The McNamara Fallacy (Part 2)

Let's start to explore the McNamara Fallacy as it might relate to FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods), or at least my take on it. For the first part see my previous post.

forethoughtsonretail.blogspot.com/2010/07/mcnamara-fallacy.html



Robert McNamara responded to those who criticized him for being too numbers oriented in his book In Retrospect.

Critics point to use of the body count as an example of my obsession with numbers. “This guy McNamara,” they said, “he tries to quantify everything”. Obviously, there are things you cannot quantify: honor and beauty, for example. But things you can count, you ought to count. Loss of life is one when you are fighting a war of attrition. We tried to use body counts as a measurement to help us figure out what we should be doing in Vietnam to win the war while putting our troops at the least risk. Every attempt to monitor progress in Vietnam during my tenure as secretary of defense was directed toward those goals, but often the reports were misleading.

In Retrospect – The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
Robert S McNamara pg 238

I don’t think I have any major disagreement with that … as Yankelovich adds … as far as it goes.

In FMCG, we have good stats on many things … best of all on the most important stat, consumer sales. But then, what? Since P&G came up with “the first moment of truth” a couple of years ago, all hell has broken loose in-store. Suddenly everyone in FMCG thinks “in-store” is important. No kidding? Despite a product’s in-store position being the MOST important factor in its sales performance, Marketing has tended to ignore, pooh-pooh, or cast aside in-store measures … that’s for Sales to look after. After all, positioning, advertising and all that is a lot more important (and a lot more sexy!). Except it isn’t (more important that is).

I am, of course, exaggerating to make a point. The focus has definitely NOT been on the in-store environment, until recently. Not to say there aren’t in-store measures (principally AC Nielsen’s causal data). But this is more a tracking measure, rather than a diagnostic tool. And yes, there are several Marketing Mix tools now available … good … use them. But in the main, the shop floor has been what I call a DATA DESERT. We'll explore the in-store data desert more in my next post.

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