The Big Data-Driven Business

Chapter 8The Arrival of Left-Brained Leaders and the Rise of the Marketing Department

Traditionally, creative people who have found themselves working in business have gravitated toward careers in marketing and advertising. At advertising agencies, there's even a place of honor for this sort of people: the creative department.

In the television show Mad Men that portrays a 1960s-era advertising agency, the protagonist has many characteristics of a right-brained person. Don Draper is a creative type with a penchant for developing ad concepts that bail him and his agency brethren out at the last minute. There's precious little data informing Draper's campaigns. What he delivers to clients is all about the ineffable, immeasurable power of creative ideas.

The very first episode of Mad Men showcases Draper's approach to his work as he struggles to come up with an advertising concept for Lucky Strike cigarettes. He jots ideas on a cocktail napkin in a bar. He throws a research report in the trash. And finally, at the crucial meeting, as he stalls for time asking the owners of Lucky Strike how their cigarettes are made, the idea hits him in a flash of insight: “It's toasted.”

What's interesting about Draper's creativity and his persuasiveness is that the goal is first and foremost about selling the client on the idea. Actually selling cigarettes to consumers is secondary.

But by the seventh season of Mad Men, a computer—not a PC but a boxy IBM System/360 mainframe—is installed in the ...