5 reasons creatives should embrace data

 This is an excellent article for all marketing creatives struggling with big data. Marque gives great insight and current examples of how some brands are embracing data... and in a very creative way.

"It's clear that data is not a threat - it's an untapped resource that creatives must learn to embrace and use to help us thrive" Marque Kabbaz, Senior Creative. 

5 reasons creatives should embrace data

Recently I had the good fortune of being made redundant from my role as a senior creative in a traditional advertising agency. It's something people in my industry accept as a natural part of the peak and trough life cycle of advertising. Win a pitch – hire-a-palooza. Lose business – start cutting back on expensive people.

But this time around, I had already made the decision that I was ready to do more with my creative curiosity. I joined the industry because I was insatiably curious by nature, saw ideas in everything, and was driven by stories. I finished my degree in psychology and jumped into a graphic design and advertising degree straight away. Figure out how people make decisions then learn how to deliver messages that have the desired outcome. (Today, combining these areas has become known as behavioural economics.) I thought that advertising was the perfect fit for my personality type and my love of stories.

For a long time it was.

Then something shifted in me. And something shifted in the industry at large. Freedom of expression was always encouraged, but only employed if it fell in line with the agency's creative vision, the strategist's insights and the account manager's view of what the client wants. Creativity is, by nature, subjective. You only have to read the comments section in any creative showcase, forum, or website to see that opinions differ greatly. 

But even more challenging, for me, was the fact that insightful, engaging stories were not the focus any more. It was about 'cool' and 'innovative', 'world-first', 'creative renegades'. It began to remind me of Dan Shapiro's blog post on company culture being a meaningless platitude.

Add to that the fact that a lot of advertising agencies are still talking about integrating digital into their business models, but really, the digital departments are being utilised as production, not creative. We live in a digital world – digital integration happened years ago. If anything, as agencies, we need to figure out how to integrate traditional media and thinking into today's digital world.

I recently had a chat with the CEO of 33Talent, Rob Fanshawe, who spoke at length about the explosion in big data, as a tool, an opportunity, and as an industry unto itself. It made me wonder how much of the future of the creative industry relies on data. Singapore has already appointed its first Chief Data Scientist, and Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) said data and analytics could generate an additional S$10 - S$17 billion (US$7.84 billion to US$13.32 billion) per year for the Singapore economy. Source

"Ok, but I'm a creative", I hear you groan. "Who cares about data?". If you want to be a leading creative well into the next decade, here are 5 things worth thinking about before you turn your back on data as a creative resource.

Information is everything

In the traditional advertising world the brief outlines the problem that needs solving, the insights into the market that could help to solve that problem, the audience we are talking to, and what we want them to think. It's all pretty broad. And the executions are inevitably restricted by budget, the media that the client has already booked, and their appetite for 'risk'. Most creatives have a drawer filled with ideas that have either been killed internally, or by clients. The reasons vary, from being 'off brief' or 'off brand', to being too expensive, or too 'risky.

Now imagine the creative, strategy, media and client people involved all had access to data that removed even a part of that perceived risk, but added a fist-full of quantified and qualified data, making the 'one size fits all' ad campaign a thing of the past. I'd argue that this is a great thing for the client's ROI and the natural future (however change-resistant agencies continue to be) of advertising.

Micro, targeted campaigns, that are tailored to the individual, become a conversation. They allow brands to tell stories that are hyper-relevant, geo-specific and completely integrated into the unique lives of every segment of its audience.

Cracking the code

Exabytes of data is great. But collecting it and storing it 'because we can' is not reason enough. Advanced analytics is needed to crack the code of big data and make the information useable. In an article published back in 2013, McKinsey & Company wrote about 'leveraging big data to maximise digital media ROI'. Today, we are closer to cracking this code as the next section shows, but my question is why this needs to pertain only to digital media. That feels like just the tip of the proverbial. I believe there is an opportunity here for entertainment, experiential design, habitat design, geo-specific display advertising and more.

Big data is still a big mess

A lot of the negative chatter around big data, especially in those agencies that are talking about it, is that it's a whole bunch of useless information.
Ask Bill Demas, the CEO of TURN, and he'll tell you they have doubled their revenue every year since their pivot into big data. With years of experience analysing data to help marketers better understand their key audience segments, he decided Turn's new offering should help those marketers collect and store data, in real time, so that they could make better decisions. "But they are not a creative agency", you say. Sure. Read on.

Big data is not a big mess

Earlier this year BBDO created one of the most successful ad campaigns ever for AT&T. Called 'It's not complicated', it was made possible by a massive 3 year big data project. This was creativity powered by big data, and it's where we're all heading. This campaign generated an estimated (additional) $50Million in sales for the telco, meaning that it was a qualified success, not just a great experiment. Source

Big data is already shaping the creative landscape.

As far back ago as the 2013 Tribeca Talks Industry panel discussion, global leaders in the film, entertainment and technology industries gathered to discuss "Big data and the Movies". SAP Labs Senior Vice President and General Manager of Media Industry Solutions, Richard Whittington posited that big data is the new oil.
With content becoming the new greatest consumer product brands can deliver to their audience, data helps studios (and brands) decide what to market, how to market it, and why. The rise of the 'second screen' quickly becoming the screen of choice, there are a multitude of ways to deliver more engaging and relevant stories to our audience. Data can help to show us how.

But the biggest opportunity of all, in my humble opinion, is convergence. And I'm not alone among my creative community. Advertising is no longer TVC, outdoor and radio. It's not a 'movement' or a 'project'. And it's not 3D projection mapping. It's so much more.

Apple knows that the iWatch is a data collection point as much as it is a product. The collected data feeds directly into the Health app and becomes a empowering (and indispensable) part of the user's life. This is content.

Johnny Walker knows that to attract a younger audience to a product with an air of old, takes something more than a traditional channel. So in partnership with online retailer Mr Porter, the 'Gentlemen's Wager' was born. Why Mr Porter and not ASOS or Gilt or Frank&Oak? Mr Porter is perfectly aligned to the Johnny Walker Blue values and caters to the 40+ gentleman set. The viewers can shop the look seen in the six minute short film right from the Mr Porter online store.

GE knows that a limited edition sneaker is certainly more at home under a brand like Nike. But recreating the moon boot that set down on the surface of the moon back in 1969, reimagined as a sneaker made of innovative GE materials, is genius that transcends brand boundaries and course-corrects GE in the minds of a new generation. Making only 100 pairs,and selling them relatively cheaply (less than US$200) on online retailer Jackthreads.com is a great strategy. But all of these decisions have been driven by data.

So even if you consider your self 'right brain' and see numbers and data as 'left brain', (this is a fallacy by the way) it's clear that data is not a threat - it's an untapped resource that creatives must learn to embrace and use to help us thrive. Creativity is subjective – perhaps data can guide us with some objectivity.

By: Marque Kabbaz

Source: LinkedIn Pulse