The other day in the barber chair I was distressed by the volume of grey locks being shorn from my egg-shaped head. Instinctively I started to count them while quickly realizing my 50 shades were borne in grand clumps not mere strands. The specific number of grey hairs hitting the floor mattered little—whatever the number the story about my moment of reflective angst was understood from a more macro analysis of the situation. I’m getting old—and the growing grey is the latest evidence.
It dawned on me that my moment of middle-aged melancholy was an apt illustration to consider
the sometimes tenuous relationship between the idea of creating great story communication and Big Data. We have opined before about Big Data and how for marketing and marketing communications purposes it seems too often overblown, overkill or over something. Big Data sees itself as kind of an analytical “snake” hell-bent on swallowing a large data “rat” while holding faith that the endless review of how the vermin is digested will yield previously unknown “facts” relevant to the enterprise at hand. If it were only that easy!
Data—whether Big, small or in-between—is merely a building block of information meant to help create knowledge and context. It is not a brass ring in itself. When rules of statistical analysis are used to learn and inform about a topic it is not the data that are telling, but rather, the implications of them when effectively (and hopefully correctly) interpreted. This requires analysts to have some idea about what they were looking for in the first place. That was true when Jonas Salk discovered a child polio vaccine that literally changed the world in the 1950s. It was true when geologists discovered the vast reservoir of the Marcellus shelf. And it’s true today when we harness data to inform, enlighten and help drive better marketing decision-making and communications development.
But Big Data advocates too hastily believe story and context should be placed in the proverbial backseat to driving what really matters most in great marketing—effective communication. That somehow measuring virtually everything, all the time, from the most innocuous to essential factors of the human condition, is correct, righteous and the key to unlock the new profits kingdom. When these mammoth data sets are married with endless analysis that look for nothing in particular but everything in general—somehow the resulting “findings” are the Holy Grail of tomorrow’s great marketing. If it were only that easy!
For years at WordWrite we have been steadfast that there is one paradigm that matters most in virtually all marketing and communication efforts—to be able to tell a great, authentic and valuable story to your target audiences. Of course these stories should be informed by appropriate metrics—but not out of reverence for “data” in its rawest form, but because those data help make a compelling story. When this order is displaced it is harmful to both legitimate data uses and more importantly, the construction of great stories. The skilled marketer too often is caught up with the supposed urgency of more data mining and distracted from the very essential tasks of reading your audiences or understanding competitive behavior—things by the way that are still easily satisfied with “small” data. Do not let this happen.
Now, I think it’s time to cross a threshold of vanity I never thought possible. I need to color my hair so that I am younger. If it were only that easy!
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John Durante is marketing services director for WordWrite Communications. 
