Who Is Data's Friend?

When we think about people and relationships, we know it’s often said that opposites attract. In friendships, there are the extrovert/introvert, assertive/shy, highly-strung/laid-back best friend combinations which work because, balanced against each other, they form a powerful unit. Each friend offers something different – and those differences strengthen each other. And so, like cheese & wine, they are a great combination!

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality inventory with the purpose of making “the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people’s lives.”

Having reviewed the personality types, my own conclusion is that Data would be type ‘ISTJ’ – “Quiet, serious, earns success by thoroughness and dependability. Practical, matter-of-fact, realistic, and responsible. Decides logically what should be done and works toward it steadily, regardless of distractions. Takes pleasure in making everything orderly and organized – their work, their home, their life. Values traditions and loyalty”.

So if opposites attract, then Data needs to find an ENFP friend – “Warmly enthusiastic and imaginative. Sees life as full of possibilities. Makes connections between events and information very quickly, and confidently proceeds based on the patterns they see…”.

So there’s Data, sitting quietly doing its thing, working steadily without distraction, looking at numbers logically. All well and good – but who’s going to make the connections, confidently talk about the findings? In essence, who’s going to be Data’s extrovert and make some noise so Data can be noticed? Meet Marketing. Marketing is the ENFP best mate Data needs – and vice versa, Data is the ISTJ mate that Marketing needs. Marketing is enthusiastic, sees possibilities, makes connections quickly – a winning combination. Data will find the story, Marketing will shout it out for all to hear.

Data within your business can be found in many guises – from sales figures to customer databases, survey responses to new business intelligence, web analytics to Facebook stats. With so much of it out there, you need to know what story you want to tell in order to bring it out of it’s shell.

Hi, I’m Data. I’m ready to make some new Marketing friends! If your data is sitting quietly, and hasn’t yet worked out what story to tell, get in touch. Let me dig through the numbers and come up with stories that you can turn into marketing actions to deliver results – great results to grow your business.