In another fascinating Lightning Talk from the YouTube Beach in Cannes, a panel of planners, creatives and brand advertisers explore whether or not data has a role in creativity, and do their best to separate the magic from the machine.
Wednesdayās second Lightning Talk began with a provocative statement from moderator Nick Vale, Global Head of Planning at Maxus. Framing the conversation for the three other panelists, Nick said: āI personally have this feeling that over the last three years, in the delivery of media weāve had a complete revolution in the way that we do it... I donāt necessarily think that Iāve seen that reflected in the way that weāre developing creatively.ā
In 2010, Dimitri Maex, President of Ogilvy One New York, wrote a book called Sexy Little Numbers, which set out to demystify the role of data in growing businesses and creating better customer relationships. Six years on, Dimitri says that things have not progressed as far as heād hoped they would, with conversations around data still focused more on technology than application. āIf thereās one thing from the book that still applies today, itās that you should start with how you use the data, start with the applications, start with the types of questions it can help you answer, and then let that inform your technology discussion.ā
Turning to Seth Barron, Head of Creative Business Partnerships at ZOO Americas, Nick then asked for a view on whether the appetite for data-driven creative has changed recently. According to Seth, while the desire for data and data-driven methods has increased, the transformation is not happening fast enough. āA lot of marketers are stuck thinking about an online and offline paradigm which is totally antiquated. Iām not sitting in front of a computer, but Iāve got a mobile phone in my pocket, so Iām online.ā According to Seth, brands and agencies should be aiming to use data to create more meaningful experiences for users, and to rid themselves of a campaign-driven mindset that has no counterpart in real-world user behaviour.
"A lot of marketers are stuck thinking about an online and offline paradigm which is totally antiquated. Iām not sitting in front of a computer, but Iāve got a mobile phone in my pocket, so Iām online."
-Ā Seth Barron, Head of Creative Business Partnerships, ZOO Americas
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While Dimitri and Seth both question the extent to which data is being applied, thereās no question that over the past couple of years, the amount of data businesses have access to has increased enormously. Suzanne Cole, EVP Media at Universal Studios, picked up this thread, describing the difficulty in differentiating between data that is important and data that is simply interesting. With Universal Studios substantially increasing their digital and video budgets, the challenge for her remains separating between signal and noise, especially in an environment where one of the brandās biggest target audiences - young people - are increasingly trying their hardest to avoid advertising altogether.
Next, the panel tackled the question of the difference between measurement and insight, with Dimitri Maex observing that in the main, data is mostly still used for the low-hanging fruit of post-campaign analysis. The bigger challenges - involving personalisation and complex programmatic creative - are still a way off, though thereās optimism that things are changing, as a new generation of more data-literate creatives enter the industry.
On the subject of data and programmatic as tools of digital storytelling, Seth Barron is unconvinced, arguing that we do ourselves a disservice by removing human intuition and imagination from the equation. āBrands are not commodities, they are ideas,ā he says, and as such, consumer behaviour is driven more by emotion than logic. For Seth a story has to be more than a collection of marketing touch-points, and the solution to ad avoidance is simply to stop showing users content they donāt care about. When we care about what weāre looking at, we donāt mind where the content came from, and with data, itās possible to understand exactly what people care about.
Looking forward into an ideal future, Suzanne Cole says she is pinning her hopes on data providing 20:20 attribution, where collaboration between technology and media partners provides a complete picture of the audience. For Dimitri Maex, the next step is to start integrating data into products and experiences, using personalisation and visualisation to make every communication and interaction genuinely meaningful. Summing up the discussion, Seth Barron predicts that dataās future will be in helping us get more of the content and experiences we want, and none of what we donāt want - an outcome in which brands, marketers and audiences will all emerge as winners.
