Does Big Data Turn Us into Its Cat?
It was another quarantine day.
My cat was devouring his dinner as usual. I rubbed him and said to my roommate: Do we still have enough cat food? Should we buy some cat food? Does Amazon deliver cat food now?
I opened Amazon on my phone and several options of cat food appeared on the front page. I checked all the reviews and finally decided to give the new brand which is also the best seller a try. The whole process was smooth and easy. I didn’t even get bothered by the phone spying on our conversation.
This slice of life shows us:
1. Big data provides certain services for us.
2. Big data gathers information from us and benefits in its own way.
3. Our behavior is influenced/limited by big data unconsciously.
Thinking about the relationship between my cat and me, I found some similarities.
Are We Becoming Cats in The Era of Big Data？
Unfortunately, most Internet companies are traffic-oriented, as long as they can increase traffic and retain user time, they will do whatever they need. Various entertainment gossips, vulgar videos, and content playing edge balls will cater to people’s interests, prompting users to click under physiological impulses and become popular. This kind of traffic is aggregated into “big data”, which brings more insights to the public’s preferences.
When more and more inferior articles are easily broken through 100k views, authors no longer write for passion but focus on the numbers. The number represents money and the quality of content as well. Using data, they are able to know the way to stimulate the emotion button, even if it is an act of disrespect to force the reader to feel connected.
We are in the era of information explosion, there are a lot of dazzling contents online. it seems we can find everything, but in fact we got nothing.
We are like pets.
No matter you accept the reality or not, what I mentioned is in history. Right now three things are happening in the digital world:
1. The computing power owned by big companies is exploding.
2. Big companies are recruiting talents expert at artificial intelligence algorithms, and their ability to utilizing data is rapidly increasing.
3. Big companies are gathering more data from everyone, expanding the database.
Big data has been swallowing our physical world.
Should Marketers Tap into Big Data?
In the article Are you ready for the era of ‘big data’, Michael Chui and James Manyika mentioned what big data brings to us are radical customization, constant experimentation, and novel business models which will be new hallmarks of competition as companies capture and analyze huge volumes of data.
Big data holds out big promises for marketing. Notably, it pledges to answer two of the most vexing questions that have stymied marketers since they started selling: 1) who buys what when and at what price? and 2) can we link what consumers hear, read, and view to what they buy and consume?
The role of big data for marketing teams is huge. When developing a campaign, it is critical that every marketing specialist first understands several variables, like the target audience, your opponents’ strategies, etc. And, this is exactly what big data helps us do.
Nevertheless, data without a vision is like a bad teacher just quoting the textbook: It’s all there, but there’s no meaningful connection. Additionally, bad data costs the typical company up to a fifth of its revenue each year. As marketers, we are supposed to use big data to create value for customers, not just target them. In my previous blog, I talked about leading with soul and staying human in the first pandemic of the digital age. Combining data and creativity as a strategic differentiator is a powerful move.
When creatives and data analysts work together from the beginning, logic meets magic, and that vision gets much stronger.
