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Marketing is, by necessity, powered by data. At least if you’re interested in strategic marketing, which I think we all are. The way we collect data has changed a lot in the past few years, so much so that we are on our way to doubling the world’s knowledgeevery 12 hours.
Data isn’t the “new oil” — it’s the new… well, poop!
Human beings are constantly taking in information and excreting snail trails of data as they go about their lives just by carrying cell phones 24/7. Our cell phone data is connected to smart devices around us (i.e., the Internet of Things). Most data we shed is invisible and loose (unstructured), but to those of us in marketing, data detritus can be gold.
In my work as a future-led innovation strategist, I work with a new type of data that marketers can use to make future-informed decisions and develop strategic insights. This data is scraped and culled from some of the most unexpected places — you could almost call it “exotic.” And this “exotic data” totally changed how we predicted our target audience’s behavior.
Forensics of “Exotic Data”
Exotic data takes all the traditional forms of data and combines them with data hidden in plain sight. In addition to analyzing data from the 14 sensors in our phones and sensors in our blood and brains, exotic data sources can include:
Patents and research papers
Interactive maps, like the Zappos real-time shoe-purchase map
Offline cultural anthropology
Mood and health apps
Ratings & Reviews
Home appliance sensors
Image analyses (e.g., what’s in the background of selfies?)
Biotech, such as wearable devices (i.e., smartwatches or the new AI Pin)
Art projects and experiments (especially hacks and dupes)
Crowd-sourced data and Wikis
Internet browsing history (i.e., “clickstream”)
TV and movie scripts
Event platforms like Meetup
Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter
Auto-completes on Amazon, YouTube, and other platforms
Types of search questions (e.g., “if” questions are more sophisticated than “what” questions)
Exotic data builds on “alt data,” such as employee posts on Glassdoor, satellite images of cars in parking lots or planes on tarmacs, credit card transactions, GitHub projects, government contracts, utility usage, census data, CDC data and data from the deep web.
And the dark web can be an interesting revealer of true intentions and wants. People are not just using it for nefarious activity, increasing numbers are using it simply because they don’t want to be surveilled. People have a tendency to lie when responding to market research, from political opinions to recreational behavior. But marketers want to know what their consumers actually want, not just what they say they want.
Cultural Foresight from Exotic Data
In the search for lightbulb moments, exotic data scientists mash up disparate, sometimes incongruous, data sets to derive insights, foresight, and marketing opportunities. While data scientists are trained to look for patterns, an exotic data analyst also scouts for the opposite — anomalies and outliers that foreshadow the future. Traditional data scientists connect the dots, while an exotic data scientist looks for missing dots and the white space between the dots. An exotic data scientist excels at inference and gestalt.
Trends start with niche interest groups and extreme, radical, and fanatical communities. As marketers, the secret sauce isn’t to identify what’s popular, it’s to identify what’s about to be popular. This is what I call “cultural foresight.”
The Rolling Stone Culture Council is an invitation-only community for Influencers, Innovators and Creatives. Do I qualify?
For example, only on the fringes of social media are four emerging food trends found: the “anti-seed oil” movement, the anti-vegan “tallow” trend, the “pink food” trend, and the “electroculture” trend. These trends came to my attention from a mashup of data from Kickstarters, Meetup groups, social and search listening, subreddit text analysis, patent applications and SciTok posts.
How to Become an Exotic Thinker?
Discovering emerging ways of thinking before your competitors can be an incredible advantage. To “think exotic,” consider the following 10 C’s:
Cast a wide net for data.
Utilize Crowd-sourced information.
Count and quantify data yourself.
Cluster-related data points.
Connect patterns and correlations.
Complete what’s absent.
Clock data over time.
Monitor Change and growth rates.
Compute with diverse AI systems.
Cultivate a high Curiosity quotient.
The Exotic Data Advantage
Marketers must do more, faster and smarter… with less. In a rapidly changing marketing landscape, the need for advanced insight is paramount. Budget constraints and increasing consumer demands for personalization necessitate innovative approaches. Exotic data provides a unique edge, enabling rapid adaptation and prediction based on data trends.
The traditional marketing funnel was created (over a hundred years ago, by the way) when consumers’ journeys were linear and predictable (e.g., Maslow’s hierarchy). Today, lives are omni-channel everywhere all at once. Journeys and life choices are totally unique, yet consumers demand personalization. How can marketers deliver this? With exotic data.
Exotic data differs from traditional data analysis, which prioritizes consistency and structure. Exotic data, conversely, embraces flexibility and creative interpretation, often seen as unorthodox by traditional data wonks.
My decade-long experience with exotic data in marketing has equipped my teams with the ability to adjust strategies offensively and defensively. This agility has led to significant engagement and innovation, born from the predictive power of exotic data.
The “Un-enshittification” of Data
It feels like the data world is undergoing enshittification. What I mean is that there is pressure to use the same data sources as our biggest competitors. Colleagues want “industry standard” data platforms and access to the “same data as our competitors.” But buying data, insights, and even foresight (such as trend reports) from the same players that my competitors are using guarantees common and obvious conclusions.
No one ever said, “Let’s use exactly the same intelligence methods as our competitors and the data will unearth something our competitors are completely unaware of.” To find blue ocean for our brands, we need to get out of the red oceans of data. We need to fish in different spots. We need to “zig” when they “zag.”
Hey all you marketers seeking a competitive edge in an increasingly data-driven world, get your exotic on!
