We wrap up our April guest blog series on Big Data with a great post from John Stauffer, CTO of True Fit. John discusses the great point of how to properly use big data to target customers but not spook them with the data collected about them. As a reminder, our next guest blog series starts in May and the topic is Mobile, if you are interested in contributing please e-mail me at taylor [at] MITX [dot] org.

John is a pragmatic software development leader with a 20+ year track record of developing successful product and architecture strategies and leading teams to execute on them. Prior to True Fit, John was Chief Architect at 170 Systems where he led the transformation of the company’s existing product architecture to a modern, scalable, and maintainable java-based architecture, leading to an acquisition by Kofax. Prior to 170 Systems, John was Chief Architect for Oracle’s Retail Business Unit after its acquisition of ProfitLogic. As Chief Architect for ProfitLogic, John was responsible for the creation of products for Retail Markdown, Pre-season Planning, Allocation and Promotion Forecasting and Optimization that are used by the world’s largest retailers.

The catalog sitting on my counter was the single creepiest piece of mail I had ever received. It was full of dog-oriented chotskies aimed at overzealous dog owners. 

As the owner of a pair of English Bulldogs filling out our nearly-empty nest, my wife and I are certainly the target market. I have a Bulldog statue proudly sitting on my desk, and I've given up the fight against the Halloween costumes that my wife insists on buying each year for our bulldogs (Knight and Princess last year, Greaser and Poodle Skirt before that).

As April is coming to an end we are starting to wrap up our Big Data theme, but we still have a little more awesome content to share. Beth Logan PhD, Director of Optimization at DataXu writes a great post about the benefits of sharing big data and how it has been beneficial in other industries. As a reminder, our next guest blog series starts in May and the topic is Mobile, if you are interested in contributing please e-mail me at taylor [at] MITX [dot] org.

Beth Logan holds a PhD in Speech Recognition from the University of Cambridge, UK.  She has worked in many fields including speech, music indexing, computational biology, medical informatics and activity monitoring, and has over 30 publications and 11 issued patents.  Since joining DataXu (http://www.dataxu.com/) in 2009 she has turned her talents to online advertising, relishing the vast amounts of data available and the many interesting problems to be solved.

I started working in "Big Data" before it had a name.  My roots are in speech recognition where at the time - and likely still - it was hard to publish at a respectable conference unless you could demonstrate a significant improvement on a large dataset. “Large” meant 100s of hours of speech, which took many hours to process on a cluster.  Fortunately, the community was quite mature and many such large datasets were readily available with excellent labels and tools to get started (e.g. see http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/).

The availability of such public datasets combined with cheap and powerful computing resources was the breakthrough speech recognition needed to become ubiquitous.  These datasets allowed accurate benchmarking of results across teams, facilitating innovation.  However, they cost tens of thousands of dollars for non-academic institutions, reflecting the high cost and labor intensity of labeling.  Yet the value generated by commercial speech recognition algorithms no doubt outweighs this cost.  This raises the obvious question of what other communities would benefit from large, shared datasets.

Continuing on with our April Big Data guest blogging series we have a great post from Chris Sheehan, COO of TrueLens. Chris gives great insight into how companies can take advantage of Big Data to create meaningful customer experiences and improve consumer-brand relationships. As a reminder, our next guest blog series starts in May and the topic is Mobile, if you are interested in contributing please e-mail me at taylor [at] MITX [dot] org.

Chris Sheehan is the COO of TrueLens, a customer intelligence company that sources deep insights from social data.  Prior to joining TrueLens, he was venture capitalist at CommonAngels Funds actively investing in marketing and advertising companies including OwnerIQ, Offerpop, Yieldbot, Linkable Networks, Promoboxx, and Xconomy.

Last week I signed up for a flash sale website. The registration process was effortless. I entered my email address and was instantly browsing sales on the site. After ten minutes, I decided not to purchase anything and left. Since signing up, I’ve received a daily email with a selection of products that don’t interest me, and I’m starting to find these emails annoying.

Sound familiar? It should. Millions of consumers provide their email addresses to businesses of all kinds: retailers, hotels, entertainment brands, restaurants and airlines—to name just a few. As a result, marketers at those businesses face important questions such as “How do I start a conversation to build a long term relationship?” or “How do I provide immediate value?”

We are very excited to have Jason Kodish of Digitas as our second guest blogger for our Big Data series this month. Jason provides some great insight in to where Big Data is going and the importance of value exchange. Enjoy the post and be sure to keep an eye out for more guest blog posts from the series later this week!

As SVP/North American Lead for Strategy and Analysis at Digitas, Jason Kodish leads a group of over 250 analytics professionals across the country - the largest S&A group of any agency nationwide. With more than 15 years of industry experience, Kodish has worked across a wide range of client industries including financial services, automotive, consumer packaged goods, travel, and more.

Where is Big Data going? The answer lies in Disney World
Why quid pro quo is becoming increasingly important to the world of big data

While researching our impending trip to Disney World, my son Holden came across an interesting new piece of technology from Disney called the MagicBand. The MagicBand embeds a family’s identification, payment mechanism, park tickets, and other information into a simple, disposable bracelet. These bracelets eliminate the need to carry a wallet and minimize the risk of losing important documents. Now, all Holden cares about is that he can wear a bracelet instead of lugging around his embarrassing father around the park and still pay for lunch. But as a marketer, the first thing that came to my mind is the incredible volume and value of the data that can be generated through this new piece of customer service. 

Not only does MagicBand provide great transparency into the full transactional data aggregated into one profile, but hypothetically, it should also be able to understand other customer behaviors – the path you take around the park, time spent in certain areas, shows attended, etc.  And it’s easy to envision Disney* using this data to create in-stay offers through mobile devices or email, post-stay communication, life-time value modeling, and customer segmentation for further marketing materials.  The strategic opportunities here are endless

We are officially kicking off our guest blogging series for the month of April with this exciting post from a great member. The theme this month is Big Data and there is some great content coming your way! Guest blogging is an opportunity we extend to our members and in the coming months we have some exciting topics, if you would like to contribute read our previous blog with all of the details.

Cesar Brea is the co-founder of Force Five Partners, LLC, which works with multi-channel marketers across several industries to build their analytic capabilities through hands-on support for marketing programs and campaigns. More: www.forcefivepartners.com

Big Data, as Alicia Keys might say, is “On fi-yah!”  As I walked through Logan airport this morning, I couldn’t take ten steps or turn my head more than fifteen degrees without seeing an ad claiming its solution as the best path to enlightenment and bigger profits. Google Trends confirms the zeitgeist:

We want YOU to write for the MITX blog! We want to feature our rock star members, and their points of view, on the most discussed and questioned industry topics. Writing for our blog is a members only benefit and one we hope everyone takes advantage of. Who better to educate our readers than some of our very own?

We're all about Big Data right now. We asked a group of exceptional data experts to enlighten us. They answered this tough question: “How will the recent explosion of big data affect marketing & advertising innovation and productivity in the future?” This post is by Jason Fields. Jason brings a well-rounded and forward thinking vision of the industry to Agency Oasis. With components of design, development and experience architecture in his past he offers an expansive range of input on his accounts bringing together robust applications from start to finish. In support of his industry work Jason holds a Faculty position with Emerson College instructing Masters Candidates on web design, development and maintenance prior to their matriculation. Jason holds a BA in Communication from UMass Amherst and a MA in Media Studies from New School University.

We're all about big data right now. We asked a group of exceptional data experts to enlighten us. They answered this tough question: “How will the recent explosion of big data affect marketing & advertising innovation and productivity in the future?” This post is by Chris Emme. Chris is Vice President, East Region for RadiumOne, an innovative Dynamic Audience Platform (DAP) that harnesses social interaction data through its own first party products and delivers audience scale for today's Intelligent Web. Chris works with senior leaders at agencies and brands to bring innovative ad solution opportunities for their digital marketing objectives. Chris has worked with leading brands and digital ad solution teams for over 14 years. Prior to joining RadiumOne, Chris worked with some of most well known brands while heading up teams at Microsoft, Excite@Home and most recently at Yahoo! He is an avid tri-athlete and new father to his son, Tyler. Find him on Twitter at @chrisemme.

Guest post by Tom Shapiro. Tom is founder of Digital Marketing NOW, a full-service digital marketing and design firm that offers strategy, web development, design, SEO, paid search marketing, conversion optimization, display advertising, analytics and more. Shapiro cuts through all the hype and develops clear, differentiated marketing strategies focused on real results for his clients. Throughout his career, Shapiro has worked with a range of Fortune 500 clients, including P&G, HP, AT&T, Sears and Kraft Foods.

This October, we're all about Big Data. We asked a group of exceptional data experts to enlighten us. They answered this tough question: “How will the recent explosion of big data affect marketing & advertising innovation and productivity in the future?” This post is by Gary I. Singer. Gary is the founding partner and CEO of Buyology Inc, a leading neuro-insight firm based in New York City, focused on understanding the non-conscious. Prior to founding Buyology, Gary served as the Chief Strategy Officer at Interbrand, where he co-led the development of Interbrand’s global intellectual property. Before joining Interbrand, Gary was a Partner at McKinsey & Company, where he was a leader of the Branding Center of the Marketing & Sales Practice. Gary will be speaking at FutureM in a session titled "How Consumer Behavior Will Change Marketing Forever" giving a new overview into insights on consumer decisions making and the science of why we buy.