This is a guest post from Joseph Carrabis, a mentor and friend who occasionally provides an unbiased independent and always very interesting view of the
web digital analytics industry. One of his previous posts, "
the unfulfilled promise of online analytics", written over two years ago, is still very relevant to this date - you might want to start there and come back. At the time, his views sparked a truckload of comments and I
nodded Joseph in a previous post.
You Say Tomato, I say "Irrefutably demonstrate that you are different than what I recognize as a 'ToMAHto' and I'll call you a 'ToMAYto'".
Dan Linton Interviews NextStage CRO Joseph Carrabis on the Web Analytics Association-Digital Analytics Association rebranding.
(My thanks to
Stéphane Hamel for his editorial guidance and to
Dan Linton for helping to continue the myth that I'm intelligent. All opinions expressed are mine. This post is dedicated to Charles, NextStage's CTO, who periodically tells me "You're such an academic.")
In March 2012, the Web Analytics Association changed its name to
Digital Analytics Association. In this article, Dan Linton interviews
NextStage CRO Joseph Carrabis regarding that name change, what it means and whether it is likely to affect the Association's present and future.
Q1: How significant is this name change to you?
While I appreciate the question "How significant is the name change to you?",
I'm not the audience that needs to answer it. To me, personally? Not
much. I recognize that the world is changing and that rebranding is a
simple strategy for claiming relevancy in a changing world, but
rebranding purely to demonstrate relevancy without adaptation to the
environmental changes (and this goes beyond indicating "we do mobiles,
too!") is change without remissioning ("re-mission", as in "change of
course", "recognition of new goals, new meanings, new purpose, ...") and
is a futile endeavor.
Aboriginal
societies rename (rebrand) individuals to designate status changes
within that society and often the individuals will rebrand themselves
based on life changes.
Whether
aboriginal or modern society, rebranding only occurs when status
changes. An individual or organization with a very strong brand (name
identity) won't rebrand unless there's environmental (market) pressure
to survive. That's evolution and any evolution is an indication the
original organism is ill suited to the new environment.
Thus the greater question is "How deep does the rebranding go?"
Q2: Is "Digital" so different from "Web" really?
About
five years ago, maybe. Between 2005-2007 the meanings were different
and significantly so. Now, not so much so. If a recognizable difference
exists it's probably a holdover from the first ten years of this 21
stcentury
and even then, only in the minds of luddites like myself - the "web" is
what you get on your desktop's browser. "Digital" is what you hold in
your hand. I mean, that's what "digital" relates to; your digits are
your fingers, hence what you hold in your hand. This hearkens back to my
statements early in 2007 that the history of technology is the placing
of the most power in the most people's hands economically.
But
the distinction I make in the above is one of device and by extension
presentation because the presentation will be constrained by the device
n which the information is presented. Device constraints are obviously a
major consideration and the demonstration of this is the big selling
points on successive generations of mobile devices - screen resolution,
color density, speed and connectivity for example.
Those distinctions are the same ones that were touted ten years ago, twenty years ago and so on.
Now
if the question is "Do people within the industry recognize a
distinction between "web" and "digital"? then we're asking a completely
different question and this leads to your next point.
Q3:
Insiders mostly think "web site analytics" is far different from
"mobile/web/app/social analytics" but from an outsider's perspective, do
those two words really mean something different?
Note that Justin Cutroni wrote
Radically Rethinking Web Analytics and it's an interesting read that answers the question from a branding perspective, not a use perspective (a la
Defining "Definition" and People as "Programmable Entities" ).
Identifying an activity (specifically, identifying one's self with an
activity) is not the same as demonstrating the outcomes of an activity
(specifically, demonstrating that one's activity produces specific
outcomes). There are lots of people who can see a rocket launch and
identify it as "rocket science" and the number of people who can get a
rocket to launch is much smaller.
This
difference between seeing and doing could be the divide Justin mentions
re web vs digital analysts. But then membership numbers become
confusing.
Daniel Waisberg shared that the official WAA-DAA enrollment is "over 2,000". LinkedIn reports 11.5k or so
members in the DAA Group.
These numbers are after an eight year WAA-DAA history. Place those
numbers against the number Justin offers for Google Analytics accounts
(even counting inactives, multiple accounts, et cetera as was explained
to me by
ClickInsight's June Li ) and a social disparity appears -
the active population is too small to sustain itself in anything but a highly networked world.
The collapse of geographic boundaries is the only reason this
"analytics diaspora" could maintain itself, and even then several other
socio-cultural factors had to exist (many of them reported in the
Unfulfilled Promise series).
But
now another problem appears and it is demonstrated in Justin's post and
the recent WAA-DAA rebranding: small cultures don't survive population
fragmenting. Everybody knows about the great cultures of history, few
know about the once thriving but too small to be sustained cultures of
the Andean Blue Men, the GoatMen of Aguirra, the People of the Elk, ...
Our only knowledge of them is from the scant oral and few written
accounts of the Marco Polos who encountered them in their travels.
So
while renaming et al is a fascinating exercise, the real goal should be
population based (recruitment, unification, defragmentation, ...). The
DAA should capitalize on its WAA roots as much as possible (as indicated
in Justin's post) rather than completely rebrand. The situation reminds
me of the chicken-or-the-egg question that exasperates semioticists;
"What came first, the chicken or the egg?" is an illogical question.
/Until someone pointed at some thing and said "That's a chicken." then
there were no chickens to lay eggs that would hatch chickens, hence the
chicken had to come first. The DAA was hatched from the WAA. It's first
port of call should be all those web analysts Justin writes about.
Now, to answer Dan Linton's question...
The answer is within the question and the demarcation is between "insider" and "outsider", not between "web" and "digital".
I
contacted forty individuals worldwide via email, Skype and phone;
people whom I knew were in the online analytics field and who were
involved in the WAA in some capacity or other (about half took part in
The Unfulfilled Promise of Online Analytics study).
The other unifying element of my sample was that their peers provided
consistent evaluations of them as people (note that. I was evaluating by
social status, not analytic ability). More specifically, I was
separating "loyalty to the dollar" and "loyalty to the truth". "Dollar"
is objective and binary, "truth" is subjective and analog.
One of the simplest ways to translate subjective, analog data into objective, binary data is via
The Chinese General Solicitation :
Does person A think person B is more apt to follow the dollar or follow
the truth? People B who scored over 90% "truth" were those I
interviewed.
Thus to the point of whether "digital" is so different from "web" and
according to a fairly diverse group (whose only commonality was that
their peers thought them a) truthful, honest people b) whose opinions
weren't influenced by who was paying them), no, not really. The great
rush, it seemed, was to catch up to where the industry was already
going. All but a few people interviewed said that the industry was
already "digital" and the majority of people were already doing
"digital" so the name change was merely cosmetic.
It was at this point that those interviewed provided an internal demarcation regarding "insiders".
A
few offered that the name change would allow for a rebranding of tools
and trainings, requiring recertifications perhaps, but not because the
tools were actually doing anything differently. They may be monitoring
mobiles instead of websites but that was only a difference in access,
not intention.
With
this piece of information one can wonder who the insiders really are
because the people actively doing the analytics have been adapting to
the changing analytics ecology for a while. Thus if the name change
represents nothing more than a new marketing opportunity, expect little
real change - remissioning - to occur. You teach a WA course, correct?
Has there been any discussion of teaching DA courses? And if so, is
there any functional, operational change in what's being taught? How
it's being taught? What actionability comes from the results?
The answers to these questions answer your Q3 question.
Dan
Linton Responds: To my knowledge, those changes will come eventually
but UBC like many academic institutions is a bit slow when it comes to
the change approval process. The reality is though that the content
already is inclusive of "digital" so I don't foresee any major changes.
The courses are mostly online reading with discussion forums and a few assignments
which the tutors (like myself) mark and offer advice upon. The courses
are more about "how to think about analytics" as opposed to any kind of
technical training. I've always thought they needed to supplement them
with far more tactical things like how to properly set up a dashboard in
Excel, which is pretty basic but shocking how few people know how to do
it.
Q4:
Does the word "digital" reflect any piece of data stored on a digital
medium (which is virtually every piece of data in the world now)?
Hmm...Within
this context? Hmm... The question as phrased is fascinating. It indicates
two-dimensional thinking. "Stored" relates to two things interacting
with each other and can only be measured as an indication of existence.
Something either exists in a given medium ("is stored") or not. There is
no information regarding that thing's value, purpose, intention,
function, et cetera. All we know is that that thing is interacting with
the space bounded by the medium and that the interaction is "exists
within". Ultimately these kinds of measurements are binary because all
we can do is determine "Yes, it exists" or "No, it does not exist". If
50,000 people live in a city we've only summed 50,000 pieces of "Yes, it
exists". We have no knowledge of what they're doing in that city. And
if the only data we can collect is binary in nature, we need an enormous
amount of binary sets to extract even the simplest information and make
decisions.
Another fascinating element of the question is the use of the word "data", not "knowledge", "information" or "wisdom".
Data
is neutral in nature. Data in context is information. Knowledge
provides structure to information, hence direction. Wisdom helps us
decide if we want to go in that direction (actionability) or develop
another structure, a new framework for that knowledge (applicability).
(image from
http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/unified/3.html)
Of course, wisdom doesn't come until you've screwed up lots of data, but there you go.
So
if the basic form of the data is a series of existences, then yes,
"digital" does reflect any piece of data stored on a digital medium.
Should the WAA/DAA ever have to deal with social probabilities (where
logical calculus rules) and neuromathematics, be prepared for big
changes because "exists" is no longer the basis of the measurement. I
use to get drink after drink after drink in bars because I could flip a
coin and continually call the outcome (I discuss how to do this in
Reading Virtual Minds V2: Theory and Application, by the way).
Eventually I discovered I could make money by teaching others how to do
it. What I was really teaching was a specific application of social
probability theory.
But
now we're discussing social, and most people doing social analytics are
still taking binary measurements, so again, rebranding without
remissioning. No new knowledge or wisdom, only new labels and titles.
Q5: Do you feel that the name change is simply cosmetic to refresh the WAA brand?
Dan,
thank you for this lovely can of worms. How nice of you to hand it to
me. The question is "Is this a renaming rebranding or a remissioning
rebranding?" and in either case, change is always worth investigating.
Change is adaptation is evolution.
This
rebranding came to my attention when I received an invitation to a
meeting. Normally invitations to any meetings quickly go into my trash
bin. I hadn't received an invitation from this source in some time and
my first thought was "They must be trolling their old email lists." Then
I noticed the invitation had been rebranded.
Sort of.
All
meetings that had once been WAA branded were now DAA branded. I'd also
been told by a few people that what once were WAWs were now going to be
DATs. The social-anthropologist in me kicked in. A fundamental concept
in neuro- and psycho-linguistics is "If what you're doing isn't working
change anything"
and here in my Inbox was evidence that there had been change - a
psychological and temporal distancing. The renaming was one thing, the
changing dates (by some, I learned, not all) was real evidence of the
latter's desire to separate from the former.
However,
as often happens, exteriors had changed and not much else. The same
people, the same purpose, the same goals, the same activities. The
emperor had changed his clothes but still ruled the same way.
Was
this some kind of splintering? Doubtful, considering the source. Was
this a recognition of a fundamental flaw in the organizational logic?
Ditto.
But
my background is one of perpetual testing. I rarely take statements as
valid regardless of source until I've tested them myself. What was this
rebranding all about? That's what led me to conduct the survey I
mentioned earlier in Q1c.
Organizational change has been necessary for a while. Several years back and at more than one con I openly stated that
the WAA showed all the traits of a society in decline .
Some people asked me what could be done to change that and I offered
some suggestions based on historical precedents. Without going into
agonizing detail, probably the best known historical precedent of a
society in decline that successfully remissioned itself so that the
society both survived and thrived is the United States before and after
the US Civil War.
Much
violence, much death, much destruction and in the end the one thing
that linguists and social historians point to is that the change was
conceptual; prior to the Civil War it was "THESE United States" and
after it was "THE United States". The country went from a collection of
individual entities who thought of themselves as "individual entities
who were part of a group" to a single entity that was "the group".
There's an old Greek proverb that fits this well, me thinks, "A
civilization flourishes when people plant trees under whose shade they
will never sit."
The
WAA as I knew it and the pre Civil War US were suffering the same
problem - lots of individuals who wanted to be recognized as individual
parts of a group. The evidence of this was that people self-identified
based on job title and company during casual conversation at
conferences, nobody self-identified as some function or relation within
or to the WAA. There is no organization until people are willing to
self-identify with that organization. Likewise, how people self-identify
demonstrates what they value. There were and probably still are a few
people planting trees and I don't know if there's enough of them to
insure future shade.
But
as noted earlier, if the change produces only new names and titles then
the emperor is changing clothes, not restructuring his kingdom and
shade will neither exist nor long survive.
The
proliferation of conferences (many of them causing increased
splintering rather than unifying), the changing of allegiances and
alliances, the once friendly leaders now threatening to sue each other -
it's almost as good as Tudor England! Everybody in Henry's court worked
very hard to 1) get their way, 2) increase their own little empires and
3) keep their enemies at bay. Keeping the kingdom intact was
everybody's stated purpose but only after 1, 2 and 3 were met.
Q6: ...or does it signify significant changes in the organization and the people involved?
There is another rule in neuro- and psycho-linguistics: Nothing changes until it absolutely has to.
Businesses
won't bring about any change until they absolutely have to. From social
and economic historians we also know that while a business may be a
market leader it will not long lead the market because businesses have a
remarkably poor ability to recognize internal threats. External threats
are dealt with by protecting one's territory and as long as one is
protecting, the only evolution that takes place is responsive, not
adaptive, and responsive change results in evolutionary dead ends - the
organism evolves to respond to a given threat perfectly but when the
environment in which these two organisms thrive changes, they can't.
They're designed for each other, not the environment, and can not
survive in the changed environment. We're currently seeing this in the
move to ebooks, except we're learning that ebooks are great for leisure
reading and not for research/study reading (students using ebooks don't
retain information as long or internalize it as rapidly as those using
printed texts). People were planning on a new environment and it turns
out that new environment is limited. Oops!
Organizations
can bring on change but the only change they'll bring about is that
which best serves their community. This is social and cultural
anthropology writ large; determine which community best benefits from an
organization's change and you learn who that organization serves. In
the vernacular, Follow the Money.
I haven't noticed the fracturing of the online analytics community documented in the
The Unfulfilled Promise of Online Analytics trilogy
decreasing (based on conversations I've had with those in it daily),
and the fact that respondents to my Q3 survey differentiated
"outsiders" from "insiders" from "Insiders" speaks volumes, me thinks,
and is the final demonstrable answer to your question.
Q7:
With this change in mind, do you see the DAA as leading, following,
struggling to keep up, or slapping paint on a condemned building?
I recognize two issues at work here.
1)
A few years back I was talking with someone very high up in the online
analytics community and suggested they use the oncoming directional
shift as an opportunity to take the lead. Their response was an emphatic
"No!" They would loudly declare where the market is going but only
after seeing where it went. This is a safe position but not a tenable
one.
People who've taken
NextStage trainings know about
Towards and AwayFrom.
Leading from the rear is an AwayFrom strategy and AwayFrom makes
organization, effective communications, strategy making and planning, et
cetera, extremely difficult. There are lots of ways to get "away from" a
problem state and the (vast) majority of them do not get you any closer
to a solution. Lots of money may be spent, lots of activity may occur
and in the net result is zero. Success is declared by corporate - or
organizational - decree, not by externally recognizable change.
What's
exponentially worse is that there's only one way to minimize time and
effort if you're an AwayFrom kind of person; go Towards the solution.
Such solutions and Towards thinkers are easy to spot. They start where
they are and step one step at a time until they've reached the solution.
Towards thinkers keep their eyes on their desired outcomes and get
there faster, more directly and with minimal expense in the long term.
Leading
from the rear is a fascinating strategy and people who lead from the
rear can not claim thought leadership. The two are incongruous. But now
we're asking, "
Is one function of the WAA/DAA is to offer thought leadership?"
In any case, the determination is one of following, not leading.
Next
determine if the WAA/DAA is offering organization, effective
communications, strategy making and planning, et cetera and providing
them from the front or the rear? Is the WAA/DAA
- Seeing
where things are going then pushing their way to the center every time
the migration ceases and declaring "This is where we're suppose to be"
- Out in front and shouting "Everybody stay back until we find out if it's safe"
- Fearful
there's a cliff up ahead, counting the number of heads still on the
plateau at the end of each day and deciding whether or not to declare
there's a cliff without further investigation as to why there are fewer
and fewer heads on the plateau at the end of each day
The
United States government is going through the same thing right now. The
time it's taking the Republican party to put forth a recognized
candidate is indicative of this.
In any case, this determines whether there's any struggling and how much is involved.
2)
One well recognized leader in the WAA told me that he's not a numbers
person, rarely looks at site numbers and never pays attention to them.
Yet this individual wanted help with their site. Another well recognized
analyst told me that they don't use any analytics on their own site.
How come? "It's not going to tell me anything useful."
These
statements are not isolated by type or person and both indicate the
leaders in the field have challenges with the industry's claims.
Industry leaders demonstrating no faith in the tools of their industry
creates amazingly deep problems within any community formed around that
industry.
The
building may be condemned but rather than rebuild it seems the owners
have decided to invest in other real estate when good deals come along.
Q8: How will business outsiders who were vaguely familiar with the WAA view the name change? ...
That
depends on their distance. The majority of the planet doesn't know
WAA/DAA exists so the name change means nothing. How far outside does an
outsider need to be to have a view on the name change? Consider myself.
I would never refer to myself as a web, digital or online analyst and
was once referenced as "an industry outsider". Yet businesses regularly
contact me for
advice on their online analytics budgeting decisions and to recommend analysts to them. My first question is usually "How come my opinion matters?"
I
know people in the business and have friends who self-identify as
online analysts. I know of people who call themselves web analysts and
started calling themselves online analysts years back. Again, this was
due to market changes and not ability changes.
I
suppose outsiders will view the change as they'd view any rebranding, a
"Wait and See" attitude. WAA/DAA and marketing tend to be participants
in an arranged marriage between families that still haven't learned how
to get along, so "Wait and See" is a good place to be.
Q9: ...How do you think insiders view it? ...
There
will be those who view it fearfully, those who view it hopefully, those
who will wait and see and those who could care less. These groups will
surface when any organization rebrands. Find out what is feared, what is
hoped for, what is waited for and why apathy exists and in what numbers
and operational paths for change reveal themselves.
There
will be those who view it fearfully, those who view it hopefully, those
who will wait and see and those who could care less.
Q10: ...What does it signify inside and outside?
Hmm...it
only signifies something to people who care. Find out who cares and the
level of their caring and you'll learn its significance.
Q11: For outsiders, do you feel the new name 'DAA' will resonate more than the old?...
No,
DAA will have as much meaning as WAA because acronyms are jargon and
jargon is only used to differentiate social, cultural, economic, et
cetera, classes from each other. Jargon is why only doctors understand
doctors, only lawyers understand lawyers and only web analysts
understand digital analysts.
Q12: ...Will it mean more to those who aren't directly involved? ...
The terms "digital" will have more cache than "web" and only until another buzzword takes its place.
Q13: ...Will people more easily understand what we do simply from the name?
LOL! Not likely. Unless they work close to the border of what is being done.
Q14: Who do you think stands to benefit the most from the change?
Ah, more worms. Thanks so much.
There
will be a cyclic flow between businesses providing solutions and
conference promoters wanting to fill seats. Solution providers will
claim "We do [insert buzzword]!" People entering the industry and not
being completely familiar with the jargon will ask what the difference
between "old word" and "buzzword" (web and digital, for example) is.
Conference promoters will claim "We have the Answer! Look! We just
created a conference dedicated to BuzzWord! BuzzWord 2012!" People
already in the industry will know that jargon has changed. Their time in
the industry will determine how much wisdom they bring to assigning
relevance to the jargon change and how to respond to it.
This
is why there's a rise in "Social Pass" sales to conferences. It's
always fun to see friends and play. We did a three year study of how
conferences were changing (in many industries). Fascinating stuff that
some promoters are using to help create mutually recognized value for
both attendees and sponsors. I keep on hoping to publish it someday...
Q15: If you could change one thing about the DAA, what would it be?
Susan Bratton interviewed me a while back .
One question she asked was "If you could change one thing about the
business world it would be ______?" I responded "If people would stop
lying to themselves - not others, only to themselves - that would be the
greatest change possible, me thinks." So my response holds for all
organizations, not just the DAA.
Q16: Would you expect any unforeseen impacts of the change?...
I've
been burned at the stake too many times for accurately predicting
outcomes to answer this one without violating my response to Q15.
Q17: ...On insiders or business outsiders?
Ditto. Nothing unforeseen, human/consumer psychology being what it is.
Q18: What do you think employers and businesses will think of all this? ...
Employers and businesses will make up the largest percentage of the "Wait and See" crowd.
Q19: ...Will they notice?...
Employers
and businesses will notice if 1) actionability increases, 2) outcomes
improve based on increased actionability, 3) accuracy predicting
outcomes increases such that there's improved decision making regarding
actionability, ...
They'll most definitely notice if they get billed more.
Q20: ...Care?
They'll
care if they get billed more and actionability, outcomes and accuracy
stay the same or decrease. They'll love it if the reverse - they're
billed less, actionability, outcomes and accuracy all improve - occurs.
Q21: What should the DAA be doing next?
Serving
its members in proportion to their population, not their dollars.
That's a nice response, possibly a popular one and also an amazingly
ignorant one. No organism can survive without consuming resources and
the consumption rate is dependent on many factors. Two environmental
constraints on the DAA are its maximum population and the individual resources within that population (
based on a recent "Top 10 Cities" infographic ).
There's
not enough people making enough money to support much activity so the
organization must either cut down on member activities and programs -
and risk a decreasing membership - or take money from "supermembers"
(businesses) that will only support the DAA if their needs are met.
That's not an envious balancing act. For anybody.
So I'd guess the first thing would be to decide who is going to be served best and state that openly.
Of course, doing so would bring us back to remissioning...
Afterword
Susan edited this and added the following:
Reminds
me of what's currently happening in IT & "the cloud" - Talk to IT
people and they laugh. "We've been doing the cloud for years. It's
called 'virtualization of the storage'. Oh, now you want to outsource if
so you call it 'the cloud'." (seeIt Might Be Time to Get Your Head Out of the Clouds and Cloud Bursting (Cloud Technology Adoption in 2012))
Talk
to people outside the IT world, marketers and such, and they get all
excited about this new thing out there that they must have. Talk to
people in the know and they could care less.
DAA vs WAA. Talk to
higher-ups and they want DAA cause it's new. Marketers go for it to
prove to their boss they're up with the latest trends. Web analysts in a
company say "we've already got a company doing that" or "we do that
now". Their boss says "But we need one that does DAA, not WAA, so the
web analysts find a company doing DAA, rebranded WAA, go to their bosses
and say "See? I do good!" and everyone's happy. But they're still doing
the same old thing just with a different name. Cloud versus virtual
storage. DAA versus WAA. It's the same name for the same old dog. The
real question is "Can the dog hunt?" Are we just calling "Rufus" "Rex"
and now he's a better hunting dog because he has a new name?
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