Political campaigns are marketing campaigns. And while Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wasn’t working for a campaign, he was absolutely on the mark in his projections of the election results this year. Anyone who bet on him, as opposed to pundit predictions on TV, made the right move.
Advertising is relying increasingly on data and microtargeting to reach an increasingly divided audience. But so much of it seems misapplied — and used to do the same old, tired creative tactics.
I’ll explore this more in depth soon. But do we need better numbers, or better number crunchers? What good is data if we don’t have people with the ability to properly analyze it?