Marketers love numbers. Clicks. Recall. Awareness. Every dashboard feels like progress — proof that something is working. But what if the data we obsess over is just the part that survived?
The Bullet Holes We Can See
During the Second World War, engineers studied returning aircraft riddled with bullet holes. The brief was simple: reinforce the most damaged areas to help more planes return home.
But statistician Abraham Wald saw the flaw. The planes being studied had survived. The damage they showed wasn’t what brought aircraft down — it was what they could endure. The real weak points were on the planes that never came back.
Survivorship Bias in Marketing
That same logic flaw runs deep in modern marketing. We optimise what’s visible — likes, clicks, and campaign recall — and ignore what’s absent. We build our strategy around the survivors of our system, not the casualties of it.
Every performance report is, in truth, a record of what returned from battle. It tells us where the bullets landed — not where they killed.
What We Miss When We Measure
- Metrics reflect survival, not success. They show what endured the system, not what drove growth.
- Recall is not reality. People report how they think they felt, not what their brains actually encoded.
- We optimise the measurable. Because it’s easy. Because it’s visible. And in doing so, we often reinforce what doesn’t truly matter.
The Work That Doesn’t Show Up on Dashboards
Some of the most powerful marketing signals are the ones that don’t return data. The ad that was seen but never recalled. The message that influenced behaviour without attribution. The feeling that shifted preference before awareness caught up.
These are the unreturned planes — the hidden evidence that tells us where brands fall from memory.
How to Think Beyond What’s Visible
- Hunt for the blind spots. Look at what your data doesn’t capture. The silence often speaks loudest.
- Interrogate absence. Non-responses, missed recall, and emotional indifference are signals — just negative ones.
- Use implicit measures. Neural and behavioural data can reveal what the conscious mind forgets to report.
- Stop rewarding noise. Don’t optimise for what’s loudest or most scalable. Optimise for what endures in memory and moves behaviour.
True growth doesn’t come from reinforcing bullet holes. It comes from understanding the gaps — the unseen, unmeasured spaces where attention slips and memory fades.
Sometimes, what’s missing from your data is the thing that matters most.
At Wanted.Berlin, we study those gaps — the silent mechanics of growth. Because real marketing intelligence isn’t about what survived; it’s about understanding why so much doesn’t.