{"id":1077,"slug":"rule-concede-credence-good-problem-make-marketing-inspectable","title":"Rule: concede the credence-good problem; make marketing as inspectable as possible","kind":"rule","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","candid-team"],"topics":["agency-methodology","psychology-aversion","credence-goods"],"reference_body":"**Rule:** Do not claim marketing work is straightforwardly inspectable. **Concede the credence-good problem** ([[marketing-services-as-credence-good-for-gc]]) and then engineer mechanisms that **make the inspectability problem smaller**, not absent.\n\nMechanisms Candid commits to:\n\n- **Published process** — the actual sequence of work Candid performs is documented and shareable, not opaque.\n- **Published reporting** — what gets measured, at what cadence, with what tooling.\n- **Named-deliverable contracts** — every workstream has a specific artifact attached, not a vague retainer.\n- **Refusal to quote cold** — Candid produces a paid audit before quoting an engagement (parallels [[pioneer-craftsmen-kitchener-design-build-reference-case]]'s paid-design model).\n- **Visible artifacts** — websites, written case studies, deployment logs, before/after CWV runs — the durable footprint Crawford ([[crawford-real-work-vs-marketing-probabilistic-deterministic]]) trained the GC to expect.\n\n**Why:** Vendors who say \"trust us, the work is real\" are arguing against information the buyer already has (FTC HomeAdvisor record — [[ftc-homeadvisor-angi-jan-2023-7-2m-order]]; Vermont AG settlement — [[vermont-ag-angi-100k-settlement-oct-2025]]). Conceding the problem flips the credibility dynamic.\n\n**How to apply:** Every Candid proposal includes a \"how to inspect this engagement\" section. Every long-form Candid content piece references the inspectability discipline at least once.","rationale_body":"R2 from the May 2026 psychology brief. Pairs with R7 (refuse lead-gen value prop) — both are responses to the same regulator-validated category-credibility problem.","metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"darby-karni-1973-credence-goods-framework","title":"Darby & Karni (J Law Econ 1973) — \"credence good\": quality consumers never discover even after consumption","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"marketing-services-as-credence-good-for-gc","title":"Marketing services are a near-paradigmatic credence good for a GC buyer","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"crawford-real-work-vs-marketing-probabilistic-deterministic","title":"Crawford \"the building stands, the car runs, the lights are on\" — marketing's probabilistic outputs violate the GC's calibrated expectations","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[]},"created_at":"2026-05-24T23:24:06.381Z","updated_at":"2026-05-24T23:24:06.381Z"}