We Need Fewer Skinny CMOs

The 4A’s loves to hear from its members. That’s why we ask thought leaders, CEOs, creative poobahs and the like to give us a piece of their minds. Here, Steve Connelly, President of Connelly Partners in Boston, calls it as he sees it when it comes to data. Connelly started his firm more than 17 years ago and began his career at Ingalls Advertising. The agency uses empathy to develop relationships and unique connections with consumers. Clients include American Express Travel, A&E Networks, American Tourister, BJ’s Wholesale Clubs, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, among others. 

Your Gut Is Filled with More Than What You Ate—It’s Filled with What You Learned

I like data. I use data. I believe in data. I have invested in data at my agency, seven figures worth of investment, nine figures if you include the two after the decimal point. The prospect of what data can do for our agency and our clients is worth the investment, makes us all smarter and is money well spent.

But data is as dangerous as it is intoxicating. Emerging and immersive technology has gives us access to a staggering amount of raw information for us to poke and prod and debate and analyze. So much so we can become paralyzed.

All that data can, in one man’s opinion, weigh down our minds and atrophy our instinct.

Here’s the thing about data: It should be directive not conclusive, and it should be directional not dictatorial. While numbers don’t lie, they rarely tell the whole truth.

That’s where your gut comes in. Your well-earned, experience-filled gut. Your instinct. And sometimes you can’t validate instinct. Sometimes, you just know.

Here’s the pragmatic truth—on occasion, the numbers do lie. Sometimes there are immeasurable factors that are at play, factors humans can see but numbers can’t reflect. A reality that is hard to embrace when you have an important decision to make and want to cover your ass. When you want data to be the absolute answer. When you want to let the numbers make your decision for you, so if things don’t go well, you have data to blame.

This has led us to this generation of skinny CMOs and agency executives. Instinct has gone the way of the home phone landline, which is disheartening to me because I have an impressive metaphorical gut (and literal one), earned over time and life experience. I know I am not alone.

Here’s a quick suggestion: Every now and then, remind yourself that most purchase decisions are made emotionally not rationally. Think of the role data played when you fell in love. With a person, a house or a car. Remind yourself of the power of instinct.

That’s not to say that instinct is always right. But, it certainly warrants a place in the debate and at the table when marketing decisions are being made.

Data all too often is used to make decisions rather than influence decisions. And, as more data becomes available to us, we consume it like nacho chips covered with intellectual cheese and jalapeños.

Data Is a Great Storyteller, But Sometimes It Skips a Few Chapters

A few years ago, we had client who had a very simple goal—to be rated the No. 1 health plan in America. Reams of data and research gave us plenty of logical and linear ammunition to help move them up one place to the coveted No. 1 ranking. Logical insights as well as emotional insights pertaining to people’s use of and relationships with their health plans. It was all good and useful information, but there was no consideration for context.

Turns out that during the same period we were concepting, the health care debate was raging and it was an election year.

The health care debate was arguably the most polarizing debate of the last decade. No matter what your position, half the people would vilify and castigate you.

Our client was in the health care business. Not a good place to be. That anger and frustration with the whole category was not captured in any data mining exercise. To add to the frustration, we were planning a rebrand in an election year, and everyone is pissed off at advertising during an election year.

So, we took a totally different tact. We admitted two realities. No one wants ever to think about their health plan, and we are not so self-important to assume that you should.

And, while health plans are not simple, they sure can be simpler.

In short, we admitted that health care is dauntingly complicated. But, we are working to make it less so. Because Simple Makes Us All Feel Better. Not the kind of blunt honesty you hear in an election year. And that’s what made us excited about the opportunities this approach presented.

The company was named the top ranked health plan in America some months later.

Data Is Overinflated

Data is awesome. And everyone is using it. In fact, the Cleveland Browns just hired a renowned data geek, a baseball sabermetrician to run their football operation.

I’m of a mind that you simply can’t manage a game played by humans or manage an agency populated by humans by unilaterally embracing data. There is a feel and art to this craft, for it is a craft of instinct.

And sometimes you can’t validate instinct. You just have to go with it.

A great manager or coach, like a great CMO, takes all the information available, including his or her own personal experiences and feel for the game or situation, and makes a snap decision at game speed. And, he or she makes that decision with confidence and without hesitation, because if you hesitate opportunity may pass you by.

I have always lived by the creed that it is better to make a bad decision than no decision. Study data, share data, embrace data but don’t sit still with data. Move. And when the data says one thing but your gut says another, take a minute and let data and gut talk it out. Magic happens when that conversation takes place.

For the Record, Gut Is Data

In addition to leading our company, I am also a high school basketball coach. I look at film, study tendencies, prepare for what other teams will try to do. But, in the flow of a game, my players have to play with instinct and feel, and make snap decisions. I do my best to prepare them with data, while demanding they play with instinct. And I tell them to play fast and make the game faster.

I preach to all my basketball players the same thing I preach to my folks here at the agency—everyone makes mistakes. Just make them quickly and don’t make them again.

The embracing of data is the attempt to mitigate risk. I like that. But when you start to believe data can eliminate risk, bad things can happen. Greatness rarely happens without risk.

So, as 2016 begins in earnest and opportunities/challenges present themselves, stop yearning to be skinny. Remind yourself of what it feels like to make a decision because you know in your gut it is the right thing to do.

Painting by numbers is for the lazy. Decision making by the numbers is no less so.