Empowering Creativity: The Intersection Of Art & Science In Data-driven Advertising

Rajesh Ghatge Jul 26, 2024

The access to data has increased and the tediousness of analysing it has reduced, says Ghatge

Creativity has always been driven by information. The creative process and ideas that eventually grow wings have been guided and inspired by gaining knowledge of the problem that needs to be solved, the audience that it is being solved for, and discovering the undeniable human truth that could be masked within the problem.

Creativity, however, is fuelled by the human ability to empathise with the audience and imagine their experiences. It has the ability not to be limited by the constraints of focus (resulting in a limited view and limited solutions), but to gain awareness, at times rejecting existing boundaries and eventually forming a wider perspective. Herein lies its inherent ability to produce expressions that resonate deeply with human emotions. Expressions that stand the test of evolving times.

What has changed is the speed and scale at which the information footprint that consumers are leaving behind as they consume content, products, services, and experiences, and also when they interact with each other and the environment. Like never before, it has become possible to capture these imprints in real time, store them, and analyse them. The rapid advances in digital technologies, both software and hardware, are exponentially increasing this capability with every passing quarter and making it easier to do so. Further, it is now possible to respond to consumer interactions in real-time too.

The implication for advertisers is that they now have access to a tremendous amount of data (information) about their consumers, access to it directly, and they have access to all the environmental or ecosystem data that may be potentially influencing the behaviour of their consumers. The access to data has increased, and the tediousness of analysing it has reduced. One may infer that this would certainly make creativity easier. The brands now know so much more about their consumers. Targeting them is easier, and personalising communication and customising products, services, and experiences is now possible at an unprecedented scale. A multitude of marketing automation platforms and software applications and services enable this phenomenon seamlessly. However, while sophisticated platforms are available, the challenge that brands face today is that of data deluge. Making sense of data is not easy and comes at a considerable cost. Further, the danger of bias creeping in is real. Data models are getting sophisticated—they spew out impressive dashboards—highlighting patterns and variations—but again, drawing a perspective from them needs a trained (and a life-experienced) human in the loop to read the reports in the human context and hope to validate that insight that had instinctively emerged.

The expansion and democratisation of the data-driven targeting and personalisation of communication, however, does not guarantee increased effectiveness unless it is infused with the right creative articulation that is driven by human insight, which is most likely to resonate with the hearts and minds of the consumers and influence behaviour.

Great art is always magical—it magically appeals—and at times the ‘why’ is hindsight. Similarly, impactful creatives (advertisements/communication digital or otherwise) have nuanced appeal—across borders, cultures, demographics, and decades.

Advertisers need to continue to strike a balance between the extent to which they use data to inform the creation of the communication and the inherent creative faculties to produce appealing work. We see mere permutations and combinations of machine-learning or archived art being passed off as creative, and zillions of variations published across omnichannel platforms as customised creatives—rarely do they work.

Data, however, definitely does help in the distribution and targeting of communication. There is an opportunity to reduce waste both in production costs and media costs by leveraging tools that enable a virtuous loop of feedback from campaigns. A well-thought-through strategic framework of hypothesis testing, meta-tagging, tracking, and optimising—all driven by a data strategy and a powerful platform that leverages the continuous advances in technology—has been seen to contribute significantly back to advertisers.