But for a C-Level person to want engage with this idea of creating an analytical culture, they have to know what the benfits will be (Competing on Analytics). Perhaps more importantly though, they would have the question: How do I create / implement / sustain the analytical culture, which probably requires some incentives for employee loyalty.

Right? Is that a “framework”? :0

Here’s the thing. This is not some kind of dream I am having, I have worked in and for companies that have a proper analytical culture, and it’s a beautiful thing to behold.

These cultures are not harsh, “by the numbers or else” kind of places. People don’t get shot for creating a poorly performing campaign or idea.

There’s balance, and recognition that great ideas sometimes fail, because ultimately Marketing measurement is about Human behavior and it’s devilishly difficult to be always right about that.

In these companies, it’s not just Marketing that’s measured, *everybody* is measured. And the interesting thing that happens in a culture like that is you begin to see the synchronicity, you see cross-silo problems where one fix improves the numbers in several operating areas at the same time.

These companies simply spend a lot more time discussing business facts rather than arguing opinons, which actually leads to a more civil interchange between the silos. Everybody has common, *non-conflcting*, measurable goals and wants to reach them together.

Sometimes I wonder if analytical cultures are dying off because the people involved simply don’t care. Given analytical cultures tend to have a longer-term orientation, is it possible people are simply churning jobs too frequently to give a crap about continuous improvement?

Thoughts anyone?

It’s been widely studied that when knowledge has an agenda, it becomes ideology, i.e. a view of the world that reinforces/justifies a political position, class advantages, a world view, etc. There’s also a vast body of sociological work that has studied how scientific (i.e. evidence based) knowledge is produced, bringing to light that pure objectivity can be tainted.

Now, in a business context, it is no surprise that people, and especially “teams”, can have similar agenda, here in its explicit and *tacit* sense. The latter is very important, and it refers Jim to your “tacit or implicit data torture”. This agenda, sociology teaches us, is not always conscious. We know however, that it can very well be too, hence the term “politics” when referring to the conflicts/struggles between the various departments/units of a business.

Now, we should ask ourselves why is it that some teams (oh boy, and so often Marketing) want to justify instead of truly analyze. Is it because of the reward system? Is it because a desire to reinforce a weak position? If the Accounting logic/view of the world is the ultimate one, the one that *truly* describes a business, why is it that other discourses, sometimes contradictory, can co-exist in the same organization? In short, why would Finance let Marketing uses soft knowledge, “gut feeling”? It almost demonstrates a patronizing attitude towards Marketing that I am sure more than one CMO has felt.

I guess justification is at its highest in a company where measurement in general is punitive, a form of coercion.You learn that having bad news, which would report on your poor decision making, is highly risky. A learning business, as you pointed out, will tolerate mistakes as long as they are within limits and especially part of a learning/optimisation/improvement process.

This begs the question of what a learning culture is versus a “non-learning” one. This is an entire whole discussion, and here sociological models could bring some light.

More on this whole analytical culture issue here:

http://blog.jimnovo.com/fear_analytics/

As to “standards”, I don’t know if it’s that. I just hate spending time on a project that’s a “lie”, just seems like a complete waste of my time because nobody is going to Learn anything and nothing is going to get better. That’s what analysts do, in my mind – make things better. Not necessarily perfect, but honestly, financially, better for the company.

And perhaps that’s a goal more aligned with Finance than Marketing?

In part this reply is an echo, and in part this reply is a re-formulation in my mind.

To me, the whole point of analysis is to make the firm money. Money is the reason why firms exist. If an analyst was ever to lose sight of that, they fail, if not in the short run then certainly in the long run.

Does justification make the firm money?

I don’t think it does. The right question to ask of a data set is “what happened, why, and what can we do to make more money?”. The wrong question is “how can you make the data prove how brilliant we are?”

Torturing is so often involved because people rarely knock it right out of the park on their first go. Why we continue to insist that all our efforts are infallible from the get-go – I don’t know.

I applaud your standards.

Here’s something that has always perplexed me – why do so many web analysts measure success in terms of Sales?

When I ask them, they typically say, “Because that’s what my (Marketing) boss wants to know. I understand very well that Profits are the best measure of success, but look, my boss wants me to analyze Demand, and that’s what I do”.

Two things happening here:

1. Tacit collusion – Recognition that something is not right, but lack of awareness or skills – not analytical, but cultural – to address the issue

2. Since Finance would LOVE to see all the Marketing analysis based on Profit instead of Demand, this analyst has a home to go to

When you think about a lot of what goes on in WA, the endless drilling down into smaller and smaller issues, the effort expended on micro-measurement of extremely low impact events, one has to wonder: How is it possible hardly anyone addresses the macro issue of true campaign profit?

Campaign lift (not Repsonse), revenue minus all costs (including product cost, for heaven’s sake), net incremental gain – one of the simplest Financial formulas around. How is it possible nobody measures campaign success by profit?

Stumbling over dollars to pick up pennies, seems to me.

And how could this happen unless:

1. Nobody cares, which I find difficult to believe, or

2. There are collusive forces at work driving justification; nobody is asking any questions

Except in Finance, where they know that ROI is based on Profit, not Demand.

In fact, it sounds genius to report to Finance. Wearing my consultant hat, we are always trying to sell to marketing; and I also see the transition from IT to Marketing when it comes to vendors. So which vendor will make the move to market WA to Finance? Coremetrics sounds like a fit…

Anyway, thanks.

And that’s not good.

Re: WA training, we actually do cover a lot of these analytical ethics issues, including an exercise in decision making when faced with an ethical challenge, in WAA Course 4 “Analytical Culture”.

So we’re trying. Vox Clamantis in Deserto, perhaps, and this issue needs to be elevated somehow.