Digital Disruption

Throughout history innovation has changed lives for the better, whether the printing press or electricity, air travel or computers.  At each juncture the world got a little easier to live in; people, goods and information moved a little faster.

Today we can work as easily with someone in another country as the next room.  All because of one invention - the internet.

The Internet of Everything

Arguably, the internet is like no invention before.  The impact is just starting to be felt but not properly understood.  The digital world is one where new boys Google, Wikipedia, Amazon and eBay call the shots.  A world where books are so freely available we struggle to get rid of them, rather than prize them as we have for centuries.

From a world where it took some small amount of effort to buy goods and services, it now takes “one click” to have your latest whim satisfied.  From a time where rarities were genuinely rare, now they surface like rabbits and collected together to be viewed and compared, for anyone to haggle over the price.  Where choices were once limited, now they are endless.  Professionals and experts see their hard won knowledge made freely available by eager bloggers.  This is digital disruption on a global scale.

Digital Advertising

Nowhere has the internet’s impact been more obvious than the world of commerce.  Where once high streets were filled with busy shoppers, now retail units lay empty or taken over by coffee shops.  Famous and familiar retail brands have vanished, unable to change fast enough when faced with online competition.  Bank branches have closed, long since replaced by an app.  Drip by digital drip, our familiar towns and cities have changed.

While the high street has been opening coffee shops, eCommerce has been adopted by retailers major and minor.  High street names let you browse and buy online, whilst small niche players open ecommerce sites easily and cheaply.  What years ago was known as “mail order” is alive and thriving on the internet. 

But there is a difference; a big data difference. Direct marketing always provided more information than traditional retail, but the internet has increased that by an order of magnitude. You can now see how long customers spend looking at your products, whether they open your email, whether they mention you on Facebook, or complain about your customer service on Twitter.  It all adds up to a tidal wave of information that’s there for the taking. 

Marketing Data Indigestion

Arguably one of the greatest challenges for the marketing profession is to make sense of all this data.  To sift, sort and decide what matters and what doesn’t. To adapt from a data sparse world, to a data rich world.

Data warehouses, cubes and user-centric spreadsheets are replacing the “take it or leave it” static reports traditionally used by marketing people. This, surely, is where the commercial battles are being fought.  

A world where data is ubiquitous, ownership is no longer the competitive differentiator.  It’s how you use the data, and how you adapt to what it teaches you.