"Control Your Data Before It Controls You": A Tagline for the Times

It was 2007. The iPhone had just been released, Facebook was still mostly for college students, and the term “cloud computing” was just starting to gain traction.

At Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL), we decided to have a little fun with a serious purpose: an internal contest to come up with a new company tagline. Our team members scribbled ideas on notepads, dropped slips into a box, and debated the merits of each over coffee.

The winning entry came from Nir Dayan, Lead Software Engineer at DCL. The tagline was short, sharp, and unforgettable:

“Control your data before it controls you.”

In 2007 this line resonated because many organizations were facing a tidal wave of digitization. Businesses were facing messy archives, inconsistent formats, and the daunting task of converting decades of valuable information into usable digital assets.  “Control your data” meant making sure your content was structured, standardized, and ready for any publishing or delivery channel. Without that, the data could quickly become a liability and be hard to find, hard to use, and easy to lose.

The Meaning Has Changed — and Deepened

Eighteen years later, the landscape has changed. We’re no longer just talking about converting and managing data for print, web, or mobile delivery. Today’s conversation is about how well your data fuels artificial intelligence and LLMs.

In this context, “Control your data before it controls you” takes on a new urgency.

If your content is clean, consistent, and enriched with the right metadata, AI can unlock extraordinary opportunities: improved customer experiences, faster product development, and data-driven decision-making.

What “Control” Means in the AI Era

Today, controlling your data isn’t just about finding it when you need it but it’s also about ensuring data is

• Accurate and up to date so outputs are trustworthy.

• Structured in machine-readable formats like XML or JSON to feed AI pipelines.

• Enriched with context so AI can understand relationships and meaning.

• Governed with clear provenance and compliance checks to protect against risk.

A Tagline That Still Works

Nearly two decades later, that little contest entry still delivers its punch. It’s no longer just about keeping up with digital transformation. It’s about safeguarding your organization’s future in an age where AI amplifies both the strengths and weaknesses of your data.

At DCL, we help organizations do just that — transform complex content into high-quality, structured, enriched assets that are ready for whatever comes next. Because when it comes to data, one thing hasn’t changed since 2007:

The time to take control is now, before it takes control of you.