One of the things marketers really excel at is testing - we A/B test and multivariate test and the most sophisticated of us test with the Taguchi method.

Then we measure, and we look at our results, and say "Ah-ha! This won. It must be the best choice."

And this is all well and good, but there's something missing.

Many marketers don't ask why the other splits didn't work.

You may argue that there's no point; it didn't work and therefore it's irrelevant. That information cannot be usefully applied except as something to be avoided in the future. This attitude misses the whole point of testing.

Testing should tell us more about the audience we're trying to reach, not just about what gives us the best numbers. If we look at what didn't work as well as what did, we can make much better judgments about what will work in the future. It's the difference between adding up numbers and understanding what they mean.

Last week, I finished reading The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton. The premise is that companies that actively foster a positive environment (and diligently get rid of jerks) are more successful and their employees are happier. A win-win situation.

I enjoyed reading this book; it's full of examples of appalling behavior that make for entertaining, if disturbing, reading, as well as being persuasive for a more civilized workplace.

Sutton defines assholes as anyone who makes other people feel humiliated or belittled and who aim their venom at others who are less powerful.

The author does a good job of reviewing why people are assholes and the reasons that they thrive. In case you find yourself in a situation like this, toward the end of the book, there is a chapter on how to survive an unpleasant work environment that has some practical tips.

Sutton also included a final chapter on assholes that are successful, which makes for a more nuanced look at jerks than appears elsewhere in the book.

I suspect this is one of those books that hits a nerve with people who already think a civilized workplace is important, but would be largely ignored by people who see co-workers as competition and not really as people.

The biggest use for this book for most people would be to bolster arguments for why a really unpleasant, though highly qualified, person shouldn't be hired.

The New York Times has published a piece about how it's very difficult for users to remove themselves from Facebook: How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free

Combined with the privacy issues that surfaced earlier with the Beacon system, it suggests the dark, or at least very careless, side of community building at Facebook.

One of the dangers of marketing is that it's easy to forget that the numbers we use and the individuals we market to are not separate entities. Once we start treating our customers as data pools, we risk losing their trust and our credibility.

I just finished re-reading The Tipping Point.

What I found most fascinating this time around was the author's point about how easily ideas are transmitted. In the book, this sounds like a fundamental human trait, to the point that we're not fully aware of how deeply the people around us influence our outlook on life.

It seems to me that if this is correct it leads to a major distinction in how we think about society and culture.

Society is what we create with geographic boundaries and laws; it's defined by who belongs to the group and where they're located. Culture is what happens spontaneously, generated by the ideas swirling around among individuals and is transient.

While culture can be bounded by the things that make up a society, and the two feed into each other, they are not not identical. Culture changes constantly as ideas change; societal changes are rarer.

It's much easier for marketing campaigns to alter culture than society; in other words, transient changes can take place. A really good viral or word of mouth campaign gets thrown from person to person and makes temporary changes in the culture (or, far more likely, in a subculture). Without constant reinforcement, though, the changes dissipate over time and are forgotten.

(The ironic bit, incidentally, is that the culture is changing so that The Tipping Point is just beginning to fall out of fashion.)

The author of The Tipping Point is an incredibly persuasive writer, which I think is part of why the book was so successful. He brings up very interesting ideas, especially about how people are influenced to act (which is rather the whole point). They do suggest a need for humility, though, about what exactly can be accomplished.

I'm suffering from one of the nasty little cold bugs that are going round right now. Not only is it giving me a cough, it's also doing a pretty good job of destroying my concentration. So I'm not that eloquent right now, but here are a couple links all about writing:

Why Good Ad Copy Works

How to Improve Bullet Point Copywriting - 2 Critical Rules