Big Data & Digital Innovation: Science vs Art

The 2015 installment of Big Data & Digital Innovation saw speakers from across the industry turn the microscope on big data and business transformation.One key message from day one was that despite the industry's relentless push towards a digital and data-driven world, the fundamentals of marketing and common sense must still prevail.“Even when consumers have moved on and their behaviours have changed, the fundamental of marketing is still the same, it’s common sense,” said Priyadarshini Sharma, international brand director of premium brands at Carlsberg Group.[gallery link="file" ids="100783,100782,100780,100779,100778,100776,100775"]In a panel discussion, panelists agreed that marketers should speed up the integration of data, to match the pace of consumer acceptance of technology."Marketing is now more of a science than an art," said Emmanuel Prochasson, data scientist at Asia Miles.Prochasson, who has held the role of data scientist for just under a year, said he is increasingly playing a bigger role to turn insights from Asia Miles' members into actionable marketing campaigns.Irene Xu, practice lead - customer intelligence, SAS North Asia, agreed that the science of data was impacting marketing in a greater way."It's not impossible that marketing will be a complex algorithm at some point," she said."But we should not forget the importance of intuition."The conference continues today.