Since joining Fuel and speaking to friends, family and colleagues about my new role, I‘ve noticed a certain amount of “data distancing”. Even for so-called “diagonal thinkers”, data can be seen as scary stuff, and it’s not surprising considering the outdated image data has in this digital and visual age. This is changing though, with new terms such as “Infomagination”, research carried out by UCL shown here and the World Wide Web Consortiums’ Linked Data project shown here.

I’m by no means a mathematician as a new edition to this award winning team, with my past comfortably lying in strategic marketing. It’s just the opportunity Fuel has within the marketing space, supporting clients and enhancing creativity, is too big to miss. My data epiphany was sparked by the awesome series back in January that was The Virtual Revolution, demonstrating the impact of the web and its might as an empowerment tool. Particularly poignant for me was the idea that whilst this empowerment is deemed to be free, it does bide by the laws of economics, and there is certainly a cost attached. Whilst the exchange isn’t monetary, we are paying with our privacy and that is arguably more valuable.

The Fuel of my excitement:

The web based processing power of “the cloud”, mass adoption of smart devices and the growing development of augmented reality is bringing business intelligence to a new level. It’s leading to a deeper relationship between company and consumer and the ability for companies not just to understand consumers better but react to their behaviour in real time to optimize performance  and with mobile accessible data solutions.

Google’s Eric Schmidt talks frequently of “Consumer Nowness” and  “Mobile First” and that is no surprise considering  that in many European countries there are more mobile phones than humans, with the Mobile web (last estimates I saw) growing 8 times faster than the equivalent fixed line web. When developing this it’s the data that drives the change becoming intertwined with your day-to-day like threads in a fabric.

Undoubtedly it’s an exciting time in digital. I however, am more excited by what lays beneath the surface of this and that is the much misunderstood world of data. Via this exchange of privacy and soaring adoption the “infomagination” can be developed to enhance market understanding. The untrackable is becoming trackable. The technology allows for it and is putting an end to the above the line stranglehold.