Mark Earls over at Herd recently made a post which comes along the same lines of two of my recent posts. In his post “Preaching Against Survey Data” he speaks out against the traditional ways of collecting market data via surveys.

I recently posted about “sampling myopia” — the idea that it’s unlikely you’ll get a “good” answer from any type of survey or study you create, because you don’t know the full context — and also about why leadership based on bad data or too little data can be disastrous.

In his post he captures the essence of the two posts and my feeling towards the data in general:

…which I’ve always thought a bit harsh: I’m in no way a “touchie-feelie”, “it just kinda feels right”, “crystals will tell us” kind of marketing thinker. No, I think disciplined and evidence-based stuff is the only sensible way forward – we just need better (and perhaps less) research approaches which harness what we now know about human beings and not more and more of the same old stuff

So… are you seeing true, positive progress from your marketing and leadership, or more of the “same old stuff”?