Music

This article is a perfectly good read - should get you thinking (click here). Click on the link, make my stats look good here in the dog days of summer. I'll wait for you.

...

...

...

...

oh, welcome back.

The gist of the article is that by making everything perfect, by scrubbing out every little error, by replacing real instruments with a computer, we've sucked the soul of out music.

Let's go back to 1980. Listen to the breaths taken at about the 0:20 second mark (click here). Those would be scrubbed out today, and the vocal imperfections would be corrected via auto-tune.

So I'm exchanging emails with an e-commerce Executive. This person is confident. He understands his Google Analytics data than anybody else. He can tell you why his Facebook ads are less effective. He can tell you the reason why any digital advertising is more/less effective. He knows everything that Google Analytics allows him to know inside-and-out. It's impressive to speak with this individual. Smart.

He then says something along the lines of "... but I seem to me missing the soul of my business, the heartbeat that keeps my business going."

Google Analytics made his campaign-centric work "perfect". He knew everything about campaigns.

But he didn't know anything about his business.

He traded knowledge of existing customers for knowledge of returning visitors.

He traded knowledge of his merchandise assortment for knowledge of his digital marketing portfolio.

Via A/B tests he knew what creative treatments worked but he didn't know anything about why customers preferred various creative treatments.

He traded new customer knowledge for traffic knowledge.

He traded knowledge of profit for an understanding of engagement.

As with all things, when something new is introduced we give up knowledge but we gain insights. We lose art but gain science. Similar to modern music, we've given up a lot of art.

We can enjoy both, y'know. It's possible.