Don't think of a horse's arse – or why the only thing holding marketers back is our own ambition

This is as true in business and branding as it is in culture, creativity and life.

Take space travel for example, arguably mankind’s greatest achievement; an amazing feat of ingenuity that has transformed the modern world in countless ways.

But, according to various must-be-believed-internet-message-boards, even our ability to ‘boldly go’ is limited by history’s most elaborate case of copycat thinking.

It’s all to do with an apparently unbreakable link between space shuttle design, railways and horses’ arses.

Here’s how the story goes.

In the US, the standard railroad gauge is 4ft, 8.5 inches.

This is because the US railroads were built by the British.

The British railways were built by those that built the tramways that came before.

The tramways were built using the same tools and templates that had been used to build horse drawn carts for hundreds of years.

Going further back, horse-drawn carts were built to be a certain width so their wheels would fit in the ruts in the ancient roads that crisscrossed Britain.

These roads were built by the Romans so their legions could travel across the country.

As they traveled from one conquest to another their chariots left ruts in the road that were all exactly the same width apart.

This meant that anyone who had a horse-drawn cart had to make it fit in the ruts otherwise their wheels would be destroyed.

So to recap.

The US railroad gauge comes from the British, who built the railways, who built the tramways, who built horse-drawn carts, to fit in the ruts left by Roman chariots, which were designed to be just a bit wider than the backsides of two horses.

What, for the love of god, has this got to do with space shuttles?

Space shuttles have two giant booster rockets attached to each side of their fuel tank. The designers who first made these booster rockets wanted to make them much bigger so they could carry the shuttles further, but the only way to get the rockets from the factory in Utah to the launch site at Cape Canaveral – nearly 2,000 miles away – was by train.

The train had to travel on a single stretch of tunnel through the Rocky Mountains. The tunnel, of course, was only a little bit wider than the railway tracks, which were the same width as the ruts left by Roman chariots, which were just a little bit wider than two horses’ arses.

You get the picture.

Whether or not this story is true is beside the point. The important thing is to imagine what could have been possible if someone, anyone, at any stage of that journey had been brave enough to think differently, rather than simply following what had gone before.

Perhaps we’d all be living on Mars, eating our meals in pill format and walking our robotic space dogs.

Either way, when it comes to marketing one thing is clear: technology is increasingly giving us the power to break out of the ruts. All we need to do is stop thinking about horses’ arses.

Gareth Jones is chief brand and content officer at DigitasLBi. He tweets @GJ