Are You Living a Data-driven Life? (David Edelman)

Are You Living a Data-driven Life?

Not too long ago, CMOs from more than sixty companies converged on Miami for the Next Generation Chief Marketing Officer Summit US. Among the top summit issues the conference covered were are how to turn digital marketing and social media into actual value, how to connect meaningfully with customers, and how to prove the ROI of marketing spend.

The summary article “The data-driven life” highlights an uncomfortable fact. Even as Big Datagets bigger (we now create as much information every 48 hours as we did from the dawn of civilization up to the year 2003 - about 5 exabytes) the hard truth summit attendees took away is that “Big Data is irrelevant unless we know what to do with it.”

While CMOs are excited and energized by the Big Data potential, they also feel the crushing weight of that data. It does, after all, fall on them to use the data to improve customer experiences, discover new market opportunities, personalize communications, etc., and ultimately deliver above-market growth to their companies. I look at this as a very positive development, however. The CMO is in the enviable position of being able to ask—and answer—the key questions that will focus the entire enterprise on the customer. The CMO will lead companies into the digital future by capturing and conveying the customer insights that must inform and influence decisions across the organization. That connection with the customer through data is so important today.

Well, getting there calls for people with the right stuff. It takes talent—and talent, it turns out, is a yawning chasm smack in the CMO’s path. Almost every CMO (98.8%) in the recent CMO Survey says that finding the necessary talent is a huge problem. Universities aren’t turning out enough data scientists. Marketers need something more. Several at the summit called for “translators,” people who can make the needs of non-technical leaders urgently intelligible to the data scientists as well as making the data meaningful to the business leaders.

There are these points of contact where you need to find “two-sport” data athletes who can help bridge them. Understanding where those bridges need to be and then finding people with the right set of talents to become bridges is critical. Good talent hunting also requires getting creative in finding people who might not have “data” in their titles or degrees but have analytical minds and what my colleague Tim McGuire calls “an insatiable curiosity.”

How are you getting creative to find your Big Data talent?

Learn more about Big Data as well as organization and talent topics on the McKinsey on Marketing & Sales site, and follow us on Twitter @McK_MktgSales. And please follow me@davidedelman.