THE BEGINNING OF THE END

294 days after nervously walking through the door for the Masters Program orientation at Hyper Island back in September 2014, I walked out from my last class preparing to tackle my final assignment, the Industry Research Project.

Funnily enough, I still had the same nervous feeling, but this time it was mixed up with a lot more excitement. Now I’m fired up by the possibilities of applying what I’ve learnt from Design Thinking, Digital Technology, Business Transformation and Start Up methodology to try and create real positive change for my agency Dentsu and possibly the advertising industry.

When the last lesson was coming to an end, my classmates and I began to reflect and think about the implications of beginning our final project; one of my peers commented that they felt ‘they could see the light at the end of the tunnel’ before another replied that they could be mistaking the light for ‘an oncoming train’. The truth is our Industry Research Project, feels like it’s somewhere in between.

As we now begin our final assignment, I’ve noticed the fear and excitement in all of my peers, it’s a daunting challenge for sure, but the chance to put what we’ve learnt into practice in the real world, is driving us all on. The first step is to pick a subject that I’m passionate enough about to sustain my interest over the next 6 months, but then to also frame it in a project that is both manageable and achievable in the time available.

So in my case, the subject I was attracted to the most over the course of the Masters program has been Data. From my background as a copywriter, I’ve always loved storytelling, and I’ve found that the stories that resonate the most with people are the ones that they can connect to the most; and data helps me understand my audience better.

For me, creating the best context I can for stories and ideas take great insights, which is why I believe they’re the pillars of great work. Whether it’s from research, focus groups or interviews, analysing data has always been one of the main tools that advertising uses to better understand the consumer and in so doing, unearth true insights.

After learning about how digital technology is providing us with seemingly limitless data, I found it fascinating to understanding its current uses, its ethical implications and the potential it has to create a more personalized and engaging world.

DATA SCHMATA

However, with regards to my profession, data collected through digital technology or ‘big data’ as it has become known, has also been proclaimed as the saviour of advertising, which will create powerful insights and lead to great storytelling. But data in advertising is as polarizing as it is exciting.

On the one hand, leading data consultants like Avi Dan, who specialize in the use of data insights in marketing, believe it will help agencies get to know their clients’ consumers on a more personal and engaging level than ever before, which will in turn lead to better creative work.

“Big Data can help finesse the insight better than traditional ad research; and using real-time data analysis and machine-learning can unlock a new understanding of consumer behavior.”

But some great storytellers in advertising, like John Hegarty have warned us against believing everything we hear from so called Digital Messiahs,

“They’re a bit like the Taliban, if you don’t believe everything they believe, you’ll be taken outside and shot.”

More recently Malcom Gladwell has further explained his view on why the marketing community mustn’t over rely on data.

“More data increases our confidence, not our accuracy.”

After questioning the effectiveness of the insights derived from data as being more focused on telling us ‘what’ people are doing, rather than ‘why’ they are doing it, Gladwell goes on to stipulate that the role of marketers is to ‘find the truth in the data’.

What I’d like to discover about data is related to the ‘why’, that Gladwell mentions. Can data tell us more about why digital technology is changing our behaviour and as a result has it really got the power to change the way stories are told, let alone make them better experiences?
I have a few assumptions so hopefully through this journey I can prove some of them right, as well as being open enough to accept others being torpedoed.
Personally, I think great stories are guided by how well the storytellers know their subjects. If data can provide us with genuinely new insights into why people are behaving the way they do regarding their interests, passions and beliefs, the more storytellers might be able to elaborate certain aspects of the story to keep their audience engaged and invested.

I think that if true insights about human behaviour could be derived from data, it could give storytellers the edge in today’s content-overloaded digital world. Because ultimately, the more we know about the ‘why’ of people’s behaviour, the better we can craft stories they’ll love.

As well as bringing my Hyper Island journey to a fitting end, I hope this Industry Research Project is the chance for me to tell my own story about uncovering insights and discovering how data could help me spin a great yarn.