How Can We Be Creative if We’re Drowning in Data?
August 4, 2009
Filed Under: in Analysis, Marketing 2.0, Social Media
Author: Rick Gardinier
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If I hear another agency person say “data is the new creative” I think I’ll scream! Data is NOT creative – people are.
Like most online marketers, I am fascinated with real-time data. Even 15 years into my interactive marketing career, I am still amazed that I can find out what is working – or more importantly what is NOT working – just hours into a particular campaign’s launch. For many years, the methods and tools that we used to measure success or failure didn’t really change all that much. Web usage stats, CTR’s, Email open rates and Opt-In’s ruled the data analytics field for years.
Not only that, but it didn’t seem like too many people even cared to see this data, which amazed me. Who wouldn’t want to tap into real-time performance data and graphs on a daily basis to find out the fate of their latest campaign? Why wouldn’t everyone want to know the home page bounce rate of your site and whether it was trending up or down?
Then along came MySpace and Facebook and a fascination with personal web stats. Startups like your.flowingdata are popping up every day and telling me that I can understand myself by digging into my personal web data. I might have issues, but this chart isn’t going to help me solve them!
Still, personal social networks have changed the analytics game forever. The average teenage Facebook user knows at every moment their “friend count.” Most Twitter users know which followers yield the most “reach” as well as their follower “growth rate.”
The pace of innovation in the data-visualization space has accelerated to dizzying levels. And now even the average marketer is demanding real-time data dashboards to track every one of the hundred or more standard metrics.
Social media monitoring companies are subsequently exploding in popularity – Spiral16’s data visualization model, for instance, is a tool that I can get lost in for days. The age old standbys, Omniture and WebTrends, for example, are scrambling to keep up.
But here’s my question – does all of this data REALLY mean anything unless we tie it back to business goals?
We are approaching data overload – quickly. In a matter of six months time, I’ve gone from the mantra “Take a look at your web daily visitor log and you’ll gain valuable insights” to “I’m not sure that you really need to be focused on how many Twitter influencers have re-tweeted your re-tweets, while figuring out if your latest sales promotion is working.”
Fascinating? Yes. But I can’t help wonder sometimes if we’re making it all too complicated. The fact is that people are still the creatives. People need time to think about the data that matters. The insights that we draw from data help to spur their creativity, but only if we’re looking at the right data.
As much as I love the field of data analytics, I fear that we’re in the middle of data overload and that might actually paralyze us instead of helping us be more creative.
Now excuse me while I use Trendrr to mashup my Twitter data against my Salesforce.com data… just for fun of course.
Great post. I've been following you guys for a month now. I"m impressed with the quality of the content. I love that you're self funded, blog with peers, and don't put bullshit ads on the site. Very credible and not insulting to smart users.
Congrats on the growth
Thanks muchly.
We're bootstrapped and sponsorship and consulting based, instead of ad
based.
Basically, we eat our own dogfood - the things we pitch as analysis and
advice in our posts we also do for ourselves and people who hire us for more
in-depth advice.
Of course I'm biased in my commentary because Rick and I represent the same company, but I think Rick's point of view is right on...and he is delivering it from a background that is highly technical and analytical so I believe it is that much more poignant coming from him. I would add that I believe it takes a combination of right side of the brain thinking combined with the more analytical left side to help create a balanced strategy for dealing with effective creative strategies, both online and off line. Data is directional and it should ideally inform the creative, not direct it.
I like this one Rick.
Data funds the budget, but emotion ultimatley drives action.
Rick,
What a flattering compliment for Spiral16!
We often stress that people may not find value in any data collection toolset unless they know how to use the results, or have defined what metrics relate best to their goals. Software is the vehicle that gets you from point A (chaos) to point B (organized metrics) - what people do from that point forward is what makes any data set valuable. Measurement is just the beginning.
Whitney Mathews
Social Media Manager
Spiral16
@spiral16
http://www.spiral16.com