You raise an excellent point; time to A/B test the landscaping around my office!

Amen Talk to the "certified" marketing managers/directors working in the industry today and ask them IF their marketing works, then ask them HOW they know it does. 90% of them will respond with a story about how one time their marketing worked with one guy or they will be using inference with sales charts. "See that increase in sales there? That was when we changed our corporate colors to beige" Like you've pointed out, it's because schools don't teach marketing from a pragmatic, experimental approach. You're getting an outdated set of best marketing practices from the 80's. A framework of how to adapt would probably be more useful than a lesson in what worked 20 years ago for most companies. These days, the only thing those outdated best practices are good for is burning through a marketing budget with minimal results.