Creative data? Ingenious information? Inspired intelligence? Inventive astuteness? Thoughtful understanding?

Data is finally cool and it’s because it is suddenly a little bit scary/sexy.

The world is full of data, more than 2.5 quintillion bytes are created every day and a lot of it is about us. We took a selfie, bought something online, used our Satnav, and every time we did another little fact was stored alongside the others. Stored in vast, sterile servers, processed and matched, cooled by huge fans, separated from reality by descriptions of clouds rather than machines. It all feels a little big brother, a little Huxley, a little, well, scary.

And who has the power over this new world? Not philosophers, or clerics. Not artists or legislators. No, it’s the super clever. The people who have the ability to fuse both art and science. The ones who can find the magic inside the numbers. The storytellers who create the new from the ether. It is the people who can turn this cold, impersonal binary code into something human, inspiring, clever, funny, and emotional.

And we love it. Air B&B, Uber, Zipcar, Amazon and Netflix recommendations, Spotify playlists, Instagram, snapchat, twitter, virtual reality, Nike fuel band, the iPhone. We love to share, to talk, to find each other, to measure our progress and to enjoy these amazing services and gadgets that make our lives so easy and more fun.

We know the data is out there and we want to use it. Increasingly individuals want to control their data and trade it with brands they trust and enjoy. A survey by the DMA in 2015 showed that 91% of us want to control our data but that more than half of us are pragmatists who understand and want to manage a beneficial data exchange with brands. And this trend is increasing.

The clever brands will treat this data carefully, like secrets shared by friends. The successful brands will value the spirit behind the new GDPR (Government Data Protection Regulation) and create stronger, more trusted and loyal relationships with their customers.

But to do this we need the new thinkers, the whole brainpower combination. These are the people who can create the great products, who build the customer journeys, who generate the opportunities to engage that are intuitive, useful, fun. We need to create ways of working and environments that bring different perspectives together fusing data with imagination, fact with feeling.

We are happy to share our data if we enjoy those ideas and interactions. The GDPR is an opportunity for great brands to be more brilliant. Outstanding customer engagement builds trust and is created from inspired intuition from those whole brain thinkers. It is exciting to imagine what they will think of next.