Brand Sherlock Holmes

Global brand consultant and author Martin Lindstrom startled big company CEOs obsessed with big data when he urged them not to ignore the small details as the key for successful brand building could be discovered there. His conviction that small data is rich data drives him, with permission of course, to look inside the refrigerators or nosing in cupboards in households as he dwells into the minds of consumers who make purchase decisions. He does this as a forensic investigator of small data looking for emotional DNA of the consumer in order to gain insights into the mind and spirit of the consumer. It’s not surprising that CEOs and corporate leaders describe him as ‘Sherlock Holmes of brand consultants’

When Martin Lindstrom studies brands, he dwells deep into even small and scattered data in search of insightful secrets that contribute to building of powerful brands. With patience and perseverance, he examines even the very small data as he draws up brand strategies for companies worldwide.

Almost three billion people access Google and 70 per cent of online shoppers visit Facebook pages daily. There are 300 hours of videos uploaded every minute on YouTube. All these generate about 90 per cent of all the world’s data over the last two years. Despite these mountains of data, information about consumer behaviours is miniscule. But it is in the small data that the building blocks of brands that people fall for are lying buried.

Consumers judge practically everything in seconds, or minutes at most. They seek instant gratification especially when on online. Learning about their behaviour is difficult because their true self cannot be gauged from social media. This is the paradox of online behaviour.

Lindstrom says online, what we leave behind is largely strategic, whereas the insides of our refrigerators and dresser drawers are not. The integration of online and offline data – that is to say, the marriage of big data and small data – is a crucial ingredient of marketing survival and success in the 21st century. Here comes Lindstrom as Sherlock Holmes looking for the key insights from the small data.