Opinions: Jargon
Everybody wants you to shut up about data, please
Everybody (ok, a lot of people) in marketing wants to learn how to use data to make their creative work bigger and better, driving customer emotions and actions, and ultimately profit.
Everybody who works in data knows how to do that, in one form or another.
I’ve spent years refuting it, but have had to admit with a critical eye on my data friends, that the two disciplines are like oil and water.
I recently searched the hashtag #data on LinkedIn, and this is basically my amalgamation of what I saw…
Targeted towards marketing professionals, but full of data jargon, selling solutions that are incomprehensible, with no mention of creativity or of the impact to consumer or business.
The only attempt to make it more engaging is to add some emojis.
If you are talking about data in this way, I guarantee that you are not engaging any marketers.
Whilst there has been a big focus in the last decade in the whole marketing industry up-skilling in all areas of data, there also needs to be an equal focus on data professionals up-skilling in their marketing knowledge.
There’s so much friction due to the narrative that data is here to save the day! that it only makes the creatives feel like here comes data to tell everyone why creativity isn’t required anymore.
Data folk, this is my plea to you, stop talking about data, and learn to talk about marketing.
The people who want to talk about data in a detailed, jargon-filled way, are other data people. You’re not selling yourself and your solutions to other data people. You’re selling them to marketers.
So whether you’re selling your wares on LinkedIn, or trying to work with your colleagues, you will find more success with a marketing first approach.
Please, shut up about data.