I love this. It reminds me of hearing an anthropologist Tricia Wang a few years ago talk about thick data and the importance of “thick data” what happens in the street, real ethnography, observing qualitative behavior, and how essential that is. I love the idea that attribution is an illusion, because it has biased our intuition and honestly made us less intelligent in our decision-making. Every word of this is true. Thank you for sharing this, Elena.
So spot on. The other part to this is of course the opportunity cost of having such a large chunk of your team and budget devoted to measuring vs creating and testing.
I couldn’t relate more. Another aspect of product marketing and growth where this mindset can be applied is the conventional data-driven approach to explaining why people churn. There are so many macro and real-life variables that dashboards simply can’t reveal.
Yes to this. Data should inform, not decide. Great marketing always starts with judgment, not dashboards. When attribution becomes your compass, you stop navigating by instinct and that’s when brands lose their soul.
Finally someone said this. Marketing attribution and the obsession with quantitative data is the opposite of what brand marketers should do. I partly blame this on the CFO who can't quantify an ROI for brand marketing spend.
The other thing I'll say is that brand isn't just marketing. Brand is everything your business does. Its how your customer support team talks to customers. Its your website's UX. Its your product. Brand is super multi-dimensional yet we try to quantify it within a line item on the Income Statement.
I wondered recently, what has it to do Sigmund Freud with Analytics? In his theory about the Eros and Thanatos, i tried to Connect the dots. In its modern marketing conception, the Eros related to love, emotion, “irracionality”, and Thanatos is related to Numbers, analysis, racionality. I was taught this is how us as consumers percebe brands and products take and take decisions for purchasing. I wonder how decisión making take decisions, intuition (this patern rexognition mind expert based on experience) and analysis (or Analytics) are combined. In my opinión it is a duality it cannot be separated but to flow as a learning feedback loop that helps or mitigate to not take unnecesary risks (has this something to do with lean startups?). I was psicoanalyzing business. :D . As an Analytics profesional there is not complete info on everything.
I love this. It reminds me of hearing an anthropologist Tricia Wang a few years ago talk about thick data and the importance of “thick data” what happens in the street, real ethnography, observing qualitative behavior, and how essential that is. I love the idea that attribution is an illusion, because it has biased our intuition and honestly made us less intelligent in our decision-making. Every word of this is true. Thank you for sharing this, Elena.
I appreciate your perspectives on attribution. Buying decisions can be more complex than what a simple metric can measure.
Oh, how I wish we had clean transaction data. 😂
Love this🤘
So spot on. The other part to this is of course the opportunity cost of having such a large chunk of your team and budget devoted to measuring vs creating and testing.
I couldn’t relate more. Another aspect of product marketing and growth where this mindset can be applied is the conventional data-driven approach to explaining why people churn. There are so many macro and real-life variables that dashboards simply can’t reveal.
All models are wrong, but some are useful
Great article @Elena Verna
I’ve scribbled something similar here a few days ago, if you wish to read: https://emreg.substack.com/p/the-attribution-trap
All models are wrong but some are helpful...
Also would recommend reading this: https://substack.com/@caseyaccidental/p-166078455
Also attribution is not just click-based, it can be impression based as well.
Yes to this. Data should inform, not decide. Great marketing always starts with judgment, not dashboards. When attribution becomes your compass, you stop navigating by instinct and that’s when brands lose their soul.
Finally someone said this. Marketing attribution and the obsession with quantitative data is the opposite of what brand marketers should do. I partly blame this on the CFO who can't quantify an ROI for brand marketing spend.
The other thing I'll say is that brand isn't just marketing. Brand is everything your business does. Its how your customer support team talks to customers. Its your website's UX. Its your product. Brand is super multi-dimensional yet we try to quantify it within a line item on the Income Statement.
I wondered recently, what has it to do Sigmund Freud with Analytics? In his theory about the Eros and Thanatos, i tried to Connect the dots. In its modern marketing conception, the Eros related to love, emotion, “irracionality”, and Thanatos is related to Numbers, analysis, racionality. I was taught this is how us as consumers percebe brands and products take and take decisions for purchasing. I wonder how decisión making take decisions, intuition (this patern rexognition mind expert based on experience) and analysis (or Analytics) are combined. In my opinión it is a duality it cannot be separated but to flow as a learning feedback loop that helps or mitigate to not take unnecesary risks (has this something to do with lean startups?). I was psicoanalyzing business. :D . As an Analytics profesional there is not complete info on everything.