Data is playing an increasingly central role in modern marketing approaches. From reaching niche communities to measuring impact, the ability to collect and analyse vast amounts of information has created new opportunities that have transformed the industry.
But as we increasingly immerse ourselves in numbers and metrics, a worrying feeling bubbles away: are we sacrificing creativity and genuine human connection at the altar of data?
The dangerous allure of data
The advent of digital marketing was, in many ways, game changing. Like never before, comms professionals could access granular behavioural data, segment audiences with precision, and tailor comms based on actual behaviours. It seemed like a marketer’s dream – a world where every decision could be backed by hard numbers.
However, this reliance on data has increasingly led us into a quantitative trap. Not everything that matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured matters.
The McNamara Fallacy, named after former U.S. Secretary of Defense (sic) Robert McNamara, warned of the dangers of making decisions based solely on quantitative metrics leading to an incomplete and often misleading picture. It’s a warning to take seriously in a sector that is all about generating feelings, creating desire, and appealing to emotion.
The efficiency bubble
Despite this, too many important industry discussions centre around delivery mechanisms rather than the art of persuasion.
Martech discussions rule the day at conferences (in fact, 26.6% of global marketing spend is now directed towards marketing technology) and many senior marketing positions have become populated by ‘numbers people’ rather than creative visionaries.
In short, we have entered an “efficiency bubble”, where an obsession with optimising every aspect of communications for marketing efficiency often comes at the expense of marketing effectiveness.
The trouble is, as Rory Sutherland once said, “marketing is one of those complex fields of human activity, where efficiency and effectiveness are poorly correlated.” Over-optimisation can lead to tactics that appear to be ‘efficient’ in delivery, but which fail to resonate with audiences.
Frustrating experiences
Consider the pervasive frustration consumers feel with aggressive retargeting. For example, take the (quite common) example of when a consumer purchases a product, therefore doesn’t need it to buy it anymore, but the retargeting algorithm actually takes that purchase action as a signal to serve even more ads at them (previous purchase is one of the greatest signifiers of a future purchasing intent, after all).
Quite quickly, a supposedly efficient way to identify and reach a relevant audience member instead creates negativity that encourages that consumer to never purchase from that brand again (quite clearly, not an effective marketing outcome).
Ironically, the data backs it up: 55% of consumers say seeing an ad too much can put them off buying a product and 15% are discouraged rather than encouraged if they are served an ad after they have finished researching a topic.
But the numbers marketers look at and use to justify success don’t capture the negative emotions stirred by relentless ads or the damage to brand reputation when consumers feel harassed. Long term, what can be argued to be efficient may not be at all effective.
The neglect of long-term brand building
This is dangerous, because the appeal of the supposed efficiency of certain comms approaches is encouraging many brands to recalibrate their entire marketing mixes to maximise ROI.
In this reconfiguration, short-term performance metrics are winning out because they provide immediate, quantifiable results. This, of course, often comes at the expense of long-term brand building, a strategy that doesn’t neatly fit into data packages and is harder to measure (and therefore isn’t flagged as ‘efficient’).
However, marketing effectiveness experts Les Binet and Peter Field have demonstrated that brands investing in long-term strategies see greater overall growth. Their research indicates that the optimal balance between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation is 60:40.
Even data-driven giants like Google and Apple recognise the power of creativity and brand storytelling. In fact, Google frequently highlights the centrality of creative quality in driving differentiation and ROI for brands. This is backed up by a study from Nielsen, which found that creative quality contributes as much to a brand’s comms success as reach, targeting, recency and context combined.
The simple truth is that there’s no point reaching an audience if you have nothing to say that has any meaning to them. When we reduce consumers to data points, we lose sight of the human element essential to effective marketing.
The risk to Public Relations
PR is particularly vulnerable in this data-obsessed landscape.
PR focuses on building and maintaining reputations, a nuanced endeavour that often can’t be easily quantified – particularly not in its fullest, longest-term form. Traditional metrics frequently fall short in capturing the true impact of PR efforts on audience perceptions and behaviours over time.
But the PR sector wants (and needs) to keep up and prove its worth, so increasingly practitioners are joining the ranks of data enthusiastic in how they attempt to demonstrate impact and ROI.
However, by attempting to measure PR using performance-related metrics, there is a significant risk of undervaluing its wider role and effectiveness. PR risks falling into a trap of being measured purely by its ability to drive immediate leads or visits to website. Like a subpar form of SEO.
Rather, PR should be about creating narratives that resonate and building lasting memorability and affinity, not just driving immediate conversions. It often isn’t the most ‘efficient’ in the immediate term, we shouldn’t be afraid to admit that, but it is massively effective over the long term, we should shout about that.
A time for a rebalance
So, how do we strike the right balance? Well, here’s just a few ideas of what we could do better:
- Embrace data-informed, not data-driven, strategies: Use data as a tool to inform decisions, but don’t let it dictate every move. Recognise the limitations of metrics and the value of human intuition.
- Invest in creativity: Prioritise creative development over building tech stacks. It is the creativity of what you serve audiences that will make the actual difference – not how efficiently you get to them. In fact, stop obsessing over how to reach audiences, and start focusing on producing content that’s so amazing that it creates audiences.
- Focus on long-term metrics: Incorporate long-term brand health indicators into your KPIs. Metrics like brand awareness, customer loyalty, and NPS can help provide a more holistic view.
- Revaluate how performance is assessed: it’s great to focus on the good, but it’s advisable to place an emphasis on measuring opportunity-costs and negative outcomes too, including ad fatigue and brand annoyance. Brand sentiment analysis can provide insights beyond clicks and conversions and might reveal that a supposedly efficient way of achieving short-term goals is actually damaging a brand’s long-term effectiveness.
The art behind the science
Data is great. It’s helping us understand behaviours, analyse impact and make better business cases than ever before. But when data leads the decision-making in comms, it can create significant issues.
We therefore need to recognise the limitations of data and at the same time value and protect the more intangible elements of what we do – the creativity, the storytelling, the long-term brand building. It’s time to burst the efficiency bubble and rediscover the art of communication.
Sources
Sutherland, R.: Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense
Binet, L., & Field, P.: The Long and the Short of It
