Creativity fired by data: How to generate more creative uses of data in brand work

Data, data, so much data. There's the personal stuff – where we are, what we're doing. What we think we're going to buy, what we actually buy. Steps, heart rates, favourite films, or songs on repeat. Yo u name it, we're probably measuring it. And that's before the universe jumps in with weather, mood, local traffic, crime levels or flu epidemics.

We've never had such easy access to so much varied data that can inform our work. But this unprecedented volume of data is also a huge challenge. With so many fragmented data sets at our disposal, how do we know what's worth exploring, what's relevant to the brief, or what might contribute to the creative process? Extraordinary brand stories aren't simply going to leap out of the data, so we need to define what we're looking for, and what we want to do with it. We need to ask the right questions.