GUEST COLUMN: Why ignorance is underrated

Lucian Camp

Brand & Marketing Consultant

Lucian Camp Consulting

Lucian Camp is a financial services brand consultant, copywriter, author and blogger. He co-presents the On The Other Hand podcast.

Over the years, I’d say the commonest reason given for not appointing me or my agency has been that I, or we, are “too close to it.”  The clients don’t want specialist financial anoraks revelling in the technicalities.  The clients want people who know little and care less, just like their customers.

And every time this objection has arisen, the thought that has come to my mind has been the same: “If only they knew.”  If only the client realised just how little any of us know or care about the financial product or service they’re offering.

Of course it’s difficult to admit this, especially publicly, because most of the rest of the time we’re trading on our in-depth understanding and insight.  “You won’t need to spend time propelling us up the steep slopes of the learning curve” we tell the rest of our clients and prospects.  “We’re already at the summit, understanding all there is to understand about ETFs or ESG or LDI or CDC or whatever it may be.”

In fact, though, that’s the lie.  Having been doing this financial stuff for such a very, very long time, I have inevitably picked up a few smatterings of knowledge here and there.  But the truth is that before I got into it, I’d never been any good at maths or numbers;  I lasted a term doing politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, mainly because I couldn’t hack the economics, before I switched to the safe and comfortable world of English;  and the word “disarray” has always been tailor-made to describe the state of my personal finances.

All this lack of interest and skill feeds through into my engagement, or lack of it, with the world so many of my clients inhabit.  I’m OK with the basics – bank accounts, savings, mortgages, insurance.  But as soon as things get complicated, my head starts spinning just as it used to whenever those log tables made an appearance in O Level maths lessons.  How do derivatives work?  What is the difference between buying a call, and selling a put?  What is liability-driven investing?  Remind me, which one is PMI and which one is PHI?  To be honest, the term “tax credit” has always baffled me – how can it be both a tax and a credit?   What is the current ISA allowance?  And what are the rules on transfers?  Is equity release as stupid as it looks?  And so on and so on and so on.

I should be ashamed of the depths of my ignorance – how could I work in this field for so long and still know so little about it – but I’m not really.  Despite what I sometimes pretend to my more financially hobbyist clients, I don’t actually think my job is to understand what they do for a living – it’s to know how to make whatever it is meaningful and engaging to consumers.  And if that’s what I’m doing, then ignorance and indifference is a much more helpful starting-point than passionate interest and excitement.

And of course it’s not just me.  In my agency days, looking around me at my delightful and talented colleagues, I have to say that an expression involving the words “blind,” “leading” and “blind” wasn’t often far from my thoughts.  And actually, I’ve often been surprised by how incredibly little my clients know – or indeed care – about what their organisations do.  There’s usually a product guy somewhere who can explain it, but many of the marketing people make me feel like John Maynard Keynes.

Although I’ve been arguing that too little knowledge is better than too much, I don’t really believe either is ideal.  I think the great communicators are the ones who can use their brains on two levels simultaneously – possessing massive knowledge and understanding, but at the same time retaining the ability to filter, edit and shape what they know in ways that make it clear and engaging.

That two-level ability is very, very rare and very, very valuable.  Clients who come across it would be wise to pay whatever it costs.  But until they do, someone who can pretend they know what they’re talking about is probably the least bad option.

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