The Buzz from Cannes – Unifying Creative & Analytics

Mid June means one thing for creatives and advertising bods – Cannes. The team at Spirable were busy showcasing their platform to both current and prospective clients and enjoying the buzz from all that creativity. However leaving to one side the rose wine, million-dollar yachts and beach parties, some interesting research pieces and reports have been released in the last week with one standing out, primarily because of what is was saying, but also because of who was saying it.

Consultancy firms well documented expansion into areas traditionally occupied by media agencies, is giving both clients and their traditional agency partners a lot to think about. Accenture Digitals stand size alone may be giving agency bosses more sleepless nights than any media owner party, Kylie or no Kylie! It was therefore the insight piece released by McKinsey & Company, who’s key theme for Cannes was based around their findings that companies who harness creativity and data in tandem, grew twice as fast as those who didn’t (10% annually vs 5%) that generated alot of interest.

McKinsey surveyed two hundred CMO’s and senior marketers and categorised those who have successfully combined data and creativity as ‘integrators’, and they believe they are modernizing marketing in three distinct ways:

1. They treat creativity and data as equal partners

Creative functions are becoming more data driven and data driven functions are becoming more creative. Advanced consumer insight is moving from the background, allowing analysts a new voice in the creative process, and crucially the opportunity to see their work come to life.

2. They make integration a way of life through an agile marketing operating model.

They have embraced agile marketing teams, where small, cross-functional teams, work relatively autonomously on focused objectives. As a result, timelines for creating new campaigns or initiatives shrinks from months to weeks, or even days.

3. They seek “whole brain” talent

Companies want talent with both left and right brain skills, even if their primary function will utilize one more the other. Creativity can no longer just be confined to creative roles.

Interesting to note that ‘integrators’ are far more likely to have adopted dynamic personalised adverts and be creating content based on data about individual consumers, as opposed to mass, generic messaging.

Creating useful and inspiring content through contextual messaging at scale, is what we do here at Spirable. Our AI driven, self-serve platform, allows businesses to combine data and creative seamlessly. Research, such as that which McKinsey has undertaken, combined with our campaign results, continues to show just how effective data driven creativity can be – in many cases we see an 8 x increase in consumer engagement – the ambition of advertising finally becoming relevant and useful for the individual, based on their current situation and mindset, is beginning to be realised at genuine scale.

We are only scratching the surface with the types of campaigns intelligent data usage will bring in the coming months/years. Everyone at Spirable is excited to be able to offer the platform, through which clients and agencies (and consultancies) can fully exploit this shift in corporate strategy and consumer expectations.

If you want to know how we can help do this, please give us a shout.