The Fallacy Of The Smoking Gun

I was about 12 years old when I sat in the Old Bailey, witnessing the prosecuting barrister outline in gruesome detail the evidence of a pretty gory murder trial. Still today, the mental image of bloodied handprints on the wall over the bed and on the pillows remains seared into my memory. You see, whilst some people took their children to the park or booked them into cricket camp on the long summer holidays, Dad had different ideas of how to fill the time constructively.

Today I’m at the age where all my friends have young kids, so I do understand how hard it is to find things for them to do. And with that in mind, I don’t judge his parenting decisions too harshly. I suppose it was just doubly unfortunate that it also happened to be a murder trial where one man murdered his male lover – making it my first proper introduction to gay relationships. But hey-ho I turned out more or less ok. And dad really wasn’t to know on that score.

Anyway, aside from any lasting psychological baggage, I do actually remember that day being quite informative and inspiring. At the end of the barrister’s outline, I was in no doubt that the chap in the dock had done it. And yet, I don’t recall one singular piece of evidence that stood out. There was no smoking gun, so to speak. Just layer upon layer of evidence that together left you well and truly beyond all reasonable doubt.

Data is a contentious topic in our industry. Battles rage over the validity of certain sources. Quant vs Qual. Human vs Synthetic. Big data vs small data. Case in point was a recent article I wrote about the apparent spiritual resurgence amongst Gen Z. One of the data points I used has been hotly debated since, due to the fact that it is based on ‘reported data’ – how often people claimed they went to church. And the challenge is fair enough. What people say vs. what they actually do are often two very different things.

In this particular instance, however, I was happy to use reported survey data for my article. Partly, because how people self-report on their faith is uniquely quite an intimate reflection of how they truly feel about their faith, but mostly, because it was just one layer of evidence. One part of a story that in concert with TikTok trends, literary history and Google Search data felt compelling enough for me to make an argument.

Outside of our industry, data is not treated in such an obsessively singular way. It is accepted that the very idea of ‘fact’ is fundamentally contentious. The notion of truth - a mere schoolboy fantasy. Scientific research, in how we try to understand the world, takes a hypothesis, and then tries to prove and disprove it in as many ways as feasibly possible. The more ways, the more likely it is to be accepted by peer review.

So why is it that when we try to shed light on our consumers, we have become so focussed on dichotomies rather than luxuriating in all the possible layers we have at our disposal? The vitriolic debate over specific research providers and how they operate is becoming way too much. The problem with the debate is not the various individual research methodologies themselves, but that fact we view any single one of them as something that can stand on their own two feet. It would be far more sensible if we accepted that all data, all evidence, and all ways of gathering it, is profoundly flawed, partial, and insufficient. Because it is only when we put enough of it together, thoughtfully, and carefully, that we get to something that can help us to make better decisions. Which is the point of it all in the first place.

Perhaps this problem is one that us strategists have had a hand in creating. Our obsession with being ‘single-minded’ being applied in the wrong place. It is a (largely good) dogma that we need to tell as tight and as compelling a story as possible to our clients. But maybe we should chill out a little bit on that front and allow ourselves the space to be a touch more plodding, and show a bit more working, and a few more charts, even if they all ultimately say the same thing. In fact, especially if they do.

Maybe, we could resist the urge from our colleagues to cut, and to trim when it comes to the data and evidence behind our strategies. Because in a world where data is quicker, faster, cheaper, and easier than ever to generate, it is becoming especially important to diversify our sources and multiply our methodologies.

And if that means we end up with a big deck, so be it. Sometimes bigger is better after all.