An industry obsessed with efficiency and overwhelmed by data is missing a trick, argues Initiative’s strategy chief Thomas Dodd. In this op-ed, he explains why the real magic often takes place when brand marketers and agency partners step back from the dashboard to understand the human truth.
When Jet2holidays saw its long running brand soundtrack being hijacked on TikTok, the data would have looked messy, off brand, even risky. But instead of correcting it, they paid attention to what people were actually doing with it.
People were using the soundtrack to share the most relatable versions of holidays, missed flights, burnt shoulders, things going slightly wrong. By staying present rather than sanitising the moment, Jet2 allowed the brand to become shorthand for real holidays, opposed idealised ones. The scale of the response was the outcome. The human truth came first.
This example sums up a tension the industry is wrestling with. We’re in a data rich, human poor era. We talk a lot about data in the marketing industry, and with the acceleration of AI, the conversation is only getting louder.
I recently read a Ritson article that pointed out that one of the most immediate shifts is in research itself, where synthetic data generated by AI rather than collected from real people, is already starting to outperform traditional methods in both consistency and predictive accuracy.
That got me thinking that what is really changing is not just the volume of data that we have access to, but the nature of how we better understand it and have a human lens on what it is telling us. In other words, we’re so busy optimising the system, we forget to step back and understand the people in it.
No-one doubts our efficiency at reading dashboards and reporting back our findings as facts. But as an industry, I believe we need to give ourselves more time to pause and sit with the data to understand the deeper tensions and human truths behind it.
What does this mean for brands and brand marketers?
For some, it might be a mindset shift in itself, asking ourselves “why?” more than “what?” so that we move beyond taking things at face value and sit more comfortably with what feels uncomfortable, incomplete, or slightly contradictory.
I find it much more satisfying when you finally crack something that didn’t immediately make sense in the first place. Because of the digitisation of the world, we no longer move in straight lines like the lines of data we read on a spreadsheet.
We experience brands and messages in fragments, which rarely connect neatly. The real opportunity is in getting closer to the data; stepping back from it; asking better questions and debating the ambiguity a bit longer.
I can safely say that in every pitch war room I’ve been in over the years, this is where the gold has truly been seen.
Being curious about what feels inconsistent or incomplete, rather than rushing to find an answer out of fear of missing a planning deadline, can feel challenging at first. It requires creating more space to pause, reflect and embrace a more considered approach to thinking and planning.
But it’s also where the advantage is, because in an industry where everyone has access to the same signals, the edge doesn’t come from the data itself, it will come from how the data is read. And if you’re only using data to optimise what already exists, it’s no surprise when you get more of the same.
I would challenge agencies, CMOs and brand marketers to step away from the dashboards and sit with the human questions behind them before rushing to conclusions. In that pause, you often discover something far more valuable, a deeper truth, and a clearer sense of where a brand can show up in a way that actually matters.
Because if we’re so busy optimising the system that we forget to understand the people in it… who and what exactly are we optimising for?
