I like Seth Godin and I try to read his posts everyday. Today he tickled our minds with a simple math problem. Think about it…
A simple quiz for smart marketers:
Let’s say your goal is to reduce gasoline consumption.
And let’s say there are only two kinds of cars in the world. Half of them are Suburbans that get 10 miles to the gallon and half are Priuses that get 50.
If we assume that all the cars drive the same number of miles, which would be a better investment:
. Get new tires for all the Suburbans and increase their mileage a bit to 13 miles per gallon.
. Replace all the Priuses and rewire them to get 100 miles per gallon (doubling their average!)
Trick question aside, the answer is the first one. (In fact, it’s more than twice as good a move).
We’re not wired for arithmetic. It confuses us, stresses us out and more often than not, is used to deceive.
Need a flashlight?
The Suburban needs 10 gallons to travel 100 miles.
The Prius needs just 2 gallons to travel 100 miles.
So, with new tyres, the Suburban consumes 10 gallons but now travels 130 miles… so the Suburban now uses 7.69 gallons to cover those 100 miles and saves 2.31 gallons per 100 miles thanks to the new tyres.
The Prius (with the new electronics) now travels 100 miles on 1 gallon. Saving 1 gallon per 100 miles compared with its original state.
Thus, Investing in Tyres for the Suburbans is 2.31 times more effective at reducing gasoline consumption.
CAVEAT: The above assumes that Suburban owners are not influenced by peers, media and others to dump their Suburban. But if they were to switch to Priuses then the Prius upgrade option would save 8 gallons per 100 miles (3x better than getting new tyres for Suburbans)
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