Art vs. Science

I tend to be a pretty analytical person. I love a good spreadsheet as previously discussed. A product person at heart. I love to gather requirements evaluate the options against the requirements , investigate/test the candidates and make a call, doing my best to stay on time and on budget. And that process applied both at work (which vendor should we use) and at home (which 5-year old dance lessons) generally works except for the visceral x factor that rears its head from time to time.

Professionally, for the first time in my career, I am trying to understand more about consumer decision making and what worked in a functional and critical business to business product – science, is really different in consumer, art. Because when deciding which marketing automation software to use, I don’t care if my “friends” are using it. Certainly references are important but not the same as the tentative voice of five-year-old making sure that there will be someone she knows in her class. All those careful requirements about when it is, and what the class is like, and level of intensity (or lack thereof) and how much go right out the window in favor of “your friends are in the class, I think you’ll have fun.”

And then I realized, business is more like the decisions I make for myself.  I love barre classes. I get to pretend I’m some combo of a ballerina and a fancy lady (both of which are a quite a bit of a stretch) while someone tells me what to do and I leave tired and with full credit for working out and there’s the added bonus that it helps my achy knees. But, I can’t cope with the idea that an hour of exercise (no matter how fancy) should cost more than $20 and so I’m always looking for a deal and a special. And I evaluate it:

Should I buy these classes? Well, do I have time to go?

When/where are they held? Will it fit my schedule?

Does it match my expectations about what I think these classes are worth?

Do I know the studio? Do I like the studio?

When do they expire?

And I make a call. This sounds like a lot of work but it’s fast – automatic, made from my phone when the groupon email comes in.

But, when it comes to my kids, logic goes right out the window. We are doing our best to keep our kids grounded in a world with too much of everything (and we are only moderately successful) but we are trying. But I also feel this guilt/responsibility. I put them in this community, in this world with 25 activities all weekend long, and options for everything, every day and I picked the ballet class so how am I now going to say no to the $31 (“optional” but only permitted option if it is cold) sweater? I mean, it’s not a $310 sweater right?

But how do you plan for visceral? How to engineer the “I just want it” feeling? How do you help people look past the logic of thoughtful requirements and just click.

1. Price Point

Some of it  is definitely price point. As I said, it was a $31 sweater (on top of the $40 leotard, $30 shoes and $10 leggings). But that’s not change your life money. That’s not even change the afternoon money.

2. “Just three easy payments of $99”

Which I guess brings to point 2, break it down into smaller digestible amounts. I signed up for a subscription for skin products about a year ago. Really like them and I totally flinched at the first $170 purchase for 3 months but said – I’ll give it a go. I have then spent about $60 per month – each month – that’s $720 on soap in the past year. If you tried to sell me $720 in soap a year ago for something I hadn’t even tried, I would have laughed and walked away.

3.  “The first one is free.”

And maybe that’s point three. Like the afterschool specials portrayal of drug dealers – “The first one is free.” Let me find out how much I like it before asking me to spend a lot of money on it. Let me see for myself why (or if) “I just want it.”

4. “It’s pretty.”

And this is the one that is so different then the business world I’m used to – it’s pretty. It’s aspirational – it matches who I am or who I want to be. (I get to pretend for 60 minutes that following this indulgent exercise, I will have this very calm relaxed indulgent day, floating from one relaxing and pampering activity to the next rather than the mad dash out the door to quickly shower, wake my children, catch my train and start our day.) Therein lies the art that no spreadsheet can capture.

5. “It will make them happy”

And as a parent, the one that knocks me down every time and sucks nearly every logic point out of my head, is when the notion that “it will make them happy,”  “they will love it” or the gleeful feeling that “I get to do this for them! This special thing that I get to make possible for them.” Logic doesn’t apply when it is for someone else.

Damn – makes you miss a good spreadsheet right? Where simple and straightforward logic could just be applied?  Despite our best efforts, there’s so little logic in parenting – it is so visceral, so emotional so much more “I think” vs. “I know.” So much more art than science.

Thanks for reading.