At the turn of the century, as the internet started to come of age, advertisers started to become obsessed with the notion of data being the key driver for all advertising. As soon as we started to measure click-through rates, impressions and clicks, we seemed to lose sight of what brands truly stood for in the process.

When it comes to digital marketing, using data to drive your brand can prove highly successful. Data analysis in itself is one of the most effective practices for building, measuring and learning about campaigns, but sometimes this causes us to start to ignore what our brands stand for.

Storytelling is as old as the hills, and in this day and age with social media allowing you to share a message, branding really matters. It looks like the tide may be turning back to impressions mattering a lot more for brands than the data behind conversions. I’ll explain a little more below, with

The Nike campaign recently released around Colin Kaepernick may mark the turning point in digital marketing where, for the first time, it seems like a brand was finally brave enough to tell a story in digital.

The campaign centred around Colin Kaepernick, a divisive NFL Quarterback famed for “taking a knee” during the national anthem played before NFL games. Taking a knee became a universal symbol of protest, and Colin Kaepernick became symbolic of the struggle of African Americans and police brutality in America. Pandemonium ensued as many conservative Americans took great offence to Kaepernick’s antics.

Sadly, at the height of the pandemonium, Kaepernick was dropped as a quarterback. Despite being a fantastic player, his demise became symbolic of the NFL’s attempts to silence protesting during games.

Nike of course saw this as a fantastic branding opportunity. After much speculation, Nike released its campaign:

“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything”

Now of course, for a relatively unknown brand, the idea that you can allocate your campaign budget to a “getting to know you” type campaign seems absurd. Campaigns should be centred around conversions, and eventually impacting bottom line revenue.

For the first time in recent memory, a big brand launched a truly viral campaign on social media without the need to build a direct line to conversions. In doing so Nike made a smart bet that future audiences would remember that campaign for a long time to come.

In short, Brand is the long game, Data is the short game.