Big bad data

This week I was fortunate enough that Advertising Age published some of my thoughts that I developed on this blog over the last month (http://adage.com/print?article_id=115045). The reactions that I got from different members of the marketing community have been quite educational. Let me try to summarize them:

• A lot of professionals outside of our analytical and data-centric community were interested in the thought of “Data Democratization”. The interest in data driven work is growing, we just need to use the momentum to make our work even more relevant and results oriented. People are watching what we are doing.
• Many professionals believe in the power of data as a potential change agent but they express their insecurity and ignorance of how to make it work in their organization. Over the next weeks I will try to write a more detailed approach of how to democratize data in bigger organizations with clear goals of improving marketing performance. It seems that the willingness to move towards a more data focused corporate environment exists. There is just a huge knowledge gap of how to attack it.
• Quite some professionals are a bit confused about the benefits of visualization. Everyone likes pretty pictures but some are challenged to move beyond the visually appealing nature of the images to really use them as inspiring tools that drive marketing decisions. There is more education necessary.
• Creatives love the idea of utilizing data to create art like objects. Sometimes they are easier to be persuaded to use data within this framework than other professions (e.g. Client Services). Who would have known.

More to come.