cheers,,

I have worked at some big companies, both as an employee (HSN is a $2 billion operation) and a consultant (Verizon is kinda big) and I have seen the analytical culture work and not work, sometimes in the same company!

HSN was basically a data fist fight – EVERYBODY had analysis so disagreements were often decided by methodology; it was truly a data-driven culture. This is what happens when a minute by minute sales and profits dashboard is on every computer Director level and above, I guess…

What really bothers me in terms of web analytics is this: people will sit around and say they are “not getting any value out of their web analytics investment”. And that could be true = weak analytical talent.

Or it could be that they’re not getting the real story out of their WA investment because everybody is so busy torturing the data to cover their arses that no action is ever taken.

And I just wonder, what % is the former, what % is the latter?

I guess we can only hope that Darwin will take over and the companies who are truly “Competing on Analytics” will survive and the data torturers will not!

This is a great discussion you’ve started–sorry if I’m a little late on the draw. First, I’m a huge fan of your blog, your book, and your work, but I must admit to being surprised at, well, your surprise.

Maybe you haven’t worked for very many large companies?

This sort of thing is positively endemic, and not just in web analytics, but in all aspects of Corporate America, but especially management consulting and Wall Street. At my last job I worked for a very sharp former McKinsey consultant and Harvard MBA, who was new to web analytics, but had many years of data analysis and presentation experience. He was surprised (and delighted) to find that I would actually look at the data first, develop hypotheses, test them, and then prepare presentations with the insights and recommendations.

Why was he surprised? Because he’d never known anyone who actually had done this before. In his experience, the process involved an “understanding” with the client…He’d start with the decision that the client wanted to make, and then “torture” the data to find evidence to justify the decision so that the client could sell this decision internally to employees and externally to the media (and to Wall Street of course). Spin 101.

Speaking of Wall Street, and Wall Street analysts, they (for the most part) rarely do what you would call “real” analysis; instead the analysis is the marketing.

As much as it pains me to say it, in the real world, VERY few large organizations have a true analytical culture, and the higher you go up the org chart (especially if it’s a publicly traded company), IME the less likely any real analysis is done and the more everything becomes a matter of appearances rather than substance.

So I think you’re really touching on a subject that is much bigger than web analytics. It’s about organizational behavior, power, control, and spin.

Another great post. It is crazy to see all of the comments and realize that we are not alone in our struggles. This is always comforting to me. Thank you for providing a place that we can voice our concerns and know that somewhere, someone else is in the same boat.

Aside from that, and more importantly I think, is the trend towards more accountability for the spend, which in many ways is causing the effects you accurately point out above – the disconnects, hiding from relevance, questioning the business model.

The reality is each media does a pretty good job at something for some products. There’s nothing “wrong” with mass media or social media.

What’s wrong – and leads to the accountability problem – is people trying to solve problem X with a media whose strength is solving problem Y.

In the end, the optimal Marketing outcome is achieved by layering *and connecting* Awareness media, Intent / Desire media, Interface / Design media, and Action / Reaction media – and measuring each against the specific job they were designed to do.

If this idea is interesting to you and you want to know more, see the Marketing Bands Series for an example:

http://blog.jimnovo.com/marketing-bands-series/

“10 percent of success is determined by the creative”…but isn’t interesting that a surprisingly large percentage of the Fortune 500 firms let their creative agencies (of record) define the overall campaign targeting/segmentation?

Any wonder why we see disconnects and/or friction between the paid search/display media targeting strategies which unfortunately result in finger pointing and/or conflicting analytical points of view presented to the VP of Marketing/Advertising.

While all too many large creative agencies promote their industry awards as supporting evidence they can build general purpose “bloatware” websites, consumers are voting (thru relevance) for distributed content & narrowly defined niche content needs directly proportional to their point in time requirements.

Is it any wonder why the traditional big creative agency model has recently been questioned in some corners of the industry as perhaps an obsolete business model when it comes to effectively understanding the targeting effectiveness of today’s online consumer.

I think the important point is you knew what was going on, and dealt with it in your own way; no shame there! Overt “paycheck” threats are a particularly horrible practice that cell phone recording might put away…

People need to understand that being an analyst by definition brings a certain amount of conflict, and *especially so* if you’re good at it. Deal with it as you must for where you are in your career and responsibilities, just know that selling your silence is not “part of the game”.

And, there are companies out there who respect the role of the analyst, though ad agencies seem to have a bit of a problem with it, according to response received so far. That’s not surprising, is it?

Any agencies out there want to hire an honest analyst like AFD?