“The plural of anecdote just isn’t knowledge,” the outdated aphorism goes. I feel the inverse can be attention-grabbing: “The singular of knowledge just isn’t anecdote.”
Marcus Collins, Head of Technique at Wieden+Kennedy New York, made the next commentary a pair years in the past:
“Although the quantity of knowledge out there to entrepreneurs has elevated exponentially over time, our skill to extract perception from mentioned knowledge has solely marginally improved. This paradox quantities to a easy — but important — oversight on behalf of most entrepreneurs:
“We mistake info for intimacy.”
Social listening is only one approach entrepreneurs can “mistake info for intimacy.”
Some have argued the that the plural of anecdote is definitely unstructured knowledge. Trendy knowledge stacks are hoovering up extra of all types of knowledge than ever earlier than, from structured to unstructured. Entrepreneurs have info in abundance. However the larger query is easy methods to make sense of all of it.
Cherry-picking is cherry-picking, regardless of how tall the information stack. We will at all times discover supporting proof to justify any determination we wish to take.
Our personal biases, from choice bias to cause-effect bias, can skew and form how we take a look at any sort of analysis. We finally must learn each the quantitative and the qualitative tea leaves.
If we wish to follow evidence-based advertising and marketing, we at all times must sense-check the proof.
Listed here are a couple of associated cartoons I’ve drawn over time:
“If advertising and marketing saved a diary, this may be it.”
– Ann Handley, Chief Content material Officer of MarketingProfs
