Harold, I dredged this up from my stillborn book.
Numbers instead of ideas.

Our submission to technological reductionism and numeracy in all creative advertising thinking endangers the creation of persuasive ideas. The advertising milieu has opted for a physics approach rather than an intuitive, biological approach with little room for intuitive thought or what might be termed, local knowledge. To quote the eminent British physicist, Lord Kelvin: “When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it. But when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind”. Kelvin uttered this in 1884, but it is gospel today.

Let me answer Kelvin with the quote of a famous American inventor, yacht designer and engineer, Nathaniel Greene Herreshoff. Herreshoff designed 6 America’s Cup winners in the late 19th century, the same time as Kelvin’s quote. In a speech at M.I.T. Herreshoff noted: “When designing tall structures such as masts, while it is important to get the mathematics right, it is even more important that the mast look as if it won’t fall down.”

Staying within the yachting context, Ted Turner once had Britton Chance design a potential America’s Cup yacht and Chance, a brilliant and very scientific naval architect, was convinced by the numbers that he had a design breakthrough. His yacht featured a keel trailing edge which was 5 inches wide instead of tapering to a point. His research numbers pointed to great boatspeed.

However, in reality the resulting drag from turbulence made the boat very slow, and Turner, losing race after race, furious, and never without a crackling retort, yelled at Chance: “Geez, Britt, even a turd is pointy at both ends!” In more temperate contemplation, the British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell once noted: “What I do is arrive at an idea I like, then I try to prove it with mathematics. If I can’t, I don’t throw the idea out, I throw the mathematics out, and start again.” Therefore we have Math; Math Lite, and Math with Added Thinking Power! Unfortunately, straight Math is the marketing metrics mantra today.