Finding the Balance Between Creative + Data in Marketing

With the potential to stifle one another, creativity and data have not always made the perfect pairing in marketing. But, just like how french fries and milkshakes are an unexpected combination, when a brand creates a strategy based on creative and data working in tandem, magic ensues. 

Whether it is first party (collected by the company about their consumers), second party (purchased information/data accessed via partnership from another company’s research), or third party data (aggregated information), data enhances creative by:

• Providing a competitive advantage.

• Painting a clearer picture of the target persona. 

• Outlining consumer preferences, patterns, insights, and behaviors. 

• Ensuring a well-informed, personalized marketing campaign. 

“The blending of Data and Creativity requires a consistent approach to cross-pollinating ideas and a willingness by both sides to try anything.”

— David Grzelak | Chief Strategy Officer | The Shipyard

We asked David Grzelak, Chief Strategy Officer from The Shipyard, a creative and strategic marketing agency, about extracting insights from data collected and how brands can overcome challenges to create a successful strategy. 

Q: The Shipyard’s tagline is, “Data Science & Creativity Living in Sin.” Tell us more about your team’s process to combine the two?

Gathering a well-rounded team. 

From the moment a project is kicked off, we gather data scientists, strategists, media planners and creative talent together in one room and facilitate an open and honest dialogue. This is where the shared curiosity between each of the disciplines can really shine.  It may sound simple, but you’d be surprised how often projects go awry when one side fails to understand where the other is coming from. 

For example, we’ve actually broken down internal silos and moved data science into brand planning. Our data folks work hand in hand with traditional brand planners in order to help mine and turn data insights into inspiration for the creative work that we do. So we can go from insight to inspiration instantly and fuel new creative work at a speed and pace that allows us to have an immediate impact on our marketing campaigns.

Visualizing data to get everyone on the same page. 

Another thing that we’ve focused on is data visualization.  That’s important because it makes it easier for strategists and creatives to work more closely with our data scientist teams to be able to say in real-time: “This message is working in the market.”  That allows us to scale campaigns and capitalize on new messaging strategies on a continual basis.

Q: How can brands leverage their data to enable creativity? 

The one thing brands can do is simply get started.  Oftentimes, brands get slowed down by technology and organizational silos. Looking for the “Holy Grail” is often unproductive. Brands can and should start leveraging their own data from in-market campaign activity to drive creativity now. 

We help brands do this by bringing a more systematic and scientific model to their marketing that allows brands to start capitalizing on their data right away. Think of marketing as a scientific experiment – testing messaging and audience hypothesis – that give you immediate real-world marketing signals that can give brands instant insights into what is and what isn’t working.  Brands can then place bigger bets, scaling what works because they have more confidence in the decisions they are making.   

We are helping brands like Weleda do this well. By better leveraging data and creativity for this brand, we have helped Weleda report double-digit growth in consumption. Together we are taking a systematic approach to understand a very complex market. They have identified over 200 audience segments and are creating unique messages against those audiences to drive growth. Check out the case study here.

Q: At Setup™, we particularly enjoy how Spotify mixes the data they have gathered from their listeners to create extraordinary traditional and digital marketing campaigns. What is an example of a brand that is leveraging data and creative well? 

Spotify uses consumer data as inspiration for creative campaigns that garner attention and resonate with consumers.

Scotts Miracle Gro. They’re doing a really great job of leveraging their first party data to identify new audiences, predict the value of those audiences and then deliver lots of unique creative messaging to them. Through this work, they’ve been able to beat their performance benchmarks by up to 80%.

Read Related - Pursuing Content Marketing: How Brands Act as Media Companies

Q: Data has the power to enhance or kill creativity. What challenges have you faced when mixing data with creativity?

1. Silos create barriers to productivity. 

   The more silos you have, the more prohibitive. Part of what we are doing is breaking down those silos - internally at The Shipyard, but also on the client’s side. 

   When silos exist, there isn’t a unified, systematic way of approaching marketing. Handoffs and reports happen internally - but that rarely translates to better creativity. You have to build a model that allows brands to go from data to creative inspiration on a brief at a pace and speed that can have a real impact on in-market campaigns.

   Data visualization gives strategists and creatives a dashboard to see every piece of creative in the marketplace and uncover insights and opportunities in near real-time so that we can discuss as a group and find inspiration faster. 

2. A limited budget limits effective creative. 

This new approach also requires a higher volume of creative assets. Identifying more audiences and more creative opportunities leads to increased demand for assets.  The challenge is budgets often remain the same. As a result, we have had to find new ways to capture content that allow us to tell more brand stories to more audiences. We’ve had to reimagine content production – creating a bank of assets that give us storytelling flexibility – rather than creating a single spot/video or ad when it comes to production.  

Q: What recommendations do you have to approach a successful strategy that encompasses both data and creative?

1. Structure and organize your marketing so that the data from your campaigns is easier to activate in real-time, based on performance.  

2. Deploy your marketing in a systematic way – testing and learning what works and what doesn’t – can quickly lead to a more data-driven approach to marketing creativity.

3. Break down organizational silos. 

4. Bring data into the day-to-day activities and initiatives of marketing. 

5. Encourage human interaction – it leads to more immediate insight and inspiration.

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A special thanks to David for sharing his thoughts and The Shipyard’s perspective regarding the benefits of mixing data with creativity. If you haven’t tried milkshake and fries yet, do yourself a favor and be pleasantly surprised! 

To read more content from The Shipyard, check out their site here. 

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