Survivorship Bias
Why we focus on success stories while ignoring failures, and how to use survivorship bias to make your product look like the winning choice.
In this issue
Hey 👋 The Crew here.
What’s the longest you’ve ever flown in one go?
Yours truly will be trapped on a plane for 12 hours this week. Basically long enough to rewatch The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Extended cut.
Hmm, now that we mention it… we just might have to watch that.
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Brace yourself for a war story.
During the second World War, a group of engineers wanted to reinforce airplane armor. And they had a logical “plane” of thought:
The planes that returned from combat were riddled with bullet holes, so reinforcing these spots should make airplanes more robust, right? Makes perfect sense.
But the statistician Abraham Wald disagreed. He argued they should reinforce the spots that sustained no damage.
At first, that didn’t make sense.
But when you think about it, it actually does. Because the planes hit in those places never made it back.
That’s survivorship bias at work. We focus on the winners, the survivors, and ignore the silent losers. This creates a misleading picture of reality.
You’ll be enamoured by the story of a college dropout who became a billionaire. But you won’t hear stories of thousands of others who went broke.
We overestimate our chances of success because the failures are out of sight.
Consumers do this, too. And you can turn it into a selling strategy. Let’s see how.
Three ways to leverage Survivorship Bias
Amplify your success stories
People are drawn to winners.
So much so that the failures fade into the background, while the spotlight on success creates the illusion that winning is the default outcome.
Marketers who lean into this bias make success stories feel less like rare exceptions and more like the natural consequence of choosing the right product.
What you can do: Showcase your most successful customers. You create a narrative that implies similar results are attainable for everyone.
HubSpot is a master of this. Their website features a vast collection of detailed case studies, with each one highlighting a company that thrived using their software.
Notice you don’t see stories about businesses that didn’t get results.
This curated view makes success feel like the norm and not just an exception.
Frame your product as the “everyday survivor’s” choice
You can use survivorship bias to frame—and differentiate yourself from—your competitors.
Take the airplane example at the beginning of this email. Would you want to take the risk of never coming back? Of course not!
Even if your plane can technically “survive” the bullets, you know the risk is huge.
So what can you do? Position your competitors’ successful users or shoppers as the rare outliers, and frame your product as the reliable choice for the majority.
The project management tool ClickUp markets itself as an alternative to complex systems like Jira or Asana:
Their messaging implies that only elite teams “survive” a Jira implementation.
ClickUp is positioned as the accessible solution for the rest of us…
Spotlight the hidden majority
Most people assume success stories are rare.
But if you have a big customer base, each one is its own hidden success story. So what can you do?
Flip the script. Share statistics that reveal how many customers thrive with your product, not just a few standouts.
At Stacked Marketer, we always highlight that you’re joining over 60,000 readers if you subscribe. That’s a huge number of reader survivors, isn’t it?
SaaS tools like Elfsight do something similar:
And suddenly, success and adoption don’t seem like exceptions at all. They feel like a default. The bigger the pool of “survivors,” the more natural it feels to join them.
Another out-of-the-box idea: Highlight how many users “switched” from a different product to this—if you have data.
This is a combination of showing hidden majority plus framing them as “survivors” that came from competitors.
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PODCASTS: Apparently, users trust podcast ads more than on any other channel. It’s also a platform where users are super focused, so ads can “stick” with less effort. This report breaks fresh podcast ads data, so it’s worth a look. Especially if you think about running some…
ADVERTISING:Should your next ad pull heartstrings or list bullet points? A new study found emotional ads are usually more effective. However…if you’re selling a practical, “utilitarian” product like batteries or tools, a fact-based, informational ad will likely work better. Interesting.
META: …has added a new Restricted words option for AI-generated text, tucked under the Branding section when you build ads. It lets you block certain words or phrases from ever showing up in AI-suggested copy. No more cringey words like “unlock” and “landscape,” then.
ICYMI, last time we looked at Unit Bias.
The “Survivors” Crew
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