As agencies look to remain relevant in a digitally-focused world, With Collective chief creative officer Steve Coll says the future of creative is to have data at the centre of the work.
Coll was speaking as part of the AdNews Media Summit last week about the role of fear and creativity in a fragmented and increasingly digital media landscape.
He says that creative departments are going to have to focus on building data into the creative process “to make the logic and magic coincide”.
“If there is fear in our business at the moment it is around the realisation that probably all of us in this room could question whether we are actually the future of this business,” Coll says.
“Ad agencies talk a lot about being brave and we're still in the same creative department sets that Bill Bernbach established in 1952. It seems like if we were brave, actually about responding to the present day, we should probably think about changing that.”
“My belief is that the future of the business, certainly the future of creative department, is to have data at the centre of the work.”
The tension between data and creativity often comes up in debate about the role of creative departments but Cumins&Partners chief innovation officer Kirsty Muddle says data doesn't mean creative is clinical.
“There are so many different plug-ins and so many ways of reading more into what people are doing it's just finding the story behind those numbers and delivering it to someone who is going to create the magic,” Muddle says.
“If you just give them a formula or give them a bunch of data it's useless. You have to find the story.”
However, Meat and Livestock Australia group marketing manager Andrew Howie says there is a problem in marketing at the moment in that marketer's are becoming too “head-driven” when it comes to building campaign and brand communications.
He used the example of demographic segmentation which he says can't tell a marketer anything about what people really think.
“If we become too head-driven in our marketing initiatives and we lose stock of what our heart is telling us, we're just going to create more shit that no one cares about,” Howie says.
“Data is a plug-in, but it's not the answer.”
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