Over the past 20 years, the marketing industry has shifted from celebrating mind-blowing creative to focusing on KPI’s, Martech, ABM and analytics. The Superbowl, which used to be the yearly highlight for advertisers, has become pretty lame now that we can see all commercials ahead of time online. And the quality of creative doesn’t seem to be where it once was.
Marketing dollars are being spent on questionable social media posts, influencers, Marketo, MQLs, KPIs, CMCs, SEO, CPC. Every post is being analyzed, re-worked and re-analyzed in order to find the version with the highest CTR’s or engagement metrics.
Look at any job description for marketing communications and you’ll likely find “develop KPI’s” at the top of the requirements list.
The fact that advertisers today are speaking more and more in TLA’s (three-letter acronyms) should make us wonder if our industry is being hijacked by the same people that have scared us for decades: MBAs! ACK! (Full disclosure…I’m one of them).
In all of this analyzing, optimizing and automating we seem to be losing sight of what makes advertising great in the first place: Creativity!
Don’t think that I’m dismissing the benefits of data analysis. There is definitely a place for it and it’s a great tool that everyone should use. It used to be that “you waste half of your ad budget, you just don’t know which half” was acceptable. Well, now we know which half—sort of. It’s invaluable to know what people respond to and what media works and doesn’t work.
CREATIVITY IS KING
Let’s take a step back and remember why people even engage with advertising:
People are genuinely delighted by clever and entertaining creative.
An ad that makes you laugh. A video that draws you in and takes your breath away. A simple headline that makes you think “dude, that’s clever”.
Why did viewers used to look forward to the Superbowl commercials? Because they were entertaining. They were funny. They tugged at hearts and made everyone wish they could work in advertising.
So what happened?
Proven Successful
In my first job, as an Account Manager with Leo Burnett, I worked on the Procter & Gamble Vicks Cough and Colds account.
P&G has always been extremely analytical in the management of their brands and their promotions. Each year they invest $400 million in consumer research. It’s the backbone of their success and part of their corporate culture.
Already back in the early days of my advertising career, P&G’s product managers were instructing us to only deliver creative that was “proven successful”, which meant to always show a married couple in a certain way (make sure you see the ring on the finger), always use a certain layout, always use certain words in the copy. So the ads all ended up being very much the same and creativity went out the window. These may have been the most optimized ads, but a fresh creative approach may have been more effective.
Of course the media environment and the way media is consumed has changed. And the internet as a media vehicle has opened the door for analytics.
But even in today’s media environment, people are delighted by great creative on a website, pre-roll, Instagram or Facebook. Consumers enjoy a great ad and a great user experience. An automated content marketing campaign is so much more effective if it delivers a message through great creative.
Even in B2B, which traditionally was thought of as more cut and dry and to the point, people are starting to realize that companies are just a bunch of people and you’re still talking to human beings instead of generic corporate entities. Great creative doesn’t just work in B2B, it can elevate a company to a brand people (i.e. decision makers within companies) love (just ask Doug Kessler at Velocity Partners).
The Right Environment
But let’s not put it all on the shoulders of our creative teams. Great creative requires a great ecosystem. It requires a great brief with insights and focus (side rant: writing great creative briefs is a vanishing art just like merging in traffic).
It requires a great client who is willing to trust her agency and take a chance and who has the authority to approve it without the need to go up the stakeholder ladder (or worse, have a series of MEETINGS!). It requires time and some patience because the first try may not hit it out of the park.
Advertising has become a bit of a dirty word in the marketing world. We now talk about content marketing, experiential, digital, influencers, social media presence. This is all still advertising, just a new way to target and interact with the audience. It’s just done in more of a conversational way and with better timing.
Its purpose is still to get people to know about and buy your product or service. And if done right, they’ll start to understand and love it so much that they’ll tell other people about it.
Advertising has always been part psychology because communicating facts is only one aspect of it. Affecting human emotions is scientifically proven to create desire and to induce memory. And the best way to affect human emotions is through great creative.
