Data-First Marketing

Afterword

May 1, 2020

When we started to write this book, “data-driven” was a term that was still not widely used in marketing, although it was beginning to pick up more traction, and not just for large B2C companies. In the middle of the world crisis we find ourselves in now, “data-driven” is everywhere. Scientists, governors, newscasters, and more point to data to justify their actions, make their predictions, and explain the state of the world.

For all of us, this is a mixed crash course on the power of data – to both mislead and to illuminate. We saw a graph the other day that seemed to be showing explosive growth in the number of coronavirus cases in a state that, despite the data shown, was about to open up hair salons, tattoo parlors, and bowling alleys. It seemed like the news anchor used the graphic as an illustration of what he was saying, and we, as the viewers, were just supposed to believe it. It seemed to say, “I have a graph, so it must be true.”

Here's what bothered us about that graph; it was labeled in a way that viewers couldn't see the actual numbers, so we did not know the scale being used. Is this exponential growth from 1 to 100 or 1 to 2,000? In this case, absolute numbers and not just the trend being shown would definitely make a difference in how viewers thought about this “data-driven” decision. And at the same time, the governor of that state kept saying that he was listening to the doctors and scientists and using data for his decisions. Could that ...