Tag Archive for: Big Data

Sustaining life – a series of quarantined thoughts

For six weeks, the world was kind of locked down for each and everyone of us. In a weekly series of thoughts I wrote down my experience connected to Covid19. These views circled around data, trust, and how humanity won and technology failed to sustain life in that one of a kind critical atmosphere.

Quarantined – Sustaining life. #1
So, Bavaria is in quarantine as of Covid19… like so many other regions in Europe. A challenge and opportunity for parents, kids and collaboration at the same time. A first review after just sunny quarantine days…

Family 24/7 is funny.
Once smartphones and tablets are banned from kids’ access. Creative caves evolved in their rooms. Kids grouped and listened to CDs under impenetrable walls of pillows and blankets. A globe spends comfortable light inside. And, believe it or not: Books become their beloved time-thieves. A sustainable change? Parents’ hope dies at last, but… to be seen.

Business is crazy.
Maybe not – once everybody else in our village is in bed. Internet connection kills sustainability efforts when everybody is at home. Thanks @ Deutsche Telekom. Apart from that? Home office? Complex or cool?! Hey, we have made it to the “No-Commuting-Days”. Smile everybody, you got at least two hours more to work and you help sustaining (and improving) the quality of nature. How sustainable these days change business life after Covid19? To be seen…

Stress is relaxed.
Inhouse? Kids’ emotions sometimes explode now and then – yet incredibly quiet overall. Hurray! Outside? Where is the noise gone? No cars. No planes. No traffic jams. Empty streets let kids rollerblade or play ball on country roads. After the quarantine disruption, kids won’t be able to sustain this outstanding freedom. Sustain stressless days? To be seen…

Yuval Harari writes in Homo Deus, A History of Tomorrow: “The most common reaction of the human mind to achievement is not satisfaction, but craving for more.”
Let’s hope, we all learn from these quarantine days, and crave for more sustainability, life quality and conscious time together.

QUARANTINED – SUSTAINING LIFE. #2
Quarantine days are not easy. However, they bring reflections. Covid19 reminds me of a former sensor garment project. Many stages at professional Champions League clubs, health companies, governmental organizations, insurance teams, and other EU stakeholders became an option for me to raise awareness around such innovation. Covid19 brings their “challengers” back to my mind: gatekeeper, data and trust. The concepts were similar: sustain life and prevent (or even predict) serious diseases.

Gatekeeper is changing.
Imagine the European Union (EU) cross-border monitors personal health around #Covid19 like Singapore does with their TraceTogether app. The EU could analyze the virus movement and warn people on distance measure or prevent further virus spreading by immediate personal advice messaging. It might become the future gatekeeper for virus prevention – a big empowerment for a real unified EU that doesn’t leave e.g. Italy and Spain alone. But it needs a long-term strategy, data dashboard capacities, and fast digital execution – but is the EU prepared for health gatekeeping, or just slowly transforming country-to-country gatekeeping? Evolution demands revolution.

Data is challenging.
People value individual health data a very sensitive topic. Once the EU has access to personal data, the commitment for a common EU health system asks for broader health or virus outbreak prevention systems. The EU might become the leading source in health data exchange for the sake of longer or “safer” lives. However, people fear that it enables the EU to also track other unique data, personal movement and individual habits that bypass health prevention in favor of future EU tax, health insurance regulation or EU financials and economics. In the end, the population needs to decide which insights to open up and which data to trust. No allowance pain, no prevention gain.

Trust is charging.
Technology has lost trust. Politicians are attempting to regain it (Edelman Trust Barometer 2020). Overcoming this mistrust level in a crisis with emerging data-driven Internet-of-Things technology (arm bracelets, censored shirts, smart watches, etc.) might train (the EU) population on technology opportunities on a broad scale. Trust batteries can be charged, once apps or sensor technologies drive prevention forward. The EU might take over the prevention driver’s seat – and may outshine the trust in WHO or other sources. The strength the EU could showcase today is that cross border exchange in Europe is more accurate than in Asia and the US. Today, fear is overwhelming hope. Tomorrow, hope is charging trust.

Technology might end quarantine days faster and regain life quality. The question is: Who is brave enough to take the driver seat? The EU, the countries, the individual?

QUARANTINED – SUSTAINING LIFE. #3
The lockdown is fading into a long-term slow down. Two weeks down empty roads and shops, humanity is people show some real personality. Quarantine is disclosing the keys to our mindset, desires and empathy.

Humanity.
In a globalized world of emerging humanity, we set up walls, restrict travel, limit trade. A virus de-globalizes humanity, only if… yes, only if we don’t collaborate: Governments cheat on nationwide figures for elections’ sake. Countries “hide” masks from other nations. Politicians selfishly negotiate on vaccine access. Millennials party against social distancing, taking the elderly’s hope and health. Humanity dropped the mask. The virus pulls on it’s strings, which fight to keep the hope for human collaboration. The virus erases borders, but borders need to collaborate.

Humans.
Mistrust and disunity is not the way forward if humans want to succeed against the virus. Neither Corona nor any other upcoming global challenge will be defeated through country-by-country activity, siloed approaches, or piece-by-piece defense. If humans are looking for a sustainable result, we cannot let Italy, Spain, US, or any other country’s beings be tackled as it will become domino effect affecting us. Company leaders talking about strategy governance that politicians seem to be missing. The virus is laughing at humans, but collaborative response will be killing it.

Unite.
Humans’ strength is to unite against emperors, terrorists and viruses. The EU or the UN could have been leading forces. The agility of the WHO does not convince the global mindset so far. They all seem to have failed on their mission. Maybe like in the motor and travel industry, it is time for a sustainable new movement – some global organization, less dependent on donations, less country-sliced, less political, but supported from a united human will and wish. The virus is a chance for some modern united approach of humanity.

Somehow, the Covid19 epidemic spreads hope that humans realize and rethink the status of the current global conditions, and we all transform the world of “Me first!”.

QUARANTINED – SUSTAINING LIFE. #4
The Coronavirus changes physical interaction in business relationships and between friends. Some will say for the good, some will say for the bad. Some will just rethink with whom they will sustain physical interaction at events, at meetings or at normal dinners and lunches in the future. Why?

Slight tapping.
Some days prior quarantine, I had a dinner with a good customer. We have had many meetings in Paris and Munich the years before. Every time we met, we gave us a friendly hug among longtime business partners. Still, when she came in that night, we both hesitated. Are we allowed to embrace each other as usual? Can we? Shall we? Dare we? Anyway, the human impulse was strong, and positive. We did. Maybe more a shoulder tapping. And, we both were lucky. No negative test chased us the days after. Will humans still behave accordingly after quarantine?

Soft embracing.
Well, thinking about it again, probably our social distancing that evening ended with a soft embracing. In principle, far too close for the quarantine ahead of us, which already had announced itself in the news. How often did we give business partners, friends and peers a soft embrace, and if we are honest… How often was this a bit too much, over the top, not really honest, not massively coming from an inner voice, more a self-staging and foolish sign of advanced business closeness? Will humans be more authentic in their physical closeness offering after …?

Stylish “pecking”.
You may have guessed it. My business dinner was French and female. The typical stylish peck was a tradition; not only between her and me, but with many people in the digital industry. All over the world, “pecking” was in fashion. Italy, Spain, New York, and many other scene capitals loved it. Physical closeness had dropped its traditional distancing mask over the last decade. Who cared about a peck here and there? Did anyone expect problems with those? And, how often may it have helped people getting closer, ending in a love relationship? Wondering if superficial pecks will sustain…?

All of the above physical closeness is gone. Gone for now. But not gone forever. Still, physical distancing rules. Hugging trees is recommended in Iceland. Maybe good for short reflection. Physical closeness will celebrate its renaissance. Will it come back even more intense after Coronavirus’ social and physical distancing? Who knows?!

In a virtual meeting last week (virtual hugs and pecks were replaced by emojis), a smart gentleman summarized his learnings from quarantine: “In the future, I will be more authentic, more realistic, more me, when I dedicate time to people – whether physical or social.” Think about it. How do you want to sustain your hugs and pecks after quarantine…?

QUARANTINED – SUSTAINING LIFE. #5
The basis for communication, collaboration and relationships between humans is trust. Trust lets humans look behind masks of content, data and knowledge. These masks have been blurring, changing, and vanishing over the lockdown. These days feel like Carnival of human honesty. Some thoughts…

Trust – Data leads.
Many talks and discussions (also many I participated as a digital speaker and moderator) in the last decade focussed on “data fueling the modern world like oil”. Not only Covid19 contradicts many arguments we had and unveils data as a much broader spectrum. Data gets spread in a rash and careless manner these days. Data is fueling the opportunity of conversations, it leads the development of context – but in the end, nothing more. The human hope is that data leverages trust. Seeing all the Coronavirus tables, graphs, infographics, and concluding algorithms, too often this data visualization is a unclassified standalone, a blank opinion, some uncommented truth. How can such data assets really help building trust in communication these days? When humans accelerate the speed of data, it leaves huge black wholes of understanding levels. Without trusted authorities, frameworks, backbones or sources, how can data be in the lead?

Distrust – Content seeds.
Networks of humans -whether offline or online- have evolved in the last decade as of three levers of relationship building: individual desire for recognition, global human interactivity and machine-learning connectivity. Despite different underlying motivations of these levers, humans have simply forgotten to question the seeds of networking: content. Thus, reality gets blurry. In our human ambition for awareness and recognition -paired with limited time resources- we handed out trust like chocolate by unconsidered liking and sharing. In the days of Corona lockdown, people told me they have massively decreased their networks as they mistrust or discredit the content of peers, business connections, or allegedly trustworthy people from past days. When humans taste the freedom of reflection and inspiration anew, many opinions vanish in distrust – in our own view and in others’ views. Fake news, invaluable connections and opaque algorithms (or as of those…) have redefined trust. How can we not distrust seeded content?

Intersubjective trust – Knowledge exceeds.
Knowledge is power, we got told. With knowledge we hope to exceed the constrains of trust, distrust and intersubjective trust. Detecting this third type of trust proves challenging in Covid19 times, where we have more experts in virus knowledge than real virologists, more data specialists than specific health logicians, and more Coronavirus “over-sharing” than substantial virus insights, research findings or correct news flow. Intersubjectivity stands between the barriers between hopes and wishes. What kind of power is knowledge in a world where data is vague, content is manipulative or at best subjective-fitted, and where AI knowledge is guiding bias to bias? Are algorithms (as the defining masses) the intersubjective trust backbone in the future for humans believing in the myths of data knowledge? Will humans’ hope in data be the intersubjective trust concept of the future? Or do we want to continue living in times of “Leadership Carnival”?

This post’s pictures leaves space for interpretation: Seas of data clouds intermingle. Light and shadow. Black and white. Fading to grey. Like human clusters searching for trust. But trust and distrust often ends in an intersubjective trust – the more we discuss, the more we agree on a story, a myth or an agreement that is a common truth. Truth is what the masses, respectively algorithms, trust in. Maybe true, maybe not, data finds…

QUARANTINED EX – RESTARTING LIFE. #6
Trust and data. Data and trust. Two twins that challenge the world when moving from sustaining to restarting life. Since May 2018 companies had to get used to the EU’s GDPR regulation. Loosening Corona lockdown turns GDPR into a complete chaos, and it seems not many people realize.

Trust – Data needed.
In order to ease lockdown, restaurants and beer-gardens have got to provide registration formulas where guests sign-in when accessing the location. Surname, name, address and mobile number (whatever the reason…) need to be given to the location owner, obviously with the idea to track down and follow up on Corona outbreaks and to inform the past visitors – just in case. Building trust is essential for any food location owner.

However, what if you visit a McDonalds restaurant and nobody takes care of filled out forms, the registrations remain at the table, and everybody can see and copy your full address details? Is this conform with GDPR?

Distrust – Insights seeded.
Although McDonalds provided single paper snippets for registration (one per person), many other locations we tested just handed out paper lists for 20-50 registrations. We could see the full reach of a beer-garden at Lake Constance on a Saturday. We noticed that predominantly women fill out the registration (probably as men had to get the beer), that more people came for other countries (although borders are still under intense control), that most people came between 1pm and 2.30pm (afternoon was not even 50% of registrations), and that not many people have got traditional Telekom (0171…) or Vodafone (0172…) numbers anymore.

However, what if you have a snack in a beer-garden and the owner has a list where you sign-in with many other guests – open for everyone to be copied, available to be photographed, and no word about how they will use the registration data? The EU wanted to work against distrust. Corona came. Checkmate GDPR!

Intersubjective trust – You count.
Obviously, with every regulation smart entrepreneurs see an opportunity, even behind a crisis registration process. When we were hiking in the Bavarian mountains on Sunday, a small sandwich kiosk just put a “Newsletter” tickbox after the Corona registration process. If that’s allowed? Well, some lawyer will have their own view on this tactical marketing approach. Not my turf. Still, my mailbox will tell the truth if this kiosk’s tactic shall materialize.

However, what if you get some newsletter, some promotions, or some discount voucher next week from one of the locations you have been to? Will you act against the restaurant, beer-garden or location that has suffered for some months as of lockdown. Is the value of GDPR locked down?

The last weekend has shown one fact around the twins data and trust to me: Loosening the Corona lockdown has been loosening the GDPR lockdown.

Germany has launched their Covid19 tracing app, developed by Deutsche Telekom and SAP (no tender, not much app experience, much discussed already). Will it help? We will see. Bloomberg is critical and sees Singapore far ahead. Make up your own mind here. We will sustainable this app life will be.

Allianz and FC Barcelona Micro-Conference: The Future of Health

Smart clothing combined with a new generation of sensors as part of intelligent hardware components is one of the biggest markets when thinking about the future. This is not only a question for the insurance industry in order to create new business segments. There are also a lot of benefits for sport clubs by tracking the activities, health and workout data of their players to optimize the practice and to prevent potential injuries. Read more

State of the Market Report: Internet of Things 2016

IoT Coffee MachineThe Internet of Things is said to have a major impact on the business world according to Jared Newman. Goldman Sachs even thinks that IoT opportunity for industrials could amount to $2 trillion by 2020. Connected cars, connected utility, connected houses, connected vineyards, connected streets, connected everything – the opportunities seem incredable bearing in mind that with IoT everyting can be addressed in the future.

Now, a recent report called “State of the Market: Internet of Things 2016,” shows that the Internet of Things (IoT) is already mainstream.

The motivation behind the high adoption rate is quite obvious: The opportunity for revenue growth drives many managers towards IoT adoption with data being the monetization engine behind it. Still, just 8% of the respondents make use of more than 25% of their IoT data these days.

Not suprisingly, the report also highlights that enterprises are turning to startups to help accelerate their IoT growth. In 2015, enterprise IoT startup companies outpaced funding for consumer startup companies by 75%.

Verizon’s experts think that IoT will continue to be a revenue driver for businesses both large and small due to the confluence of five macrotrends:

1. Consumer usage of smartphones.
High expectations to automation possibilities as of simplified interface. 81% of IoT adopters in the public sector believe that their citizens increasingly expect them to offer enhanced services from data and IoT.

2. Data monetization is wanted.
By 2018, almost 50% of businesses expect to be using more than 25%of their data. Descriptive data collection will become predictive and prescriptive data analytics. Paradigm shift from “big data” to domain experts expected.

3. Regulatory landscape will bring right ecosystem partners together to drive industry standards.
In the US, with the Drug Supply Chain Act manufacturers until late 2017 will implement systems to electronically transfer and store transaction histories for their prescription drugs including shipment information across their distribution and supply chain. Result: Thwart counterfeiting drugs and savings of $75 billion annually according to the World Health Organization.

4. Democratization of innovation by network connectivity, low power devices and IoT platforms.
Businesses can scale their IoT deployments from millions to billions of connections more cost-efficiently. With the new 5G, autonomous solutions such as cars and robotics will become a reality and new categories of uses cases will evolve, such as virtual and augmented reality for IoT deployments.

5. Security experts keep up with the development of technology by looking to arising threat vectors
Some old, some new – that will impact IoT deployments and ongoing operations. Data privacy, protection and processing will remain the biggest challenge for security experts.

Spot On!
Sometimes reports do not look at the data challenge of the IoT development in my eyes. The interesting aspect is that IoT offers some incredible opportunities to improve our lives, simplify our ways of health tracking and be informed about the status of our cars and houses. However, most of the use cases are often based on some cloud services that people do not trust in as the generated data is stored in some unknown data center somewhere in the world. I sometimes wonder, why companies don’t start to save the data in a personal private cloud that can be added as an add-on service to the IoT business.

But hey, maybe I am asking for too much at this stage of the IoT status. Thoughts?

Study: Millennials do B2B purchase decisions differently

Credits: Gerd Altmann  / pixelio.de

Credits: Gerd Altmann / pixelio.de

We all have heard that Millennials, those humans that are frequently connected, well-informed, tech-savvy, and always having an eye on efficiency. But do we know much about their buying habits, especially when it comes to B2B purchase decisions?

The Institute for Business Value at IBM conducted their next study on Millennial called “To buy or not to buy: How Millennials are reshaping B2B marketing”. The research was based on the opinions of 704 Millennial respondents in order to better evaluate their thoughts about
buying habits of those business decision makers oft he future. The respondents had to have at least some degree of purchases power of $10,000 or more. Then,IBM compared the responses of Millennials (1980-1993), Gen X (1965-1979) and Baby Boomers (1954-1964) to see how the strategic buying decisions vary to other generations.

One thing becomes clear, Millennials want simplicity in handling their partners. They value ease of doing business before industry expertise. Compared to Baby Boomers it shows that the later generation was more heading for fast response times from vendors than their attitude to collaborate.

However, cooperation means a lot in terms of buying-decisions for Millennials (56%) and Gen X (64%). These employees claim to make better decisions when involving more colleagues. In contrast, only 39% of Baby Boomers will ask their colleagues for buy-in or recommendations.

In days, when we are all talking about smart and big data, it also shows that Millennials make use of analytics more than their previous generation. Millennials (53%) and Gen X (63%) leverage data to make better business decisions, whereas Baby Boomersare not much keen on using data to drive better purchase value.

Furthermore, Millennials are looking for direct contact with vendors in the sales cycle. When researching for products or services, they tend to get in touch with vendor employees directly. It shows that the days oft he good old sales pitch is over for them. Millennials want authentic and personalized customer experience to establish a better trust basis for the later cooperation. Social Media, chat and instant message are essential for smart collaboration with vendors. However, they want to stay in the driver seat.

“Digital interaction is almost table stakes. The real differentiator is … experiential opportunities to work with vendors. They want a sense of, ‘What would it be like to partner with these guys? Do they have the same values?'” Carolyn Baird, Global Research Leader, IBM Institute of Business Value

Spot on!
It becomes clear that companies and brands who aim to work with Millennial -by 2020 over 50% oft he global workforce- should prepare themselves for offering deep insights and analytics to speed up the business decision and buying process. What is definitely crucial is to be open for new collaboration habits and a culture of cooperation. Probably the most important insight suggested from the study is that vendor companies need to have a culture of open collaboration and easy access to all employees across the vendor organization when addressing B2B Millennial buyers.

Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends 2015 (Infographic)

Technology trends are moving fast these days and most companies have already forgotten what was trending in 2010. Or can you still remember?

The following infographic by Needa Shredder gives an overview on the top technology trends for 2015. Furthermore, it offers some predictions of what technology trends form the digital arena will be leading into the future of 2020.

Not surprisingly, computer everywhere, the Internet of Things, 3-D printing, big data analytics are heading up the list. Still, by 2018 the guys from Needa predict that business process workers will be decreased by 50% in the digital business, and by 2025 one in 3 jobs will be replaced by robots and computers.

Sounds all a bit depressing. Well, maybe the major digital job boost of 500% will be even better in terms of offering new job opportunities for the future.

But hey, who can really foresee the future of technology trends by five years. If you can, let us know…

Forecast Technology Trends 2020

"Stream me up, Scotty!" – Viacom study shows streaming is the new black

Credit: © XtravaganT - Fotolia.com

Credit: © XtravaganT – Fotolia.com

Scotty’s world is gone. Today’s future is not “beam me up”, but “stream me up”. At least when it comes to listening to music. The Viacom music group, consisting of CMT, MTV and VH1, published some summary results which prove that teenagers and adults up to age 40 consume music in a streaming mode.

In a quantitative study with 1,200 respondents, which also included some qualitative secondary research and some new form of “blography” component, it made clear that streaming has become a mainstream behavior. Almost four out of five (78%) participants of the survey had streamed music in the past three months. The streaming habit on the way to purchase is most often (91%) a form of auditioning music before buying it – especially YouTube has an important role in this process.

The age group of 22-30 year olds is even more active than their older and younger counterparts. Streaming music has become a daily habit for them (63% do it daily). As the group sample was taken from their target audience, it might be a reason that this result is even higher than in usual user studies.

The young generation of “streamers” listens to radio as an important source of information to this group. However, the study credited broadcast and the Internet as sources of music discovery. Interestingly enough the study states that the act of listening seems to be passive. User do not seek to find their music, it basically comes to them. It could be a prove that the music industry has understood how to use big data to favor the music taste of their users.

Obviously, TV is another major discovery platform for this generation. 88% of respondents mentioned that they searched for songs on TV shows next to listening to them. This could become another important opportunity for track-identification mobile apps (like i.e. Shazam).

The path from discovery to purchase (which in this study can mean several things, including “streaming it incessantly”) is interestingly charted. The role of streaming in that path is often a form of auditioning music before buying, according to 91% of participants, who use YouTube for that purpose.

Spot On!
Not surprisingly, the respondents state that downloading music via P2P networks is not popular for them (60% see it as “risky” or “wrong”). Still, this does not mean that the idea is completely gone from their minds. Sharing music data with friends via DropBox or other sharing platforms is a common practice for music fans. However, if 81% of participants believe this is a support to bands they admire can be doubted. Maybe the music fans haven’t quite understood how their bands make money. It probably “beams up” the bands relevance and popularity more if 63% of fans follow artists on Facebook and share the bands’ news in their personal networks.

Adobe Summit 2014: Flashback in Tweets

Adobe Summit 2014Sometimes when I travel to speak or to moderate at events, I have no idea what I can expect from the stages, the audience, the speakers and their input. Sometimes you fly home disappointed as the news were old, the stories not exciting, the slides were shabby or even impossible for the audience to read. And not often you have a long lasting experience that will change the way you experience the digital (marketing) world. Adobe’s Summit 2014 has proven to become an outstanding event experience, and I am sure the following stories will stay in my mind for a long, long time.

Let me summarize the main messages of the event “Reinvent marketing” with the following five tweets…

Creativity
Not often tweets can stand on their own. This tweet has a message that marketer need to obey in order to fullfil the message of the event and justify their position in the company. Marketers don’t need to glorify their brand through advertising. They should simply enable consumers to tell the brand stories from their own perspective. “Storytelling is not story yelling!” as Gaston Legorburu, Chief Creative Officer at SapientNitro puts it.

Adobe Summit 2014 Gaston SapientNitro

Data
When you hear all the opportunities about big data and see what companies like Adobe can do, it makes you think and wonder what these institutions will do with it – no matter what (EU) regulations we will have in the future.

Adobe Summit 2014 Adobe Values

The feedback from Rod Banner made me think: “I feel pretty sure they won’t. Not even intentionally. It’ll just happen. Remember, “Knowledge is Power”. And the answer from Twitter user Corticelli (whoever you are) seems to support Rod’s and my view: “oh, they will stalk and spam. And ruin that shiny technology fur the rest of us … #AdobeSummit”. Let’s hope the three of us are wrong with our slightly pessimistic view.

Change
Having had the Head of Internet Office from the Vatican at the event was definitely surprising, hearing him speak was like meeting the Pope on stage. His gesture, his facial expression and his words were famous even before they were even spoken out. When Monsigneur Lucio Ruiz collected his words together to frame them in a picture of words that not many people on earth can paraphrase, people started smiling, applauding and laughing. Laughing, not because there was no meaning in them but just being spot on. So he said about the Pope: “His words might differ. The message is always the same!”

Adobe Summit 2014 Ruiz Vatican

Decisions
Definitely the most inspiring and touching story on starting anew came from Kurt Yaeger. The well-known actor from the American TV series “Sons of Anarchy” lost part of his left leg on a motorcycle accident in 2006. When the accident happened, he was a BMX professional and the doctor told him that with or without his leg he will only have a max. 20% chance to survive. Although it will kill his career as a bike pro, he did not have to think long to decide what to do. Sometimes, you just don’t have to wait long to stop a routine or a habit.

Adobe Summit 2014 Kurt Yaeger

Personal note
I remember when my son got meningitis in Greece. He asked me to stop smoking that day. I told him while throwing the new pack of cigarettes in the bin: “You get well again soon. And I stop smoking now.” I have never touched a cigarette again, and that was over eight years ago. And, I will never do it again.

Influencer
When you get invited to a panel on the future of marketing, it makes you think whether you really know more than the rest of the selected media audience.

Looking back, I have seen more or less all of them taking notes and starting discussions. And, when the Q&A session started, you could feel that this round could have been interesting for a wider audience, not only for the media. But who knows. Adobe reinvents their marketing. And maybe you can also discuss with us about the future of marketing at the next digital or Adobe event.

Big Data Opportunities (Infographic)

We discussed this topic in many panels at dmexco this year, and in the last couple of years I assume not many buzz words have made their way through so many blogs and articles: Big Data. Some see the value of it in measurement and analytics for marketing purposes. Others try to identify new potential and hire Corporate Data Scientists for their web strategy to leverage the potential of unstructured data. And some are still on their way to understand how their data can be embraced to exchange with the data of some partner or even their clients.

The topic Big Data will stay. Just look how much data is generated daily: 2,5 Exabyte. A number that doubles every year according to an infographic the guys from Elexio have put together. It illustrates the potential for companies and how Big Data might generate bigger opportunities in several sectors. Especially, in retail or e-commerce where Big Data let’s brands analyze customer behavior and deliver more personalized messages in order to create an exciting user experience, more engagement, and sure i the end more sales. However, sometimes you wonder if they are doing it right.

As Big Data also let’s us analyze offline data, some clever marketers might combine those with online data to get a clearer view of consumer activity. On the one hand, this might be good as it keeps them from delivering the wrong banner or engagement outdoor advertisement and content to the wrong customer. On the other hand, there might be people arguing that Big Data is still in its infancy as long as companies cannot extract critical and unstructured data from the valuable data that creates a new customer journey experience.

The main challenge will be how we bring Big Data and security together in the future. Consumers get stressed these days as they realize that promotion banners and branded content are following them across channels – with products and services which are often not wanted, or already bought. But how can companies deliver a seamless customer experience? How can they make use of Big Data that boosts their lead generation or sales numbers while still showing careful approach that consumers appreciate?

With all the social media sharing and curating of content via social networks and their buttons, does it really make sense talking about Big Data and security? Or, do we need organizations that audit how companies handle customer data? What rules do companies and brands need to obey to enable a social and secure shopping experience? Many questions that we will discuss on a panel at the ChapmanBlack “Future of Digital” event in Berlin next week. Sure, I will change those afterwards…

Please find the infographic of Elexio with latest insights into the new opportunities that Big Data can offer to brands and companies.

Big Data Infographic Cloud