Let's Hear It For Little Data

Big data is very much in the news these days. It is unquestionably powerful and is profoundly changing the way we plan, execute and evaluate campaigns, but it should not over-shadow it's less lauded sibling, small data

I don't mean to be pejorative about small data, which is what the name might infer. I believe it can be incredibly powerful and inform insightful thinking on very specific problems that we need to solve for.

It is easier to field small scale research surveys, more quickly and more affordably, than ever before. Media partners appear to be quick to offer these up as added value and, even when they are not, they can be sourced from a myriad of reputable research vendors.

Last year, we used small data very effectively on a pitch for AT&T's High Speed Internet Service which illustrates the power of small data. It is a story I often use with my teams to encourage them to think about how we can more intelligently use data, everyday.

Our AT&T clients came to us with an incredibly insightful brief. They wanted to be the antidote to that moment of immense frustration when your internet goes down. They were happy to try and own the problem as they passionately believed it would lead to more emotional advertising in a category that defines reliability in very mundane and rational terms. To be quite honest, the brief was so clear it was difficult to add substantive value to the strategy..

However, in our discussions as a team, it became quite clear that different people got incensed by very different internet meltdown moments. In my household, all hell breaks out when the internet goes down during the middle of homework. There is absolutely no buffering between the internet cutting out and the screams from my oldest daughter's bedroom. One would think that her academic future was coming to a cruel and painful end.

In other people's households, the meltdown moments were very different - online grocery shopping, Face timing friends when the pixilated freeze frame acts as a conversational "coitus interuptus", watching live sports, catching up on work after the kids have gone to bed etc

To ensure that we really tapped into the emotional heat of this problem, we decided to do a quick piece of research to understand which moments resonated with which audiences.

We fielded a quick survey with Google Analytics and got the results back in less than 24 hours. The survey gave us a clear ranking of the moments we should focus on, but it also highlighted that all of these moments tended to happen in the evening.

This gave rise to a very obvious, but powerful media strategy. We were going to own "the scene of the crime" in the evening, in the home, during the events that people did not want interrupted. There was a tremendous opportunity to divert spend away from TV and target people in digital media at a relevant moment in time.

Right Audience X Right Message X Right Moment = more effective advertising. Always a good formula to put up in a pitch.

Also, we were able to provide our creative teams with the two things that they rightly always hanker for:

- genuine consumer insights that would make the work relevant and engaging
- a clear rationale for why we were using the media we had selected

It wasn't rocket science, and no DMP was required for this assignment, but for around $1500 the clients thought we added a huge amount of strategic value and we were able to write some of the best digital work I have been involved with in recent years.

Sadly, despite the client acknowledging that we delivered superior strategic thinking, we lost the pitch. The client saw an idea they preferred - a sobering reminder that, at the end of the day, it is all about the work, the work, the work.