Data and creativity are surely best friends. Two sides of a coin or you can say two parts of the same machine supporting each other. Creative communication in advertising either solves a problem or tells a story. Data-driven creative enables new digital storytelling strategies that are more personal and relevant to your audience.
“Historically, it was creating one piece of brilliant creative to be fed to millions of people on TV or radio.
But now it’s about turning that upside down and saying, ‘We need a million pieces of
brilliant creative to be fed to each individual on an as-needed basis, depending on who that person is, where they are and what their needs are "
A great creative will always be vital to effective advertising, but consumers today also expect relevance to go along with the wow factor. Data bridges the gap. With rich data, dynamic capabilities, and AI, the best creative now is more personal, relevant, and more inspiring than ever.
Data-driven creative involves using information about a customer to inform creative communication. By using data, the creative team optimizes creative development resources and minimizes wasted media dollars spent on delivering ineffective or irrelevant ads. When starting with data, one of the biggest advantages an artist gets is that it already contains half of the story. A story that's more relatable to that target customer segment.
With more and more creatives embracing these possibilities, a new kind of man-machine partnership will evolve that can propel human creativity forward. It will combine the analytical abilities of data systems and algorithms with human intuition and empathy.
This combination will be the future of data-driven creativity and it will bring about creative solutions that surprise, delight and inspire us even more
The effectiveness of data for creativity can be imagined at two stages of customer-brand journey. Both strands of data-driven creativity, data-powered big ideas and programmatically derived variations of creative output for n+1 segments will no doubt help in flourishing the brands at both vital stages of the funnel
1- TO BUILD & MAINTAIN CUSTOMER-BRAND RELATIONSHIP
A brand wants to gain footing by attracting new customers via a brand awareness campaign, build a deep relationship with the customer through content marketing, or it wants to maintain its relationship through re-targeting - data will allow the production of creative output in more meaningful terms to strengthen this connection. Instead of relying on 'gut feeling', different data points can be used to determine relevance, usefulness and acceptance of a particular creative solution in the wild. This development is fueled by the desire of creatives and clients to do something cool with that new currency called ’data’ but THE BIG IDEA NEEDS A HUMAN TOUCH
2- TO SELL & REPEATEDLY SELL TO A CUSTOMER
You have sold to them and want to sell to them again. So, it's better to know them more. Data does that effectively. At this stage, MACHINE GENERATED CREATIVES with machine learning & converting data points into visuals will work the best. Every customer deserves attention; therefore, a power generated idea with complete personalization will work much better here. The business case for programmatic creativity is too compelling. By activating their data and technology investments, brands and advertisers can cut through the clutter to provide real value to customers, and as a result, achieve high-performing campaigns.
With over $20 billion spent globally in programmatic advertising, data-driven creative poses a tremendous opportunity for marketers to reach and engage potential customers.
Though 30%, or $6 billion, of this programmatic spend is invested in targeting technologies like Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) and Data Management Platforms (DMPs), brands and advertisers have not yet successfully delivered on the promise of the right message for the right audience.
In fact, according to research, up to 97% of programmatic campaigns lack a targeted creative for each audience segment.
This means that once the ad has successfully reached the potential customers, a majority of creatives are generic and un-tailored. Brands and advertisers need to combat this $6 billion waste by activating their data and delivering personalized messages that truly resonate with customers.
Data will free the creative mind from repetitive tasks and routine jobs. The rise of generative design will save a lot of time finding potential variations of a theme or idea and help creatives to focus on what they do best: come up with new things & Bigger ideas.
" With my experience I see data as overwhelmingly positive. It helps guide the creative in the direction it must go."