BBH’s Sarah Booth argues that we are being so ‘highly optimised’ that our horizons are rapidly narrowing. Is it time the media re-thought its use of data science and artificial intelligence?
My favourite word is blepharospasm. It means eyelid twitch. The kind of unstoppable eyelid twitch that you get when you are really, really tired. I use it at every given opportunity; dishing it out like a gift to every slightly fatigued person I come across.
‘I’m exhausted’ they say, ‘My eyes have gone all twitchy and sleepy.’
‘Oh woah, let me see! Yes, there it is. You have a BLEPHAROSPASM!’, I announce with glee.
Silence.
‘Blepharospasm? It’s an eyelid twitch, just like yours… It’s my favourite word.’
Almost without fail, the recipient of this information is bewildered, slightly unsure how to respond, but – as I console myself – they always leave with a slightly richer vocabulary.
I found my favourite word in a weighty volume of the Oxford English dictionary one rainy Sunday afternoon. I wasn’t looking for anything; the dictionary was just on the table. I started at B, because that’s where the book fell open, and there it was, the most surprising word I ever did see.
And so I remembered it, for the simple reason that I thought life was a little bit more exciting with blepharospasm in it.
This brings me in a round about way to my second favourite of all of the words; serendipity. That lovely moment when you happen upon something unexpected that you weren’t looking for and that you didn’t exactly want, but which leaves you feeling all the richer.
And I am sitting here worrying about serendipity. I believe we are in grave danger of losing it, not from the dictionary but from our lives. Let me explain.
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These days we have access to more information than ever before – thank you Google – and we can access that information everywhere in the world via the pocket sized, satellite connected super computers we call mobile phones. But despite this, we are experiencing less and less serendipity.
It’s this data science, artificial intelligence stuff that’s doing it. The personalised, hyper targeted, no wastage, highly efficient way in which our industry is delivering communications is immeasurably changing the information we encounter.
What we have done before, who we appear to ‘be’ and what people who seem to be a bit like us ‘do’ is becoming the story of our future as well as the story of our past.
Now, I’m not against the capabilities of data science, advanced targeting and programmatic advertising per se. I know what I like, and am not averse to more of it.
I am interested in crime drama shows, brand building, hilarious animal videos, current world politics, early noughties pop comebacks, gender equality and unicorn memorabilia. I don’t want to miss out on more of this kind of stuff and am delighted when suggestions crop up in my multiple news feeds.
I don’t want my current interests to define my future at the exclusion of all else.”
But what I don’t want is for my current interests to define my future at the exclusion of all else. For these little passions of mine to be so loudly played back at me that I don’t ever get to see or hear the things I might be missing out on.
In a recent and alarming Pinterest incident, I found my feed entirely filled with sausage dogs. Nothing. But. Dachshunds. Regardless of any recent sausage dog pinning sprees I may have partaken in, this left me bored, cold, uninspired and a little bit less keen on sausage dogs.
This is not OK and it’s not what one signs up for. I want the world to surprise me every day, to challenge me and move me to new places. I want my mind to stretch and to grow. That means seeing things I have never seen before. It might even – shock horror – mean seeing things I don’t think I want to see at all. Our brains need serendipity to make leaps to new places.
Increasingly, I have to actively search for difference and challenge in my life because I appear to be so ‘highly optimised’ that my horizons are rapidly narrowing.
I actively search for weird people and things to follow on Twitter and Instagram, I listen to the songs on Spotify that have never been listened to and I write down every book, show, magazine or exhibition that anyone talks about because I know the brands around me won’t ask me to stretch myself.
I don’t mind when a book is a bit pants, a song makes my ears bleed or a show takes an hour of my life, never to be seen again.
This is the game of life; it’s part of the journey. None of this is wasted time because for every six shockers there is a gem, something that changes me for the better. Something serendipitous, unplanned and totally, utterly wonderful.
So this is my plea. Whilst data allows us to hyper-target, giving people more of what we know they like, let’s not forget that they don’t yet know all the things they like. Let’s broaden our own horizons by loosening the specificity in places, letting some of the unexpected slip through the net and wanging in some wild cards.
Let’s all fight for serendipity.
Sarah Booth is strategy director and partner at Bartle Bogle Hegarty
