From a business point of view, the last year has essentially been about the economy and what we were once told was the worst recession since the Great Depression. I've long held the belief that the depth of recessions are manifestations of our own fears, i.e. we're told there's a big recession, so we slow our spending and boy, wow, we're suddenly in a recession. I'm not discounting all the significant economic indicators, but I believe false pessimism leads to a deeper hole than one we might originally have been in. So I was interested and chagrined to see this graph, courtesy of the Societé Générale which shows how economists are largely far more optimistic about recessions than the reality.
As James Montier, the author of the report wrote, "when you look at their record, it's clear that the three blind mice have more credibility". A question I'll pose now and try to answer later is this...if economists can be this wrong about predicting future behavior, how about brands?The Dozen is an eclectic take on innovation, branding, media, strategy and research, brought to you by the creative minds at Egg Strategy.
Comments
I think what your graph shows is a reluctance for forecaseters to take a radical stance, where predicting the status quo is much safer and more often rewarded than delivering very bad or very good news.
In this your analogy to predicting the future of brands is pretty interesting. We tend not to take big risks with brands, prefering the status quo with slight modifications. Is risk, in the context of brands, so badly rewarded that it encourages this behavior?
Clearly Krugman isn't in here, right? :) Is this an average of Wall Street economists? Because that might explain why they are so optimistic...
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