1. Admap Prize 2015 Entry Form and Guidelines
Thank you for downloading the Admap Prize 2015 Entry Form and Guidelines.
Please take a few minutes to read this form and its requirements.The Gold Award will be made to the
essay that best addresses the topic: Does Big Data inspire or hinder creative thinking?
Judges will score essays for the quality of their ideas, argument, evidence and writing style. Essays
should be between 2,000 and 2,500 words long.
When you have completed your essay, email it to admap.prize@warc.com. The essay should be
submitted in Word format in the original font on this entry form (in the space below).
If you have not done so already, you should read The Admap Prize 2015 Terms & Conditions.
Before you start completing this form, please also read the bullet points below. They are designed to
help you fill out your entry form in the fullest and most efficient way possible.
• Ensure you give a source for any data included in your entry form or any claim you make
about the evidence for your essay idea.
• The deadline for entries is February 16, 2015 . For updates follow colin_admap on Twitter
or by reading Admap magazine by subscribing to the print or iPad edition at
www.warc.com/myadmap, or refer to the Admap Prize site at
www.warc.com/admapprize2015. To receive a deadline reminder, you can also email
admap.prize@warc.com, putting “Reminder” in the subject line.
• To be eligible for The Admap Prize, your work should be original, unpublished and represent
your own original thinking.
• Essays will put forward arguments that answer the central question – Does Big Data
inspire or hinder creative thinking? Big Data and its application in marketing is a topic
that is being hotly argued in all corners of our industry. The gathering of data, its
manipulation and its employment is fundamental to the future of marketing. In some quarters,
Big Data is seen as a panacea for all marketing’s ills, a kind of Holy Grail quest to form one-
to-one relationships with customers, eliminating all marketing wastage. Others view Big Data
as the enemy at the gates, a dagger in the heart of creativity.
Between these polar extremes, most people accept that the mass of data now being
generated from consumer activity can be a positive if channelled appropriately. Among the
issues that essay entrants might consider in addressing the topic are: Can data assist the
creative process? How can it assist in the development of the big idea, or the little idea? How
can data finesse the media strategy? How will programmatic buying impact on media
planning? How can brand marketers effectively integrate numerous datasets to optimise
brand messaging to benefit consumers without annoying, or infringing data privacy
protection?
As can be seen, there are many ways one can address this central question. The above are
just a few of the issues that might be considered. You may well have other ideas.
• Your essay should be between 2,000 and 2,500 words long and should be submitted in Word
document form in the English language and the original font. Supporting charts can be
submitted as separate files to the essay. It is not obligatory to include charts and marks will
not be lost if none are submitted.
• Your work should be written as free-flowing, engaging narrative in the form of an essay, and
not, for example, in the form of a Powerpoint presentation. Marks will be awarded on the
following basis:
Idea (25% of marks). Marks will be scored for the originality of the central idea, the
strength of the idea and how practical it is in terms of its relevance and application in
marketing.
Admap Prize 2015 Entry Form and Guidelines www.warc.com/admapprize2015 Page 1
2. Argument (25% of marks). Marks will be scored according to how convincing is the
argument for the idea, how credible is the case made, and the understanding of the issues
involved.
Evidence (25% of marks). Marks will be scored for the strength of the evidence that
supports the idea and the argument and how well it demonstrates the practical application of
the idea. This might include real brand case examples.
Writing style (25% of marks). Marks will be scored for the way in which the idea,
arguments and evidence are presented, how they flow, how well the paper communicates the
thinking in the essay, how easy it is to understand the idea and how readable and engaging
the essay is. Allowance will be made for authors for whom English is not their first language.
Now, please complete the following entry details:
Essay Title
So, what do you do for a living?
Author(s) Name(s) & Job Title(s)
Thomas Henry, Senior Strategist
Author(s) Company(-ies)
DARE
Author(s) Country of Residency
UK
Author(s) Email Address
Thomas.Henry@thisisdare.com
Author(s) Telephone
07749104463
Please signify that you have read
and agree to the Terms &
Conditions by typing I AGREE
in the box right.
YES
Admap Prize 2015
Does Big Data Inspire or Hinder Creative Thinking?
Essay title: So, what do you do for a living?
Essay authored by: Thomas Henry
Write your essay here in between 2,000 and 2,500 words:
So, what do you do for a living?
One Saturday night in the mid 1970s, creative maverick George Lois was on a TV talk show with the
CEOs of two Madison Avenue giants.
"So Gentlemen,” the host asked, “what is advertising"?
The two establishment boys proceeded to wax lyrical about marketing, customer research and
positioning. As these two men in grey-flannel-suits congratulated one another on the fine and
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3. splendid points they were making, Lois looked dismayed.
"Mr Lois, you seem to be agitated. Don't you agree with this definition of your profession?"
Lois practically jumped out of his seat before spitting back in his thick, Bronx staccato.
"My profession? Geez, I don't think I work in the same business as those guys".
"OK Mr Lois”, the host asked, “what do you think advertising is"?
"Advertising? Advertising is poison gas. It should hit you in the mouth, like 'pow' you know? Your eyes
should be stinging, your hands should go numb. You ‘oughta be gasping for breath with your heart
pounding a hundred miles an hour when you see it. That's what I think advertising is".
*
“Diamonds are lumps of coal that stuck at it no matter how much heat or pressure they
faced”. Jeffrey Fry
Forty years after George Lois’ plea for creativity, our industry is just as far away from answering the
same question posed that night - what exactly is it we do for a living? The answer is crucial to thinking
about whether big-data inspires or hinders creative thinking in advertising.
I’ve chosen to limit this essay to creative thinking in advertising because it’s the industry I feel most
qualified to comment on. Even then, it’s a pretty big task.
For example, last year we were told that the Publi-Com merger would pave the way for the future of
advertising. ‘Big networks’ would use ‘big-data’ to create ‘scalable solutions’ that provided ‘operational
efficiencies’. I for one struggled to see what any of that had to do with my day job.
I don’t think big-data is hindering creativity in advertising because I don’t think there’s any evidence to
show that big-data has an impact on creativity in advertising. It’s like asking if the sun has an impact
on the size of sausage rolls in Doncaster.
What I do think could affect creativity in advertising is the misplaced pursuit of big-data solutions as a
panacea; the idea that an ever-expanding spreadsheet can solve all client business problems. Such a
pursuit diverts time, energy, resources and client good will away from creating ideas that can change
businesses.
Now, I'm a planner, so of course I think big-data is interesting, but as a northerner I reckon it’s just
coal, fields and fields of coal. And creative agencies don’t sell coal. We sell diamonds.
All diamonds start as coal, but not all the coal makes it through to being a diamond. Throughout the
strategy process you’re constantly labouring to apply analytic pressure and creative heat to raw data,
trying to turn it into something valuable. In the end you actually discount lots of data because it’s not
the amount of coal that’s important in getting you a diamond, it’s all about what certain lumps of coal
reveal when you turn up the pressure and the heat. That’s about bringing together the right
information to help you arrive at an insight that leads to a diamond worth paying for.
To be clear, I love using data, but I also see its limitations no matter its size.
My dad founded a direct marketing agency in the 80s, just as digital databases became popular.
When I was 16, I worked for him as a copywriter and became fascinated by data driven creativity.
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4. One day I asked him “why don’t you just write all the copy based on data? Only use the adjectives
that test well, the punch lines, the intros and outros”?
My dad smiled at me and said; “We could do son, but what I’ve found is that data only ever tells you
where not to go, it never tells you where you need to go”.
I didn’t understand what that meant until I became a planner, then, it suddenly made all the sense in
the world. Data doesn’t guarantee you will produce ideas that work for your client; therefore, time
spent in pursuit of bigger data is wasted and hinders your ability to produce diamond quality creative
work.
Where’s my evidence? Let’s have a look.
“Emotion leads to action, whereas reason leads to conclusions” Donald Calne
One of the main reasons that there is no empirical link between big-data and creativity in advertising
is that data is objective, rational information and creativity is subjective, emotional information.
This is important because, as shown in the work by Binet & Field1
as well as Byron Sharp,2
advertising
is effective by building and maintaining memory structures. The best way to do that is to establish
emotional connections in the mind of the customer. What we generally term ‘creativity’ is the way in
which these emotions are articulated through a medium: communications, service design or products.
This building and maintaining of memories through emotion is effective because human decision-
making is a thoroughly emotional process. As famed behavioural economist Daniel Khaneman put it:
“We think that we're much more rational than we are. And we think that we make our decisions
because we have good reasons to make them. Even though it's the other way around. We believe the
reasons, because we've already made the decision”.3
Prior to advances in analytical psychology that facilitated Khaneman’s work on ‘system one and two’
thinking, Antonio Damasio reached similar conclusions in his seminal text, “Descartes’ Error”. 4
Damasio showed that that the brain often ‘chooses’ among alternatives in decision making by
‘marking’ one alternative as more emotionally salient than another.
The key case study Damasio cited was of ‘Elliot’, a patient who’d had parts of his prefrontal cortex
removed because of a brain tumour. The prefrontal cortex classifies experiences emotionally as either
‘good’ or ‘bad’.
Without his prefrontal cortex ‘Elliot’, had been robbed of the ability to perform emotional classifications
when making decisions. It would take him three hours to order a sandwich because – rationally –
what is the difference between a tuna salad on rye, and a chicken salad on rye? They’re both protein
based with a similar nutrient content. They are both pleasing to eat. How do you make a rational
choice quickly and efficiently?
1
”The Long and The Short of It” by Les Binet and Peter Field, 2013
2
“How Brands Grow” by Byron Sharp, 2012
3
“Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, 2011
4
”Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain” by Antonio Damasio, 1994
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5. ‘Elliot’ was the perfect consumer in an economist’s mind; a rational agent who could weigh up
information and maximise his utility based on objective criteria. But what drives every economist
crazy is that they know this is not possible.
Harvard Professor of Psychology Dan Gilbert explains why:
“Our brains are bad at two things: accurately estimating the odds that our choices will lead to
success, and making huge errors in estimating the value of the success of those choices”.5
Because the rational decision making bit of our brain isn’t very good, emotional decision making is
essential to normal human functioning.
When launching products like ‘Google Glass’, Eric Schmidt is fond of reminding us that we now
create more data each year than we did from the birth of Christ to 2003. He would argue that, in this
'information age' the scale of the data has fundamentally changed the applicability of it. But big-data
is still just rational information, so no matter how much of it we have, it’s not going to help us better
understand the emotional context in which decisions are made. If we’re after creative diamonds, more
coal isn’t the answer.
The truth is that, as Bill Bernbach so elegantly put it, creativity in advertising does not appeal to
changing man, it appeals to unchanging man - a wonderfully inefficient, beautifully fragile cipher for
past experiences and future dreams.
That hasn’t changed just because Google invented glasses we can talk to.
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” Sir Isaac Newton
So if big-data has a limited applicability to the kind of creativity that can influence emotional memory
and decision-making, then perhaps it could be useful in establishing a more creative approach to
audience analysis and understanding of large scale behaviour?
Well, the world’s best economists and mathematicians aren’t convinced. The search for a link
between big-data and human behaviour is sometimes referred to as ‘physics envy’ by economists:
“Physics envy: the need to reduce a series of complicated situations to clear, broadly applicable
lessons. But while the laws of gravity and thermodynamics work the same way in Vancouver, Seoul
or Athens, businesses do not.”6
This disconnect is caused by the difference between ‘complicated systems’ and ‘complex systems’.
One you can model with data and the other you can’t, no matter how much data you have.
Professor Eve Middleton-Kelly, Director of The Complexity Research Group at the London School of
Economics explains:
“Complicated systems are machine type systems, you can design them and you can predict their
behaviour. A complicated system would be something like a jet engine, it has lots of interdependent
moving parts, but they can be designed so we can predict the outcome every time”.7
5
“Why We Make Bad Decisions” at TEDGlobal by Professor Dan Gilbert. 2005
6
“The Physics Envy Problem”, by The Economist, 2011
7
“Complexity”, on BBC R4 In Our Time, 2013
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6. Good news for frequent flyers!
In advertising, a complicated system could be a website, an app or an in-store environment. Systems
we have designed in order to generate certain outcomes. But we cannot do this with a complex
system. Professor Eve Middleton-Kelly again:
“Complex systems are different because they create new structures through the interactions of agents
within the system. They are not just made complex by the interaction of these agents, they are made
complex by the new layers of interdependence that arise as a result of this connectivity”.8
This characteristic of complex systems is known as ‘emergence’, the process whereby larger patterns
arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities that themselves do not exhibit such
properties. This is the kind of system we traditionally deal with in advertising; a market, a category or
interactions between platforms. These complex systems cannot be definitively modeled with data.
Ian Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick, gives a beautiful
example of this using the human brain:
“You can write down mathematical equations that are good representations or predictions of what
individual neurons do. But when you connect billions of neurons together, you get consciousness.
There is nothing in the structure of an individual neuron that says it has to form consciousness. And
yet, we know that all the wonderful things the brain does happen through neurons exchanging
electrical and chemical signals along a network”.9
So if world class academics can only model the complicated parts of complex systems, how do they
make sense of it all? Through focus groups of course. Professor Eve Middleton-Kelly again:
“When we try to understand the behavior of humans, we need to talk to them. It isn’t enough to
understand the numbers; we need to understand the ‘why.’ Why do people interact in the way they do
and why does it change under certain circumstances? To understand those ‘whys’ you need to use
qualitative, critical analysis, because in no way can we predict how individuals will behave or react”.10
So how does this help us to know whether chasing big-data is a waste of time that detracts from
diamond-quality creativity?
Well, if world class economists and mathematicians can only model the complicated parts of complex
systems to investigate human behavior, I don’t think creative agencies can do any better.
“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.” G.K. Chesterton
So if we’re not in the business of big-data efficiency, what do we do for a living? As Rory Sutherland
put it, our job is to turn human insight into business advantage.
The leap that gets you from A to B in that sentence is creativity; seeing information in a different way
to anyone else, and then having the passion to steal from every genius you’ve ever loved to put
something out there that blows the bloody doors off.
8
“Complexity” , on BBC R4 In Our Time, 2013
9
“Complexity” on BBC R4 In Our Time, 2013
10
“Complexity” on BBC R4 In Our Time, 2013
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