Adaptive analytics: Surfacing the organic pulse of today’s consumers

The 2016 US election upended both traditional political discourse and people’s faith in the ability of polls to capture national sentiment accurately. Right up until and throughout election day, poll after poll forecasted a different electoral outcome than the one witnessed that night. Pollsters and commentators alike need to reassess their predictions and gain a better understanding of the underlying reasons, not only for post-mortem analysis, but for future campaigns, presidential or otherwise. Are there better methods and approaches pundits and data-driven marketers can embrace to truly understand consumer behaviour, both proactively and in the moment? Traditionally, the management and assessment of marketing campaigns have been linear: create, execute and observe. This ‘rear-view mirror’ approach, hiding under the cloak of optimisation, can be modernised for today’s analytical and technical environment. This paper draws on three very public case studies and offers prescriptive instructions for data-driven marketers using an emerging technique known as adaptive analytics. At its core, adaptive analytics reroutes observed results immediately into the insights and analytical processes, while campaigns are still in-market, thus improving a brand’s chance achieving business goals.