In 1990, mathematician John Allen Paulos wrote a book called Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences. His point? Illiteracy has an equally devious sibling in the world of numbers.

As a result, numbers are far too often used for mere reporting and far too rarely used to tell stories. I think we should take the opposite approach – and use Innumeracy as an opportunity.

An opportunity to innovate. To rethink and reframe. The fact that too many eyes glaze over at the introduction of charts and graphs should not be a reason to either (a) get rid of charts and / or graphs or (b) accept subpar charts and / or graphs.

There is no one way to present numbers because there is no one way to understand numbers. So don’t feel that you have to present them one way. Strive to use numbers as a way to capture someone’s imagination. Two recent examples that captured mine:

Videos On YouTube: Earlier this year, YouTube celebrated its sixth birthday. At the time, it was announced that 48 hours of video are now uploaded to YouTube every minute. Impressive. But what does that mean? Think about it this way: More video is uploaded in two months than the three major U.S. networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) combined created in six decades. Wow. I get it. And I’ve already told someone about it.

Time Spent On Facebook: It should come as no surprise to anyone that a good deal of time is spent on social networks. One widely reported statistic? Americans spend one quarter of their online time on social networks. That sounds like a big number. But @sarahvanelzen posed it this way to me yesterday: People spend 1.3 million years on Facebook every month. Wow. I get it. And I’ve already told someone about it.

As “big data” becomes the office-equivalent of a household word, we have an opportunity to make numbers meaningful. We should start by using them for what they are good for – telling stories.

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But more and more, best practices must consider what’s right now. And consider what’s next. They must make some assumptions – based on looking to the future.

In 2007, IBM predicted that the advertising world would change as much in the next five years as it had in the last fifty. We’re speeding towards the end of that line. And it feels like the change is just getting started.

In the face of rapid change, your best practices can’t become a prison to conformity.  Best practices must be discovered and adopted, but in the face of ever more rapid change, they must be abandoned with as much discipline.

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The interviews with the designers are both interesting and insightful. Hearing designers talk about their craft made me think about a planner’s job. Especially the idea that good design is when users think “of course that’s the way it is.”

The point – that was mildly jaw-dropping to me – was that good design doesn’t need to be jaw-dropping. Except, perhaps, in its simplicity. The same can be said for good strategy.

Good strategy does not have to be surprising. It doesn’t need to make you think it is brilliant. Or – even – all that interesting. I like Farrah Bostic’s point about insights. She says there are no such things as insights. Her case in point? Nike+ was built on the insight that people like to listen to music when they exercise. Not exactly Nobel-worthy. But it did change a category.

One worthy bar worth striving for? Being self-evident. Strategies don’t need to start simple. But they should be made so.

Make sense of the chaos in a way that allows everyone to move forward confidently. Simplify. Focus. Cut away the non-essentials. Do it again. And – hopefully – you’ll get to a point where someone looks at your strategy as says, “of course that’s the way it is.” Being intuitive – in design and strategy – wins.

Design your strategy accordingly.

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And these can be incredibly valuable.

Questions customer responses to research aren’t good at answering: Do we need to take a chance or play it safe? How will this affect the internal culture? The website? The sales force? What is the cost of executing well? The extendability of the idea? Its emotion? Its clarity? Its potential to breakthrough? How it connects to our business goals? Its implications for bottom line growth?

And these can be incredibly important.

As the world becomes more complex, the issues marketers face and the environments in which we face them are following close behind. We do research to make sure we understand the “voice” outside of our proverbial four walls. But the expert voices inside those walls need to be understood, too.

On these considerations, it’s important to remember, the customer can’t always be right. Instead, it’s up to you and your team.

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That same month – July 2010 – an AdAge article suggested that coupons may be selling more body wash than The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. I know this because I bookmarked it, wanting to come back to it with some hindsight. Hindsight like: This campaign just won the Grand Effie.

So, was this the most effective advertising of the year or a case of coupons accelerating  the growth of a brand in a growing category?

I don’t know. But, as I’ve written many times before, the long run matters. And I fear the AdAge article was falling prey to benchmark-eting, so I’d put my money on the former. That said, I’m not sitting around a conference room table with the folks who could actually know. Neither, it should be noted, were the Effie judges or the AdAge reporter. There is likely truth to both.

The bottom line is that numbers and data are what we make them. So proceed with caution. Don’t ask “what do we know?,” ask “what do I care?” And while simple answers may be comfortable, true success comes in successfully navigating complexity.

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The first issue was released to the public this month. It’s dedicated to data. And, seeing as Google is addicted to data, I thought the perspective was refreshing. From the people who brought us Google Insights and Google Analytics comes a Google Pause in the form of a quote from Guy Laurence, the CEO of Vodafone UK. This should become a daily affirmation for marketers:

We were brought up to believe more data was good, and that’s no longer true.

In other words, let’s stop asking “What do we know?” And let’s start asking “What do I care?” “What do we know?” is the path to efficiency. “What do I care?” is the path to effectiveness.

It’s an essential question because it’s easy for the data we have to become the dictator of what we need to do. Tangible, easy-to-measure metrics – like click-through rates – become more important because… we have them. Now, click-through rates can be an important measure of banner success. I won’t argue that. But they are one measure. And because they are ubiquitous, they can easily become shorthand for success – the only measure consistently asked about.

Because we are asking “What do we know?,” we know the click-through rate is .X%. But what do I care? That depends on the objective. And that’s a harder question to ask and a harder question to answer.

I’ve written before about how click-through rates only tell part of the story. A piece this week from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard confirms that, while easy to measure, click-through rate is only one part of engagement. Time-and-time again, we’ve seen that CTR ≠ ROI. So don’t give up on increasing awareness or changing perceptions or meeting whatever objective it is you care about.

A well-defined objective will make you more objective. It will focus you on the right behaviors. And that can make answering “What do I care?” much easier.

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[Editor’s Note: Not for nothing, but click-through rates may have seemed like they were picked on in this piece. It’s because they are easy to know. The question “What do I care?” can – and should – reach much farther. From reach and frequency to ad equivalency. Easy-to-measure metrics to not equate to importance.]

Marketers must jettison the generic. According to @roger_brooks, we are exposed to 5,000 marketing messages a day. And everybody uses the same language to describe similar things. As a result, 97% of community-based marketing is ineffective because it is too general. What a scary proposition. I’m thinking of having “Part of the 3%” t-shirts printed up for our team here.

Consumers have a new resourcefulness. Peter Yesawich shared a number of his recent research findings – including 86% of respondents agreeing that “these difficult times have helped me to focus on the things that matter most in my life” and 79% of respondents agreeing that “I have become a much smarter shopper.” We often say that “savvy is badge.” He went one step further: “value is in vogue.”

Both of these point to the continuing – and bigger – evolution. Consumers are becoming self-directed. In travel. In healthcare. In financial services. Really, in whatever category you can name. The study that laid the groundwork for McKinsey’s Consumer Decision Journey found that two-thirds of touchpoints with a brand during the active evaluation stage are consumer – not company – directed. That’s a sea change that we’re still riding. The brands that win will be the ones that will figure out how to transform accordingly. In a non-generic way, of course.

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We have a saying around the office: In the battle between the TV and the computer, the winner is the phone. And the implications for businesses are flying at us freight-train fast. Smartphone stats are all about “more…”

More users. Based on Nielsen numbers, an estimated 51% of the U.S. population will have a smartphone by the end of 2011.

Spending more time. eMarketer reports that consumers spend an average of 50 minutes a day on their mobile devices. And time spent with mobile is rising faster than all other media.

Enjoying more control. According to Microsoft Advertising and Compete, 46% of smartphone owners compare prices on their phone while in the store.

Recognizing more utility. 56% of respondents to a Deloitte Consulting survey who owned both a smartphone and a laptop agreed the smartphones were replacing “many of the roles” of these computers. This number is up from 41% just three months earlier.

Evaluating more touchpoints. A study from ClickZ reported that 33% of online shoppers also visit online retailer from mobile device.

From more devices. Android has been growing. BlackBerry has been faltering. And Apple has been holding steady (for the moment). According to a recent MediaPost piece, each had about 28% share as of December.

The numbers are in. Your brand can win by going mobile. So what more are you doing?

[More smart stats for smartphones can be found here.]

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Make it pretty. There is a false dichotomy between data and creativity. The presentation of data should be interesting, engaging and relevant. Data can change perceptions. Data can affect behavior. Don’t think of numbers like a textbook or a spreadsheet. Think of them like an advertisement. A great, recent example? The connections Facebook makes – a map of human relationships.

Make it simple. Mark Twain once said, “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” It’s an important idea that should be applied to every research presentation. Everywhere. Always. The common misperception is that numbers are scary. Numbers aren’t scary. How they are presented? That’s another story. Complexity is a choice. It’s one that must be avoided. Watch Hans Rosling take 200 years of population data for 200 countries and make it make sense. In four minutes.

Make it a story. There was a great piece in the New York Times a few weeks back titled Stories vs. Statistics that made the point that with stories, we suspend disbelief. But with statistics, we suspend belief. That’s insightful. Make sure your numbers have a point. It doesn’t matter whether they are interesting or rational, surprising or expected. Make them memorable. Make them sharable. Tell a story.

Three articles caught my eye recently and were quickly put in my growing file titled “Reminders of just how accessible and interesting data can be.” Their profundity varies, but each, I believe provides a look ahead for marketers:

When do people break up? According to the new book The Visual Miscellaneum, the break-up is much more likely to happen two weeks before Christmas than closer to the date. And it’s based on compelling data from quite possibly the best source for this information – Facebook. In the world of “at the right time” communications, I would imagine dating services, bars with Ladies’ Nights and ice cream manufacturers would be interested in the data.

When are iPhone users most happy? According to a study published in Science magazine by Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, it’s when they are focused. The authors used an iPhone app to explore moment-to-moment happiness and found that 46.9% of people’s time is spent thinking about something other than what they are doing. That matters for advertisers and web developers. And provides a roadmap for those designing brand experiences (think: engaging).

Where is the economy heading? The Billions Prices Project is “an academic initiative that collects prices from hundreds of online retailers around the world on a daily basis to conduct economic research.” By monitoring prices of 300 online retailers in more than 70 countries, the folks at MIT are building models to forecast future trends. Somebody get the White House on the phone.

And this is just going to get more interesting. As more TV fans check-in to their favorite shows, advertisers will be able to get a better feel for the context of content. Which shows have the most tech-savvy, engaged fans? And which shows are being time-shifted by their tech-savvy, engaged fans?

Clearly, translating data to insight and insight to implication is essential to success, thus the title of this post. But it’s worth noting that in two of these three examples, the A-Ha moments came from existing infrastructures. The knowledge was created by talented, dedicated people. But their power was not self-made. At least not totally. It came from the accessible and / or existing data.

What insights would you need to make better, more confident decisions? Does it exist already? Could you build an infrastructure to better capture it?

Take a fresh look at these questions. Set yourself up to be powerful.