Brief
Dentsu Africa proposes conversational analytics to replace static marketing reports
Wayne Tigere says the new approach lets marketers ask data‑driven questions in natural language, cutting reporting cycles.
By Felo News Desk · Published
Wayne Tigere, product innovation and growth director at Dentsu Africa, argues that the marketing industry’s reliance on static reports is a costly habit and proposes conversational analytics as a replacement. In a piece published on Bizcommunity on 2 October 2026, he explains that the problem is not a lack of data but the distance between a question and an answer.
What happened
Tigere describes the traditional reporting workflow: data teams collect information, analysts interpret it, strategists frame insights, account teams present the findings and clients receive a deck of slides, dashboards and charts. He notes that once a report is delivered, any new question that the report cannot answer restarts the cycle, leaving insight arriving after the moment it was needed.
What the reports add
The article highlights that Dentsu Africa sees an “access problem” rather than a data shortage, citing the abundance of campaign, commerce, audience, financial, market‑performance and spend data now available. Tigere stresses that conversational analytics enables natural‑language queries, allowing users to interrogate performance data directly instead of waiting for periodic reviews.
What was said
"The most valuable question is usually the next one," Tigere told Bizcommunity. He adds that the shift is not merely from dashboards to chat interfaces but from receiving information to interrogating it. He also states, "Yes, answers arrive faster. Yes, analysts spend less time building decks. Yes, reporting cycles become shorter. But faster reporting isn’t the disruption. The disruption is that the report stops being the centre of the conversation."
How it came about
The piece links to Dentsu’s broader critique of habit‑driven marketing, echoing themes from the agency’s recent Africa Digital Digest that warned marketers to move beyond platform‑centric planning. Tigere’s call for conversational analytics builds on Dentsu’s ongoing focus on behavioural‑driven strategies and its recent MIC masterclass at Loeries Creative Week, which explored new creative growth models in an attention economy.
Key facts
- Dentsu Africa sees the reporting process as an operating‑model problem rather than a data shortage. (bizcommunity.com)
- Conversational analytics lets marketers ask natural‑language questions of performance data. (bizcommunity.com)
- Wayne Tigere says the shift will make reports stop being the centre of the conversation. (bizcommunity.com)
Sources
- [1] bizcommunity.com — originally reported as “What if you could just ask? Conversational analytics and the end of the static report - Dentsu”
