The100:  interstitial viewing, everybody lying and the Righteous Brothers

Creativity being killed by data
THE (Sir) John Hegarty is pretty damning over what data has done to marketing and advertising:

“Data is great at giving you information, giving you knowledge; but it doesn’t give you understanding and that is its great failing.”

He goes on:

“The focus on data is the root cause of the problem, making big brands risk averse and ‘boring’, too focused on saving money instead of generating growth.”

Ouch.

Everybody Lies?
David Ogilvy:

“Customers don’t know what they feel, don’t say what they know, and don’t do what they say. Market research is three steps removed from real behaviour.”

? We can help you get around that little enigma 😉

Research is useless if it’s not noticed

“The academic’s cliché, “more research is needed”, is not necessarily true. Often all the necessary research has been done, but it has not been assembled and systematically reviewed. Or it has been systematically reviewed, but not enough people have noticed.”

Intentional, interstitial, and invisible
On the theme of ‘if it’s not viewed, it’s useless’, Dan Pink looks at emerging patterns of TV consumption:

“…focus less on the technologies of distribution and more on the patterns of consumption—yields new clues about both the economics of media and the design principles of its creation.”

We could apply his thinking to how we do our business comms by making use of interstitial periods?

• 5m summaries, not 90m debriefs;
• information available in chunks;
• high availability (and adaptation) for smaller format consumption?

Plus ça change?
Marketing evolves (it has to). And yet much doesn’t change. Mark Ritson is clear that the professional challenge of marketing has remained the same for the past 40 years:

“The search for differentiation. The need to understand a changing customer. The battle for brand supremacy against your fellow marketer. The need to stay ahead.”

Ahhh so that’s why…
Turns out the year we’re born dictates what music we like. The most influential period for men being 13-16; for women 11-14 (and in case you need help remembering).

Unchained Melody by the Righteous Brothers on my 16th birthday? Explains a few things.

I’m not a huge football fan
Sorry. But seeing as it’s the FIFA world cup – with apologies to our US, Italian and Dutch (and now German) readership –  it would be remiss of me to not include something football related. How about these superb football pitches from around the world?