Marketing: The Art or Science or Both Debate

This cyclical marketing debate frustrates me: Is marketing a science, or an art, or some trendy mix of both? The cycles can suddenly make clients feel pressured to produce data-driven rationales in the midst of a successful multi-year campaign, or conversely, suddenly want to ignore the numbers entirely and focus only on the ‘artistic expression’ of the brand personality. You may be relieved to know I am predicting this debate will disappear forever soon.

The Classic Frame

Seth Godin described the two marketing camps this way:

Some marketers are scientists. They test and measure. They do the math. They understand the impact of that spend in that market at that time with that message. They can understand the analytics and find the truth…

The other marketers are artists. They inspire and challenge and connect. These marketers are starting from scratch, creating movements, telling jokes and surprising people.

Godin, among many others, goes on to explain we need to practice both types of marketing, but that a marketer must focus on only one at a time.

Resistance

I tend to resist such mutually exclusive, forced choices. Talk of polarities like black or white, either/or, mind-or-body, rational/creative quickly stirs rebelliousness in me.

Just because the science and management of strategic assessments, opinions management, customer segmentation, internal stakeholder engagement, critical path management, predictive outcome models, real-time reporting, budget control, actual ROI assessment, review and approval checkpoints and assumptions reviews calls on my left brain to be exercised, does not mean I cannot appreciate value there without feeling constrained.

On the other hand, it is easy to understand the natural inclination of people from the ‘creative services’ part of marketing to think that the art is being lost at the same time an increasingly fiscal-driven marketing manager thinks there isn’t enough science in all of this.

Western society has supported this model of a rational left brain/creative right brain schism for a long time now – despite evidence to the contrary.

New Understandings of Human Nature

In recent years, there has been an explosion of new research on the way our brains work and what drives our behavior. The irony of much of this logical, scientific research is that it has been unequivocally proven that we are not very rational beings. Though I’m likely to dive into these resources in more depth in future posts, (hint: subscribe above) here is a quick list of a three favorite resources on brain research for marketers.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. Though his title implies a bias, Daniel Pink actually makes a strong case for whole-brain thinking.

Brain Rules by John Medina documents research for 12 rules describing how our brains work, and not surprisingly, linear rational thought is not included.

The Social Animal, by David Brooks, is also summarized with humor in video (TedTalks, March 2011). Brooks expands on the latest neuroscience findings on human nature and how that affects politics, policy, and the economy (which is all about marketing, of course).

End of the Debate

These new understandings about human nature and the brain are what have given me new hope that the cyclical debate on marketing as art or science will disappear forever soon. Just as now it seems inconceivable to debate whether or not the world is flat, it will seem inconceivable to imagine that marketing to humans is either a science or an art. I look forward to our increased understanding of our own human nature, and to a new appreciation that marketing is neither art nor science alone.