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Big data will help us to 'know ourselves for the first time ever,' says FutureBrand global head of strategy Tom Adams

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By Gillian West, Social media manager

December 3, 2013 | 5 min read

Big data will enable us to “really know ourselves for the first time ever,” according to FutureBrand’s global head of strategy, Tom Adams.

Tom Adams will look at data from the human side

Speaking ahead of The Drum’s 4 Minute Warning conference tomorrow (Wednesday 4 December) Adams revealed that he will be examining the phenomenon of ‘Big data’ from a more human perspective as “big data is not created by niche, individual, unusual behaviours, it comes from the things that we do that are all alike.”

Tomorrow Adams will be taking part in the DATA: Volume, Velocity & Variety session and will be exploring how we create data. Over the last few years data has been a buzzword for brands and businesses though Adams admits “we still don’t really know how to access or use it yet”.

Though brands and businesses will ultimately harness and mine data for their own ends, using it to promote and sell products and services, Adams believes that big data will have also have a disruptive effect on us as individuals as “when data is presented to you it can start to help you observe what you really do.”

The example given by Adams is how we have a bias towards thinking that we’re healthier than we really are. “Nike Fuelbands, and even going back to the late 90s pedometers, collect data that confronts you with the reality of what you really do,” explains Adams. “Seeing what you really do in the moment can help to shift your behaviours. Just say that shift in behaviour effects 10 per cent of the consuming population around the world, and say that consuming population is four or five billion at any one time, 10 per cent of that is a gigantic amount of people and that shift would have a significant and seismic effect on the way the world works.”

Personal data apps are currently big business with consumers using their smartphone to record their exercise, diet and sleeping habits on a daily basis. Of the popularity of these apps, Adams said: “One of the issues with this kind of data is it’s still quite fragmented, I may choose one app to tell me how much I exercise, and another to see how much I eat, and another to find out more about my sleep pattern but all that data is not in one place in a way that can proactively shift my decision making in context.

“There’s a real role for someone to be able to bring all of my behaviours into one place and know where I am at particular times and my behaviours at that time and alert me to what I’m doing and the impact that has. Feeding back data about my real behaviours will be able to impact the choices I make. Paradoxically it might not be about a retailer trying to encourage me to buy more of something; they might encourage me to buy less.”

Data, of course, isn’t a new thing as brands, businesses, government and political parties have “always tried to find out what everybody thinks,” Adams believes the most disruptive part about new methods of data collection will be the information gathered will be honest and true.

“In the past research techniques have been a series of questions which generate skewed answers as people like to give the answers they think the organisation wants and will present an image of themselves that idealises their behaviour…we now have data which is generated in real-time constantly and is a by-product of real life behaviours and movements,” he said.

What this leads to on the consumer side its “an anxiety that organisations will know more about me than I want them to, and a worry that brands will know more about me than I do.” Adams reveals that if we can “go back to this idea of my data being my own and not someone else’s” then we can use data to improve our own experiences.

He adds: “We can track ourselves in a way that will help us to have a better understanding of what we do and I think it’s exciting as we can, for the first time ever, really know ourselves, but it’s scary because everyone else will know us too.”

Tom Adams is just one of a number of speakers taking part in tomorrow's 4 Minute Warning conference hosted by The Drum at SapientNitro, London. More information on speakers and last-minute tickets can be found on the 4 Minute Warning site.

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