Blurred lines: Changes to marketing in a data-driven world

The Future of Media London

In a data-driven marketing world, the distinctions between above-the-line and below-the-line are no longer clear and creativity has potentially become “second fiddle”.

At The Future of Media London in October, Jenny Bullis, UK and Ireland CEO of Dentsu’s media practice, said: “I think the lines have been blurred for quite a while now. You can get business outcome reporting at the pace of performance [marketing], even though you may not be doing performance, and I think that is fundamentally changing the lines.”

Allwyn global head of media Ross Sergeant agreed: “There’s no such thing as above-the-line and below-the-line.”

It’s difficult to categorise a “particular publication or platform or outlet or format” because “we can use it in multiple different ways”.

Sergeant continued: “It depends on where it is in the consumer journey, the creative we’re using, the message we’re using, the time it’s consumed, where it’s consumed. We should be as channel-gnostic as possible.”

Sam Taylor, interim marketing director at Direct Line Group, went further and argued that marketers must be both media-agnostic and channel-agnostic, and it’s the customer who has to be centre of the Venn diagram.

He added: “That way of thinking is quite seismic — the way we think about media and creative, the way we work with our agencies, the way the agency planners have to think. We’re at the tipping point where we’re really shifting this kind of way of thinking into a new dynamic.”

Transformation journey

According to Bullis, data is the key here. “If you actually look at the media channel landscape, there’s not really a single medium that you can’t use data to do a targeting option or a measurement option now.

“It’s a transformation journey that a lot of marketing departments are still on, which I think frustrates a lot of marketers, because they probably feel like they’ve been transforming for at least five, six, seven, eight years now — but it’s still ongoing.”

For Direct Line, for example, Taylor said the proliferation of data has allowed the company to look at CRM in a different way. “Talking to existing customers to drive brand engagement amongst those that we already acquired to drive cross-sell, upsell, retention, loyalty… it’s just something we wouldn’t have been able to do, because the technology wasn’t there, the connectivity [and] the data collaborations weren’t there.

“We’ve now come a long way and we’re able to unlock the value of data right through the funnel.”

Lauren McGuire, Salesforce’s regional vice-president, media, comms and sport, pointed to the “years and years” of data we as an industry now have on customers. She asked: “How do we actually compile that into a single view? How do we leverage the targeting, the segmentation, based on all the data that we have, that full view — how do we potentially automate on it and make ourselves more and more efficient?”

Indeed, the array of data and tools available can be dizzying. Sergeant said that whereas previously marketers were perhaps trying to use all the tools available — such as last-click attribution, which “took us on a journey to hell” — “we’re beginning to learn how these tools can effectively make us do what we should be doing much, much better”.

Evolving creative

In this data-driven world for marketers, could creativity and “the big idea” become second fiddle? For Bullis, it’s simple: “There is no amount of money or targeting that compensates for a shit ad. That’s just a fact.”

Sergeant countered that argument, exclaiming: “We are slightly obsessed with advertising output.”

He added: “If anybody thinks that we can wind ourselves back to the good old days of the 1990s and pretend that ad effectiveness is a two-minute-long TV ad which we just place, they’re missing all of this beautiful information and data.”

For Taylor, while a “strong, purposeful idea” remains necessary, he recommended splitting the word “creative” into two areas: while the core brand idea has to be “stronger than ever”, “creative delivery and advertising delivery and production” is less important and “more enslaved to the media plan”.

Rather than taking a traditional “creationist” approach to creativity — the idea of releasing a big idea and leaving it — Bullis suggested a more “evolutionist” process, whereby the creative is constantly evolving.

She explained: “It allows you to be agile, in the moment. I think the notion of inflight optimisation and course correction is actually really at the heart of data-driven media.”

The panel was moderated by The Media Leader editor-in-chief Omar Oakes.