• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 24, 2013

If you’re old school like me, you are no doubt familiar with the “five Ps of marketing.” If you’re not familiar with them, don’t worry, they’re ancient history and are about to be replaced by the “five Vs,” according to a compelling new report from aptly name Big Data firm Teradata. The five Vs, according to the report, “Be A Big Data Marketing Hero,” are volume, velocity, variety, veracity and value. While they’re all important, and deserving of blog posts of their own, I’d like to focus on the concept of velocity, because of the real-time implications associated with accelerating the speed at which data flows and decisions are made based on them.

Velocity, of course, is a noun defined as, “a measure of quickness in a given period of time.” In the world of real-time marketing, and specifically, in the language of Big Data analytics, velocity refers to the “speed at which new data can be generated, assimilated and analyzed or data-driven marketing operations.”

That’s the technical definition, but the folks at Teradata note there is also an organizational meaning, which is how quickly people -- and the systems they use -- can respond to the data.

“The real-time aspect of modern data delivery has revolutionized business operations and customer service -- along with many other aspects of business, including advertising and promotions,” the report notes, adding, “Customers and corporate leaders expect immediate responses and transactions, so companies have no choice but to deliver.”

The impact on the organization depends on what type of marketers they are. Promotion-centric brands might react in real-time to information being delivered by coupons via smartphones to customers geographically near their places of business, while an e-commere brand might focus more on data from site usage or related channels that drive traffic to them, and respond with dynamic consumer offers.

As formidable as tracking, processing and analyzing Big Data might be, the real task for any marketing organization or agency is developing the organization and infrastructure capable of applying it in lock-step, or as close as possible to it. As the velocity of the data flow accelerates, so must the people and organizations relying on it. But how fast can we go?