Dubai: When print, broadcast and online news media started converging, marketers quickly moved towards platform-agnostic campaigns to capture diverging target groups who suddenly found themselves oscillating between different platforms and channels.

Back then, it was still relatively easy for marketers to distinguish between print and internet-based media, and with the help of their creative, media and PR agencies would deploy the required budgets, campaigns and content to reach out to their audiences. Well, if you are an advertiser, best if you start bracing yourselves because life is simple no more.

I am not alluding to the increasing complexity when deciding your budget split between print and digital, as we all know that the pendulum has been swinging towards the latter of late. I am not even referring to the rather odious task of having to include certain unfamiliar or unchartered media in your budget allocation and the risk this may inflict upon your credibility among your stakeholder universe.

No, I am not putting any of the above challenges into the mix I am about to share with you. For that mix is as novel as it is incredibly seamless, a natural concoction of two parallels, a hybrid of the same species. And it’s evolving right at birth.

I am talking about the mix between social media and digital, or digital and social media if you prefer. A line so fine it is hard to dissect it into parts and which nonetheless has been robust enough for some time now to be able to segregate the two conjoined twins from each other.

But recently, this line is getting even thinner with each passing day, obscuring the boundaries of what is considered digital and what is meant to be on the social media side. And the culprit — or enabler, depending on whose side you are on — is Big Data.

A new breed of consultancies is emerging out of Dubai’s desert terrain fusing the talents and brains of digital engineers, number crunchers and content creators. Passionate for the changes they feel they can bring, but hopelessly romantic in their Robin Hood approach, they are running faster than they can walk. That can lead them to extinction and the early adopters to trouble.

Big Data sits at the core of the thesis of these start-ups. This thesis suggests that as long as data is available, mined, analysed and appropriately deployed across an organisation’s marketing and CRM arsenal, it would empower marketers to make informed decisions while using digital and social media tools to make that data relevant for consumer interaction.

The problem with this thinking is the quality of data in this region. When challenged, the new-kids-on-the-block will admit that most data is of questionable credibility as it is mostly extracted by Facebook account profiles. Well, according to the social media giant’s 2013 estimate, between 5.5 per cent and 11.2 per cent of its 1.23 billion accounts are fake. That number can go as high as 137.76 million, if the company’s higher-end estimate is to be believed.

Another issue with this type of data in the UAE is the highly transient nature of the marketplace rendering the relevance of much of this data rather short lived.

Once decisions of spending millions of marketing dirhams are driven by questionable Big Data analytics, the overinflated promises of their “laser-sharp” effectiveness will not take long to be felt. In the meantime, brands who choose to divert much-needed budgets from tried and tested basics will have lost valuable traction and brand equity which will require increased investment in order to recap.

Before you know it, you will have fallen into a vicious cycle lured by the unfounded and yet-to-be-discovered El Dorado of Big Data analytics.

At the end of the day, the big question one needs to ask is whether Big Data is too big to fail or too much of a buzzword to stay.

The truth, or in our instance the right mix, is as always in the middle. As long as everyone acknowledges the relevance of others in this equation and as long as integration remains a challenge — but not an obstacle — the relevant mix can be attained.

The writer is Head of PR and Social Media at Al-Futtaim group and author of ‘Back to the Future of Marketing — PRovolve or Perish’.