Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Janez Rakušček, ECD, Luna\TBWA Ljubljana
“Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it…” This is how the phenomenon of collecting and processing large amounts of data was lucidly interpreted by the renowned economic scientist Dan Ariely (by the way, I warmly recommend his books, especially The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty and the Predictably Irrational). The definition of Big Data in fact says that this is the collection of such large and complex datasets that traditional methods of processing are insufficient to arrange and interpret them. It’s not just the sheer volume of information, which would require immense processing capacity, but above all it’s about new connections and patterns which can be revealed only by large amounts of data, given that they remain below the threshold of visibility in the smaller batches of data. Big Data, of course, is not something that should concern only the communication paradigm of the future – the impact of meaningful use of large amounts of data is crucial to virtually all areas of human existence, from medicine to traffic; with it, it is possible to dramatically improve the flow of traffic and properly diagnose disease in patients.
But let’s stay with communication. Whoever already looked for some information on the Internet and tried to book a hotel room, for example, in Berlin, and was then followed by ads for Berlin hotels at all possible internet sites for months and years after returning home, knows well that the use of collected data – at least given the possibilities – is still somehow in the stone age. Even Google itself, with the help of some simple data binding, should conclude that for a few days I logged into my account from Berlin, and draw some logical conclusions from that. But, things are changing. The communications war with the greatest stakes in play in recent years – the race for the Oval Office at the White House – analysts have tried to explain in every possible way. First of all, there was a symptomatic and total failure of public opinion polls that unanimously heralded the victory of Hillary Clinton. Some of the few analysts, such as, for example, the famous statistician and baseball expert Nate Silver, who predicted the victory of Hillary as probable, but by no means certain, were drowned in a sea of false security. Surprisingly, the political autumn in the United States was by far most accurately predicted by screenwriter and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, who in December 2015 announced Trump’s victory in the Republican primaries, and already in July 2016 (ie. more than four months before the election), in bleak article titled 5 Reasons why Trump Will Win, he beautifully predicted what would happen on election day: the first and most important reason Moore stated was what he called Midwest Math, or Welcome to Our Rust Belt Brexit.
But all this did not happen by itself. The thin electoral advantage in the states of the American Midwest, which brought Trump to the White House, was most likely the result of micro-targeted communications based on the meaningful use of large amounts of personal data. The morning after the election results were announced, CEO of an unknown company with a cryptic name Cambridge Analytica sent the following message to the media: “We are thrilled that our revolutionary approach to data-driven communication has played such an integral part in President-elect Trump’s extraordinary win.” Alexander James Ashburner Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, boasted that the company has over 5,000 data units on more than 220 million Americans that they purchased from a variety of platforms. Their specificity is that they don’t segment the information according to demographic data, but on the basis of psychometry, which is based on five personal characteristics, known as the Big Five: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (abbreviated the OCEAN model). As Nix puts it, it is pointless to expect that people will react the same to the same message just because they are women or of dark skin color. It makes a lot more sense to have the segmentation of messages based on psychometry. And, by the way, the company Cambridge Analytica before Trump also helped the British Leave.EU campaign with their services.
All this is far from clumsy monitoring with interfering banners. In the future this may very strongly influence the advertising agencies and the way they work. David Golding, co-founder and strategic director of the London agency adam&eve/DDB in a recent article for campaignlive announced the future of agencies in two directions: Culture vs. Collateral or communications that are based on ideas, create brand fame, spread to popular culture and remain part of the collective memory and, on the other hand, communication based on silent monitoring of the extremely segmented consumers with simple messages on every corner – by collecting and analyzing data. Sir Martin Sorrell, visionary head of the world’s largest communications holding company WPP, at the recent CES in Las Vegas made it clear where he sees the future of his agency chains: : “The medium has become more important than the message”, hinting that WPP, in the future, will put data driven communications to the foreground. This could change the way agencies work: in the first phase it will be the media strategy and tactics, and the content will have to adapt to the media plan.
These are all speculations for now, but some events already indicate the direction in which the future could go. The fastest growing agency at the moment is the English Oliver Agency (have you heard of it, or for some ad that the agency created?), whose bespoke business model promises clients more effect with less investment, using simple, informative and highly targeted messages, whereby they don’t burden themselves with creativity, longevity or virality of images they create. Are we perhaps going back to the era before Bill Bernbach?