Why marketers are idiots

Just back from a trip to the USA (see my post about the Waldorf Astoria on www.oldbastards.jp) where the only high point was a discussion with some colleagues about business intelligence - now there's a double negative if ever I heard one! Everyone was talking about needing to get data out to executives and having people pay attention to fact-based decision-making.
Time for a rant:

• executives aren't interested in data! Showing me a pile of numbers and reams of paper is not going to get my attention. Tell me a story and you might see me listen.
• decision-making is rarely fact-based. People, especially busy people, are much more likely to use their emotions to make a judgment. Stories generate emotion, facts generate boredom.
• attention is rarely commanded, and more often it is paid to the coffee and cookies rather than the matter at hand. Telling stories will get attention.

So what am I trying to say here? I can not understand why people don't get the fact that it's stories that get us to learn and laugh, wonder and weep, look and listen. From the moment we're able to listen, life's lessons are best delivered via stories that communicate the central facts inside a context that has relevance and immediate meaning. Stories fire up the imagination, allow people to test their (emotional) hypotheses against a non-threatening construct, and allow everyone to take part in a sharing experience without consequences - real or otherwise.

Hint: Last time I looked, data does none of these things (unless you're a real data freak like me). A picture is worth a thousand words, and a story is worth a googol (correct spelling) of data points.

So here's why marketers are idiots: if their talents and passions are all about getting emotional brand responses from their audiences (and you need to fire them if this isn't the case!), then why would they want to fall into the trap of providing executives with data? That's falling into the trap of plucking out your eyes when everyone else is blind. It means you're having a discussion with finance wankers and nit-picking logistics experts on their terms. Get out of here!

Word to the wise marketer: when you collect data into bunches of like items, you get information. And information similarly processed leads to intelligence (business or otherwise). Once you have intelligence, you can weave these together to create compelling stories. And stories are what you're paid for. Any stop short of the destination on this continuum is selling yourself and your ideas short.

Now I'm a huge fan of dashboards and data suites - it's just that these things are indicators that point towards a holistic outcome, not the be all and end all. I've created some best of class data constructs, but I've always been successful when I've turned these into diagnostics that give busy people visual insight into what's going wrong and how to fix it. The data is irrelevant if it doesn't roll up into an actionable insight that creates future value - if the C-Suite wanted historians and librarians, they would fire you and hire some. Communicate the insight via a story.

If you're starting down a track towards providing the C-Suite with data, remember the wisdom of the robot in Lost in Space - "Danger, Will Robinson!". Your goal should be to create a story (in words, sounds, images and all the sensual tools you have at your disposal). Sure, have the data available but ask the "so what" question up front before you bore me to death (come to think of it, that might be a viable success strategy for my C-Suite...). Tell me a story...

Or am I an idiot?