Irrational Struggles

What most people mean

When marketers talk about customer problems, they default to rational struggles. Functional needs. Feature gaps. Efficiency. Cost savings. Time savings. The stuff you can put in a spreadsheet and present to the board.

“Our customers need to save time on X.” “Their pain point is that Y is too expensive.” “They struggle with the complexity of Z.”

All rational. All correct, probably. All boring.

Where the definition breaks

Humans tend to see themselves as perfectly rational creatures, but if that were the case, we would all live in harmony, and things like makeup, megayachts, or civet poop coffee wouldn’t exist.

The folks who make up the marketing world love to pretend people are robots. Cold, calculating machines that analyse every purchase with the logic of a cyborg. And who can blame them? It seems easier to sell to walking spreadsheets than to messy, emotional humans.

But it’s just so f*cking boring.

Nobody needs coffee shat out by a jungle cat. It costs $650 per kilogram. The rational argument is that it’s more aromatic and less bitter than regular coffee. But if we were all ruled by logic, civet poop producers would be out of a job. People buy it to use as a party trick to impress guests. To gift to a coffee lover. To satisfy curiosity. To relive memories from a trip to Indonesia 28 years ago.

In most places, “you can never be fired for being logical,” argues Rory Sutherland. “If your reasoning is sound and unimaginative, even if you fail, you will unlikely attract much blame.” But solving rational problems will get you “exactly in the same place as your competitors.”

How we define it at STFO

Irrational struggles are the emotional and often subconscious problems that prevent a certain group of people from getting a job done. The bizarre stuff humans do that doesn’t make sense.

They’re the juiciest kind of struggle because big companies tend to see people as rational decision-makers, which means they overlook the irrationality of human behaviour. That’s your edge as an underdog.

Ten categories:

• Self-love. Avoiding feeling like a loser. (“My hair is like lo mein noodles. I look like a witch.”)
• Love and company. Avoiding loneliness.
• Fitting in. Craving approval and belonging. (“I bought these because now I have a roommate.”)
• Purpose. Seeking meaning, unity, and nostalgia.
• Control freaks. Controlling and organising chaos. (“Never in my life have I been able to control the frizz.”)
• Fewer decisions. Avoiding overwhelming choices.
• Entertainment. Seeking fun and avoiding boredom.
• “Look at me!” Seeking recognition and wanting to be valued.
• Reducing risk. Reducing risk, even if it means not using the best option.
• Power trip. Seeking superiority or “keeping up with the Joneses.”

To find ignored struggles, start with the irrational ones. You have to do the emotional labour on behalf of your customers to fill the gaps. 95% of our brain activity is unconscious and automatic. We like to think we’re in control, but we’re not.

What it is NOT

• Not “pain points” (too vague, too rational)
• Not something customers will tell you directly (they’re subconscious, you need to read between the lines)
• Not limited to B2C (B2B buyers are humans with the same emotional wiring)
• Not a nice-to-have after you’ve covered the rational stuff (start here, not last)
• Not unprofessional to acknowledge (ignoring irrationality is what’s unprofessional)