CREATIVITY INSPIRED BY DATA

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Advertising has long been considered by those in the industry as akin to art: a great idea sparked by powerful intuition, layered with deep insights and compelling storytelling.

The big idea remains the primary focus for any advertising agency’s top talent, with copious amount of time, effort and money spent on developing campaign ideas and creative concepts.

But with digital disruption, data-driven marketing is the new normal. Data is everywhere. Yet, how much of this is being picked up, filtered and applied to generate big brand ideas, powerful messages and captivating content?

Not enough.

In this white paper, we acknowledge data-inspired creativity, validate it and provide some frameworks, strategies, inspirations and solutions for advertisers to embrace a data-rich way of working.

Data and creativity need each other. Are you ready to bridge the gap?

AUTHORS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Deepika Nikhilender, Senior Vice President, Xaxis APAC

Thomas Wagner, Planning Director, BBH, APAC

Eunice Loh, Associate Director, Global Client Solutions, Wavemaker

Damien Crittenden, Director of Analytics and Insights, Xaxis APAC

Stephen Dale, General Manager, Digimind, APAC

Karen Schuster, Insights Manager, Unruly, APAC

Martyn U’ren, Head of Research, Twitter, APAC & MENA

CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION

• OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS

• MORE RELEVANCE, LESS WASTAGE – THE PROMISE OF DATA-INFORMED CREATIVITY

• INTRODUCING THE CREATIVE COMMUNICATIONS PROCESS

E STRATEGY

E TOUCH POINTS

E IDEA AND CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

E OPTIMISATION

• INJECTING DATA ACROSS THE CREATIVE JOURNEY

• CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

As digital media becomes a more dominant part of marketing investments, the associated data generated is a massive by-product for brands. The use of data in media decision-making has been in practice for decades, informing everything from consumer behaviours, to better targeting and budget optimisation.

Still, in many cases, this data is not being applied to shape brand messages or creative work. There is little point in being able to address clearly targeted consumers via relevant platforms if the messages being served have no relevance or resonance.

Despite the phenomenal rise of digital and double-digit growth of programmatic media, we have yet to see the stakeholders of creative, content development and brand messages embrace data for inspiration.

This is a missed opportunity that brands cannot afford to ignore in today’s saturated and fragmented marketplace.

Insights gathered from data have the power to shape big and small ideas that form the very foundation of campaigns and the means to engage with consumers in relevant and meaningful ways.

As an industry, we are still behind in the adoption of data-inspired creativity, even more so in Singapore and the wider Southeast Asia region.

Smart analysis of data for actionable insights can and will provide a springboard for powerful ideas and campaigns that drive effective, impactful results.

But this can only be realised if creative teams embrace the philosophy and marketers foster the culture of data. There is no doubt the time has come for a proactive union of data science and creativity.

There is a perception that data and creativity

are polar opposites. But in fact, data drives

the insights, that drives the ideas. It can be an insight

into the heart and mind, an insight into behaviour,

or some other insight. It can influence the creative concept, the touch points plan, or some other

part of the communications process.

Damien Crittenden,

Director of Analytics and

Insights, Xaxis Asia Pacific

OLD DOG, NEW TRICKS

The creative process has become a prime example of path dependence, which emphasises the way things have always been done to the detriment of innovation. The current methods applied are not new, just slightly adapted from previous generations or past campaigns.

Too often the ‘insight’ is still restricted to either a single top line fact about the audience or a product advantage. Although there are many brand owners who have developed ‘war room’ style data centres, audience data seems far removed from the start of the creative process.

Training is one of the key barriers. A spectrum of digital and data related skills need to be imparted to the teams who drive the Brand, Communications, Media and Marketing decisions in any organisation. Talent at all levels will need to embrace data-driven thinking.

Moreover, clients still employ a lead agency (an agency to organise all others) to handle the work which leads to agencies having distinct and individual KPIs. This means agencies are operating in siloes, leaving little or no room for digital collaboration. Often, individual agencies bring digital views that are specific to their particular individual KPIs. At a panel discussion during Advertising Week Europe in March 2017, Zaid Al-Qassab, CMO of British Telecom Group stated there were “too many agencies in the room whose objective is to get something sold”.

All this, combined with a fundamental misunderstanding of what digital communications should be based upon, has diluted attention and focus.

So where do we start? Industry training is obvious but we also have to allow data to enter the creative process and not restrict it to the generation of ‘cool stats for copy’. We need to use data to bring the audience into the room.

The fact you use the word ‘digital’

causes people to use the wrong

metrics. What happens is those people

go into the boardroom and start to look at

the wrong things. They look at how much

money is spent on digital, not what

the message is.

Zaid Al-Qassab,

CMO, British Telecom Group

Far from posing a threat to the creative process, data

complements creativity in a variety of ways. For example,

the use of data to assess the impact of content on intended

audiences makes the process less subjective and more objective.

It gives advertisers an extra layer of assurance that their content

will have the desired effect on the desired audience, further

justifying the production costs and reducing media wastage.

Phil Townend,

Chief Commercial Officer, Asia Pacific, Unruly

MORE RELEVANCE, LESS WASTAGE –

THE PROMISE OF DATA-INFORMED CREATIVITY

Programmatic advertising has quickly grown to become one of the biggest contributors of digital ad spend. According to a study by Zenith, programmatic ad spend globally grew from US$5bn in 2012 to US$39bn in 2016, at an average rate of 71% a year. This figure surpassed Magna Global’s 2015 projection that programmatic ad spend would hit $37bn by 2019.

Programmatic ads are such a popular media format because they can reach targeted audiences with customised messages at moments when decisions are made. Paired with personalised creatives, it can be a powerful tool to deliver effective digital campaigns that drive desired actions from target audiences. A CMO Council poll with senior marketers found more than two in five agreed personalised content converted more customers. Additionally, 46% of the respondents said personalised or enriched content made for more timely and relevant interactions.

The problem is that consumers in Asia don’t believe brands are succeeding in making ad experiences relevant and useful. Research by Adobe Digital Insights demonstrated that 65% of 18 to 34-year-olds in APAC prefer ads based on their interests, with a third of the same demographic believing advertisers are not doing it well enough.

To reduce ad spend waste in digital campaigns, companies should use data to better understand their target audience’s behaviours and preferences. Such data-driven creative processes can vastly improve campaign effectiveness by allowing teams to develop personalised creatives that are more relevant, thus encouraging curiosity and clicks.

CONSUMERS’ VIEW OF PERSONALISATION

0

20

40

60

80

57%

41%

19%

32%

18-34 35+

PREFER DO NOT PREFER

18-34

65%

54%

15%19%

35+

ASIA-PACIFIC US

CONSUMERS’ VIEWS ON TODAY’S PERSONALISATION

US

0

20

40

60

18-34

13%

29%32%

22%

ASIA-PACIFIC

35+

17%

39%

31%

18%

18-34 35+

AGAINST ALL PERSONALIZATION LIKE BUT NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Source: ADI: Attracting Online Attention Is Costing APAC Advertisers More

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Age group bands

Additionally the introduction of the Creative Data category at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2015, which recognises creative campaigns that use data as the core of the ideas, is a strong indicator of the importance of data-driven creative in today’s ad age.

To succeed with producing data-driven creatives that boost the bottom line and achieve campaign goals, teams need to start by identifying the right data sets required to activate creative decisions. By focusing on collecting and analysing only data that is relevant for understanding consumers, companies will be better able to leverage trends and insights to make data-driven decisions.

Today big data is readily

accessible. However, the

excessive amount of information in big

data paired with a lack of training on

analytics has prevented marketers from

successfully leveraging meaningful

insights. Marketers need to be able to

filter big data down to make it smart data - data that is meaningful and

can be acted upon to inspire

data-driven creatives.

Paul Vivant,

CEO, Digimind

There is an explosion of data

availability in recent years,

though it has not been used to its full

potential. Clients and agencies all play a

crucial role in mining these data troves for

insights, since brands see the best results

when data has been integral to

the creative journey.

Eunice Loh, Associate Director,

Global Client Solutions,

Wavemaker

INTRODUCING THE CREATIVE

COMMUNICATIONS PROCESS

We work in an industry that was built on finding insights in data and today we have access to more of it than ever before. Yet the skill of applying data in a way that

creates long-term competitive advantage for our clients seems to have been lost. Have

we become snow-blind? Whilst we explore and experiment with the new, we must also

recommit to the tried and tested fundamentals of applying data through strategic

rigour and creativity.

James Sowden,

Head of Planning / Managing

Partner, BBH Singapore

Creative communications are developed via a process. Working through this process in its fullest will involve many skill sets. There are also several other variables to consider, such as the nature of the brief, the timeline, the task and the budget.

But despite all of this, most campaigns will see a similar process play out. Broadly speaking these are the fundamental elements: strategy, touch points, idea & content development, optimisation and evaluation.

In some cases this process might take 12 months to complete. In others, it might take 12 days.

Often the process will be iterative – different phases of the process will repeat themselves in order to improve the output, or even the entire process itself, or it may be the kind of campaign that requires optimisation once live.

Traditionally, data is most commonly used and generated during the strategy, optimisation and evaluation parts of the process, but it has equal value in influencing other spheres. In fact, data could inform all the steps in the creative process.

STRATEGY

EVALUATION

OPTIMISATIONIDEA & CONTENT

DEVELOPMENT

TOUCH POINTS

SIGNALS INSIGHTS SOURCES

STAGES IN PROCESS

INFORMED BY

CREATIVITY

• Purchase patterns• Cost of acquiring customers• Market position• Quantity and quality of leads• Customer Level Data• Sales channels

• Discounts and coupons utilised

• Mode of payment• Loyalty and returning

customers• Specific time• Quantity and value• Specific place

• Volume, frequency, recency of visits

• Quality of visits• Visit by source• Visit paths• Blocks to basket• Device used• Time of sale

• Sentiments - for our brand vs competitors

• Where is the buzz• Audience insights• Key influencers• Which channel is the buzz on• Who are talking• Advocates

• Volume of search• Geographical skews• Time and Type of search• Patterns of search• Demographics and profiles• Consumer journey• Content consumption

• Attitudes towards category• Brand user profiles• Consumer segments• Path to purchase• Media consumption• Consumer preference

• Behavioural response• Emotional response• Brand message receptivity• Appeal to creative• Message comprehension

• Level of engagement• Who engaged• Creative performance• Channel attribution

• Weather• Flu trends• Maps/ Location Data• Traffic• Content themes• Trends• Economic indicators

• Point of sale dynamics• Consumer segmentation• Sales predictions• Purchase cycle• Buying patterns

• Online vs offline consumer patterns

• Purchase trends• Visit patterns• Operational changes• Improve customer delight

• Product Halo insights• Content engagement• Audience device

engagement• New segments• Upsell and Cross-sell

opportunities

• Targeting your Audience• Respond in real-time• Adapt messages• Culture triggers• Communities

• Trends of the category• Triggers for brand messages• Content creation/curation

ideas• Culture triggers• Consumer need states

• Define target audience• Product innovation ideas• Inform creative strategy• Identify media and touch

point strategy

• Creative optimisation• Creative relevance to

segments• Emotional response to

messages• Channel impact on creative

resonance

• Content appeal• Performance by channel• Products that appeal• Moments and trends• Creative format performance

• Themes for real-time creative• Contextual relevance• Influence of environment on

category/ brand• Moment of demand and

influence• Drivers of association

• Internal sales system• CRM platform• Retail sales audit• Store level data - from offtake• Footfall and traffic at store

• Point-of-sale systems• Online: Web & App analytics

packages• Loyalty programmes• RFID• Financial systems

• Web analytics packages• Adserver cookies• Data Management Platform• Server logs• Search Engine stats

• Social listening tools and platform

• Facebook insights• Twitter insights• Social agency services

• Search engine’s analytics platform

• Google Trends

• Primary consumer research• Qualitative research• Industry secondary data• Syndicated data• Trend data sources

• Customised brief to Research agency

• Self-executed AB tests

• Publisher data• DSP/ Trading software logs• Data Management Platform• Reporting dashboard

• Weather APIs• Govt. / Met data• Free data sets, Gapminder,

Facebook Open Graph• Location-based data

companies and providers & Telcos

• Open data sources, public data sets

SALES DATA

TRANSACTIONS

WEB / APP

ANALYTICS

SOCIAL

LISTENING

USAGE AND

ATTITUDE DATA

CONTEXT

TESTING

CAMPAIGN

DATA

SEARCH

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

STRATEGY

TOUCH POINTS

IDEA & CONTENT

OPTIMISATION

EVALUATION

DATA SOURCES THAT INSPIRE CREATIVITY

Applying data to strategy: opportunities for data to inform creativity

1. Business objective / Marketing objective

2. Consumer barrier / Consumer insight

3. Communications objective

4. Strategic proposition / Functional support

The use of data can help bring clarity to each of these different steps and can help to move teams forward in the process.

The following case studies demonstrate how this process worked for some companies.

STRATEGY

Taking the ‘Data sources that inspire creativity’ table as a guide, how can data inspire more creative solutions? It all starts with strategy.

Strategy’s role is to find the best way that communications can help achieve business and marketing objectives. This ensures that creative work has purpose.

The strategy process will usually result in a creative brief. That creative brief will often have a number of elements within it that provide an opportunity for data application, be it simple data input or intelligent data analysis.

A well thought through business objective can lead to an interesting and enlightening marketing objective that results in different creative output.

How Sainsbury’s tried something new

In 2004, UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s launched a campaign called ‘Try Something New Today’.

The original business objective was bland: “Increase sales by £2.5bn over 3 years”.

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE / MARKETING OBJECTIVE1

This was translated to a much more tangible marketing objective. Through some simple data analysis, the resulting objective became: “Convince our 14 million weekly shoppers to spend an extra £1.14 on each visit”.

Reframing the data in this way led the team to the highly effective idea: “Try Something New Today”, which helped them make £2.5bn in extra revenue.

Using data to shine a light on consumer behaviour is probably the most common application of data within strategy.

Some strategies are built when data helps answer the question: “What stands in the way of people taking the action we desire?” The availability of many more types of data through social platforms still provides opportunities to innovate.

The two case studies below illustrate both approaches:

Gillette against lazy creative

Gillette wanted men in India to shave more frequently. At the time men mostly shaved for special occasions. The barrier to changing this behaviour was simple: men actually thought that stubble was a good thing and that it made them more attractive to women.

Gillette research showed the opposite to be true. Some 77% of female respondents actually preferred a clean-shaven man.

Gillette used this statistic to inform a new way of communicating to men, via women. The brand built a campaign called ‘Women Against Lazy Stubble’. This was a self-proclaimed movement to get men to shave. Launched in late 2009, the campaign won a Silver Lion in the Cannes Lions PR category in 2010.

KFC: hijacking the joyless world of clean eating

Fast food brand KFC created a humorous fake ‘clean eating’ campaign to successfully launch its newest product in the UK. The campaign was recently awarded with the 2017 WARC Grand Prix for Social Effectiveness.

The team analysed three different pieces of social data. First, they scoured volumes of conversation about ‘craving’ KFC on social media and built an index from this data called the KFC Crave Index.

Next, they looked into anti-fast food trends, specifically clean eating. This showed very distinct patterns across days of the week and months of the year.

CONSUMER BARRIER / CONSUMER INSIGHT2

HELPFUL DATA SOURCES THAT MIGHT INFORM A SIMILAR TASK

For brands hoping to follow in Sainsbury’s footsteps, the most useful data to look at is their own. This might include: sales data, panel data, CRM data, third-party industry data and bespoke quantitative research.

Finally, the brand analysed sentiments around clean eating and found that the more people discussed the topic, the less positive the conversations were.

Using the crave index, clean eating data and sentiment analysis, the team came up with a simple creative idea, which was to hijack the joyless world of #cleaneating.

The resulting campaign used multiple social strategies and was hugely successful. With around 20 million views of the social film, the burger sold out in 70% of KFC stores in the country.

Defining the purpose of communications is essential for success. Data inputs can inform this role profoundly.

Old Spice: using data to scrub away outdated communications goals

P&G’s Old Spice brand was famously unlocked with a remarkably simple piece of data input: 60% of men’s body washes are actually purchased by women.

To increase sales of Old Spice, the brand therefore set itself a new communications objective – to “win over female shoppers and get them to buy Old Spice for their men”.

A famous and highly creative campaign followed.

COMMUNICATIONS OBJECTIVE3

HELPFUL DATA SOURCES THAT MIGHT INFORM A SIMILAR TASK

HELPFUL DATA SOURCES THAT MIGHT INFORM A SIMILAR TASK

For brands hoping to follow in Gillette, KFC’s or Old Spice’s footsteps, data has to shed light on what people think, feel, talk about and do in relation to the product and category. Data sources include: bespoke qualitative and quantitative research, usage and attitude data, third-party industry data, search trends and social listening.

These kinds of data relate to attitudes about the category and the associated behaviours and attitudes: bespoke qualitative and quantitative studies and third-party data.

In many sectors, category peculiarities – or how people behave when relating to the category - can inform a proposition or point of view for a brand. Here are a couple of famous examples:

• Dove’s creative briefs are informed by the fact that 96% of women don’t believe they are beautiful.

• Ariel discovered 70% of married men in India agree that doing household chores is the wife’s job.

• Persil uncovered that prison inmates exercised more frequently than children.

Each of these powerful data points allow these brands to build disruptive and distinctive work across time.

STRATEGIC PROPOSITION / FUNCTIONAL SUPPORT4

TOUCH POINTS

What touch points work best to achieve the desired objectives? Data can inform and inspire creative and effective choice of touch points by shedding light on audience behaviour.

Below are some case studies to illustrate this role of data:

CITRA: DATA-LED, TARGETED MOBILE ADVERTISING

Citra, Indonesia’s largest body lotion brand, had witnessed slowing sales. The brand wanted to use the launch of its new night body lotion to expand its market share of the nighttime beauty regimen. To enter that space, however, Citra needed to present its night body lotion as a vital part of any nighttime beauty ritual. While TV would have built baseline awareness, Citra needed an emotional connection with consumers.

Citra found 69% of consumers interact and spend quality time with their mobile phone before going to bed. The percentage was even higher among the consumers Citra was targeting.

These consumers tended to chat with friends, play games and browse Facebook - all activities that delayed sleep. These sleepless moments presented an opportunity for Citra to provide value to consumers and connect on an emotional level. The solution came in the form of Citra “Good Night” mobile greeting cards.

Consumers, while browsing their smartphones at night, were served teasing brand messages such as, “Are you sleepless?” or “Wanna wish Good Night to your friends?” Consumers who clicked on the ads were brought to a rich-media-based app that allowed consumers to wish their friends a good night’s sleep.

The mobile campaign reached 4 million people, with 22,000 consumers creating 63,000 Citra “Good Night” wishes. It generated 19 million Citra-branded impressions on Facebook and the brand gained 300,000 Facebook fans during the campaign period. More importantly, Citra night body lotion gained 2.3% market share within three months of its launch, making it one of the most successful variant launches in the body lotion category. One million Indonesian women tried the product within its first quarter. This increased Citra’s volume growth by 16%.

PUSH AND PULL: HOW NTUC INCOME USED INSIGHT TO DRIVE LEADS

NTUC Income, one of the largest insurers in Singapore, was facing stagnating growth in its life insurance business for the 35 and under segment despite leading in brand equity scores. Analysis revealed that its small distribution force was holding back growth. To compensate for this and support its advisers’ efforts, Income needed to focus on driving enquiries, and the channels that can drive them.

However, in an industry notorious for incessant ‘push’ efforts which have resulted in people dreading to speak to advisers, how could Income ‘pull’ people to speak to its advisers?

The insurer used data to find insights into the key pain points of the existing adviser experience and people’s service expectations. The solution was Adviser Connect, a digital tool for people to find a financial adviser who suits them and chat with them anytime and anywhere.

Embedded on owned channels like their website, and lower-funnel marketing activities like remarketing, Adviser Connect led to a 114% increase in total enquiries and supported a 30.6% increase in new life insurance customers aged 35 and below.

IDEA AND CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

In the above examples, data informed the strategy or touch points, but did not form part of the content itself. An exciting area of development is where data becomes an essential element of a creative campaign. Data becomes the creative idea.

SPOTIFY: USING LISTENER DATA AS CREATIVE

Since 2015, Spotify has been mining its own data across Asia and Europe, creating opportunities to tell humorous and contextual stories in their advertising. The creative work made light of specific user behaviours, such as repeatedly playing Justin Bieber on Valentine’s Day.

The stories from the data are told simply, letting the information and insights speak for themselves in the creative.

GETTING PERSONAL WITH UBER

Uber wanted to remind people of its role in their lives. The most personal way to achieve that was through a light-hearted and fun look at their habits and trips with the ride-hailing app during 2016.

Uber visualised 1,020 contextual data points from its riders to create a hyper-personalised ad. These ranged from journey locations, times and lengths of trips, right through to city specific references such as sunrise, sunset and weather conditions. They overlaid this data with relevant local cultural nuances for events such as Ramadan, Chinese New Year and the Formula One Grand Prix.

NIKE: DATA VISUALISATION THAT INSPIRES

Nike created Unlimited Stadium, a giant pop-up running track in the centre of the Philippines’ capital, Manila. The installation was launched in August 2016 and ran parallel to the duration of the 2016 Olympic Games.

The 200-metre running track was lined with LED screens. Up to 30 runners at a time could run a virtual race against themselves via a sensor in their shoe; the athlete’s competing avatar running alongside them on the continuous LED screen. The avatars became larger the further and faster they ran, encouraging people to keep pace with their digital selves. The campaign won 15 Cannes Lions in total.

SNICKERS: HUNGERITHM

Snickers harnessed data in a very specific way.

They built a hunger-algorithm that monitored mood online based on social media conversations.

The company lowered Snickers prices accordingly at every 7-Eleven in Australia: the angrier the Internet got, the cheaper Snickers became.

The campaign achieved a 15% increase in year-on-year sales at 7-Eleven stores and also had over 30 million media impressions.

Data plays an important role in

fulfilling our mission of bringing inspiration and innovation to every athlete

and Unlimited Stadium is a great example

of that: personalised data, generated live

and visualised in an interesting way, to

help runners challenge their biggest

competitor – themselves.

Byron Brooks

Manager, Brand Communications,

Southeast Asia

HELPFUL DATA SOURCES THAT MIGHT INFORM A SIMILAR TASK

The examples above feature data usage that is often driven by a technology feed that tracks or visualises real world product usage. However, the opportunity for ‘data as creative’ is really only limited by the creative idea itself. As such, the opportunities are endless and this is hopefully an area of creativity we will see flourish.

Exceptional marketing happens when magic (insights) gets mixed in with

madness (creativity). But that can only happen with everyone from creative

director to data scientist being on the same page from the start. Missing people

means missed opportunities.

Reza Behnam,

Co-founder and Executive

Chairman, CtrlShift

OPTIMISATION

Data can also be used to refine creative work before it launches. Pre-testing allows clients and agencies to understand the attitudes towards the brand, the concept and the specific aspects of the creative.

BERLEI: FINDING MISSING AUDIENCES

Lingerie brand Berlei wanted to pre-test the effectiveness of their video ad, “Do It For Yourself”, which featured tennis player Serena Williams and draws inspiration from the 1983 film Flashdance.

Through a content evaluation tool that measures the emotional impact of an ad, the ad returned average results. Further analysis found potentially responsive audiences that the initial target demographic was missing, which led to a re-examination of the data. Based on insights garnered during testing, several recommendations were made to improve the quality and impact of the content:

• Focus targeting on a younger demographic, including females aged 18 to 29

• Re-edit the creative to reduce overall length

• Show Berlei logo earlier in creative to set the context, reduce confusion and improve brand recall

Berlei implemented these changes, producing a revised creative that was a minute shorter than the original. The campaign was distributed across social media channels between January and February 2017. The revised ad resonated well with the new target audience, and was shared widely in Australia and overseas.

To date, the ad has received 17.1 million organic views, with 7 million of those coming from ANZ. It has an average engagement rate of 3.94%, fivefold higher than the industry benchmark of 0.72%.

DON’T JUST EXECUTE, EVALUATE

Learning from campaigns is crucial. Collecting and analysing the data from a past campaign can lead to unique insights that inform the next strategy.

The data gathered from a website, app, social media or any other channel can provide all sorts of information on how content worked, what channels were effective, what devices and formats performed and for whom. Most importantly, this data can offer an understanding of why this is the case.

HELPFUL DATA SOURCES THAT MIGHT INFORM A SIMILAR TASK

There are a number of tools to optimise content, including: surveys, focus groups, content testing tools, facial coding softwares, brand lift methodologies, biometric measurements, and A/B testing.

INJECTING DATA ACROSS

THE CREATIVE JOURNEY

In many organisations, marketing, media, brand and insight teams operate separately. The same goes for agencies, where media, creative, digital, social and PR teams might even compete for advertising budgets.

On both client and agency side, KPIs are frequently not aligned, leading to friction and potentially diverging recommendations instead of data sharing. Creative and touch point strategies are often not aligned upstream, leading to frustration and wastage on all sides.

In the rare case where data is used – it is merely to manage risk – to ‘pre-test’, optimise and evaluate – rather than to inspire creative marketing solutions.

The end goal is to transform creative processes and be better informed by data. Ultimately, creative teams can leverage data to:

• Develop a better understanding of the target audience - their profiles, preferences and expectations

• Deliver personalised messages and experiences that truly resonate with your target audience

• Identify appropriate moments for delivering these messages

What is needed for this process to work?

FOSTER A DATA-DRIVEN PHILOSOPHY

Organisations need to inject new ideologies among creative and insights teams. There needs to be continuous communication about:

• The importance of data in creating relevant and engaging campaigns for your target audience

• The varied resources and technology available to inform the creative process

• How to activate data sets, including real-time insights from social media, customer reviews, focus groups etc. to define strategy

Insight teams should also work towards presenting relevant and inspiring data in digestible formats. This can be achieved by familiarising them with the needs of creative teams so they can better serve them.

ENCOURAGE COLLABORATION ACROSS DEPARTMENTS

Successfully achieving insight-driven creative outcomes requires 100% commitment across an organisation, from ensuring you have the right talent on board to seamless collaboration between teams. Strong relationships are vital for key information and insights to be exchanged across departments.

Bridge the divide between creative and insight teams. Involve them - along with upper management, vendors and agencies - from the outset. This way strategies can be built that are relevant to the target audience and driven by accurate, real-time insights.

Create a dedicated platform with charts and graphs on key metrics for data teams to feed creative teams with relevant real-time information. This can take the form of a digital command centre, customised dashboard or automated reports.

Sustain collaboration and communication between the two teams. While different teams may take the lead at various stages of the project, it is important that everyone remains involved throughout. Too often, each group completes its portion of the project and hands it to the next group with minimal explanation on data sets considered or potential impact to the creative process.

FACILITATE ON-GOING COMMUNICATION:

• Weekly meetings. Include external vendors and agencies so they are fully informed about any changes in creative processes or data needs

• Specific spaces for team members to work together. This is particularly useful for major or real-time marketing campaigns

• Digital dashboards and weekly newsletters on the latest data findings

• Dedicated chat groups where teams can create public or private channels to manage and share information and inspiration on different projects

Additionally, organisations should appoint internal leaders and evangelists to coordinate communications with their respective collaborators. Project managers and data-driven creative evangelists who have KPIs on innovation can also prove valuable in championing consistent collaboration across departments.

Last but not least, ensure the continuity of the above processes not only through communicative and collaborative measures, but also through your talent pool. Build the insights team, hire digital natives and actively nurture their ability to contextualise data into meaningful insights.

CREATING MAGIC FROM MATH

Once key ingredients like culture, structure, collaborative behaviour and infrastructure are in place then the journey of data-inspired creativity and ideation really begins.

The start of this journey will ultimately yield the following key benefits:

1. It will be about insights not data: The focus of the organisation will move away from collecting huge amounts of data and worrying about where to put it, to who to task with analysing and generating actionable insights from it. Ultimately, the conversation about data will be as much about storytelling as it is about analysis.

2. Your ideas will be validated: The campaign idea will be validated by consumer behaviour, cultural trends, feedback on the brand and evolving environments rather than intuition and subjectivity, which can sometimes come from people who are not really the target audience.

3. Measurement will go beyond post-campaign reporting: The teams in the company will be preparing for a data-driven creative brief, a laser-focus expression of the consumer, a cultural relevance for the big idea and so on, rather than a post campaign report or campaign optimisation impact alone. It is not only about reducing wastage among different formats of creatives, but about the campaign idea itself.

4. You will be listening to actual versus claimed behaviour: Advertisers will be listening to the signals emanating from a very large sample size of real behaviour rather than relying on an expensive output from claimed behaviour. Brands will shift from using a lot of historical learning that may not be actionable in current conditions to predictive analytics and developments that are more forward-looking. No more ‘rear-view’ measurements of past behaviours.

5. You will create a data-sharing environment: The organisation will have a structure and talent culture that shares data for interpretation and application anywhere. The working environment will be such that data scientists and creative specialists collaborate to create magical results.

Shaping campaign and brand messages with insights derived from data boosts effectiveness metrics for both the medium and the message.

As terabytes of data hit us every day, brands and advertisers cannot afford to ignore the signals. The data-driven era of marketing means brands must put out meaningful and relevant brand messages; there is simply no excuse not to. And it’s not going to take us weeks and months anymore. It’s about quick and real-time contextual responses to what consumers are telling us as they leave their footprints for us to interpret.

We have at our disposal frameworks, processes, inspiration and talent. It is time to initiate a culture in which to realise this transformation and unleash great data-inspired campaigns. Take small steps, aim for quick wins and be prepared to adapt.

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CONCLUSION

Karin Timpone,

CMO, Marriott International

If you are an artist, learn science.

If you are a scientist, cultivate art.