Down with dashboards!

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Hello Spark reader,

“Marketing teams aren't failing because they lack data; they’re failing because they’re drowning in it.”

I’m sure these words will resonate with many of you in teams or organisations where marketing has become a “reporting sport”. I recently connected with Sean Sampson, Managing Partner of a South African creative agency who was experiencing exactly that—and decided to do something about it. They’ve developed an exciting AI-powered solution that might just transform marketing reporting for good!

Enjoy,

—Ryan

Tell us about your background and how you became interested in the power of AI for marketing?

I think a lot of teams are currently going through the same pain we did.

We are a creative agency and our creative has taken centre stage for the last 5 years, won us some awards, and some very cool clients. In order to deliver on our client goals, we of course had all the dashboards that we could informing us of how our campaigns were doing. The overall strength of our creative and creative team kept the campaign results trending in the right direction, but the hard part was trying to grasp why or what was causing specific ups and downs in the metrics.

Then, a year ago, we bumped into Martin. Martin has a Masters in Computer Science and Advanced Mathematics, and he had just exited from the software company he had built up to employing about 50 software developers. Martin likes Cappuccino. Ryan le Roux, my business partner, makes a great cappuccino. It seemed obvious we should work together.

Through Martin we had access to deep knowledge about the AI industry—so we built a team around him. This team has built a product that is now helping our agency and others. It’s an ever-changing landscape, so we’re learning and building day by day.

How did you frame the right problem to go after?

The real problem isn’t that marketers don’t have insight—it’s that insight is often locked behind work.

In most teams, understanding performance means someone has to pull reports, interpret charts, build a narrative, and then convince everyone else. That process takes time, and because it’s slow, decisions get made based on habit, instinct, or what feels ‘safe’. So the problem we decided to go after was:

You talk about the ‘antidote to dashboards’—what’s wrong with dashboards?

Dashboards aren't inherently ‘bad’, but they are just containers. They tell you what happened, but they almost never tell you why or what's worth your attention.

They provide the illusion of control: seeing a screen full of charts makes us feel like we’re managing things, but visibility isn't the same as actually taking action.

So when I say ‘down with dashboards’, I don’t mean ‘burn the charts’—I mean stop mistaking reporting for thinking.

In what instances are dashboards actually useful and where do they quietly fail?

They help when you already know what you’re looking for and you’ve got simple, steady goals e.g. you have a clear KPI, a stable funnel, and a specific question. They allow you to monitor health, spot obvious problems, and keep teams aligned. They are also great at giving the user a lot of information within a single visual—and are much better at doing that than just words.

Where they fail is when the situation is complex, fast-moving or unclear—which is most real marketing. When things get messy with multiple channels interacting, when the market shifts, or you’re trying to figure out which creative actually drove a sale, you end up staring at a ‘wall of facts’ with no way to know what’s driving the results.

That’s where teams get stuck: they can see the numbers, but they can’t see the story.

You talk about the fact that dashboards have created a whole operation around reporting. What happens inside a team when reporting becomes the work?

When reporting becomes the main event, the culture shifts from making progress to just showing activity:

• Meetings become boring status updates

• People spend their energy defending their specific numbers instead of trying to improve the business

• Teams get ‘busy’ but the actual strategy gets buried under the weight of producing the next report

If insight becomes simple to access and understand, how does that impact day-to-day workflow and what other benefits have you seen?

The goal isn't to have a ‘magic button’, but to make insights accessible without needing a specialist to translate them every time. The immediate benefits are speed and focus: it allows teams to learn and iterate based on evidence rather than arguing over opinions.

But doesn't just apply to marketing, either—every function that makes decisions has the same underlying problem: there’s information everywhere, but clarity is rare.

If you can translate complexity into usable direction, it applies to:

• Product teams deciding what to build next

• Customer teams understanding churn risk

• Finance teams spotting inefficiencies early

• Leadership teams making decisions without waiting for a monthly report cycle

The opportunity is moving from ‘data visibility’ to ‘decision intelligence’. Not replacing people, but helping people make better calls with less friction.

What are the limits? Where does AI not help?

AI isn't a silver bullet.

It can't take responsibility: humans still have to decide what ‘good’ looks like and what trade-offs are worth making.

And it won't fix a mess: if your goals are unclear or your data is garbage, AI will just help you chase the wrong metrics faster.

Sean Sampson is a South African entrepreneur who started his first business at university and has been building ever since. His journey eventually led to 11&1, and now into software and AI-driven products. He has a practical, solutions-led view of marketing, one focused on solving real business problems, unlocking growth and building useful innovations like Mia, using systems thinking and AI.

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Send us your shout-outs and strong opinions to include in next week’s edition at [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace, a global B2B creative studio and consultancy that helps businesses drive meaningful brand and commercial impact. Get in touch if you’d like to chat with any of the team. Have a great week ahead.