Data is a fundamental part of modern marketing, but is our overreliance on this having a knock on effect on our advertising effectiveness, on our creativity?
This presentation takes you through the issues with being too data focused, highlights when you should trust your gut and offers a few insights to help you optimise your brain, just like you would your data.
19. We are impacted by a lot
@johnlukejackson
Biases
Anchoring
Past Experience
Concentration
Risk analysis
Multitasking
Biology
Confirmation Bias
Hindsight Bias
Halo Effect
24. Data + Experience => Insight => Creativity
@johnlukejackson
Multiple, refined
data points
Been there before. What
have you seen? What
patterns can you notice.
Is it relevant? Does it
matter? Does it fit with the
wider world?
How can we make people
care?
32. Short tail Keyword
1000 searches pm
Ranking 2nd
180 visits
Long tail Keyword
<10 searches pm
Ranking 2nd
1/2 visits
VS
33. Search volume doesn’t always
matter. Specificity does.
Understand what's best for your
client
34. Use your gut, but think of it as
another data point
Gary Klein
35. Know when to trust your
intuition
1. Some regularity
2. A lot of practice
3. Feedback
Paraphrased from Daniel Kahneman
36. If you know it will work,
just do it.
Time costs money
37. Pre-Mortem – What could
go wrong?
Vivid
In a premortem, team members assume that the project
they are planning has just failed—as so many do—and
then generate plausible reasons for its demise.
Those with reservations may speak freely at the outset,
so that the project can be improved rather than
autopsied
https://hbr.org/2007/09/performing-a-project-premortem
41. Vivid
Improve your creativity by:
• Looking at art.
• Imagining how an accountant would
approach a problem.
• Incorporate “cheese” and “pie” into
your next meeting.
• Asking what toothpaste is for?
Richard Wiseman – 59 Seconds
46. Know when to be unpredictable
https://riseatseven.com/blog/creative-ppc-stunts-that-drive-brand-and-traffic/
47. In Summary
• Data is only as good as its sources and its
interpreters
• Trust your gut, but be aware of your fallibilities
• Use data, but remember to take risks where you can
• Data can only get you so far, Creativity is key
People Use Statistics as a Drunk Uses a Lamppost — For Support Rather Than Illumination
Andrew Lang
Robby Mook was the key Strategist for the Clinton campaign against trump. They hired 60 mathematicians and statisticians—several from the Obama campaign—to create a software program Ada that used statistical modelling to plan their campaign.
With Ada and this modelling, they lobbed 70% of the campaign budget at television ads, specifically around what it thought were potential swing states. The model took blue-collar voters for granted, figuring that they reliably voted Democratic, most recently for Obama, and they would do so again. With blue-collar votes as her unshakeable base, Clinton would coast to victory by persuading minorities and liberal elites to vote for her.
Look, Ada is just a computer program and, like all computer programs, has no common sense or wisdom. But you would expect the Human leading the campaign to have wisdom. Yet time and time again they ignored the issues. The first hint of trouble should have been around the challenge of Bernie Sanders. This was a 74 year old socialist senator from Vermont. He wasn’t even a democrat till he challenged Clinton. Yet he ran her close by emotionally appealing to blue collar voters.
Then, when up against Trump, Bill Clinton pointed out that the campaign should try to emotionally connect with Blue collar workers in the Midwest. Places like Wisconsin and Arizona. Whatever you think about Clinton, if you look at his record his is an instinctive political genius, yet, Robby Mook actually took to mocking him stating that “my data disagrees with you anecdotes”
Needless to say, Hilary lost the campaign due to losing those “safe” blue collar states like Wisconsin and Arizona to the emotive, batshit mental statements from Trump…
The remain campaign relied on logically, data backed arguments, whilst Leave relied on emotion.
The EU, fundamentally, is a political project. Its fundementally emotional but the remain campaign couldn’t grasp that as they stuck ridgedly to the economic, logical, data based arguments.
It relies on models
Its based on the past
Random events, things that don’t fit the model, will break it
Its predictable and predictable things are easy to hack
Its ability to apply the “illogical” is what makes it stand out. Your brain is key to creativity
Experience helps us analyse data effectively and spot patterns
an algorithm can only do what it's programmed to do, so it can't possibly do anything novel
Its not “once upon a time” or “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or 'The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (1980)
Multitasking – The invisible Gorilla – Daniel Simons – People were so focused on passing a ball between themselves they couldn’t actually see when a gorilla walked past them
Think Suntory and Lost in translation – As an arty media studies wanker I both liked the film and liked to think of myself as a whisky connosiere
Daniel Kahneman, G Klein, This is especially important for big strategic decisions
Bernbachs masterpiece. All 1950s American cars were massive gas guzzling beasts. VW turn up with a tiny car made by Nazis. They went against convention and pushed a product the market didn’t even know it wanted.
Snickers will not drive any direct value from this, but they will build awareness, that ties into the broader marketing campaign. This lights something in the back of your head that recognises the tag line and you respond
Marketing is the closest most of us will ever come to producing real magic