People spend money on advertising on the basis that it will work. Most end up disappointed. But they are disappointed for a strange reason. What they have done has almost always achieved results, but they don’t know why. This is the real cause of dissatisfaction. David Ogilvy’s famous observation is still true: “Half my advertising works. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

The reason for this predicament is strictly mathematical. Advertising, like everything else, obeys the laws of probability. For most people this is readily acceptable. However, the nature of probability itself is not generally understood.
Probability occurs as a wave. If you think about it, everyone knows this. Unlikely events lead to more unlikely events. Improbability clusters. You get on a run. You get cluster fucks. Good fortune is always unstable. But, fortunately, so is bad.
In a wave, every movement up is impelled by a movement down, and vice versa. Mathematically, the probability of what might happen is calculated as a vector. Probability waves may radiate from any point in 360 degrees in every dimension. This is why there is both positive and negative probability. Negative probability may seem a surprising notion, but nothing ever happens without it.

This reciprocal wave-like motion blurs expectation, muddles deterministic interpretation, and undermines concepts of progress. It leads to the constant abandonment of working ideas, continual dissatisfaction with outcomes, and the eventual waste of money and resources.

We do have one useful tool which helps us manage expectation and cope with future events however. Storytelling is the exploration of probability. Because of this, stories have a shape. The shape of most stories is a wave, or part of a wave. The wave form of probability is why fortunes rise and fall and it is the reason stories have twists. It is why reversals a so memorable. It is also why so much public debate is deeply polarised, why binary thinking degenerates to an infinity loop, and why intractable problems frequently require an outsider to solve them.

If you talk to a statistician you will learn none of this. Why is probability so misunderstood? Our perception is deeply distorted by our habit of attempting to determine reality through the invention of games and rules. Gamifying sets imaginary boundaries. In a game, we are in a privileged arena where an event will be completed. The calculated probabilities of possible outcomes in a defined event always add up to one, and there is no obvious place for negative probability. This teaches us to ignore the true nature of probability, even though we see the effect of both positive and negative probabilities all around us. In all our avenues of enquiry, only the labyrinths of quantum physics pay it any attention.

Understanding probability in a more realistic way, of course, would bring huge rewards. It would make us braver and more adventurous in communication strategies, and it might even lead us properly to understand the function of storytelling in advertising and business effectiveness.

If you are interested in this subject and would like to know more about the relationship of probability and imagination, you might like my book, Quantism, which is available here. There are also more essays and thoughts about probability and its effects on these pages.