We’ve all seen it. Sometimes it’s subtle. Sometimes it’s three competitors using the same word in 48-point type.

An entire category starts competing with itself instead of competing for the customer. The claim wars begin. More this. Less that. Faster, cleaner, smarter, better. Cruise control kicks in. Everyone benchmarks one another until they start looking like one another.

I like data. It shows us what people clicked, what they bought, and what they said in a focus group while eating a stale sandwich. It helps us make smarter decisions and avoid expensive mistakes.

But data is much better at protecting a decision than creating distinction. If every brand is reading the same reports and staring at the same dashboard, why would anyone expect a different answer?

Data can lead to comfort, a feeling that is great when you’re taking a break on a beach somewhere. In a category or a boardroom, comfort gets expensive.

The danger is that comfortable decisions typically produce safe campaign language, with images and graphics that are an evolution, not a revolution. Maybe they even move the numbers a bit. But that doesn’t create memory.

A campaign can rack up millions of impressions without making one. A brand line can be read on a billboard and never repeated in a group chat, across the dinner table, or at a bar. Awareness puts your name in front of people. The soul is what sticks.

So, do we fire the data? No. We just stop letting it run the meeting.

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