Data-led creativity: A riff on the hot fuss
Machine-learning gives us an opportunity to be more creative, and highly targeted and efficient in marketing, but are we truly optimising this data back into our creative work?
Digital transformation in marketing allows marketers to have transparency and see who is actually engaging with their brands – but is it who we think it is or want our brand audiences to be? If yes, how can we adjust our marketing efforts to engage this target audience more specifically, intimately and creatively?
If not, how can we use data to appeal to a brand’s preferred audience? Or how can we use data to engage the audience that is already there – perhaps an unexpected subset of aspirational or future consumers, or a following - and insight to a greater demand - in an unexpected location? The discovery of such an audience could become a vital part to a brand’s success story. Data lets us understand how to intentionally engage with and optimise communications to convert loyal followers to customers.
These are some of the hidden opportunities – and solutions – data-driven creativity allows us to explore and harness for brand impact and success.
WHAT’S THE BUZZ
‘Data’ has become this buzz word bandied about by everyone; we apparently need to collect all this data all the time in order to see, understand and get on a human level with our audiences. But what is the use of collecting all this information, if it’s not intelligently processed and channeled - creatively and effectively - back into the place from which it came?
This is a problem marketers the world over are facing – because it takes time, energy and resources to thoroughly work through the analytics and glean usable and actionable insights. Yes, there are tools that can organise this information, but utilising it - really splitting the atom in the quest for creative solutions, requires brain power. Machine Learning, ultimately, cannot replace the creative human mind.
All the tools, platforms and data sources that can be found across and behind the digital presence of the modern, digitally transformed brand, can inform the creative process. There are many creative directions one can run, and many creative executions that can evolve, from a really good, really unique, or really smart insight.
The thinking goes that businesses, brands and creative agencies alike, that activate their data and optimise the technology available to them, are able to take more creative risks, and prove their, albeit sometimes wild, ideas - this is good news for brands with risk-averse budgets. And great news for creativity and the foundations on which the future-proofing of creativity can be set.
So, the opportunity of data-led creativity equals results-driven and proven creativity; if you’re only willing to do the dirty - read: analytical - work to get there!
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
With all the tools available, it’s never been easier to understand how your audience ticks; know what they are interested in and passionate about; get to know them more deeply. In a nutshell, there’s really no excuse for bland and uninformed marketing when there’s a wealth a datasets to inspire smarter communication.
The next step is to point your marketing strategy in the direction of what the data says works. To align and resonate more strongly with your desired audience is then a matter of following the science. Data can be used to connect, tell stories that are meaningful and relate to the lived experience of consumers. It can also be a gateway to finding them in the other places, communities and brand worlds they hang out in. People spend the most time in micro-communities based on their individual and highly niched interests.
Brands that play well into the data-led creative space and optimise their assets to reach different subsets according to the content they are choosing to engage with, are experiencing dramatic lift in search interest and good, old-fashioned, top of mind recall. A/B Testing can be an expansive creative treatment in its own right; far from being limited to ‘testing’; it can be an iterated creative experience.
Strategic experimentation can have great, and even massive, results for brands open to playing to leverage the digital opportunity. It allows you to find what works and learn from what doesn’t - information that was hard to come by in the broadcast and ‘spray and pray’ era.
The nature of the data-led renaissance means it’s also easier to learn from others – from the experiments, fails and supreme wins of other brands; evidence-based outcomes are a click and a search away.
THE HEAT IS ON
The essence of live campaigns allows you to learn and iterate in real time – if an ad isn’t working or being noticed by your audience, you can tweak your target audience or update your ad creative for something that is, not necessarily more ‘big, bold and shouty’, but smarter and more effective for adapting in the moment. Small tweaks and changes can make the difference between missing the mark entirely or stopping thumbs mid-scroll.
The key to it all is experimentation and agility – and highly creative, bright minds, of course – but being able to work fast as an agile team of marketers and creators; to efficiently adapt and evolve, and conjur magic in the moment while the heat of the moment is still warm to the touch. Data-led creativity thrives in real time because data is a dish best-served fresh, hot and happening.
