It’s all about Big Data, right? Targeting, gathering information, using that data to deliver relevant messages, correct? Not so fast says Millward Brown, conducting an analysis of winning case studies from the IPA Effectiveness, Effies and Cannes Lions awards.
“This analysis serves as celebration of creativity. Advertising which is enjoyed, found involving, and stimulates the emotions in a way that other advertising doesn’t, should be encouraged and rewarded. But that doesn’t mean advertisers should pursue creativity at the expense of all else.
It has long been known that advertising needs to be underpinned by an appropriate strategy. This analysis adds another factor: branding. It is all very well for an ad to leave vibrant memories, but do these memoires link to your brand uniquely?
Branding has nothing to do with repeating the brand name and showing packs; it has everything to do with making the brand the centre of, and the reason for, the creative idea. The Marlboro Cowboy, the Hovis delivery boy freewheeling down a hill to the strains of Dvorak’s “New World Symphony”, the Andrex puppy and the Clio-driving Nicole and Papa, are all excellent examples of well-branded advertising.
There are many ways to brand an ad but, ultimately, it relies on creativity to integrate the brand, or an established branding cue, into the ad in an engaging way. This analysis suggests that advertising should also stimulate emotions; but there is no single emotion which works better.”
An important 180 by a company that brought you the “Awareness index”, a key metric that assumes that achieves its effect primarily by impacting memory – awareness and recall. Come to find out, emotion is pretty much everything.
As a professional that worked on the creative, media, accounting and planning side, I can assure you that creative work is not everything. You need to have a solid planning foundation, providing a platform to develop brilliant creative. And you need to have advanced communications and media planning to get your message heard, activate the audience and get the most of your owned platforms and earn media.
Problem is, the digital marketing industry has been in the grip of technologist, data nerds and spread sheets. They own digital marketing. That needs to change. Or we will continue to live in a world of tiny boxes being overlooked by customers. Guess works masqued as metrics.
Advertising was always about emotions. How come we forget about that?
Time to remember.
uwehook 
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