How do agencies maintain an effective balance between creativity and data-driven strategies? We hear from Emily Hart, digital director at AKA UK.
The question of utilising both data and creativity is one that I think is consistently relevant, and is certainly a topic that is high on the agenda for agencies – especially us at AKA.
As a full-service agency, AKA’s in-house audience, creative and BI teams equip us with the insight to plan a campaign, the creative to activate it, and the data to maximise its performance.
I love both creativity and data. Creativity is the thing that people remember, arguably the more fun individual in this rather important relationship, whereas data is the slightly more serious one, essential for validating our actions and strategies. The emphasis on measurability and numbers can sometimes overshadow the equally crucial aspects of message relevance and situational context, leading to a one-dimensional view of success based solely on metrics.
Being measurable is overpraised. I believe we’re too focused on numbers, and deem success solely on the metrics. There are crucial aspects, including the message and its relevance, that can often be overlooked. We have a responsibility as an industry to better educate clients and marketing teams on what success looks like”. When digital first entered the media space, agencies and clients alike felt they’d finally found a way to directly attribute media to sales through KPI’s such as ROAS & CPA – great! There is of course still a place for this but by fixating on these metrics we’re limiting the space that could be made for creativity within our media mix.
Creativity is at the heart of what we do, we want to enthral our audiences but also convert them. Data can be extremely powerful, it’s reassuring in performance, gives us proof that we’re doing the right thing and ultimately bolsters the effectiveness of a marketing campaign.
Creating and maintaining the symbiotic relationship between art and science is the key to a memorable, effective and successful media campaign.
