Your Aversion to Getting Technical Costs You Millions

You don't need to become a data scientist. You need to be able to kick the tires.

CEOs, CMOs — your aversion to getting too technical costs you millions.

I know how that sounds. You didn't climb to the top of the org chart to debug regression models. You have people for that. You have agencies for that. You have a reputed consultancy on retainer for exactly that.

And of course a CMO can't be an expert in every technical detail. Nobody is asking you to be.

But here's the thing… bluntly outsourcing your insights — to data scientists, to a big-name consultancy, to a market research firm — is risky too. Risky in a very specific way.

It's risky if you can't kick the tires.

Any Strategy Is Only as Good as the Insights It Builds On

This is the part most leaders skip past. So let's not skip it.

Every strategy is a chain of reasoning. It starts with a picture of how your market works: why customers buy, what they value, what would make them switch. Then it stacks decisions on top — positioning, pricing, portfolio, communication.

If the picture at the bottom is wrong, everything above it is wrong. Not slightly off. Wrong.

Wrong remains wrong — no matter how elegant the slides, how senior the partner presenting them, or how large the sample size.

You already apply this logic elsewhere. You wouldn't approve a factory built on an unverified soil report. You wouldn't sign off on an acquisition without due diligence on the numbers. Yet strategies worth hundreds of millions get approved every week on insights nobody in the boardroom ever stress-tested.

Why? Because the insights felt technical. And "technical" got delegated.

The Dirty Truth About the Insights Industry

Here's what three decades inside this industry taught me, first as a researcher, then as a consultant, now as an author.

Management consultants and market researchers offer what sells. And they apply what is easiest to explain.

Not because they're dishonest. Because of incentives.

A method wins a pitch when the buying committee understands it in ninety seconds. Familiar beats rigorous. A driver chart everyone has seen before beats a causal model that requires ten minutes of education — every single time the buyer can't tell the difference.

So the industry converges on the explainable, not the true. Surveys that ask people why they buy — even though decades of neuroscience show they can't answer that question. Correlations dressed up as drivers. Segmentations that describe your customers without explaining them.

The consultancy isn't cheating you. It's giving you exactly what the market rewards.

The market rewards it because buyers can't kick the tires.

See the loop?

What "Kicking the Tires" Actually Means

You don't need to rebuild the engine. You need to know whether the vehicle is roadworthy before you drive your company into it.

That's a different skill. It's not data science. It's informed skepticism — a handful of questions that separate decision-grade evidence from professional theater.

Ask these five questions in your next insights review. You'll learn more in twenty minutes than in the previous twenty decks.

And notice: none of them require you to write a single line of code. This is the level of understanding a marketing leader actually needs — I've written a whole piece on whether CMOs need to understand Causal AI, and the answer is the same. Conceptual literacy, not hands-on skills.

The Cost of Not Asking

Let's make the "costs you millions" claim concrete.

A repositioning built on the wrong driver analysis doesn't just waste the research budget. It redirects the media budget, the creative budget, the product roadmap — all pointed confidently at the wrong lever. The research invoice was the cheapest line item in the disaster.

A pricing move based on stated willingness-to-pay burns margin the day it ships. A launch validated by a survey that measured polite intentions instead of real demand dies in month three, and takes eighteen months of pipeline with it.

In every one of these cases, the strategy work looked impeccable. The workshops were energizing. The deck was beautiful.

The foundation was sand.

The most expensive research is not the rigorous kind. It's the convincing kind that happens to be wrong.

Why Customers Actually Buy

There's a second layer to this, and it's the reason kicking the tires matters so much in marketing specifically.

Customers don't buy for the reasons they state. Purchase decisions are made by the intuitive, subconscious mind — and narrated afterward by the rational one. So any method that relies on asking people directly is structurally blind to the real buying root causes.

This is not a niche academic point. It's the difference between strategies that move markets and strategies that move PowerPoint.

At SUPRA, our ambition is to go deeper than what sells easily. We built our consulting work around methods that unearth subconscious buying root causes — implicit measurement to capture what customers can't articulate, Causal AI to separate what drives behavior from what merely correlates with it.

In my latest book, THE TOP 5%, I lay out the full argument: why this depth is needed, why customers actually buy, a proven framework to unearth the subconscious root causes of buying — and dozens of case studies showing how this creates growth for brands.

The title is not an accident. Only a small elite of brands grows sustainably. The difference is rarely talent or budget.

It's the quality of the evidence underneath the strategy.

The Leader's Job, Restated

So no — don't become a data scientist. That's not your job, and it never will be.

Your job is harder: to refuse to build on foundations you haven't tested. To make "how do we know this?" the most normal question in your organization. To reward the agency that survives your five questions, and to get nervous about the one that gets uncomfortable when you ask them.

Delegate the analysis. Never delegate the judgment.

This is how you 10x your decisions.

Kicking the tires: frequently asked questions

Do CMOs really need to understand technical research methods?

Not at expert level. But a CMO must be able to kick the tires — to ask the questions that expose weak methodology, such as how causality was established and what would falsify the finding. Any strategy is only as good as the insights it builds on, so delegating insights blindly means delegating the foundation of your strategy. Leaders need conceptual literacy in methods like Causal AI, not hands-on skills.

What does kicking the tires mean in market research and consulting?

Stress-testing the insights work behind a recommendation before you act on it. You don't rebuild the engine — you check whether the vehicle is roadworthy. In practice: asking how the data was gathered, whether the analysis separates causation from correlation, and whether the method was chosen for rigor or for ease of selling. It's the difference between buying a story and buying evidence.

Why would consultancies and research agencies use weak methods?

Incentives, not malice. Consultancies and market research agencies offer what sells and apply what is easiest to explain to a buying committee. Simple, familiar methods win pitches; rigorous ones require education. That's why methodological depth rarely survives procurement — and why SUPRA positions research and insights excellence as the core of its consulting work rather than a subcontracted commodity.

What is THE TOP 5% about?

THE TOP 5% is my book on why only a small fraction of brands grows sustainably. It explains why customers actually buy — the subconscious root causes behind purchase decisions — and presents a proven framework to unearth them, illustrated with dozens of case studies showing how this creates growth for brands. It's written for CEOs and CMOs who want to judge insights quality without becoming data scientists.

Dr. Frank Buckler is the founder of SUPRA and a pioneer in Causal AI for marketing. He has applied implicit research methods across FMCG, pharma, financial services, and insurance for over 25 years.