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BIG DATA and Vertical Thinking

“Vertical Thinking is using one's previous knowledge within a professionally defined area to solve a problem within the same defined area”
-Søren Hansen & Christian Byrge

For the last 5 years, we have used all our energy to categorize things. Communication is divided into channels, and thoughts about marketing are increasingly based on what we have data on that works. BIG DATA.

We throw around buzzwords like never before. Buzzwords that the slightly less adventurous business people and marketers flock to, like a carrot hanging from a stick. #OnlineMarketing #bigdata #OmniChannel #CrossChannel #SoMe #ResponsiveDesign #EmailMarketing #MobileMarketing #RealtimeMarketing #ContentMarketing, which in reality is very old wine in new bottles.

business is being conducted on a large scale with new bottles of old and very well-trodden wine.

And the umbrella over all these social marketing and business development buzzwords is #ReturnOnInvestment. The guarantee that what money is spent on works. which is always nice.

Focus is placed on the areas that we can document have an effect, while areas that do not have a “documented” effect are disregarded… for now!

It is largely safe ROI to place your money in known territory, and there is nothing wrong with that. Opening a webshop with a nice mobile-optimized template design, investing heavily in AdWords and SEO, giving free advice on social media, and encouraging sharing of opinions on well-known channels like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. This is something we have all heard about; we flock to what works.

With all these hashtags that we flock to and write about, we create an increasingly clear and contrasting picture of which paths any business person should take to achieve success. There is a rough sorting of the tools so that everyone can more quickly reach the best and most optimal goal. It is fundamentally a question of whether we can define our needs. or put another way, that we “ask the right questions” just like with Watson.

Today's marketing is fully “cruise controlled” channeled into known “highways” where operations are conducted under safe conditions, entirely based on what we have data on that works. More and more is being invested in vertical thinking and research in known and most visited areas.

A brief example, as described earlier, is online stores, Google, and social media. 3 very successful and well-trodden areas when it comes to marketing and business development.

what in the old advertising days could be seen as a gray area of guesswork that the “creative” moved in, has now been sharply drawn into black and white. The safe money lies in the known explored land, while theorists look askance at the adventurous gold-digging pioneers who venture into unknown territories to find new golden initiatives that the theorists can subsequently blog and hashtag about. Provided a documented effect is achieved, of course.

The effect of new buzzwords like #realtimemarketing is, for advertising pioneers, logic for caged hens. While for many theorists, it is still something they need to swallow while the graduate students are finishing their thesis on the subject. Once a dissertation and “white paper” on the new golden initiatives have been made, it is packaged with a nice new buzzword and prepared for mass production so that theorists and IT entrepreneurs can dive into it, and not a second before.

But it is not only new initiatives that are written about in theses; it is often seen that old advertising initiatives are wrapped in new buzzwords and sold as low-hanging fruit. Pressed like old wine in new bottles. #newsvalue

There is a deep dive into the effective methods, knowledge shared across the board, fine-tuned, thoroughly tested, and optimized. The best is brought up in every new initiative that provides ROI. No one can have a problem with that. For in most cases, it is a safe ROI. But the longer lifespan an initiative and its branches have had in the market, the lower ROI it will yield as the market becomes flooded with competitors who have found ways to optimize the already optimized. This applies to everything from technology-based things like SEO and mobile-optimized websites to more marketing-oriented concepts like real-time marketing.

Every time a new hot buzzword with documented effect is penned, all the young, quick IT entrepreneurs jump on it and program online systems that analyze and optimize your data. So the customer can get the best out of any new buzzword as cheaply as possible, in the best democratic sense. It is clear that this is candy for Watson. If one can program conclusions based on data. That is, raw “AI,” we can already see what the future holds in terms of competition in the theoretical knowledge field that swarms around BIG-DATA.

It is simple supply and demand logic. But it is not enough just to see it as, the more that offer advertising initiatives and services in the form of “products,” the lower the price will be. We need to go one level deeper and look at the effect of marketing initiatives in the market. The more widespread a marketing initiative is, the more diluted its effect becomes.

Being a first mover is something that pays off. and it is seen that the industry's most successful companies are those that are first movers. Those who listen to the grapevine and jump on every new tool that sees the light of day. It is an approach that is relatively risk-free, as one does not have to invest in major creative rethinking.

But it requires that one is constantly aware of the market, that one is always willing to change and ready to move on from the position one has. It may be that tomorrow's new method is a stark contrast to one's current investment. It can yield a good return on investment to be in the loop, even though one can get a bit breathless with all the new methods that come to light, including all the branches of known methods that one also needs to follow to achieve the best margins.

In chapter 3, we will talk a bit about what really moves us as consumers in marketing and how we find the good ideas.

On to chapter 3 : Horizontal thinking and shareable content –>

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