In Jason Heller’s February 28 post titled “Achieving Simplicity from Complexity,” he talks about the importance and necessity of transforming “today’s digital complexity into digestible simplicity” to ultimately create useful insights. I couldn’t agree more with his thoughts. But not only is this important in navigating the digital world, it’s vital to everything we do as marketers.

Today’s challenge isn’t finding the data; we’ve never had so much information at our fingertips. Rather, it’s determining what data you should be looking at in the first place, making sense of it all and then communicating the insights succinctly and effectively to stakeholders. The two key questions I always ask myself when analyzing data are (1) is this information relevant and (2) is this the best, most concise way I can tell the story.

In my experience, the times when you see light bulbs go off in a room full of people are the times when a complex web of information has just been presented in a way that is not necessarily simplistic, rather understandable and very relevant to their unique challenges.

At R/P we use Opportunity Maps™ as a tool to show the meaningful connections between seemingly independent sets of data. When this is done, and done well, the knowledge and understanding gained is powerful, empowering and – dare I say – liberating. Clarity is gained, assumptions are checked and the possibilities become exciting. The newfound insights are an invaluable guide to strategy development, tactical execution and ongoing measurement.

As the old saying goes, “knowledge is power.” The saying still stands true today, but times have changed since Sir Francis Bacon said it in 1597. Because of the myriad of information available to us, there are so many nuances that go into understanding human behavior and motivators. It’s wading through the sea of information and making the meaningful connections that all of a sudden makes the knowledge really powerful. How do you make sense of the complex web of data in your world? How can we help?

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