I had a really interesting meeting a couple of weeks ago with a long-time client that gave my world view (business-wise, at least) a bit of a shake. We’d been discussing some long-term web and branding strategies that were long overdue in my mind. We talked about brand consistency over several different mediums, streamlined UI for the various web properties that owned, and how (to our way of thinking) there were tremendous opportunities ripe for the taking. “How so?” he asked without batting an eye. (In hindsight, this is where the little alarms began going off in my head-I of course ignored them and plowed on ahead)

I spoke of the importance of a focused brand-consistent logo, colors, fonts, etc, etc to more firmly fix the company and product in the public’s eye. (The Coca-Cola logo is a great example as it’s instantly recognizable to a sizable percentage of the world’s population, even if it’s written in ancient Sanskrit) I went on to talk about the importance of providing proper web metrics, how many unique visitors, entrance/exit points, search terms, referrals, SEO, SEM, banner ads, and on and on in reference to the web properties.

“Of course you’d say this” he interjected. “It’s your business. You’re assuming that those things are connected to how much business we do.” His tone made it crystal clear that at that moment, in his eyes I was just a salesman blindly pushing his product with a practiced script. My brain quickly turned this over-of course a focused brand is important, fixing his websites would improve web traffic and streamlining the UI would improve his bottom line, just because it happens to be a part of our business doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

In my enthusiasm I’d forgotten two very important things, the first being that the man on the other side of the table owned 2 (3?) more Ferraris than I did, had been doing this for a long time, and was quite possibly one of the 5 most intelligent people I knew. He had considered all of this before, and I was not the first person to raise these topics with him. The second thing I’d forgotten was my Hume.

David Hume was the 18th century philosopher who was one of the first to point out that what we call “causes” are really strange bits of knowledge. If we do x and y happens, then x is responsible for the change in vector. Hume pointed out that causes are not facts, but a “lively conception produced by habit”. Put another way, we use them as mental shortcuts to make sense of what we experience. Nothing wrong with this as it helps us with all manner of activities and enables us to create some technological marvels. Things start to fall apart when dealing with really complex systems however. “Identical” twins may be genetic duplicates, but they are certainly not duplicate people. Despite billions of dollars in technology and decades of research, a forecasted sunny weekend turns into a blizzard. A sedative that was supposed to help cure morning sickness caused birth defects instead. Couple the reality that “causes” are not facts with a person or entity who’s financial situation is vested in proving their own value and it’s no wonder that this client (who knows his Hume backwards and forwards) was skeptical of my not-so polished claims. (Continued next week in Part 2)