Marketing vs. Statistics…

 

Recently my bank’s bank statement printer / computer was advertising an insurance covering „occupational disability“ using the following message: „occupational disability – a risk that applies to every fourth human…“. I wonder what the marketing department of this major financial institute is trying to tell me? Well, of course they want to strike fear into my heart, because fear is (as we all should be aware of) the only argument resulting in bigger sales that even sex.
Ok, fear has got me: „Dear god, I’m going to suffer from occupational disability – that machine printing my account statements is wise!“
Not so fast, lets just assume the ad’s text would actually have been prepared by someone keen in mathematics or statistics! Then it becomes clear that 75% of the population is not affected by any risk concerning occupational disability – wow, that’s much better news than intented! But what about those 25%? They are not guaranteed to suffer from occupational disability, no no no, there is a risk for them to do so. How high that particuar risk is? Well I don’t know and the ad was not going to help me further in this regard. Let’s just say it would be a ten percent risk within that group, this would mean that of the population in general only 2.5% might unfortunately acquire occupational disability.
Ok, I have to admit, that „You have a 97.5% chance to never need the insurance package we try to sell“ is not really going to be a big seller, so marketing – as usual – got everything right…

If I take my thoughts one step further and take into account that the underlying numbers are -most likely- provided by an insurance company, that would mean that the message is something like „three quarter (or even 97.5% – see above) of you folks reading this add will never get anything out of this insurance we want you to buy“. Quite shocking, isn’t it? I would have expected such an information in a booklet for potential shareholders of the insurance company rather than in an ad for the actual insurance…

Dieser Beitrag wurde unter Allgemein veröffentlicht. Setze ein Lesezeichen auf den Permalink.