What Lady Gaga Can Teach You About Analytics

What do meat suits and analytics have in common?

A lot actually.

It turns out, Lady Gaga and her (now former) manager, Troy Carter, realized the importance of social media early on. In 2008, she was one of the first artists to begin utilizing Twitter to interact with fans. It made sense, because of her brand platform, but they soon realized that, while they didn’t own their Twitter followers or Facebook likers (Gaga has an amazing 66 million likes), they could drive them to their own space, LittleMonsters.com, and use the resulting data in fascinating new ways.

Gaga can customize set lists for concerts based on the listening habits of her fans in a particular location on Spotify—be sure to play this song, leave that one out. She’s taken fan-created artwork, uploaded to her website, and printed it on t-shirts, driving merchandising sales up more than 30 percent.

And the music industry is catching on. A service called Next Big Sound, which counts all the major record labels as customers, can predict (with great accuracy) which acts will be huge hits before they’re ever signed to a label by mining social media.

But it’s not just the music industry that can use big data to its advantage. Any company—or indeed anyone—can, and should use data to make better decisions. And companies who don’t do that will be left behind.

Data is changing your cabs, cigarettes, and corn.

When it comes to the impact of data, there are other great examples of how some companies are challenging traditional industries by learning more about their customers with data and technology.

Uber, a much talked-about car sharing service, has made waves both with it’s app-based bookings to request a car, and it’s acquisition by Google for a huge price. It’s also just one example of a new wave of services that are part of what’s being called the disruption economy. Companies like Uber, AirBnB (a web service that allows people to rent out rooms in their homes as hotels) and Coursera (a free education company) are using data and technology to outpace their traditional counterparts in the service economy.

They’re also being hit by a wave of regulatory backlash, but as Bloomberg notes, the writing seems to be on the wall, that service companies which don’t embrace technology will be on the way out.

The rise of ECigarettes, the smokeless electronic nicotine inhalers, isn’t due solely to the technology that makes the actual physical product possible; they’re also utilizing technology in other ways. Smokio is an eCigarette that comes with an app that monitors your nicotine intake. QuitBit is a “smart” lighter that connects to your phone via Bluetooth to keep track of your smoking habit, and IntelliQuit is the world’s first smoking cesation biosensor—a lighter-sized carbon monoxide detector that purports to help you quit smoking the way you started: one puff at a time.

Even the good, old fashioned family farm isn’t so old fashioned any more. Tractor and farm equipment manufacturer John Deere now uses data and analytics and many farmers rely on data to optimize fertilization and productivity. The company employs automated crop reporting that provides in-depth information about crops for farmers to assist in filing crop insurance claims. The data can also help farmers make difficult decisions about planting, harvesting, and more. Deere also provides a web-based solution for farmers to manage their fleets, decrease downtime, and save on fuel all based on sensors built into the tractors.

Companies that are embracing technology and finding ways to put data to use for their customers are not just ahead of the curve, but setting the standard for the way their industries will work in the future.

Does your industry embrace technology and data? Or are you lagging behind? I’d love to hear your ideas, concerns and examples in the comments below.

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About : Bernard Marr is a globally recognized expert in strategy, performance management, analytics, KPIs and big data. He helps companies and executive teams manage, measure and improve performance.

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