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I love this comment from David Sable … the COO and Vice Chairman of Wunderman.
“The world’s servers are bowing under the weight of data … everything from the type of pets we have to our most recent online purchases is available. The problem is most of that information is usless because data is a record of HISTORICAL transactions, so all it tells you is what happened yesterday.”
No Shit Sherlock!
Look of course he is right … data only informs you what has happened, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what IS going to happen. The reason I find his comments so amusing is that for years, his company has been riding the wave of ‘data is everything‘ and now, just as consumers are demanding more privacy, he is switching track and saying data is important, but you need other things too.
It’s abit like Oprah saying, “Women are amazing – but only when men help us”
One of the things I absolutely detest when someone comes up to me and say’s, “… but the data proves this” when [1] they’ve only looked at one piece of data and not cross referenced it with other sources of information and [2] they believe the data they’ve got is the insight for which all future work should be based.
And this leads to another question?
Why does every communication discipline believe THEY … and ONLY they … have the answer to all the World’s problems? Seriously, if I sit in one more meeting where someone claims his/her skillset can change the Universe … blood will be shed.
Look, data is not insight and insight is not data … but when they come together and you add a little imagination – my god, great things can really, happen. It’s just a shame it isn’t happening very often at the moment – but that’s a rant for another day.
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at least David can spell
Comment by bob June 1, 2006 @ 6:38 pm