Rain Dancing

Who knew that 80% of companies are under spending on marketing activity and not making the most of opportunities to reap extra profit with marginal extra investment? Glenn Granger’s Rain Dancing makes a compelling case for putting data at the heart of everyday decision-making – and in the hands of front-line marketing teams.

Granger is clearly passionate about numbers having all the answers – “an analyst and an activist” – but without discounting the value that marketing practitioners can add to the model. The primary argument is that the combination of “superhuman modelling power” and experienced human judgement will transform the effectiveness of marketing spend. And, at the same time, strengthen the case for marketing budget allocation with the CEO.

As a numbers nerd myself, it is appealing to think that all my questions can be answered by looking at patterns within the existing data I hold.  Obviously, past performance isn’t always a precise predictor of future performance but, as Granger argues, given that consumer behaviour is generally slow to change, it’s good enough until we stumble across a reliable crystal ball...

In an age of “big data”, this idea is even more apt. With more and more data at our fingertips, it gets harder and harder to see what’s really going on. Finding an easy way to see patterns in this ever-growing dataset would be a big leap forward – and Granger’s proposed desktop modelling software (no more complicated than PowerPoint) might just be the silver bullet.

Although, obviously, we don’t all have perfect data all the time, so when your systems let you down or when you just don’t have a lot of good quality data, all is not lost... Granger makes a good case for harnessing collective intelligence – gathering a group of diverse individuals to estimate and explore the models more manually can often arrive at reasonably accurate outcome.

An easy and refreshingly blunt read, helpfully dotted with interesting case studies of data-led decision-making in action. Even if you’re pushed for time, don’t miss the conversation with Martians – a surprisingly helpful and enlightening bunch.

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