2 MUCH 411

Thursday, June 26, 2008

The average American couldn’t tell you which is bigger, Detroit or Milwaukee.

The average European could.

You might think that’s because the average European is smarter. But, actually, it’s the opposite that’s closer to truth: the average American knows too much.

More specifically, the average American knows too much about his own country.

Most Americans are aware of both cities. Yet most Europeans have heard only of Detroit.

Which is exactly why they tend to guess the Motor City is larger: they’ve heard of it. Europeans outscore Americans on this question with results significantly greater than chance.

Thus is supported Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer’s theory (in his book, Gut Feelings) that intuition rescues us from being overwhelmed by extraneous information. In fact, he argues, acting on gut feelings is the reason we are all still able to stumble about this planet.

In our industry we’re often bombarded with masses of research results. Everyone, from client to customer to cashier, has an opinion. It is the task of the writer (OK, and art director) to isolate only those salient bits of information that will lead us to a relevant insight. Perhaps this is why the more I think about how I’m reaching an idea, the more focused generally comes the idea.

Most ideas form from the mysterious ether of the unconscious. (Really, we don’t know where the heck they come from.) But this does not suggest that idea generation is passive.

Our thinking can be directed. At least somewhat.

For a recent pitch to a luxury client with an unusually long and complex sales process (with products in the range of millions of dollars) we established four pillars by which to guide our thinking and assess the work. (For the record: prestige, precise, practical and personal.) In a dramatically limited time, we — according to the client — blew all the other agencies out of the water.

I’m certain it’s because we were aware enough to focus on only what was relevant.

As it happened, we followed Gigerenzer’s advice:

“A simple rule that focuses only on the best reason and ignores the rest has a good chance of hitting at the most useful information.”