by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) The era of “big data” is quickly becoming the era of “big bullshit” — bullshit on a grander scale than ever before. We’ve always had ability to bullshit with words. Now we have the ability to bullshit with math.
Tag archives: big data
AdForum Worldwide Summit: A surprise visit from John Wren, Omnicom CEO
by Johanna McDowell (@jomcdowell) NEW YORK CITY: Day 5 was quite spectacular as our first meeting was a surprise — John Wren, CEO of Omnicom. The AdForum Worldwide Summit Forum has not seen him for a few years but he accepted the invitation to join and give us an update on the Publicis Omnicom merger.
[Digital Grandad] Demystifying your huge data Syndrome
Dear Grandpa – does size matter?
I was hoping you could help me demystify the topic around ‘Data and Big Data’. We are a high street retail brand and run a loyalty program and have over 520,000 records in our database that run monthly campaigns with little conversion – but my CEO attended a few conference recently and feels we are not doing enough, don’t have enormous amounts of data and we should be thinking big data. In truth I am not sure what it all means and quite frankly feeling quite insecure. I need to report back next week and advise on what is Big Data. Help.
Regards
Mr Insecure
Dear Insecure
“Big data is huge, its enormous, it’s gigantic, in-fact it so bloody big, its scaring the living daylights out of marketers, sending shivers down CTO’s & CMO’s backs, making some break out in a cold sweat and leaving them feeling very inadequate umm”
But, please don’t be insecure – your not alone! You must have heard the saying “size matters”, but let me tell you son, size doesn’t matter! It’s what you do with it that counts! So lets equip you with the intelligence to verify what you have is good and that you are taking the right steps in what you are doing with your data – let alone if it is big or small data and in doing so, demystifying your huge data Syndrome.
Mad Men to Math Men
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Mad Men to Math Men is where advertising has been heading for a while now, and the pace of transformation is only picking up Steven Plimsoll (@splimsoll), Chief Technology Officer at the WPP Data Alliance and at Mindshare Worldwide, told delegates at the recently held Acceleration Digital Ignition Symposium.
In case you don’t know, the WPP Data Alliance is a partnership between WPP companies “to connect diverse data to provide powerful, analytics-driven solutions for our clients.” This is where direct marketing meets media, says Plimsoll, who argues that the traditional adoption model used by many marketers is broken as consumers adapt communication technology at an unprecedented pace.
WPP, with its keen eye on shifts in marketing spend, and backed up by the findings of a 2012 Gartner report that says by 2017 the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) will spend more on IT than the CIO, is investing in building data partnerships, like the one recently announced with Twitter, and going into client data strategy.
For the WPP Data Alliance every consumer interaction, across the various channels they make use of, becomes an opportunity to collect data on consumers. “Insight opportunities” extend from store openings to tweets, call center activity, online ratings and reviews, media preferences and more. Data sources include traditional market research, owned activity monitoring (own website, call centre activity etc), social monitoring and media intelligence.
Marketers complicit in big data mischief
he snot really hit the fan last week when The Washington Post and The Guardian reported that the US had secret spying programs that are “tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies.”
It was inevitable that our industry’s obsession with Internet data collection would come smack up against questions of civil rights and individual liberties. But no one in the marketing or advertising industries seems to care about the consequences of our obsession with data, or the central role we are playing in this controversy.
It is an article of faith among the pundit digerati that the Internet has given us reg’lar folks more control over our lives. One of the mantras of marketing’s chattering class is that “the consumer is now in charge.” These people think that because we can tweet “the fries at Wendy’s really suck” we now have greater economic, social and political control. They are alarmingly insensitive to the trade-offs the web has presented us with.
On several occasions during the past few years I have taken the, ahem, contrarian position that not only are we not “in charge,” but the illusion that we are is masking the fact that the powerful are getting more powerful and that the individual citizen has less control than ever.
The Sell: Shopper data — a ‘blockbuster’ debate between Minority Report and Zero Dark Thirty
by Mimi Nicklin (@miminicklin) I don’t know about you but I find it very irritating every time I read a newspaper article or report that quotes the Tom Cruise film, Minority Report, as a reference to how ‘psychic’ we are becoming when it comes to shopper data analysis.