Big Data has been around since the AARDS, and before.

I can remember when, working in Clemenger Sydney’s media department waaaay back in the day, and the?Nielsen Adex?had replaced the?Australian Advertising Rate and Data Service (AARDS), to forensically identify customer demographics and viewership splits. Countless researchers, media experts, and data boffins poured over the release media figures to publish these expensive bi-annuals.

Agency media departments went to war (pitch) based upon their agency’s take on what the numbers revealed about a client’s customers.

Today, those numbers stream straight from the measurement algorithms into planning tools offered on social platforms, and through the many third-party analytic software products agencies can buy off the shelf and incorporate into their tech stacks for the next pitch.

But.

In this ‘live data’ orgiastic marketing world we now live (or die) in, there’s a human skill that has been pushed to the side, offering an incredible advantage to any marketer who recognises its importance:?the key insight. Whether it’s product, customer, pricing, marketing… wherever that insight comes from, there are countless case studies on the power of a true differentiator.?

I suspect—and I couldn’t know for sure—that too many pitches spend a lot of time talking about some piece of tech that no one else is using yet, instead of getting to the nub of why the client is sitting in the room in the first place. What’s the real insight here? What opportunity can we—the brand—take advantage of??

Now, as a creative founder—from a numbers background—I think back to my media days. The creative peeps upstairs, with their ponytails, bouncing rubber balls off the walls and playing pinball machines, weren’t allowed to go home or leave the alcove in the back bar until they had an insight worthy of putting countless agency hours behind, crafting a hand-made pitch deck worth presenting to a national brand, and keeping their jobs.

?

Enter another seldom-used word:?experience. :)