APG Noisy Thinking 2016

We set out to provoke, and whilst the topic drew a huge crowd there was far more agreement than conflict, despite an intriguing range of ways in to the debate from our 4 speakers…….…… (And who’d have thought, given the topic at hand, that one of the big winners of the night would be our excellent friend, qualitative research).

Les Binet | Head of Effectiveness at Adam&EveDDB dazzled us with his data, precisely nailing inconvenient truths, and even more precisely reminding us of some basic prescriptions for successful data based marketing plans:  Immediate responses should be rationally driven but if you want to maximise profit in the long term, take the emotional route.  Data is dangerous if you’re not looking at the whole picture. Chasing volume is a cost, not a benefit to a business. Getting people to pay more for the same stuff is the best plan and you can reduce price sensitivity by long term brand building.  And that is just a tiny taster of the incredibly clear advice based on rock solid data foundations, in Les and Peter Field’s excellent volumes The Long and the Short of It, and Marketing in the Age of Accountability

Lazar Dzamic | Creative Strategist from Google Zoo ‘where we eat data for breakfast’ is all about turning light into heat and mining Google data to give texture and nuance to the stories we want to tell through brands and campaigns. So much for old fashioned planning, you might say.  But more provocatively Laz thinks that we should ‘automate the dull 40% to 60% of ad campaigns’ – get the algorithm to do the donkey work and concentrate our efforts where we can make a real difference; that is ‘fame strategies’ that are powered by human brains.  Laz is a firm believer in collaboration as he thinks that strategy is too big for one person and with collaboration you can make far more of multiple data sets and complex consumer behaviour. “Data is still waiting for its Scorsese….’

Shorful Islam | Managing Director at Stream Intelligence noted the floating air of conflict in discussions about data and his plea is decidedly for peace and understanding.  Shorful thinks data should just live alongside strategy and that it’s simply another source of info like a book.  All that is happened is that we are now collecting and storing the signals that data creates.  It’s incredibly useful because data can help us understand the repercussions of an original action and then help you re-optimise customer journeys to lead to changed behaviour.  The role of strategy is crystal clear:  To set objectives and set out what ‘good’ looks like. ‘Data without strategy is pointless.  Strategy without data is dangerous’.

Leo Rayman | Head of Planning at Grey had the best video and examples of the algorithm at work: A robot consistently beating a human at ‘Scissor, paper, stone’ (the robot had a camera that allowed it to anticipate the the action of the human and win every time); a slowed-down visual of trading algorithms in the city and a somewhat dodgy poem written by algorithm. (Maybe give it Shakespeare rather than Taylor Swift lyrics to plunder next time?) He talked about ‘Edge Cases’ and imperfect algorithms and the fact the some of our best thinking comes out of illogic and apparent stupidity:  Dirt is good?  You have to be able to think ‘anti-intelligence’-style as people are unexpected and challenging.  The computer can win at chess but we tell the puerile jokes that have us rolling in the aisles.  ‘Augmented Intelligence’ is the answer perhaps: Doing our strategy assisted by fabulous machines like the Amazon success built on a combination of intuition, hypothesis and loads of testing.  So use algorithms as much as you can, but dwell at the edges like creative thinkers and be mindful of the ethical dimension.  We need to think really hard about the questions and the answers.