I’m a leader in analytics working at a global advertising and production company. My work lately has been in CPG.
I think the core purpose of analytics is to increase velocity in the feedback loop. The faster a team can learn something and act on it, the more it’s worth. There are two ways I try to do that.
Technology. Automating collection, cleaning up processing, building the pipelines and tooling that get data from where it lands to somebody who can actually use it. Most of the delay in analytics isn’t the analysis. It’s everything upstream of it.
Testing and measurement. Confidence in a decision comes from confidence in the data behind it. That means designing tests that can actually answer the question, and building measurement frameworks that hold up when someone pressure-tests them.
Day to day that looks like marketing mix modeling, geo market testing, incrementality work, creative effectiveness, and a fair amount of infrastructure. It also means leading a team and figuring out how to get findings in front of people early enough that they can still do something about them.
I write here about that work — measurement, media, and the judgment calls that don’t fit on a slide, and anything else I want. These thoughts are my own.
Tools
Mostly Python and SQL, with Snowflake underneath. Stan for geo test design, Streamlit for internal tooling, Tableau for reporting. But I don’t think the specific tools matter much. They change constantly, and something better shows up every year. What matters is having worked across enough of them to know what a given problem actually needs, and being willing to pick up whatever that turns out to be.
Outside of work
I’m based in Norfolk, Virginia, and up in New York often — the agency’s headquartered there.
At home I like building things: woodworking, projects around the house, working on the yard, and a 3D printer that stays busier than it probably should. I also spend more time than I’ll admit poking at AI tooling and seeing what I can get it to do. We spend time at the beach and travel when we can.