View from Silicon Valley

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Previously I’ve written about the pronounced differences that you can find in tech companies between teams specialising in qual, ‘traditional’ quant and big/behavioural data. This isn’t unique to tech but it’s certainly more obvious in our industry.

I’ve written about some of the opportunities for research teams and agencies to complement behavioural data by adding context to what the data is telling us. I have to be honest though – at some point we’re all going to have to take the plunge and learn some data science. Simple as that. 

If you’re running a brand tracker, what happens when your stakeholder completes a predictive model to identify patterns in their data that foreshadow changes in market share in real time? If you’re a qual specialist, what happens when your client launches an AI tool that automatically mines social media data and has in-depth discussions with consumers on its own?

These examples are happening right now in the ...