How do you strike a balance between data and creative hunch in a digital marketing world obsessed with metrics and ROI? Slides from a session with the Hyper Island Digital Data Strategy class of 2015, at the school's Stockholm campus.

1. Data vs. Hunch
Hyper Island Stockholm, 2015

2. It used to be really simple…..

3. HR Consultants
brand
HR
pr
finance
operations
strategy
marketing
learning
R&D
product
development
sales
PR agencies
Accountants &
Auditors
Management
Consultants
Branding Agencies
Ad Agencies
Corporate
Training
Consultants
Sales
Consultants
Product design
& innovation
consultancies
Direct
Marketing
Agencies
Direct
Marketing
Agencies
25 years ago the boundaries were clear

4. brand
HR
pr
finance
operations
strategy
marketing
learning
R&D
product
development
Brand Website
Banner Ads
And then web 1.0 came along…..
sales
E-Commerce
SEM

5. brand
HR
pr
finance
operations
strategy
marketing
learning
R&D
product
development
sales
Brand Website
Display Ads
Social
E-Commerce
SEM
And then web 2.0

6. E-Recruiting
E-Learning
brand
HR
pr
finance
operations
strategy
marketing
learning
R&D
product development
sales
Digital Supply Chains
Social analytics / big data
E-learning
E-commerce
SEM
Digital product
design & testing
and then everything became digital
Digital Transformation /
Change Management
Brand Website
Display Ads
Video Marketing
Mobile Marketing
Social
Earned Media
“Fun” Apps
“Serious” Apps
Digital service design
Crowdsourcing
Co-Creation

7. Branding
PR
Management
Consultancies
Data
Analytics
Design
Social
Advertising
Digital
Accenture
buying Fjord
W+K
aces social with Old
Spice, Three et al.
WCG
buying predictive
analytics firm
WPP
buying AKQA
PR + Data
Analytics
DigitalAdvertising +
Advertising + Social
+Management
Consultancies
Service
Design
So we all started getting into each others’ business
Just a few examples…..

8. Digital is no longer a department

9. And with digital
pervasiveness comes some
challenges for marketers…..

10. Marketing has
become a battle
against metrics…

11. Because with digital
came the rise of ever-
increasing trackability
Accountability through ROI became a
critical component in justifying and
making digital marketing spend as
efficient as possible….
CTRs, conversion rates, UVs, shares, followers,
downloads, A/B testing, attribution modelling,
etc. etc...

12. Marketing isn't used to talking about the “bottom line”

13. So how are we
doing?

14. You’re more likely to survive
a plane crash than click on
a banner advert...
Source: Solve Media

15. ..and there’s only a
1 in 1,000,000 chance of
someone viewing your
YouTube video...
Source: wistia.com

16. 89% of TV ads not even
noticed or remembered while
7% are remembered
negatively...
Source: Dave Trott, regarding UK market

17. Is there anyone out there?
• 60 - 70% of marketing content goes
completely unused (Sirius Decisions)
• 30% of Microsoft’s 10MM pieces of
content has never been visited
(company audit)
• We are exposed to ~5,000 marketing
messages a day and a social link has
a half-life of 3 hours (various & Bitly)

18. Does anyone care? • Average human attention
span in 2000 was 12 seconds.
• Average human attention
span in 2013 was 8 seconds.
• Average attention span of a
goldfish is 9 seconds

19. So can data solve this, eliminating the waste
by teaching us what works?

20. 0 Exabytes
500 Exabytes
1000 Exabytes
1500 Exabytes
2017Dawn of Civilisation - 2003
We have gone from data scarcity to data abundance
Amount of data created
From Dawn of
Civilisation to 2003
2017

21. And the ‘Internet Of Things’ means we’ve just started, leading us
down the path to ‘perfect real-time knowledge’
200 million connected
devices in 2000
By 2020 there will be 50 Billion things
exchanging 40,000,000,000 terabytes
of data

22. © Copyright 2013 Beyond. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential
Algorithms / Data Growth
Exponential Digital
Combinational
Mobile / IOE /
Metcalfe’s Law
APIs / Web Services
Credit: Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, MIT
The 1st machine age: muscle power was automated
The 2nd machine age: cognitive powers are being automated

23. So will the marketing of the future be data-driven,
automated, programmatic, real-time, predictive, and hyper-
personalised?

24. Leading some marketers to question...

25. Where is the room for creativity in marketing today, when
data is all the boardroom cares about?

26. © Copyright 2013 Beyond. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential
Don’t forget that a world that is becoming obsessed with
data is still run by emotions

27. © Copyright 2013 Beyond. All rights reserved. Private and Confidential
price = what the market wants to pay
book value = what accountants think it’s worth
market price to book value - s&p 500 - 1979-2011
When emotions that drive behaviour change, algorithms fail

28. Four tips for finding a balance between data & creativity

29. 1. Understand what data is and isn’t good for

30. Too often people look for data to
provide the “silver bullet” insight,
and end up frustrated by lack of
answers.
We’re taught that math equals fact,
and that to measure something is to
understand it.
But the reality is data is a lot more
subjective than we think.
There are no silver bullets

31. With more data, we actually get
more uncertainty
“With more data, you get more spurious
correlations, more false positives, and
erroneous answers. If the quantity of
information is increasing by 2.5
quintillion bytes per day, the amount of
useful information almost certainly isn't.
Most of it is just noise, and the noise is
increasing faster than the signal.”
Nate Silver, The Noise & the Signal

32. Use data to define the problem, not give you the answer
"If I had one hour to save the world I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the
problem and only five minutes finding the solution"

33. 2. Use different data sets to look at the problem through as many
lenses as possible
473683173

34. In a famous Indian fable, a group of
blind men touch an elephant to
learn what it is like. Each one feels a
different part, but only one part,
such as the leg or the tusk. They then
compare notes and learn that they
are in complete disagreement.
Relying only on the data your
organisation is accustomed to
collect blinds you to truths outside of
your experience.
Don’t just rely on the data
you can easily get

35. Brand insights
Market/category
Insight
Consumer insights
Digital/Tech insights
Toolbox:
Social listening
Web analytics
Focus groups
Behavioural & attitudinal surveys
User observation
Ethnographic research
Toolbox:
Competitor analysis
Financial analysis
Market sizing & fundamentals
Trends & forecasts
Toolbox:
Digital value creation analysis
Channel and touchpoint diagnostics/
optimisation - search, social, content, UX
Technology strategy and forecasts
Data strategy
Toolbox:
Positioning analysis
Brand architecture analysis
Brand perception analysis
Get a good tool box

36. Mix your quant and qual, your direct and indirect

37. 3. Be very clear about where data ends and strategy begins

38. Data shows us the world as it is, not how it could be

39. Idea
Management
Strategy
Research &
Analytics
Information &
Product Design
Strategy works from a basis of
objective data but in order to achieve
previously unmet goals it must
speculate into the subjective.
What we will createWhat it is
What can be
Objective
Subjective

40. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do”
Michael Porter
Focus Questions
Most of the time there will be
multiple insights that can be
drawn from the data. Strategy is
all about choosing the path that
is most likely to fulfil your goal,
with the resources you have
available. That’s different from
choosing the most interesting
insight.

41. 4. Don’t feel guilty for taking a creative leap
beyond the data

42. “The origins of an insight are usually to be found in
numbers. That's how we know an insight to be more
than airy whim…
But, except to the supernaturally numerate, numbers
seldom sing spontaneously…
[The] strategist who comes up with an immaculate and
scrupulously accurate relief map of the brand and its
market - and absolutely nothing else - will not be
greatly loved by the creative group…
By definition, a good creative brief contains a bold
hypothesis. To generate hypotheses you need to
speculate: you need to progress from the known to the
unknown. But you cannot paint the future in the colours
of the past. Other people's imaginations need to be
engaged…” Jeremy Bullmore
Speculate with hypotheses
Insights

43. FACT / DATA: Statistics show that 90% of
people feed their pets twice a day
OBSERVATION: They tend to feed them at
breakfast and dinner
INSIGHT: People feel guilty eating in front
of their pets
FOCUS QUESTION: How might we show
moments where owners “give in” to their
pets?
How are they different
Insights

44. Understand what drives behaviour
An insight seeks to understand
'the why' rather than 'the what'.
Why do people think the way they
think or do the things they do......
as opposed to what they actually
end up doing.
Insights

45. Focus Questions
Focus questions join together
the insights and the brief. They
summarise the strategy in the
form of a question that the
creative team can answer
through ideation.
Feeding the creative team with
the synthesis of the problem

46. Focus Questions
Why is a Good Focus Question Like a
Refrigerator?
Because the moment you look into it, a
light comes on.
Focus questions lead
to inspiration and
interaction. Your mind
should start filling with
possibilities as soon as
you read them.

47. Focus Questions
How can a focus question say so much
with so little?
Through the understanding of the feelings your
audience associate to certain words. Words
carry strong implicit meaning and, as such, play
a major role in how we perceive a problem.
Through the use of metaphors, analogies and
similes that can re-phrase the core tension you
have found in your insight.
Through using unexpected associations
between contrasting or disparate words or
ideas.
By avoiding the direct or explicit and using
creativity to phrase the problem in an inspiring
way.

48. Focus Questions
• The brief phrased as a
question.
• A collection of stats and data
from your analytics
A Focus Question is NOT

49. Strategy
Giving creative a framework
“Creativity loves constraints. It’s
why pictures have frames and
sonnets have fourteen lines. It’s
why Henry Ford set pricing for
his cars so low, because he
knew that ‘We make more
discoveries concerning
manufacturing and selling
under this forced method than
by any other leisurely
investigation’.”
Eric Schmidt

50. Strategy
Giving creative a framework
“When forced to work
within a strict framework,
the imagination is taxed
to its upmost and will
produce its richest ideas.
Given total freedom the
work is likely to sprawl”
T.S. Eliot

51. Now you have a strategic framework and some potent focus
questions, what’s the best way to harness a lot of ideas?

52. Clients are grappling with the pace at which technology changes and we need
to adapt our creative process to meet the new challenges clients throw at us

53. Challenge 1: The work is more complicated than ever

54. E-Recruiting
E-Learning
brand
HR
pr
finance
operations
strategy
marketing
learning
R&D
product development
sales
Digital Supply Chains
Social analytics / big data
E-learning
E-commerce
SEM
Digital product
design & testing
Remember how many types of briefs we are trying to solve with digital now
Digital Transformation /
Change Management
“Fun” Apps
“Serious” Apps
Digital service design
Crowdsourcing
Co-Creation
Brand Website
Display Ads
Video Marketing
Mobile Marketing
Social
Earned Media

55. Challenge 2: New technologies requiring new agency skill-sets
are appearing every day.

56. So how do you meet the needs of an ever more complex tech /
marketing lanscape?

57. Rather than limiting creative thinking and idea generation to a
creative department

58. Form custom cross-disciplined creative teams from across the agency for
each brief who have a variety of skills, perspectives and experience.

59. Use ideation methods that enable everyone to contribute

60. Idea Management
Make sure the team follows these
creative principles:
Think big & encourage wild ideas
Get all your ideas out
Quantity is a condition for quality
Postpone critical thinking and judgement
One conversation at a time
Build on each other ideas by saying yes
and…

61. At Beyond we use a process called Applied Creativity

62. We define Applied Creativity as a data driven process that
enables cross-discipline collaboration resulting in more
informed creative output.

63. What are the benefits of taking this approach?

64. Benefit 1: Different brains working together can tackle
problems from every angle

65. Benefit 2: New ideas often come from combining ideas
from different disciplines in orginal combinations

66. Benefit 3: When all the disciplines are involved in
conceiving the ideas, they can implement them quicker

67. Benefit 4: This approach liberates and makes the most of
your talent.

68. Thanks!
Nils Mork-Ulnes
Head of Strategy
nils@bynd.com
Alex Hunting
Strategist
alex@bynd.com
Charlie Lyons
GM, London
charlie@bynd.com