I was fortunate enough recently to be asked to take part in 'A Parliamentary forum
for Media and Marketing Debate'
in the House of Commons along with Graham Hales, the MD of Interbrand UK against a
formidable pair of foes, Matt Brittin, the MD of Google UK and Louise Ainsworth the MD of Nielsen UK.
The motion that ‘In digital, data is the only
currency’ was a tough nut to crack, but was perhaps fatally flawed by the
insistence that it was the ‘only’ currency, something we set out to disprove –
here’s a taster of our winning argument;
"What I’d like to do is talk in particular from a creative perspective, and to remind ourselves that we are first and foremost in the business of generating attention and advocacy. Two areas in which data struggles to live up to the standards we would expect from a common currency. Our role in life as marketers is to create desire, to generate conversation. Data on its own is simply insufficient to account for the full breadth of emotion that we deal with day in and day out.
I'd admit that the creative process and data have not always been easy bed-fellows, however today even although data cannot provide the full picture, data and creative have become increasingly inseparable.
In the creative realm it affects so much of what we do. It informs the actual creative we run, the messages we develop within that creative, their order, their impact and magnitude of effect. Data can provide unparalleled strategic knowledge and understanding, it gives a unique understanding of the pressures and requirements of our clients businesses. There is no doubt that data is certainly a critical and invaluable currency, which when used adeptly can ensure that we are able to offer the best and most appropriate solutions to our clients.
However data is just a part of the equation, and to argue that data is somehow the ONLY currency in digital is to repeat the common assumption that digital is merely a simple offshoot or extension of direct marketing, wholly defined by rational, conscious decision making. Digital is certainly a hugely powerful and impressive provider of direct response activity, however it would be a vast understatement of digitals reach, and would substantially undervalue its impact and complexity.
As an industry and I’m sure this is true for many people in this room, we’ve spent the last 10 years hopefully proving that it is possible, essential and indeed desirable to seek to deliver true creative emotional responses through digital work. During this time digital has changed beyond all recognition and arguably now encompasses the full extent of all media, in doing so it is employed in the same tasks as those more traditional media; building brands, creating desire, sparking real human emotions.
As such digital also encompasses the full extent of measurement techniques both qualitative and quantitative. Both sides of the measurement coin. But we find that as in traditional media, not everything in digital can be reduced to a simple transaction.
Indeed if data where the only currency then we wouldn’t need space in our lives to stop a think, acquiring and responding to sufficient data would be enough to make our decisions for us. It is no coincidence that Google itself famously gives each of its employees 20% of their time to work on special projects outside of their day-to-day work – distance and variety are essential elements in a balanced creative life.
To seek a single currency would be to know the cost of everything, but sadly the value of nothing.
Rather than a currency, data has become a commodity. We’re swamped with data at every level, we count more things than we can ever hope to make proper use of. Even as the things we count become less and less valuable. It is quite clear that the far more intangible and difficult to measure currencies of real human emotional responses and behaviours are those that we must seek to understand the most, bur are in turn are so impossibly difficult to accurately grasp.
It is people and their imaginations, who define how any data is to be collected, what form it should take, how it is measured and most importantly how it is interpreted; imagination is the ultimate arbiter of the value any data may have.Anyway, saying all this we all know that 36% of all statistics are made up on the spot! [Joke: insert laughter here] We continually use data selectively to infer and direct towards a pre-ordained result, or to back up an assumption we may have made. The act of observation, the setting of the rules determines the result. The consistency and talent of the person who sets the rules is equal to if not more important than the data itself.
Of course forensic levels of obsessive observation and analysis are dramatically more effective than they ever were before, the usefulness and completeness of data today is what is edging it towards being defined as a common currency. But human inference, creative analysis, experience and intuition remain critical. As such a single currency becomes not only almost useless but also impossible to achieve, in fact the most important things that take place can’t be measured at all.
We’ve found that rather than ‘content being king (an increasingly outdated notion in these days of free and open networks) instead we should consider ‘conversation’ as king.
The attention we generate around our use of digital, the shared conversations, the nod and wink, the pub chat, all of this rich advocacy and discussion, only some of which takes place in digital channels themselves. This is where the real value lies, this is where we really need a currency, and in many cases this is exactly where the acquisition of accurate data falls flat on its face.
Even if we could measure them accurately how can any currency based on data accurately account for such things as love, desire, infatuation and irrationality.
In the creative process, the intuitive leap of faith will always be paramount. Its what creates the spark, what moves us forward, what defines us as human. Digital is real life. It encompasses the full range of emotions, the ups and downs, the surprises, the things we haven’t even imagined yet.
Believing that a single currency is the answer to everything may mean you sadly lead a rather mundane and lonely life. Defined by cold hard rationality rather than spontaneity.
As in real life money, data or any other currency can’t buy you love.This is why I urge you to vote strongly against this motion."
The full text of the debate can be found on the Debating Group website.
