territory in one geography, in one product category. Can be completely different to another company operating within the same parameters. Why is that? Especially if there are pretty concrete, broad-brush laws that should apply? Even if you read into EBI's work, you'll notice quite a lot of variation within laws that broadly hold true. Ignoring these edge cases, or variance is a critical mistake. It doesn't necessarily disprove laws, but it's really important to understand all the variables that are at play. This requires delving a bit deeper than all famous industry commentators do. 

So strap yourself in and marketing-geek out with this episode. 

Learn about beer and Champagne. 

Learn how the tradition of spraying bottles of bubbly during car races first started. 

Learn the political reality of marketing decision-making. 

Sort the academic paper chaff from the wheat. 

But most of all, tap into Koen's deep expertise bridging the gap between marketing theory and practice. 

Ready?