Step Back From The Dashboard: We're In A Data Rich, Human Poor Era & The Industry Is Poorer

An efficiency-focused marketing industry overwhelmed by data misses the value of stepping back to understand human realities. When Jet2holidays’ long-running brand soundtrack was hijacked on TikTok, the activity could have appeared messy, off brand, and risky. Instead of sanitizing or correcting it, the brand paid attention to what people were actually doing. People used the soundtrack to share relatable holiday moments, including missed flights and minor mishaps. By staying present, the brand became shorthand for real holidays rather than idealized ones, and the scale of the response followed. The piece connects this to a data-rich, human-poor era and to AI-driven synthetic research that improves consistency and predictive accuracy, while still requiring a human lens to interpret meaning.

"In this ope-ed, he explains why the real magic often takes place when brand marketers and agency partners step back from the dashboard to understand the human truth. When Jet2holidays saw its long running brand soundtrack being hijacked on TikTok, the data would have looked messy, off brand, even risky. But instead of correcting it, they paid attention to what people were actually doing with it."

"People were using the soundtrack to share the most relatable versions of holidays, missed flights, burnt shoulders, things going slightly wrong. By staying present rather than sanitising the moment, Jet2 allowed the brand to become shorthand for real holidays, opposed idealised ones. The scale of the response was the outcome. The human truth came first."

"We're in a data rich, human poor era. We talk a lot about data in the marketing industry, and with the acceleration of AI, the conversation is only getting louder. I recently read a Ritson article that pointed out that one of the most immediate shifts is in research itself, where synthetic data generated by AI rather than collected from real people, is already starting to outperform traditional methods in both consistency and predictive accuracy."

"No-one doubts our efficiency at reading dashboards and reporting back our findings as facts. But as an industry, I believe we need to give ourselves more time to pause and sit with the data to understand the deeper tensions and human truths behind it. What does this mean for brands and brand m"

Read at B&T