A Numbers Game

Failed Marketing Concept #202: “You do the math!”

My latest advertising pet peeve. Commercials that want me to do all the leg work.

No. I will NOT do the math. I hate math. Everyone I know hates math. Even the ones with math degrees!

As a consumer looking to make a purchase, all I want is a quick understanding of a particular product’s benefits. What I DON’T need is a directive to dust off the calculator and grab a piece of scratch paper (and, in my case, ask my 11 year-old for help.) As an advertiser, you should be doing everything you can to make my decision simpler, not mandating that I find the coefficient of pi or the cosine of x2.

Besides, what if I do it wrong? I suck at math. I could forget to carry a two, or miscalculate a remainder. Do I get your product at that price, even if it’s way lower than the actual price? I mean, if you’re hanging on to such a used cliché as “You do the math”, should I not assume that you’re still employing the misguided farce that “The customer is always right”?

No, sir. YOU do the math. I think you'll find that you have one less sale in Q3 than you might have projected.