‘The single customer view is unattainable’
Marketing Week Live 2014: Camelot insight chief Nick Bonney does not believe a true single customer view will ever be within reach.
At his Marketing Week Live 2014 presentation, Joining The Dots, Bonney said: “I don’t think we will ever get there [to the 360 degree customer view]. Consumers are starting to say ‘we do not want you to take my behaviour and know everything about me’.”
He said the adoption of temporary platforms like Snapchat and anonymous channels were now disrupting gathering of data. He also pointed out that even with something as basic as a loyalty store card people often forget or cannot be bothered to scan it when making a purchase at automated tills.
“Someone looking at the data will only get a partial view. You need to be realistic about the amount of data you are able and need to collect,” he added.
He also warned against putting too much store by social media sentiment data. Bonney said marketers need to “hold their nerve” if a product or service launch seems to be received badly on Twitter or Facebook and wait until research or transactional data had been gathered, as this often contradicts voices on social media.
Bonney added that to make best use of data marketers need to brief their research and insight team properly about the objectives of a project.