It all starts with QUAL

Do you mind if I start with an absurd analogy?

There’s no bigger question in the universe than its origin.

We’ve all heard of the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. We know that at some point the universe was very hot and very dense, compressed to an incredibly small size.

But this point we know about was a tiny fraction of a second after the actual bang.

And if we try to go back to that moment, which scientists call t=0, the laws of physics break down. General relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible.

So we need something new to make sense of it all, a theory of quantum gravity.

Then maybe one day we’ll know the answer to all sorts of questions.

Like was the universe ever infinitely hot?

And did time itself start at t=0, as Stephen Hawking suggested? So asking what happened before the universe was created is meaningless.

Or was there no sharp beginning? The universe emerged smoothly from a quantum state. Like the surface of a sphere, finite but without edges.

Or is the universe in an endless cycle of expansion and contraction? So the Big Bang was just its latest bounce.

Or is the universe endlessly expanding? Inflation never stops, but it does end in ‘pocket universes’ and we’re in one of them.

Or is our universe one of many universes in a vast multiverse? Marvel were right all along.

Or even, is this all by accident or design?

It’s head-spinning but fascinating stuff, if you’re curious about questions like this.

And that’s the bridge.

In marketing, the biggest question will always be "why?".

Why do we do what we do?

Why do we remember what we remember?

Why do we choose one brand over another?

But we now live in a world of measurement, the world of quant.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. We need evidence at scale to see the patterns and move beyond idle theories.

Quant on its own, though, is a simplified view. A case of measuring what can be measured.

Mental availability, for example, is the probability of a brand coming to mind in a certain situation. So, of course, the bigger the chance of that happening the better.

But the temptation then is to say that all that matters is salience and distinctiveness.

So why not motivation and meaning?

Well, maybe it’s because they come into play at t=0. That moment of closeness when buyer and brand connect.

And that’s a difficult point in time for quant to measure what’s going on.

So if you want to understand why something’s happening or not happening, you need qual.

And it needs to be done first, at the beginning of the process, whether that’s for strategy diagnosis, new product development or comms insight. How can you measure what matters if you don’t understand what matters?

It’s going to be more complicated. Sorry, this is real life.

But use qual at the start and it’s the key to everything.

Even knowing the mind of God.

Or at least, people.