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Why the finish line can make smart marketers do dumb things.

George Finch testing oxygen equipment in 1922. Photographer unknown.

Marketing has a bad habit of finishing things simply because we started them.

Mountaineers have a term for a dangerous version of this: summit fever. A climber becomes so fixated on reaching the top that the summit starts to matter more than everything telling them to turn around. Bad weather. Safety rules. Physical exhaustion. The goal is right there, so they keep climbing.

In marketing terms: the campaign has been approved. The media is booked. The website is almost ready. Everyone has spent months getting here.

Then the warning signs start showing up.

The strategy isn’t holding up. New information changes the picture. The idea doesn’t feel as strong as it did three months ago. Maybe someone finally asks the uncomfortable question: Is this still the right thing to do?

But the summit is right there. So we keep climbing.

The closer a project gets to the finish line, the harder it becomes to question it. We’ve already spent the money, gotten approval, put in the hours, and told everyone it launches Friday.

But "we’ve come this far" is a terrible reason to keep going in the wrong direction.

Some of this is the sunk cost fallacy. But marketing makes it especially tricky because the investment isn’t just money. It’s time, pride, and ownership. Changing course can make all of that feel wasted.

It isn’t.

Sometimes doing the work helps you discover the original idea was wrong.

The important thing is remembering what the actual summit is.

Launching a campaign isn’t the goal; it's solving the problem that started the project in the first place.

If the work no longer does that, crossing the finish line doesn’t make it successful. It just makes it finished.

Good climbers pay attention to the warning signs, even when the summit is in sight. Good marketers should too.