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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Welcome to the data society!

Besides that, campaigns can be enriched with these
new data sources and kept more current, as well as
orchestrating channels and touch-points effectively.
New ideas for communication emerge with ease and
content can be created which is more relevant and res-
onates more efficiently.
To understand how this works, it is important to know
the three main data sources:

Big Data: Companies that want to continue to grow in
saturated markets, count on the dual strategy of inno-
vations and increase in efficiency. Both approaches are
After the industrial and IT revolution, the digitization of intentionally opting to collect large and diverse data
all areas of life is spreading out, giving the impression sets, combine and evaluate them in the shortest possi-
that data is the next driver of great change. In fact, dig- ble time, and make them usable. Big Data promises
itized data processing seems to go mainstream, since gains in efficiency and performance, granular customer
we start to generate data with almost everything we do segmentation and more rational decision-making.
today. Leaps in evolution - in terms of infrastructure, artificial
IBM calculated, for instance, that 90% of all existing intelligence and data visualization - make this possible.
data has been produced in the past two years, whereby Even if companies already collect data, it only rarely
only 0.5% of all data is getting analyzed in the end, ac- implies a benefit yet, but it is to be expected that the
cording to market researcher IDC. Still, experts believe efficient handling of large amounts of data becomes the
the amount of data collected will rise three hundred norm in a few years.
times in the next five years, resulting in double-digits Open Data: Companies and organizations start to
zettabytes.
make their data public, because it is a good idea to
Whether you like it or not… make data available to third parties as they would po-
tentially find additional ways to use the data. Open data
Data controls important decisions that affect our lives - records allow interested parties to make full usage of
whether you like it or not. It is nothing new that decision data, edit it, and distribute it again.
-making is much easier with data analysis and that’s
why business intelligence is already well-established Quantified Self: Neuro-scientists assume that people
and still going strong across all industries, such as e.g. are on autopilot around 85% of their lives. Everyone
scoring methods for credit or insurance. who has ever tried to quit smoking knows how hard it is
to change habits. A number-based lifestyle uses new
However, new is that we can gather data about custom- technologies to better understand and be able to opti-
ers often long before their purchases, and it’s new that mize the own behavior. The "Quantified Self move-
marketing departments make many decisions based on ment", for instance, is counting the daily calories,
data, rather than relying only on gut feeling. The chal- measures the steps and analyzes the quality of sleep
lenge is therefore to bring customer intelligence and and much more.
business intelligence together and to develop useful
products and services for customers. With the advent of smartphones, sensors have become
ubiquitous - from smartphones to wearables. GPS re-
… the new world of data is coming, although priva- ceivers, cameras, microphones, position and motion
cy issues will play a decisive role. sensors are bulk goods today. Users can now keep

Of course, privacy is an important issue. Therefore, the records of their meals on The Eatery, save the activity
use of data should always be transparent and compre- values of their workouts on Nike+, or count the daily
hensible for the users. Only then, there will be ac- steps with Fitbit. On the corresponding websites and
ceptance for the new world of data. apps they analyze, share and compare their data with
others. Hence, new multi-sensory device classes are
Particularly, three data sources enable context- taking off, just look at Smartwear like the Samsung
sensitive marketing, since companies are able to ana- Gearfit that has already captured the mass market.
lyze large amounts of data in a short time (Big Data),
data is made publicly available via interfaces (Open Fact is that companies can work more targeted with
Data), and consumers measure their lives digitally in more data. However, the competitive advantage arises
order to optimize themselves (Quantified Self). not from the pure existence of data, but from its intelli-
gent combination in the future.
‘Big Context’ originates from the intersection of these
data sources that gives brands the opportunity to un- The advantages are big for those who extract and inter-
derstand their customers better and to address them pret data the best and be able to make sense out of it.◊

individually. By Daniela La Marca
4 Asian eMarketing February2015 - Data-Driven Marketing