Storytelling with the Sounds of Big Data

Trying to internally “sell” the merits of a big data program to your executive team?  Of course, you will need your handy Solution Architect by your side, and a hard hitting financial analysis vetted by the CFO’s office. But numbers and facts probably won’t make the sales pitch complete. You’ll need to appeal to the emotional side of the sale, and one method to make that connection is to incorporate the sounds of big data.

Trying to internally “sell” the merits of a big data program to your executive team?  Of course, you will need your handy Solution Architect by your side, and a hard hitting financial analysis vetted by the CFO’s office. But numbers and facts probably won’t make the sales pitch complete. You’ll need to appeal to the emotional side of the sale, and one method to make that connection is to incorporate the sounds of big data.

There’s an interesting book review on “The Sonic Boom” by Joel Beckerman in the Financial Times.  In his book, Beckerman makes the statement that “sound is really the emotional engine for any story”—meaning if you’re going to create a powerful narrative, there needs to be an element of sound included.

Beckerman cites examples where sound is intentionally amplified to portray the benefits of a product or service, or even associate a jingle with a brand promise. For example, the sizzling fajitas that a waiter brings to your table, the boot up sound on an Apple Mac, or AT&T’s closing four notes on their commercials.

Of course, an analytics program pitch to senior management requires your customary facts and figures.  For example, when pitching the merits of an analytics program you’ll need slides on use cases, a few diagrams of the technical architecture (on premise, cloud based or a combination thereof), prognostications of payback dates and return on investment calculations, and a plan to manage the program from an organizational perspective among other things. 

But let’s not mistake the value of telling a good story to senior management that humanizes the impact of investing deeper in an analytics program.  And that “good story” can be delivered more successfully when “sound” is incorporated into the pitch.

So what are the sounds of big data?  I can think of a few that, when experienced, can add a powerful dimension to your pitch.  First, take your executives on a tour of your data center, or one you’re proposing to utilize so they can hear the hum of a noisy server room where air conditioning ducts pipe in near ice cold air, CPU fans whirl in perpetuity, and cable monkeys scurry back and forth stringing fiber optic lines between various machines.  Yes, your executive team will be able to see the servers and feel the biting cold of the data center air conditioning, but you also want them to hear the “sounds” (i.e. listen to this data center) of big data in action.

In another avenue to showcase the sound of big data, perhaps you can replay to your executive team the audio of a customer phone call where your call center agent struggles to accurately describe where a customer’s given product is in transit, or worse, tries to upsell them a product they already own.  I’m sure you can think of more “big data” sounds that can accurately depict either your daily investment in big data technologies…or lack thereof.

Too often, corporate business cases with a “big ask” for significant headcount, investment dollars and more, give too much credence to the left side of our brain that values logic, mathematics and facts.  In the process we end up ignoring the emotional connection where feelings and intuition interplay.

Remember to incorporate the sounds of big data into your overall analytics investment pitch because what we’re aiming for is a “yes”, “go”, “proceed”, or “what are you waiting for?” from the CFO, CEO or other line of business leader. Ultimately, these are the sounds of big data that really matter.