Karan Chadda

The growth of data continues to pose a headache for digital marketers. The range of data sets available is bewildering and contains as many gaps as it does duplication. Growth has brought with it some questionable data gathering techniques.

Poorly scripted survey monkey polls morph from ‘quick and dirty’ research into facts. Google Analytics data is taken as gospel without any effort to remove spam. Data presented at conferences is copied and repurposed without any reference to the source.

It’s terrible that so much data, which informs how we spend a lot of time and money, is poorly gathered and used.

Here are three simple questions to ask to make sure you know you’re working with information you can trust.

What?

It shouldn’t really need saying, but the first step is to ask what data you really have. So many bad decisions are made because people don’t question their data sources. How was it collected? What biases does it have? What can it not tell us?

Let’s be frank, not all data sets are equal. For example, there are opinion polls that seek to genuinely capture public opinion and there are those that are designed to generate headlines. You need to differentiate between the two.

Only when you understand your data can you begin to get information of any value from it.

So what?

Once you’ve got to grips with your data, you then need to ask whether it means anything. Why is it relevant to your business and what you’re trying to achieve? If it’s not useful, dump it.

We’ve all seen the slides showing how many tweets are sent in a second or how many users Facebook has. They’re very impressive, but from a campaign planning perspective, they’re completely useless. Only keep the data that is useful.

Now what?

This is the crucial bit. What can you do with it? Can you repeat the data gathering to provide you with useful information about trends? Has it given you soame insights about your clients that can inform a creative brief? Ultimately, this is the most fun question. Once you have data you understand and is relevant, you can then have fun manipulating, querying and playing with it.

Employing these three simple questions should save you time, money and, crucially, provide you with a better understanding of where your marketing really is.

A marketing lesson for consultancies from my plumber.

The way people buy things is complicated. Their likes and dislikes are built over time and the specific effects of different elements of marketing are hard to gauge. There is, however, usually one activity that prompts a sale. For consumer goods, it’s usually something simple like an in-store promotion. For consulting firms, such activity is much harder – it’s difficult to target marketing activity at the exact moment someone’s putting together a pitch list.

So how can firms make themselves top of mind when they can’t easily be present at the point of the critical decision?

The best example I’ve seen of staying top of mind at the crucial moment is from my plumber, Ash. He does it using a radiator key. He’s had his phone number etched into hundreds of radiator keys and gives one to every customer. It’s cheap and it’s useful.

Ash’s thinking is that the only time people really worry about their heating is when it isn’t working. And the only thing that most people really know about radiators is how to bleed them.

So if their heating is below par, they bleed their radiators. If that fixes it, great. They’ll hopefully remember Ash gave them that key. If bleeding the radiators doesn’t work, his phone number is in their hand the second they realised they need to call a plumber.

Ash understands his customers and he’s found a way to be top of mind when they need him.

It’s hard for consulting firms to copy Ash. Consultancy purchases are rarely driven by a pressing need and there isn’t a uniform point at which clients decide to write a pitch list. Yet, the fundamentals are the same: you need a useable insight and a creative execution that puts your firm in the room when you’re not physically in the room. That’s the key to being top of mind.

Twitterstorms. We’ve all seen firms deluged by them. Online petitions. We’ve all watched as clicktivists click up their numbers. Whether your data’s anecdotal or empirical, that the frequency and speed of campaigns (effective or otherwise) has increased is unarguable. The ease and low cost of publishing and organising means that companies can quickly find themselves facing a crisis.

Some crises are well deserved, while there are others which companies seem to walk into by accident. The trouble VW is mired in is clearly of its own making. However, Lego has faced a couple of crises in recent times either because of long-standing commercial arrangements or a policy of trying not to get drawn into an issue.

When Lego’s partnership with Shell came under scrutiny, at first the company said it would not bow to campaigners. Then, facing repeated high-profile videos of its famous figures drowning in oil, Lego said that it would not renew its licensing deal with the oil giant. More recently, when the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei approached Lego to secure bricks for a new art installation the company refused, saying it did not get involved in politics (although surely the not getting involved position would’ve been to sell him the bricks?).

No more hiding places

In both incidents, Lego did what most corporations do. It tried not to be drawn into an issue. It took an agnostic approach. Companies do this because they like to stay out of the fray. They prefer to focus on the business of doing business. It has been, until very recently, the sensible option.

There are, however, fewer issues on which agnosticism pays off for companies. As the online conversation becomes more shrill and as it moves more quickly from issue to issue, companies will find agnosticism is not always the route to a quiet life. They will have to take a view and state it.

Environmental campaigners have been at the forefront of forcing corporations to move away from the we-don’t-take-a-view attitude. Every company does something positive when it comes to sustainability. Companies have realised that environmental agnosticism is no longer an option. In Lego’s case, it has discovered this means not only what you do to reduce environmental impact, but also who you partner with.

Other campaigners, particularly those focused on social issues, are making headway too. Whether it be ethical supply chains, diversity or gay marriage, agnosticism isn’t the hiding place it once was. And it’s not just activists, either. David Cameron has called for companies to speak out about the benefits of being in the EU. So there’s political pressure to take a position on big issues.

Moving beyond agnosticism

Brand consultants have long had tools to help companies work out what they stand for. First came ‘values’. Often abstract (and, nowadays, normally dull and identical), developing a set of corporate values was a way to help companies really focus on what they stood for and make day-to-day decisions in a brand-consistent way.

Then along came ‘purpose’. Defining a purpose is a way for companies to formalise how they relate to the communities they serve and society in general. A company’s purpose is usually aspirational and talks about a role that’s wider than generating a profit or making widgets.

Purpose is popular for good reason: companies that know their purpose, whose staff understand and believe in it, have a much clearer understanding of why they do what they do and are more quickly able to make decisions.

These companies will also find it easier to take consistent positions on social and other issues, express those positions clearly and, importantly, defend them and themselves.