Dr Charles Randall is Head of Solutions Marketing at SAS UK & Ireland where he combines the twin roles of active analytical marketing practitioner, with being a writer and spokesperson for SAS on the application of advanced analytics to business problems. As part of this role he collaborates with leading business schools and market research agencies to carry out original research into the issues facing the modern marketing professional. Prior to working for SAS, Dr Randall's career has included spells in Marketing, Strategy, Finance, and Management Consultancy within both B2B and B2C organisations. He was awarded his PhD in Econometrics by University College Swansea in 1994.
The unstoppable rise of the data scientist in marketing has transformed the industry. Previously seen as creative, intangible and emotional, marketing has gone under the knife of measurement and awoken in a strange new binary world. But before we consign creativity to the work of algorithms and witticisms to machine
Clever words, beautiful imagery and exciting creativity have long been marketing’s domain. But an alternative view of the world has emerged and is creating a divide. With the rise of big data, relentless objectivity and the unceasing quest for measurement we must welcome the data scientist. Surely all true marketers
Eighty-four per cent of marketers now regard the rise of the digital native as overwhelmingly the most important (or a very important) factor affecting marketing plans. So while we welcome the digital generation we must also re-tool our mind and skill sets to the new marketing order. This though appears
I don’t want to have a relationship with a marketing department. I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to engage in conversation with you. I feel no loyalty towards you. When I say I like you I’m not entirely sincere. And yet I chose to share an enormous amount of my life with
The Centre for Economic and Business Research is a respected economic consultancy. Earlier this year we asked them to look at the value of analytics to the UK today, and forecast the likely growth of analytics over the next five years. Their full findings can be downloaded here. But why
What channels do marketers think are important? Which do they think are good? What new technologies are they focused on? And how are they getting to grips with Social Media? This was the theme of a webinar I participated in last week, hosted by Marketing Week (the leading marketing publication
Whose mobile communications are hitting the spot? Which broadcast strategy helps banks make an emotional connection with their customers? Who sends out such badly targeted e-mails that customers see them as less personally relevant than a TV advert? The answer to these questions may surprise you. Our recent survey of
Healthcare was one of five sectors looked in the Pleased to Meet You research (the other four were Banking, Supermarkets, Soft Drinks, and Mobile). In the UK the majority of healthcare is publicly funded, and so healthcare was chosen to as a representative of the public sector. It allows us
Which new channel is winning with the customer? Given the current hype about social media as a marketing channel I thought it might be nice to see how our respondents in the Pleased to Meet You survey responded to this channel. In particular we will compare it to the mobile
The instinctive answer to this question is “Yes, obviously they do”. But as a marketer the obvious answer is not enough. Yes they do, but what does that look like in practice, and how does this affect the way I should approach my marketing. This is the question that has
