Mullenlowe’s vision for the future of creativity and data
Advertisers and agencies need to ditch the idea of data-driven marketing and instead focus on data-inspired creativity, the global CSO of MullenLowe Open said this week.
Speaking at Mediatel’s Big Day of Data, Simon Goodall said the “all-encompassing” term ‘data-driven marketing’ often prioritises efficiency and short-term business goals – despite evidence which proves that long-term thinking is the most effective strategy for brand building.
Meanwhile, as the advertising industry moves towards a world where everyone has access to the same technology and similar data, in the end “creativity is going to be the most important means of differentiation for brands”.
However, despite ongoing concerns that the industry’s obsession with data is killing creativity, Goodall said that there is now a “great opportunity” to think about “data-inspired creativity”, where data is used not just as a form of measurement, but to “fuel new ideas”.
“The next opportunity is for data to really be integral to the idea itself,” Goodall said. “To be at the heart of the idea, where the idea is not just inspired by an interesting data point but the whole value of the customer experience is fuelled and driven by data.”
Creating distinctive customer experiences is “really important” for brands, he added, and “we create distinctive experiences using distinctive data”.
Last year, MullenLowe Group worked with the Diageo-owned gin brand Gordon’s to create its #YayDelay campaign.
The campaign used train, location and social sentiment data together to target consumers with a discount on G&Ts in station bars whenever they were experiencing train delays, with a larger discount offered the longer the delay.
According to Goodall, the idea for the campaign was conceived while looking for a time at which Gordon’s “Shall We?” slogan would be most relevant to customers. The agency therefore looked for the time at which there was the most “tension” around 5 o’clock, and found train delays to be the sweet spot.
Over 20,000 consumers claim to have purchased a Gordon’s G&T as a direct result of the campaign.
Goodall also named Spotify’s annual “Wrapped” campaign as an example of “data-inspired creativity”, in which first-party data was used to share the weirder and more eccentric listening habits of its users.
However, according to Goodall, enabling data-driven creativity will require breaking down silos within organisations and getting creatives and data specialists into the same room.
“You have to embrace the tension that comes with that. Creative people and data people don’t always speak the same language or have the same perspective, but in that tension can be where the magic happens.”