{"id":1121,"slug":"pitch-categories-pre-emptively-defeated-by-gc-cognitive-profile","title":"Pitch categories pre-emptively defeated by the GC cognitive profile — seven types this audience rejects before evaluating on merits","kind":"reference","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["gc-vertical","psychology-aversion","persuasion-design"],"reference_body":"**Claim:** Categories of pitch this cognitive profile defeats *before* the pitch is evaluated on merits:\n\n1. **Strategic-reinvention pitches** — violate bird-in-hand and affordable-loss ([[sarasvathy-effectuation-bird-in-hand-affordable-loss]]).\n2. **Unbounded loss-framing** (\"you'll fall behind\") — defeated by overconfidence on in-house execution and by absence of a bounded number ([[bounded-vs-implicit-loss-frame-distinction]]).\n3. **Probabilistic-upside pitches** — defeated by the certainty effect ([[tversky-kahneman-1992-probability-weighting-certainty-effect]]).\n4. **Scarcity / manufactured-urgency pitches** — defeated by scarcity-cognitive pattern recognition ([[mullainathan-shafir-2013-scarcity-bandwidth-tax]] gives the substrate; [[cialdini-six-principles-audited-for-gc-buyer]] gives the diagnosis).\n5. **Non-peer social proof** — defeated by reference-group mismatch and identity signaling ([[goldstein-cialdini-griskevicius-2008-provincial-norms-hotel-towel]], [[berger-heath-2007-identity-signaling-de-persuasion]]).\n6. **Brand-purpose / mission appeals** — category mismatch with this buyer's decision rule.\n7. **Pitches without explicit kill criteria** — leave the GC inside the disposition-effect trap and signal unbounded commitment ([[shefrin-statman-1985-disposition-effect-narrow-framing]]).\n\n**Confidence:** Applied inference; each item links to its empirical/theoretical substrate.\n\n**For Candid — diagnostic use:** Before sending any pitch, audit against the seven categories. If the pitch is anchored in any of these patterns, expect it to be defeated on form, not content. The fix is structural, not editorial.","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"research-brief-risk-aversion-post-failure-may-2026","title":"Research brief: risk aversion, loss aversion, and post-failure decision patterns in GC and trades-business decision-makers (May 2026)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"},{"slug":"sarasvathy-effectuation-bird-in-hand-affordable-loss","title":"Sarasvathy effectuation (2001, 2008) — expert entrepreneurs decide on affordable loss + bird-in-hand, NOT on expected value","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"bounded-vs-implicit-loss-frame-distinction","title":"Bounded-loss vs implicit-loss frame — implicit (\"you'll fall behind\") fails; bounded (\"max exposure $X, kill points at month 2 and 4\") works","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"tversky-kahneman-1992-probability-weighting-certainty-effect","title":"Tversky & Kahneman 1992 (JRU) — cumulative prospect theory; probability weighting w(p); certainty effect","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"goldstein-cialdini-griskevicius-2008-provincial-norms-hotel-towel","title":"Goldstein, Cialdini, Griskevicius 2008 (JCR) — provincial descriptive norms (\"guests in this room\") outperform general descriptive norms; reference-group proximity matters","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"berger-heath-2007-identity-signaling-de-persuasion","title":"Berger & Heath 2007 (JCR) — identity-signaling; consumers avoid choices of dissimilar others; non-peer cases actively de-persuade","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"shefrin-statman-1985-disposition-effect-narrow-framing","title":"Shefrin & Statman 1985 (JoF) — disposition effect; narrow-framing / mental accounting of each vendor as separate account","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[]},"created_at":"2026-05-25T13:13:31.079Z","updated_at":"2026-05-25T13:13:31.079Z"}