In the recent Facebook scandal regarding Cambridge Analytica (CA), I stumbled upon an interview made to Alexander Nix (CA's CEO) at Web Summit '17 (link).

He mentioned an interesting point: how data can replace the work of a creative (a marketer, a designer, a copywriter, etc), when the objective is to influence an audience to achieve a goal (buy a product, for example).

It's still "fresh" in my memory that the work of a creative is to come up with a brilliant idea to influence an audience but, instead of that, that same audience can be influenced based on individual/targeted data, making creativity lose its main role: to persuade.

My question with this is: how do we designers (and other creatives) see data being used as the main "tool" to pass a message? A threat to replace a brilliant and creative work? An opportunity to help sustain our work (when used properly)?