Math Vs Snow

Market Opportunity

My local area had a late season snow storm recently, which did what it always does to cash-strapped towns; crippled them for days until the snow more or less went away on its own, because there are too many side streets, untended sidewalks and poor drainage areas, and not enough human bandwidth and money to clear it all away. Even when the main roads are clear, the side roads aren't, which makes all traffic slower, and yeah, I miss living in California, where you get to visit the snow at altitude, like elephants at a zoo. But let's move on.

What leads this into a marketing and advertising discussion is what happened next. Residents who normally walk or ride bicycles requested transport from ride sharing apps. So did those who were unwilling or unable to free their car from the ice and drifts. Many people who drive for these services chose not to, because driving in snow is dangerous and slow. And the apps did what they always do; adjusted on price to match the change in market conditions.

Which meant spikes in price of up to 600%. Leading to a subsequent hue and outcry in print and social media and among some consumers, and the usual shrugging non-apologies from the ride sharing companies themselves.

Now, it's possible that this is all just growing pains for a market that, for all of the exploding market cap and countless PR and cultural mentions, is still relatively new to much of the country and market base. It's also likely that spikes like this will ease in the future, especially if the ride sharing companies are able to convince more people to drive for them. But what struck me in reading the coverage, and which isn't a given because we're dealing with humans, is how quickly narrative was attached to algorithms.

Some consumers talked about the greed of the companies. Others railed against those who complained as looking for some kind of government handout, or unworthy of using the service because they weren't smart or hard working enough to afford it. Still others stood up for existing cab services, with an equal or better number stating that the status quo created the competition through past abuses. You could find still more voices defending bus service, or tele-commuting, or the need for more flexibility in scheduling from schools or employers, and so on, and so on.

What few seemed to do, at least publicly, was to note that the system worked exactly as a free market intended, with a resource getting real-time pricing in a de facto auction environment. Or that now that this toothpaste is out of the tube, it's never going back in.

Ride sharing apps aren't alone in having a narrative spring into existence from data, of course. Every A/B test with a significant deviation from the median creates an opportunity for a story, and so does interactions with a client who is resistant to change, or extremely demanding about small matters.

That's because in a universe that boils down to two kinds of events (facts, and the stories that we tell about these facts)... we treat our stories as factual, and always will.

Even when it's just math.

Keeping this in mind might help you keep your sanity the next time you have a difficult client, feel tempted to overstate the findings from a test, or find yourself irritated about the speed of a cycle, or any number of outcomes, really.

But if you are standing in snow, waiting for a ride that costs six times what it might have cost a day ago?

You're likely to tell a story about it.

Probably not a very nice one, either.

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