LO 1.

DATA HAS ALWAYS SHAPED SOCIETY

The second premise of this textbook is that data is nothing new either. We tend to use the word ‘data’ and its
sophisticated brother ‘big data’ to represent some bold new frontier for humanity. The reality is that data has been
with us for as long as we could count. Originally a term in philosophy, and once restricted to scientific fields, data
is facts and statistics, collected for analysis and potentially decision-making. The number of Facebook posts you
like is data. The number of chapters in this textbook is data. The number of times I write data is data.

Data can be collected in many ways. Traditional research uses qualitative methodologies such as interviews or focus
groups, and quantitative methods such as surveys or experiments to collect data. One of the first data-gathering
tools used in advertising was audience measurement , which started with the BBC in the UK in 1936, before
the current market leader, Roy Morgan, began five years later. With the advent of the database and the
sophistication of computing systems since the 1960s, organisations began collecting and storing personal
information or sales data. And in 1991, the public launch of the World Wide Web created new data possibilities.
Large tech giants such as Amazon in 1995, Google in 1998 and Facebook in 2004 amplified computing power and
marketing opportunities.

While data may have got bigger, it has always been a big influence in shaping our society and its Page 6
technology. You see, food and water have never been enough to sustain us. New information stimulates
new ideas and ongoing innovation to constantly improve the way we live, the way we work and the way we
communicate.

This is evident throughout our history. As early as the eighth century, the ancient Greeks invented the alphabet,
which freed us from the bonds of memory. In 1440, the printing press democratized reading and therefore
learning, by making knowledge and ideas more widely available. The phonogram, and then the radio, and then the
telephone, meant that people didn’t even have to read. They could just listen. And with the television, the masses
could watch media as well. But perhaps the greatest application of data to solve a problem was imagined by Alan
Turing in 1936. The Turing machine not only changed the course of history, but created a prototype for mainframe
computers, which signalled the Third Industrial Revolution.

Big data was originally defined in terms of three Vs2—that is, large volumes generated at high velocity from a
variety of sources. A fourth V, volatile, was added to the list to represent the inadequacy of some traditional
processing environments.3 Sivarajah et al. (2017) added another four descriptors, poring over the V words in the
dictionary to make the definition of big data even bigger. They defined big data using eight Vs—volume, velocity,
variety, volatility, veracity, variability, visualisation and value. All are very valuable descriptors.4

In marketing, big data is generally gathered through digital brand touchpoints. A touchpoint is any contact
between a customer and a brand before, during or post purchase. Malthouse and Li (2017) describe the symbiotic
relationship between these digital brand touchpoints and data: ‘Digital interactions create big data, which can then
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be used to inform subsequent digital touchpoint decisions.’ So touchpoints both gather data and enable marketers
to make informed decisions as a result of that data. This can be seen in Figure 1.1 , which shows the role of data
in advertising. It brings together all brand-initiated contacts with consumers (brand actions) and augments this
with dialogue behaviours, or all non-purchase actions between customers, such as liking, sharing or reviewing.
Shopping behaviours, including searching, web logs of browsing and shopping carts, can lead to purchase. And all
of this leads to brand-use behaviours and brand outcomes, such as brand loyalty, lead generation or even
purchase.

Figure 1.1 The role of big data in advertising

Source: Adapted from E Malthouse & H Li, ‘Opportunities for and pitfalls of using big data in advertising research’, Journal of Advertising, 46(2),
2017, p. 228.

And when you do it well, you get on everyone’s playlist. Like Spotify. Its global out-of-home campaigns transform
user data into catchy headlines (see Exhibit 1.1 ), such as advising, ‘Dear 3749 people who streamed “It’s the End
of the World as We Know It” the day of the Brexit vote, hang in there.’ Now Spotify is partnering with new data
providers to make its service and its headlines even more relevant. For example, Spotify’s ‘Climatune’ project
compared 85 billion anonymised music streams with the weather in over 900 cities across a 12-month period,
delivering some surprising insights. In one instance, the data from AccuWeather and Spotify shows us that Sydney
is one of the saddest cities in the world when it rains, selecting their sad playlist. But unlike the rest of the world,
Brisbane loves cloudy days, opting for more runnable music.6
Exhibit 1.1 Spotify turned data into headlines with their humorous billboards, such as ‘Dear person who played
“Sorry” 42 times on Valentine’s Day, What did you do?’
Source: Shutterstock/Maquette.pro

While data can shape society and help us to understand consumers and their behaviour, there are also some Page 7
challenges in using data. These include the validity of the data—how it was collected, whether it is reliable
and whether it has both internal and external validity (remember your marketing research subject). There may be
biases, if the data does not measure all causal factors or if it contains errors. There’s even the question of whether
the data represents real consumer behaviour or that of bots. And of course, data must be collected ethically, and
people’s privacy must respected at all times.