My cartoons are often inspired by something I overheard the previous week. Last week, I traveled to speak at the GPeC Summit in Romania and got to hear UnMarketing author Scott Stratten’s entertaining take on marketing while I was there.
Part of Scott’s talk included a rant on vanity metrics — the seductive allure of focusing on data that makes us look good. Vanity metrics are particularly rampant in digital marketing and can cause us to make really bad decisions.
The term “vanity metrics” were first coined by Eric Reis in the Lean Startup. As Eric put it:
“Vanity metrics may make you feel good, but they don’t offer clear guidance for what to do next.”
The idea of vanity metrics got me thinking about each of the seven deadly sins and how they might apply in this increasingly data-driven world.
Data is never just about the data — it’s how we use and make sense of the data. How we interpret the data is subject to the same human biases and foibles that drive everything else we do.
Of course AI promises to help with data-driven decision making and yet AI is fueled by many of these same biases and foibles. As we look at the data, we have to continually sense-check where it came from and how we’re using it.
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
