Can big data and analysis replace intuition?

Pradeep Kumar and Roopa Choodamani

Source: Admap Magazine, Admap Prize, Shortlisted, 2015
Downloaded from WARC

This article explores the relationship between big data and creative thinking, and argues that when
used well data can add to the creative process, but used badly it stifles creativity.

There is huge amounts of data being generated all of the time, including consumer-owned data
(wearables and connected devices), company-owned (on web traffic, sales data and much, much
more), and that generated by marketing activity.
Data cannot replace imagination and intuition, but it can supplement creative processes, reveal
unexpected deep insights and improve customer experience.
However, used the wrong way data can also hinder creativity by leading organisations to over-
engineer processes and stifle creative thinking, and also by being overwhelming in its size.
Getting the most out of the big data opportunity requires multi-talented teams with an art-science
background so that they can understand data and identify patterns, and then apply creative
thinking.

Pradeep Kumar and Roopa Choodamani

FCB Chicago

Does Big Data inspire or hinder creative thinking?

This essay was entered into The Admap Prize 2015.
For more information visit the Prize page.
With such a provocative topic with polysemic terms, we want to start by defining them in a marketing context and
avoid the semantics before we unfold our point of view to our readers.

What is Big Data?

In marketing, we have always had molehills of data inspiring creative. We see Big Data as huge sets of raw
data, encompassing every detail of pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase. It is about what consumers
think, express, act, share and experience. There are many mountains of data – social conversations,
transactions, voice, video, text, the decision journey and so on – which together create humongous sets of data,
structured and unstructured, from disparate sources, that need advanced techniques and technology to distil
insights, intelligence and inspiration from them. It is more than what meets the eye. That is why we cannot be
dismissive about the worth and role of Big Data in creativity. According to McKinsey's statistics, "big data leaders
have, on average, 5% higher productivity and 6% higher profits than other companiesi."

What about creative thinking?

Creative thinking is anything that changes existing norms and existing behaviour for the better. Creative thinking
goes beyond the routine and leaves people around you awestruck, challenging the status quo. We all know that
creative thinking is not confined to a creative department. For that matter, data and strategy are not the
monopoly of a few planners or analysts either. Creative thinking can come from anywhere in the marketing
ecosystem. Can mathematicians, statisticians and data scientists be creative? Of course, in their own way, they
can be creative. There are various examples, such as the famous Hardy–Ramanujan taxi cab number 1729ii, the
data visualisations of Hans Roslingiii, the data-driven workiv by the Office for Creative Research; these are all
interesting examples of the creative use of data.

In marketing however, creativity is about what it can do. It has to move people to a desired action and behaviour.
It has to change perceptions, beliefs and make consumers come back again and again to their brand and
influence them and their social networks to become advocates and ambassadors of the brand. Creative thinking
is perhaps not structured. Data as we knew it in the past was very structured. But Big Data today is a lot of
structured, as well as unstructured, data. Big Data is perhaps becoming increasingly unstructured and that is the
commonality, right there. Both Big Data and creative thinking need imagination to inspire each other.

Elementary, my dear Watson! Data big or small inspires us to be creative change agents within a context. Data
on its own is useless.

Creative thinking is not just an ad; it is an all-pervasive experience

around your brand
Creative thinking is not merely in creating ideas to which consumers react, but also in creating ideas from
consumer actions, inactions and reactions. To inspire and motivate consumers as well as to be inspired and
engage them even further – to engage and steer their behaviour. Creative thinking is in the design, content and
delivery of the product, the service and the experience. The confluence of art, code and copy powered and
inspired by data-driven insights beyond purchase behaviours is the newness we bring to marketing today.

Today, creative thinking as it pertains to marketing can – indeed must – include any and all touchpoints with the
brand. Creative thinking encompasses innovative products, compelling and shareworthy content, creative
packaging and even creative pricing. Creative thinking, at its best, leads to consumer behaviour change – and a
very high level of stickiness to the brand.

Along with producing ads, consumers' need for real-life experiences, that are true to the brand stories being
delivered, is the impetus whereby marketing has changed into continuous 'social' conversations, leading to
consumer-generated content and consumer-generated products.

Be it a brand such as Chipotle or a brand such as Kmart, engaging content managed intelligently with
technology, plus small and big data human insights that seamlessly integrate the consumer experience,
catalyses consumer behaviour change and fights the forces of change in the marketplace.

Marketing is not just using data today but in some ways it is producing
it almost all the time
Today, practically everything in the marketing and communications area is supported and driven by data. Or, in
some way leads to producing data – behavioural data. Behavioural data that is beginning to be owned by
consumers. With more wearable technology and connected devices, we will have more consumer-owned data
and more connected consumers. Why wouldn't a brand harvest this Big Data and be inspired by the insights
from it?

The challenge now is in relative brand value creation to tap into Big Data captured by these devices. How can
brands distil inspiration from Big Data without infringing consumer privacy? By creating a data–value exchange
where consumers voluntarily share it with brands they trust. The ultimate answer in building brands and
profitable businesses is in delighting consumers and motivating them to win their trust and advocacy, time and
again.

Beyond doubt, Big Data has revolutionised the development of new products, services, and customer
experiences. Brands such as Coca-Cola, Hallmark, or Clorox regularly use social media to identify nascent
trends or float new ideas with customers. E-commerce companies such as LinkedIn or Amazon, to name but a
few, continuously test new website features with millions of users at any given time, to determine which features
should be released globally. These companies and many others rely on Big Data and analytics to find valuable
pockets of margin, and exploit them to deliver consistent and reliable revenue growth.

Can Big Data and analysis replace intuition?

They cannot replace each other. We believe they coexist and outsmart erstwhile practices. Film studios have
become quite adept at figuring out what moviegoers want, and then giving it to them. To screen film concepts
with large test audiences, gather data, and then rework, adjust, tweak, and rescreen two or three times again is
now a way moviemakers save lots of movies from being terrible flops. Is this stifling of creativity? We don't think
so. Not when it works to augment creative bravery and respects intuition. Not when it isn't overengineered and
made into a mere clinical process. Imagination and intuition cannot be replaced with data, big or small. Our
argument is that we already have examples of blockbuster ideas in the movie world where data and creativity
worked hand in hand. Big Data is not going to replace imagination. In fact, it is imaginative use of Big Data that
will lead to innovation and blockbuster ideas. Big Data will not replace intuition but will augment intuition with
counterintuitive data-driven ideas. For instance, when the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (KCPA)
looked for prospective customers, it was Big Data that revealed their affinity to the PGA. Without Big Data such
counterintuitive ideas would be scarce and KCPA would not have creatively addressed the 'golfers' for a
whopping 60% increase in ticket salesv.
There are enough examples of how we could improve the long tail, how we could achieve efficiency through
programmatic targeting and by crafting custom experiences from Big Data. There are innumerous custom
experience examples, such as how the Morton steakhouse delighted a frequent shopper with his favourite dish
before he landedvi or how passengers in 'upper class' Virgin Atlantic can have their boarding pass automatically
brought on-screen as they approach a security checkpointvii.

Big Data helps brands in engaging with consumers in ways and territories that have never been explored before
to improve societal good – for example, to eradicate polio in a country with a very high populationviii. Big Data is
vital to eradicating and controlling diseases such as polio, Ebola, measles and in monitoring fluix.

A simplified data point, such as Dove's discovery of women's perception of their beauty, is the Holy Grail of
information mined from disparate Big Data sources. The creative leap thereafter has built the brand-compelling
stories and a 'blockbuster' campaignx.

Marketers are no longer merely image makers but behaviour hackers

Building brands valued by consumers is not only about changing attitudes and creating predisposition. It
includes creating a value, beyond a value perception, so that consumers are motivated to do something that the
brands wants them to do. It is about consumer behaviour.

Marketing is now transforming consumers from passive audiences to active players. When consumers become
active players, all their actions produce data. These are not only purchase data. Marketing has always looked at
purchase behaviours. From catalogue marketers to digital retail, marketers always focused on purchase
behaviours. For the first 80 years of modern marketing, it was all about attitudinal data – changing attitudes and
perceptions. And then we shifted our focus to purchase behaviours.

But today we have availability and unprecedented access to non-purchase behaviours. How consumers engage
with our brands. How they navigate through their shopping journey and leave breadcrumbs of their behaviour in
the digital and social space.

We call it the Third Wave. The Third Wave is where we can look beyond attitudes and purchase behaviours to
explore social behaviours. It is this data that helps us in understanding the consumer social networks, and its
influence, in mining sentiments, emotions and even their behavioural intent, giving us the opportunity to improve
how consumers engage with our brands.

Beyond predicting consumer intent and behaviour, it is this data that helps us in understanding the minutiae of
consumer choice. For marketers to be behaviour hackers, they need to practise behaviour hunting, auditing
consumer behaviour and influencing consumer behaviour. It is Big Data that has the potential to reveal
consumers' mindset, their feelings, emotional intensity and behavioural intent to inform, incite and inspire
creativity; creativity with a purpose. By creating not just a few ads but by creating an omni-channel pre-
purchase, purchase and post-purchase experience for the consumer.

Like never before, data impacts our day-to-day lives and we engage
with Big Data like never before
Data is impacting people's lives – their everyday lives, every day. Traffic, weather, whereabouts, friends, family,
health, pets, children, feelings, emotions, actions – an update on all these comes to us as consumers and we
engage with it, in one way or another. Purposive creative thinking cannot afford to ignore Big Data. It is a
consumer engagement input. These consumer actions, inactions and reactions are an inspiration to do
something about it creatively and to address it in real-time or near real-time for a brand to be a guide by the side
and thereby enhance the consumer experience.

Some early adopters of analytics have been using data in finance, insurance pricing, and marketing to segment
customers, build sales response and direct response models that creatively design products, services and
experiences that are usage based. Consumer usage of products and services is Big Data. Brands that mash up
the social conversations, weatherxi, sleep activity, driving patterns, handwriting samples, and voice data from
mobile phones can, in fact, detect patterns that even consumers themselves are unaware of. This magic of Big
Data is the inspiration for creative thinkers to produce relevant recommendations to cross-sell and encourage
advocacy to their brands. More than anything, insights and intelligence from Big Data allow brands to relate
better to their consumers and impact their lives. Twitter, Airbnb, Hotel Tonight, Amazon, Google and Facebook
all used insights found deep within their Big Data to unlock big growth opportunities, and continue to do so.

Big data can inspire and hinder creative thinking

Big Data is a double-edged sword. Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of dataxii. There's so much
unstructured data out there. And so much of it is relatively new. Photos, graphic images, videos, streaming
devices data, webpages, PDF files, presentations, emails, blogs, wikis, word processing documents, sensors,
beacons, wearables and connected devices – that is Big Data. And that is a problem, right there. Data overload,
call it data obesity – that is a major problem.

The biggest challenge is in knowing how to winnow the wheat from the chaff. Knowing how to recognise
emerging patterns needs technique, technology and expertise. And knowing which patterns are relevant to the
business inspires creative thinking to make it more purposeful. Data needs skill sets and mindsets to inspire
creative thinking. This comes from people. As a fraternity, that is what we need to invest in, to cultivate the
people who have the mindsets and skill sets and nurture them. Achieving a big impact from Big Data warrants
organisations to invest in people, tools, techniques, technology and a cultural transformation. Employing
machine learning, redesigned work flows and automation for a big impact is impractical without a collaborative
effort and bodacious leadership.

Big-Data-inspired creative thinking happens with people, the right

hybridisation of talent
Big Data is not always better. It could well be a trap when Big Data lands in inept hands. Big Data leads to
multiple correlations. Context is often lacking when information is pulled from these different sources and that
could lead to questionable conclusions. Why does that happen? It is because spurious correlations always exist
in Big Data. We cannot wait to establish the causation behind all correlations.

We need more people with mindsets and skill sets to investigate, interpret and find the needles in the haystacks
of data, working collaboratively with the creative minds in marketing. To annul the data overload, for the noise
cancellation and to simplify the big insight and the Big Data savvy idea, we need a hybrid, art–science talent.
People who identify patterns, improve predictability, and relentlessly pursue the 'why' behind patterns and
behaviours to think creatively and collaboratively.

In marketing, we cannot stop with a prediction. It is a lot more complex than that. Yes, that is our predicament.
And so we look at prediction as nothing more than continuous smart and smarter experimentation. The truth is,
we don't merely predict the future, but we experiment with it. Every marketing deployment is a learning
opportunity. Today, leading marketers are investing in designing experiments with the goal of recursively
learning from each and every experiment.

The days of using data to simply support a hypothesis are over. We're moving beyond preconceived models and
potential assumptions. Today, we're using data to lead rather than just support. We're using data to apply into
the future – not only for insights but also for foresight – be it in designing a product or a service, be it
programmatic media buying or real-time contextually relevant messaging to enhance customer experiences.

Data big or small has always inspired us and will continue to inspire
our creative thinking
That's no big deal. The role of creative thinking and Big Data in pre-production, post-production and re-
production of marketing communication and integrating consumer experiences is huge and cannot happen
without a hybridised talent and their collaborative efforts.

Use it to profit. Abuse it at your own peril.

Footnotes
i http://www.businessinsider.com/big-data-can-boost-marketing-roi-2013-1

ii http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hardy-RamanujanNumber.html

iii http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen?language=en

iv http://o-c-r.org/work/

v http://www.4cinsights.com/

vi http://consumerist.com/2011/08/18/mortons-delivers-man-steak-at-airport-after-he-jokingly-asks-for-
one-in-a-tweet/

vii http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/05/02/virgin-atlantic-unveils-new-airport-terminal-experience-
powered-by-apples-ibeacon

viii http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Polio

ix http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/12/opinion/lbbecke-big-data-saves-lives/

x http://www.12ahead.com/ogilvy-big-data-vs-big-creativity
xi http://adage.com/article/dataworks/weather-forecast-predicts-sales-outlook-walmart/295544/

xii http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/what-is-big-data.html

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