I'm not data-driven

And the quest to keep the "art" part of marketing alive

Go scroll LinkedIn for 2 minutes and you’re bound to see the term “data-driven” in at least 3 posts. Go look at any marketing job description and chances are that you’ll see the term “data-driven” written in there.

So why all the emphasis on being data-driven in the past handful of years?

According to an article published by Harvard Business Review, “For many companies a strong, data-driven culture remains elusive, and data are rarely the universal basis for decision making.”

So is this push towards being data-driven a swing of the pendulum to the opposite side to try and correct for decisions made with no datasets? With limited datasets? With 20/20 hindsight wishing you could apply what you know now to then?

But Sam, you talk about data all the time…

This is true. And I can promise you that I’ll continue to for the rest of my career.

But here’s the thing that bugs me within the semantics of the term “data-driven”: it implies that the data is the sole driver of the decisions you make. Remember that chat we had a few weeks ago about ecosystems, the over-reliance upon attribution tools, and what’s missed when only relying on those? Seems relevant to the conversation here today.

So while it may be an issue of semantics, those words still carry a heavy weight and, more importantly, set expectations for anyone who hears them.

And that’s where I’d like to propose we move away from everything needing to be “data-driven,” and instead opt to be “data-informed.”

Data-informed vs. data-driven, what’s the difference?

Let’s get literal for a second.

Data-driven means data drives the decisions you make.
Data-informed means data informs the decisions you make.

I don’t know about you, but as a marketer (and honestly, this applies to most any profession), the individuals who are successful or uncover better ways of doing things are the risk-takers, the creative ones, the fearless among us. And they’re seen as this way for one primary reason:

Because the data isn’t there to back them with confidence that they’re making the right decision.

We typically only have data around things that we’ve either done ourselves or someone else has done before us. In essence, it’s a retroactive lookback, it’s being reactive to what we’ve seen. This is how data-driven individuals and organizations operate.

On the flipside of this, and where those who often find success live, is creativity and risk. It’s using a combination of what we’ve seen/experienced before (data) and combining that with intuition (the opposite of data). This is how data-informed individuals and organizations operate.

Simply put, it’s the combination of science AND art.

Data-driven example: attribution software

CFO: “We have $50k more to invest this quarter. I want to know where to put this money and what the return will be.”

Sound familiar? I’m sure everyone reading this has been in the room at some point in their career when that question was asked.

The default answer for this is to go to what’s currently running across the entire go-to-market (GTM) team, find out which channels/efforts are most impactful, and calculate the opportunity cost of putting more money there (because things like the point of diminishing returns exists…)

Further, this needs to be proved to the CFO - they NEED the data to justify the investment. So we pull out our handy dandy notebook attribution tool to see what’s been driving the most revenue for us. And while this is technically the right thing to do, we often forget that the tool is only able to see a limited number of things that impact that revenue being captured, while also over/under-attributing “key points” of that journey.

And alas, the birth of another ebook/webinar campaign, $50k handed over to Google, or hire another BDR.

Google Ads looking at your $50k with their “automated bid strategies” and display network

Data-informed example: Liquid Death x YETI collab

Let’s jump over to the other side of the fence now. A few weeks ago Liquid Death and YETI announced a collaboration on…a casket.

Link to post

Just stop for a second and imagine the above CFO being pitched this concept by the marketing team. Either the CFO would have an aneurysm or the marketing team would be fired on the spot.

CFO: “You’re telling me you want to put this money into building ONE cooler and creating an over-priced commercial about it!? GET OUT OF MY OFFICE, NOW!”

But during the one week that this “auction campaign” ran, it took over the internet by storm. I have no idea about the data behind it, but in looking at just a few posts from Liquid Death, YETI, and team members of those organizations, I see tens of thousands of likes and thousands more comments and shares. So this means on LinkedIn alone, they had HUNDREDS of thousands of organic (free) impressions.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on all of the media pickups this got from outlets like AdAge, ADWEEK, Food & Wine, local news stations, and more. I would be willing to bet that the number of earned impressions this campaign got was easily in the tens, if not hundreds, of millions. Not to mention that it also sold for a casual $68,200….

Link to page on Liquid Death website

No clue what their budget was when going about this. But here’s the math I’m running through my head:

• Total budget to build casket, film commercial, etc. was less than final bid of $68,200, meaning they were ROI positive on this alone

• Total earned media was likely in the ballpark of what would’ve cost at least $0.5-1.5 million in ad spend dollars to reach that same amount

• Unattributable amount of additional revenue generated for Liquid Death and YETI for purchases of their other products by people who learned about them (or were reminded about them) through this PR stunt

So to that CFO who doesn’t like the risk-takers on their team, and only makes investments based on historical data…

Maybe being so data-driven isn’t the best answer.

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Switching it up this week - AMA (Ask Me Anything)

Instead of the usual LinkedIn + podcast share down here, I want to engage better with more of you each week. I’ll make this a staple moving forward in the newsletter where I answer a reader question here.

Or, if you like the post + podcast share more, I’ll go back to that (and if so, reply back to me letting me know you’re in that camp!)

Stay tuned for next Saturday’s email where I’ll field the first question (and let you know if this section is here to stay…or not 😜).

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See you next week,
Sam