At recent events like AdTech and in conversations with clients, I’ve heard a staggering number of statistics that would make even the most sane marketer’s head spin:
- There are 800 million people on Facebook.
- Human beings generate 200 EXABYTES (read: 18 zeros!) of information each year.(1)
- 42 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube… Every minute.
- 178.5 million people will browse online before they ever make a purchase.(2)
Are you scared yet? I certainly am. These numbers tell us a great deal about how consumers – people – get, consume and utilize information.
I had the pleasure of hearing Wendy Clark, the SVP of Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities for Coca-Cola, arguably the best known brand in the world, speak at the New York AdTech event last month. She reminded us that today’s consumers are highly connected – to each other, to brands, to, well everyone. And, the content we generate spreads with us or without us. Her point? Even companies like Coca-Cola must engage with consumers on their terms to build the meaningful relationships that foster brand trust and loyalty.
So back to the numbers. How do companies deal with the data overload? With the need to be real-time? With the desire to create multichannel customer dialogues? I think Fatemeh Khatibloo, Senior Analyst with Forrester Research, said it best in our recent Webinar, “Intelligence – not data – will be the difference between success and failure.”
What is customer intelligence (CI)? According to Forrester, it’s “the management and analysis of customer data from all sources, used to drive marketing performance and business strategy.”
In my estimation, it’s a way to start making sense of the overwhelming stats and best utilize the mounds of data we, as marketers, have to pour through. If you’d like to hear more from Fatemeh or Quaero’s own Niall Budds on the topic of CI, take a listen to the Webinar replay on our website. Better yet, feel free to reach out to Niall directly.
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(1) David Siegel, Entrepreneur, Futurist, Author, “Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to
Transform Your Business”
(2) Booz & Co. presentation at AdTech Fall 2011
