In Marketing, Creativity and Data Must Work Hand-In-Hand
Caid Christiansen•All around us, there’s talk of the increasing importance of data in marketing.
Data and analytics, the industry says, must be a part of marketing decisions.
We couldn’t agree more. In fact, we’ve written about this multiple times before. Your organization needs to invest in metrics–now. Marketing experts need also to be ready to trust more in analytics than in their personal taste. We’re a data-heavy organization; in marketing, gut instincts are no longer enough.
And yet, as the use of data in marketing becomes more sophisticated, and as organizations get better at using data to inform strategic marketing decisions, it’s important not to lose sight of a key skill: creativity.
Jim Carroll described this problem in a recent piece for The Guardian. Marketing, he said, risks becoming mechanistic without imaginative ideas to animate it. While modern brands will be data-rich and heavily reliant upon technology, “we need to protect the role of creativity in our culture, people, and processes.” The trouble is, data and automation sometimes make too much sense–they’re very linear. Imagination and differentiation, even when based upon data, still require creative ideas to succeed.
For an example outside of marketing, we need look no further than Spotify. Spotify is often hailed as a shining example of modern algorithm usage; it knows what you listen to and finds new music you could’ve never found on your own. But in the search for the perfect playlist, Spotify still relies on an “editorial team” to build and refine playlists. Those playlists are populated and assisted by droves of data, but at the end of the day, they still need a human touch to stay grounded and sharp.
Even if your data usage isn’t as sophisticated as Spotify’s, creativity must still have a place within your marketing. If it doesn’t, you risk losing that emotional connection with customers which is so hard to replicate in a sterile environment.
No–we’re no longer in the age of creatives at big agencies smoking cigars and drinking scotch, hoping to dream up the next big advertising campaign. We’ve moved past that. But we shouldn’t yet be ready to hand the reins over to software and data analytics tools that tell us what percentage chance our video has of going viral.
Even the best data is still augmented by a human touch. We may not be in a ‘creativity-only’ age–and we shouldn’t be–but we’re not in a ‘data-only’ age, either. The sweet spot for marketers, where hypotheses about content and campaigns are backed up and strengthened by data, likely lies somewhere in between.
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