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I am certain it tested excellently. Infact, it is the job of not only the marketing team to make sure the testing team comes back with a positive result, but al

I am certain it tested excellently. Infact, it is the job of not only the marketing team to make sure the testing team comes back with a positive result, but also the testing team. Why would anyone want to have their stuff come back with a failure? The problem is the testing itself. We see this in political polling, where the poll surveys come back very confidently stating x y and z people are n points ahead among demographics a b and c. The problem is that time after time again the pollsters are made out to be weathermen forcasting rain during a heatwave a snow during a drought with lots of gesticulation but no substance. Their methods were wrong, and they picked the safest modeling to use so that if they were wrong they would be only sort of wrong, until it got to be a pure flip of the coin as to if it would rain or not. The polls and tests and all this "data driven" hogwash are not testing for truth in the market, they are testing for truth in how things test. And as software developers know - the real testing happens after QA. Too many predictors and fortune tellers are trying to sell a nice thought with plywood beams holding it up. In the past it was hard to actually go and quantify how poorly the rest result matched up with reality, today it is a lot easier to see a failure after a poor showing - but somehow we are still eluded in the testing process. Fire them all. Have google gemmini make a thousand ads and run them in a thousand places and then figure out which ones are hitting the mark after the fact. It would be cheaper than sitting around for months trying to synthesize the perfect ad in vitro just for it to be poorly received and the entire investment wasted. Pollsters, focus testers, marketers, they all have this same problem of thinking their lab still can accurately quantify the external world. They can't, and I dont have a solution (i will never respond to a poll, even for money).

dylan604 2y ago
> Why would anyone want to have their stuff come back with a failure? because that's their exact purpose. it's much better to get laughed at in a focus group than being laughed at by the general public. in the former it can be fixed where the latter means you're trying to save face. only Hollywood Don Drapers never have a stinker of an idea. testing teams with no spine to push back serve no real purpose.
rsynnott 2y ago
In an ideal world, the job of a focus group is to tell you “this ad is terrible, and will make everyone hate you - never let it see the light of day”. It’s far from bulletproof, though.

dylan604 2y ago

> Why would anyone want to have their stuff come back with a failure? because that's their exact purpose. it's much better to get laughed at in a focus group than being laughed at by the general public. in the former it can be fixed where the latter means you're trying to save face. only Hollywood Don Drapers never have a stinker of an idea. testing teams with no spine to push back serve no real purpose.

rsynnott 2y ago

In an ideal world, the job of a focus group is to tell you “this ad is terrible, and will make everyone hate you - never let it see the light of day”. It’s far from bulletproof, though.