Religion And Wealth–Distilling Vast Amounts of Information

As you can tell, even more than information itself, I find fascinating the role it can play in decision making.  Throughout my career in community/destination marketing I faced the never-ending challenge of condensing vast amounts of information into “at-a-glance” formats.

Most often this format was important in order to distill measurable performance indicators or to help time-starved local officials with “just in time” delivery of data to inform decisions, often when retention proved futile, over and over and over and over again..

I’m known to have strong opinions, so people found it ironic that as early as seven years into my now concluded nearly-40-year career, I turned to data- or information-based decision making as a means to help the communities I represented leapfrog more established competition.

Thanks to friends like Dave Dittman, a public opinion researcher in Anchorage and Dave and Judy Palmer, then executives with Alaska Airlines and Princess Tours respectively this was years before data-based decision making became established as a best practice in community marketing.

It worked and so dramatically that in turn I find it ironic that so many remain still wedded to anecdotal opinions, blind to data and are thus pretty much held hostage, along with the communities they represent, to a long-outmoded way of making decisions.

Of course, it could be that some of those DMO execs are being held hostage to outmoded ways of making decisions by their governing boards or local officials.  Either way those communities lose.

So I hope anyone who finds this blog of interest will also find it useful when, from time to time, I share some remarkable ways huge amounts of data are today being distilled into what we now refer to as infographics.

An great example is the one found by clicking on the image above or on the website GOOD (for people who give a damn) which distills information about various religions and the household income of their followers as gathered in a study by the Pew Center .

I know, I know, this doesn’t address the fact that many folks don’t appear to know what to do with information, especially if it is different that what they hold as opinions or conventional wisdom.

More on that later.