strategy-marketing

Marketing & Communication Strategy - Decision Hygiene

Why this domain is a bias minefield

Marketing planning combines ALL ingredients of poor judgment (Kahneman, Sibony & Sunstein).

1. Creative projections - no reliable data, judgment rules, noise is maximal
2. Pressure to deliver - the CMO promised ROI, the plan must confirm it (structural confirmation bias)
3. Post-hoc measurement - success -> campaign, failure -> market (self-serving bias)
4. Trends - "hot" channels capture budget vs proven ones (availability heuristic)
5. HiPPO - CEO/CMO "feels" the brand should go X (authority + action-oriented bias)

Domain-specific biases (8)

Load: skills/strategy-marketing/biases.yaml

SM1 - Shiny Object Syndrome

New channel/tech attracts budget from proven channels. Question: "Proven ROI of [existing] vs estimated ROI of [new]? Where does the estimate come from?"

SM2 - Attribution Fallacy

Attributing success to campaign when correlation != causation. Question: "Without this campaign, how many leads would have come anyway?"

SM3 - Sunflower Bias (HiPPO)

Team aligns with leader's vision without challenge. Question: "Who disagreed with this plan? If nobody - why?"

SM4 - Narrative Fallacy (brand storytelling)

Coherent brand story becomes rigid constraint. Question: "Brand identity is a choice. What would a competitor without this story do?"

SM5 - Budget Anchoring

Last year's budget anchors this year's. "+10% digital" != strategy. Question: "If you reallocated from zero, how would you split it?"

SM6 - Survivorship Bias (benchmarks)

Studying successes without counting failures with same approach. Question: "For each success case, how many tried the same with no result?"

SM7 - Vanity Metrics Bias

Optimizing for impressive but irrelevant metrics (impressions, likes). Question: "What's the correlation between this metric and revenue?"

SM8 - Creative Sunk Cost

Continuing a campaign because time/money/energy already invested. Question: "If this work didn't exist, would you launch this campaign?"

Frameworks (5)

Load: skills/strategy-marketing/frameworks.yaml

1. MAP Marketing Strategy

6 independent dimensions:

1. Measurable business impact (0-3: not measurable; 7-10: causally proven)
2. True total cost (budget + team time + opportunity cost)
3. Proven audience alignment (0-3: assumed; 7-10: tested)
4. Competitive differentiation (0-3: me-too; 7-10: unique)
5. Executability (skills, time, tools available?)
6. Reversibility (can we stop quickly if it fails?)

2. Campaign Pre-mortem

"6 months later. Campaign failed. What happened?" 7 marketing-specific failure modes.

3. Budget Noise Audit

Each team member allocates 100 points independently. Sentinel measures variance.

4. Marketing Reframes

6 techniques: departing customer, copying competitor, budget / 10, horizon x 5, total stop, new employee.

5. Zero-Based Budget Challenge

Rebuild budget from zero based on proven ROI only.

In-context commands

When /sentinel detects a marketing/communication context:

STANDARD adds:

• MAP marketing dimensions (not generic)
• Domain-specific questions SM1-SM8
• Budget anchoring check

FULL adds:

• Campaign pre-mortem (7 failure modes)
• Budget noise audit (if team > 1)
• Marketing reframes (6 perspectives)
• Reality-checker with marketing base rates
• Calibration: KPI predictions vs actual

Templates

• Strategic plan: skills/strategy-marketing/templates/strategic-plan.md
• Campaign pre-mortem: skills/strategy-marketing/templates/campaign-premortem.md
• Budget challenge (zero-based): skills/strategy-marketing/templates/budget-challenge.md
• Leadership noise audit: skills/strategy-marketing/templates/noise-audit-comex.md
• Initiative scorecard: skills/strategy-marketing/templates/initiative-scorecard.md
• Campaign calibration: skills/strategy-marketing/templates/campaign-calibration.md