Predictions and Reflections
Will our data always be F**ked? What could f**k our data in the future? It’s time for us to make our own predictions of the future – the big things we see happening months or even years from now.
George Santayana, an American philosopher, said: ‘To know your future, you must know your past.’ While researching this book, I came across an article making future predictions. John D. Louth, a writer for the McKinsey Quarterly, spoke about ‘the changing face of marketing’ as far back as 1 September 1966; he wrote:
-------------------------
‘Change is the dominant fact of life in every business today. And the ability to master and exploit change has become one of the most sought-after management skills. This is particularly true in marketing, where the very tempo of change is constantly quickening.
‘The dominance of the customer
‘It is nearly a truism that the needs and wants of the consumer are the critical issues today in creating new products and services and developing the accompanying plans to merchandise them at a profit. But this trend – the first on my list – is still in the process of evolution. The need to understand and anticipate future customers is bound to become even more essential than in the past, because the end users of almost every company’s products are shifting in makeup, location, and number at an ever-increasing rate.
‘The significance of this to senior marketing executives is twofold: First, they cannot – indeed, they must not – assume that yesterday’s customers will be available tomorrow. Second, they had better be certain that they have adequate sources of market information. Unless they can keep up with what is happening to their markets, the whole company’s selling effort may ultimately be directed at the wrong people with the wrong products and at the wrong time. This is what a marketing vice president I know meant when he said, “My company’s sales output can’t be any better than my intelligence input.”’
-----------------
Perhaps our methods might change with the technological and social landscape around us, but what we’re trying to achieve in the changing landscape does not. Just like our market trader example, modern data and analytics are just about trying to achieve personalisation at scale – offering the right products to the right people at the right time. Sixty years ago or 60 years from now. It always comes back to how well you know and serve your existing and prospective customers.
I predict the following five things driven by political, economic, social, and legal factors that will drive the next five years in digital analytics for marketing.
