MediaPost reports this morning on an interesting new survey from TNS, which says that “sixty percent of shoppers across the globe believe that they will be able to pay for purchases using just their fingerprint by 2015, rated top by 25% of shoppers.” Never mind the chill that should send down the spine of anyone who values their privacy – we’ll deal with that another day. For the moment let’s have a look at what people expect from The Future®.
In yesterday’s MediaPost Marketing Daily, Douglas Brooks touched on a subject I’ve been yarping about for some time – measurement. He offers some prudent advice, but sidesteps the issue that’s been bothering me: to wit, our rage to quantification is driven by fear, not expertise, and it often leads us to ignore a whole suite of important decision-making tools.
I would never suggest that ROI doesn’t matter – quite the opposite – and I also wouldn’t argue that quantitative methods can’t provide us with useful data – of course they can. The problem is that American culture has this odd relationship with knowledge and evidence – in any kind of professional enterprise, statistics and numerical metrics are increasingly being taken as the only kind of evidence. If we want to say something about our customer base, we feel an obligation to quantify whatever we’re trying to say. Continue reading
wordSmith | Writing / Content Marketing 