Marketing Inspiration #37.1

Your weekly dose of data-driven marketing insights - The Shiny New Object podcast

On the Shiny New Object podcast , senior brand leaders share their vision for the future of data-driven marketing and their best tips to improve creative effectiveness.

“Data is our best guide, but we shouldn’t mistake it as fact.” - Phil Clark , Senior Director, Digital Marketing & Media at Canada Goose

Good marketers stay humble and never stop asking questions, according to Phil. Although we have so many sources of data these days, he wants to remind marketers that there’s never just one source of truth. Although data sources are built on historic or predictive models, “they’re very clever, but they’re not fact.” Listening to different stakeholders’ opinions brings in nuance and important new insights.

Moreover, human sources of information should never be underestimated. Remember that the world is ever changing and every individual is different, some audiences will fall into trends and some will not, and nuances are extremely important when understanding customers.

Listen to Phil talk about the importance of mentoring, empathy, and the future of end to end generative AI (and human generated content), on the podcast here .

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This month’s ‘Best Data Driven Marketing Tip’?

"It’s so powerful to have a conversation with a real customer.” - Virginia Barnes , Interim Brand, Sponsorship and Retail Marketing at Standard Life UK

Customers often have the answers marketers are looking for, especially when looking for nuances in amongst the sea of data, as we’ve been advised by Canada Goose’s Phil Clark. Virginia urges us to go beyond spreadsheets and seek information from qualitative sources as well. However, impersonal surveys or even focus groups are not enough - they can’t come close to the clarity you get from speaking with customers directly.

This should give you insights into how people use your product or make decisions to purchase it in the first place. It gives you a new “colour in your paint palette” and forces you to consider things from a different angle. Talking to real customers also helps understand small details: tonal differences, body language, all the subtleties that a survey or numbers on a screen simply cannot convey. Tune in to Virginia’s episode of the podcast to hear her tips on how to get good qualitative data and learn more marketing tips.?