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A few months ago I wrote some of the classic lines used by CSO Insight’s Barry Trailer to describe the importance of sales analytics.

• “Don’t expect what you don’t inspect.”
• “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

Good advice, and much better than the well-worn “BI-partisan” mantras of “one truth” and “for the masses.” My favorite quote on statistics is this one from Winston Churchill:

“Statistics are like a drunk with a lamp post: used more for support than illumination.”

Lately I’ve been seeing a rise in creative business intelligence marketing programs. Last week I was invited to a data warehousing vendor webinar called, “BI: The Inconvenient Truth.” I like it. Today I heard about a marketing campaign that refers to business intelligence as an “economic stimulus package.” Not bad. Better than Pipeline Shock and Awe I suppose, but it still pales in comparison to the now classic (in my mind at least) On-Demand Business Intelligence Time and We Couldn’t Get the Answers.

The rise in creative new ways of getting the business intelligence message out to customers and the market may be due to:

• The fact that analytics is more like aspirin than vitamins in difficult economic times.
• New vendors bringing new approaches and innovation to the market.
• The realization that telling impactful stories with quantifiable ROI is king (as the French say).
• A need to overcome past failed data warehouse experiences.
• More and more business intelligence bloggers (and tweeters) helping to get the unfiltered word out about solutions and benefits.

Either way, it’s encouraging. But it’s not just the vendors. Check out this video of the Gartner BI analysts band Star Schema 2.0 letting their hair down at their recent European conference:

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