I've been doing marketing for 20 years.
Even saying that out loud sometimes feels like a long time.
A lot has changed.
The tools.
The platforms.
The consumers.
Even the word "marketing" probably means something different now than it did 20 years ago.
But one thing hasn't changed that much:
At some point, someone still has to make a judgement.
I've learned a lot of methodologies over the years.
I've used plenty of frameworks.
Some were genuinely useful.
Some I never used again.
There will always be new ones.
I believe they have their place.
But I increasingly don't believe that:
If you use the right methodology correctly, things will automatically work.
Take the same framework.
Give it to different people.
You can get completely different results.
Because the difficult part isn't knowing a method.
It's knowing:
When to use it.
When not to.
When to keep going.
When to stop.
When the data is worth listening to.
And when the data is simply telling you what happened, without telling you why.
Take a brand entering China.
Of course you can do market research.
Consumer segmentation.
Competitor mapping.
Positioning frameworks.
You probably should.
But eventually there is a moment when:
you have to decide.
This price.
This positioning.
This channel.
This market.
Now.
Or not now.
No framework can make that decision for you.
That's probably how I think about experience now.
Experience isn't:
"I've done lots of projects, so I know the answer."
Quite the opposite.
Experience should mean:
I know which questions don't have standard answers.
I know when to listen to the data.
And when the data isn't enough.
I know when to listen to HQ.
And when to listen to the China team.
I know when another discussion is useful.
And when it's time to just do something.
That's why I increasingly value judgement.
Not because methodology isn't useful.
But because methodology answers:
"How can we think about this?"
Judgement eventually has to answer:
"So what are we actually going to do?"
There is often a lot of real work between those two questions.
After 20 years, that's still the part I find most interesting.
