"To be uncertain is to be uncomfortable, but to be certain is to be ridiculous."
--Chinese Proverb
My modus operandi after graduating college was to eliminate as much uncertainty in my life as possible. Maybe that's because I believed my only alternative was to be like the feather in the wind at the beginning of Forest Gump.
After becoming the CEO of a direct marketing company, "visibility" became my magic word. I wanted predictable results, predictable processes. I craved the comfort of certainty. When uncertainty reared its head, I armed myself with all the data I could muster and fought back.
But something didn't feel quite right. I hungered and thirsted for information, yet was starved of real knowledge.
"…rare events cannot be estimated from empirical observation since they are rare."
-- Nicholas Taleb, TheBlack Swan
Our most profitable catalog mailing ever featured over 1500 military videos. It took four months to get this catalog from product selection to mailbox.
Then one day after sending out a few million catalogs, President George Bush (the original) launched a massive military operation named Desert Storm. Our response rates plummeted 80% and nearly bankrupted us. Nobody wanted to watch videos of past wars when there was a brand new one live and in color on CNN.
Yet Albert Einstein's famous saying, "God does not play dice with the Universe," remained terra firma for me. Randomness and uncertainty could be tamed by working harder than everybody else. In those years, I often left home before my kids awoke and got home long after they went to sleep. Hey, eliminating uncertainty is hard work!
After selling the catalog operation, the non-compete provision allowed for TV direct response and online marketing. The year was 1996 and we contemplated re-purposing some of the top titles from previous DR campaigns; among which was a Shirley Temple compilation. We tested in early December of 1996 and produced a cute commercial of a very precocious 6-year-old Shirley Temple.
Then on Christmas day 1996, JonBenet Ramsey was murdered and garnered nationwide headlines. Suddenly, our little Miss Temple didn't seem so "cute" anymore. The promotion died after a promising test, brought to its knees by my old nemesis, uncertainty.
Now, here's where it gets really interesting: Concurrent to our Shirley Temple debacle, we were also in test with two Riverdance commercials. The results were marginal, but unbeknownst to us, Michael Flatley's company had made a deal with PBS to air the entire Riverdance performance in late 1996. Conventional thinking suggested that a commercial-free airing would hurt our sales. But just the opposite occurred. Sales jumped AFTER the PBS airing! Riverdance became the hit DR product of 1997, thanks in no uncertain terms to uncertainty. I was beginning to appreciate uncertainty in the context of its alter ego, otherwise known as LUCK.
Fast forward to the world of online marketing…
Online marketers are heavily vested in the notion that predictive modeling of human behavior is a rational process. This is what happens when MBA-driven venture capitalists pour billions of dollars into behavioral targeting methodologies hell-bent on eliminating -- or at minimum taming -- uncertainty. And yet, what does our most recent report card reveal? Industry-standard click-through response rates of .35%. That's a 99.65% failure rate for anyone who's not certain of exactly how to interpret the data.
Thankfully, life's lessons cured me of my quest for certainty. But I ended up in an online arena which still clings to the illusion that rational behavior is something that can -- and should -- be measured. Interestingly enough, I came to learn that in the original Sanskrit, "measurement" and "illusion" had the same meaning.
Behavioral Targeting (BT) promised a new way to accountability. But the underlying assumption that humans are rational creatures is flawed; it becomes even more specious the closer we look. We need delve no further than the stock market to see what we get when we place blind faith in BT models that tell us who, what, where and how, but never "why." As Dr. Phil would say: "How's that working for ya?"
So let me say as emphatically as I can that eliminating uncertainty is not a strategy. The way out of the mess is to EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY!
"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers."
-- Erich Fromm
We need to manage a portfolio of uncertain futures. Forget about trying to out-think chance. It is a fool's errand. We live in a quantum reality of almost infinite possibilities. We can let our creative juices flow and pursue an ongoing and unending journey guided by uncertainty.
If we wake up every day open to these possibilities, certain or not, we will go to sleep each night a little wiser. We must welcome and embrace what we do not understand. It is when we question our assumptions that we begin the creative process. It is through uncertainty that greater truths emerge. On that note, I leave you with a precious quote from Van Gogh:
"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream."
--Vincent van Gogh
About Jaffer AliJaffer Ali is CEO of Vidsense, the Web's largest video advertising network. With more than 80,000 advertiser-friendly video clips licensed from major film and TV studios, the Vidsense network of more than 20,000 safe-for-work partner websites delivers millions of qualified visitors directly to advertiser websites on a pure Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis. Vidsense is to Adsense what video is to print -- a far more engaging and compelling environment for consumers and advertisers alike.