How to Think Like a World-Class Marketer

The Doorman Fallacy Framework

Evaluating Cost Cuts Without Destroying Unmeasured Value

A framework for identifying and preserving value that is real but unmeasured when evaluating cost-cutting proposals. Named for the hotel doorman whose visible cost (opening doors) obscures multiple sources of unmeasured value (security, taxi hailing, guest recognition, status signaling). The framework prevents value destruction by forcing explicit identification of all functions before elimination.

Preference Arbitrage Framework

Finding Value by Exploiting Taste Asymmetries

A framework for identifying and exploiting situations where your preferences differ from the majority, allowing you to acquire assets or experiences at a discount. Works by identifying attributes that most people disvalue but that you are neutral about or actively value. Applicable to real estate, hiring, partnerships, and strategic positioning.

Ogilvy-Doyle Writing Framework

Clarity with Occasional Complexity

A framework for effective writing that balances conversational clarity with occasional sophisticated vocabulary. Based on the observation that David Ogilvy and Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in extremely plain prose punctuated by rare complex words, creating both readability and respect for the reader's intelligence.

A distribution where a small number of events account for the majority of total impact. In marketing, 5-10% of efforts deliver 110% of value. Implies different strategy than normal distributions: maximize exposure to tail events rather than optimizing average outcomes.

In Practice: Discussion of fat-tailed nature of marketing returns

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

Behaviors or traits that were adaptive in ancestral environments but are mismatched to modern environments. Humans evolved to assess individual trustworthiness, not abstract service quality, leading to reliance on human proxies in modern service evaluation.

In Practice: Discussion of evolved trust assessment mechanisms applied to modern service contexts

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

The evolutionary tendency to follow group behavior as a risk-reduction strategy. Following the group is rarely optimal but is less likely to be catastrophic than trying something nobody else does. Creates innovation resistance and explains why new products require more marketing.

In Practice: Explanation of why innovative products face adoption resistance

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

The value of the next best alternative foregone when making a choice. When evaluating efficiency improvements, the opportunity cost is the alternative use of those resources, often value creation through human investment.

In Practice: Discussion of choosing cost reduction over value creation

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

When one party (agent) makes decisions on behalf of another party (principal), the agent's incentives may not align with the principal's interests. Management consultants on gainshare agreements have incentive to identify cost savings regardless of value destruction.

In Practice: Gainshare agreements incentivizing consultants to cut costs without regard to value

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

The pleasure or displeasure from the perceived value of a transaction, independent of the utility of the good itself. Willingness to pay for identical beer differs based on whether it's from a boutique hotel versus a shack, reflecting fairness perception.

In Practice: Richard Thaler beer on the beach thought experiment

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

Exploiting situations where your preferences differ from consensus to acquire undervalued assets. If you genuinely don't mind attributes others disvalue, you can buy those assets at a discount. Requires honest self-knowledge of true preferences.

In Practice: House buying strategy of seeking attributes others avoid

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

The introduction of a third option (decoy) makes one of the original two options more attractive. The decoy is designed to be inferior to one option but similar enough to shift preference. In real estate, showing a less desirable house first makes the target house appear more attractive by contrast.

In Practice: Real estate agent trick of showing inferior house before target house

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

A cognitive bias where one positive trait influences perception of other unrelated traits. A likeable postman causes customers to perceive the entire postal service as good, regardless of actual delivery metrics.

In Practice: Royal Mail case study showing postman likeability overriding service metrics

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

Using trustworthiness of a person as a proxy for quality of a product or service. When technical evaluation is difficult, humans default to evaluating the seller's character as a stand-in for product quality.

In Practice: Secondhand car buying example and real estate vendor trust assessment

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

Deliberately creating mild stress or inconvenience to observe how someone responds, revealing character traits that are hidden under normal conditions. Used unconsciously in dating and hiring to identify psychopathy or poor temperament.

In Practice: First date lateness as psychopath detection mechanism

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

For human-serving systems, subjective experience matters more than objective metrics. The 'feels-like' temperature is more useful than actual temperature for deciding what to wear. Problems should be defined in terms of human perception, not mechanical measurement.

In Practice: Feels-like temperature versus actual temperature analogy

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

The tendency to prefer the current state of affairs. Change is resisted not because the new state is worse, but because it's different. Human default modes are 'do what I did before' and 'do what everyone else does' because these minimize catastrophic risk.

In Practice: Discussion of human default modes and innovation resistance

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

The value of having choices without obligation. Entrepreneurs seek high variance environments where occasional huge wins offset many small losses. Chess has capped upside; poker has uncapped upside. Strategy should increase surface area for positive surprises.

In Practice: Entrepreneurs in casinos versus chess clubs metaphor

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

Components in a system have relationships that are not obvious from looking at individual parts. Removing one component can degrade system function in unexpected ways because the interdependencies were unmapped.

In Practice: Doorman fallacy showing multiple hidden functions of a single role

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

When decision-makers optimize for a different time period than the actual consequences unfold over. Public companies optimize quarterly performance while customer relationships develop over years, creating systematic underinvestment in long-term value.

In Practice: Public versus private company incentive structures

Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001

Evolutionary mismatch between ancient trust mechanisms and modern service evaluation

Human brains evolved to assess trustworthiness in direct interpersonal interactions, but we have minimal evolved capacity to evaluate abstract service quality like postal efficiency. We default to the ancient mechanism: assessing the human we interact with. Royal Mail customers judged the entire organization based on their relationship with their individual postman. For 99% of human history, trusting the right person was more survival-critical than optimizing abstract service quality.

Discussion of Royal Mail brand perception study and secondhand car buying behavior

Geometry puzzle requiring one additional line to solve

Certain geometry puzzles appear impossibly complex until you draw one additional construction line, at which point the solution becomes trivial. Sometimes the solution isn't persuasion or complex strategy, but simply providing one additional piece of information that changes the problem from impossible to obvious. Problem difficulty is often about problem representation, not inherent complexity.

Discussion of how providing a single fact can solve a marketing problem

Feels-like temperature versus actual temperature as model for human-centered metrics

Weather services provide actual temperature (objective) and feels-like temperature (subjective combining temperature, humidity, wind, sun). Most business metrics resemble actual temperature: objective reality divorced from human perception. Effective marketing requires feels-like metrics incorporating psychological factors. When the purpose of a system is to serve human needs, optimize for subjective experience, not objective metrics.

Discussion of how to incorporate psychological factors into problem definition

Casino games versus chess as entrepreneurship metaphor

In chess, maximum payoff is binary: win, lose, or draw. Casino games like poker have unbounded upside: a single hand can yield 100x return. Entrepreneurs are found in casinos, not chess clubs, because entrepreneurship is structurally a casino game: most ventures fail, but wins are asymmetrically large. Corporate managers try to turn entrepreneurship into chess by demanding predictable quarterly returns, but this caps the upside. In chess, minimize errors; in casinos, maximize exposure to rare huge wins.

Discussion of fat-tailed distributions in marketing and entrepreneurship

Toxoplasmosis as metaphor for ideological capture of institutions

Toxoplasmosis alters host behavior: infected rodents lose fear of cats, leading them toward the predator completing the parasite's life cycle. Sutherland coins technoplasmosis by analogy: technology consultants have infected corporate finance departments, causing them to demand marketing metrics serving consultants' interests rather than company interests. The infected finance departments lose natural skepticism of tech solutions and begin advocating for them, completing the vendors' sales cycle.

Discussion of how tech vendors and consultants have captured corporate finance functions

Management Thinker and Dean Emeritus, Rotman School of Management

Founder, Dyson

Behavioral Economist, Nobel Laureate

Evolutionary Psychologist

Psychologist, Author

Marketing Writer, Former Boxer

Canadian Philosopher and Author

Advertising Legend

Attorney, Author

Author, Creator of Sherlock Holmes

Former Marketing Director, Royal Mail

gainshare

Compensation where consultant receives percentage of client cost savings identified

“Management consulting firms run a scam called gainshare agreements.”

technoplasmosis

Tech consultants capturing finance departments like toxoplasmosis parasite captures host

“Tech people and consultants have taken over the finance department through technoplasmosis.”

sesquipedalian

Characterized by long words; given to using long words

“Throw in the odd sesquipedalian long word to remind the reader you're not an idiot.”

Global management consulting firm

Canadian management thinker, former Dean of Rotman School

Former Marketing Director of Royal Mail who discovered postman loyalty effect

Behavioral economist, Nobel laureate, pioneered transaction utility concept

Psychologist who writes about psychopathy

Evolutionary psychologist, author of The Mating Mind and Spent

Self-taught Libyan marketing writer, former boxer, coined technoplasmosis

Attorney and author of Life Without Lawyers and Can Do

Canadian philosopher, author of Voltaire's Bastards

Advertising legend, founder of Ogilvy, known for clear prose style

Author of Sherlock Holmes stories, exemplar of prose clarity

Decoy Effect

Adding inferior third option makes one original option more attractive by contrast

Quantification Bias

Tendency to focus on measurable factors while ignoring unmeasured but important factors

Evolutionary Mismatch

Adaptive ancestral behaviors that are maladaptive in modern environments