I went to the post office box and found a rhinoceros. The clever people who produced this brochure should have used a bull instead, bulls being more at home in marketing, but let’s not be picky. He’s a rhino with spots, and he’s hawking analytics software.
He’s leading the “British invasion” with software that’s like him: “brutally forceful” and “amazingly agile.” Best of all, he’s going to be at a reception in Las Vegas serving bangers and mash, fish and chips, single malt scotch and leading some go-go girls.
Go-go girls? Yes, after all, business intelligence is all about the human story. Let’s have more humans! Bring in the humans! You can hear the marketing and PR people scribbling furiously on the yellow pads: business intelligence needs human stories.
You’ve got to feed humans, someone says above the scribbling. Ah! More scribbling.
What’ll we feed them? Long discussion. Let’s break for lunch.
It’s the new marketing: get attention but ignore the hangover. It’s like Rumsfeld’s war machine gadget, with the ultra-light infantry (amazing agile, brutally forceful) sweeping through and leaving everybody who was there before to close in behind.
I just don’t understand why business intelligence marketers don’t make better use of stories. I know, It would take guts. It would take guts to get actual customers to let their stories be told. Who wants to admit that, gosh, they didn’t have total control before the miracle solution arrived and saved butts across the enterprise? Well, I bet there is someone. In fact, here’s one I researched and wrote.
It would take guts, and that’s why we’ll never see much of it. But at least it would be more credible, and would say more, than a rhino with spots.
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