The Next Creative Frontier

I know, I know – it’s probably ironic that a woman who ran what, at the time, was the largest global media services agency – Starcom Mediavest Group – is about to strike a keyboard on a laptop about creativity. But that’s alright: by the time I’m done with this article, I hope you see how the next Frontier is Creativity in our business of marketing, and how the evolution and revolution of dynamic targeting and buying has now made that possible.

The Wheel or The Carousel?

The last episode of Season 1 of Mad Men is quite possibly my favorite. In it, Don pitches the Kodak business while trying to find a USP for this new technology they had created: “The Wheel”. It was technologically advanced, but consumers didn’t get it and didn’t know why they should want or use it. Kodak was desperate for an idea.

The Sterling Cooper pitch, led by Don, was simply brilliant. The Wheel wasn’t a function, or a feature or a technology - it was a Carousel, going backward and forward in time, full of memories and emotions and moments that had a unique power to captivate and, most importantly, to make people feel.

Watch the clip here.

With one turn of phrase, and a deep and unique connection to imagery, human experience and emotion, Don turned “the carousel” into a must-have product and deepened the impact of the Kodak Brand. The power of creativity.

The Left Brain Industry

In the last decade we have seen the marketing and media industry dominated by what I call the “left brain side of the industry”.  This has been where the action has been the last decade in the industry, and where, gains in ROI, effectiveness and media cost efficiencies have been largely gained. Programmatic, especially, has made real time data injection, campaign targeting, bidding and optimization happen in milliseconds. It has propelled our industry forward and given rise to some amazing companies – not just Google and Facebook, but Trade Desk, Live Ramp and others.

But we all know, as we’ve all been following the money, something has been missing. The value exchange between consumer and brand has been less fulfilling as ad blocks get longer, targeting gets more disjointed or decided in silos between the what, who and where of the communication plan, brand safety concerns makes the internet a scary place, and marketers are not sure who is paying attention anymore. Buying reach – even a mix of traditional and digital reach – has been effective, but many are wondering: is it now? Has the advantage of all this technology, functionality and real time-ness led to a quality experience, captivated and made people feel so that they “must have” a brand or product?

We all know why people anticipate the ads in the Super Bowl – because they are well-crafted, big, iconic and usually have something to say that is surprising and new. Unfortunately, the remaining 364 days of the year don’t feel that way at all.

Watch the Future of the Agency Business from Season 3 of Mad Men here (it got Duck fired).

The Creator Generation

We are undoubtedly at the beginning of the creator generation. The smart folks at Adobe know that the power of images, stories and content is more dominant than ever as 40mm subscribers have embraced the Creative Cloud and all of Adobe’s creative tools.

It is critically imperative that the industry meets the call of the consumers and people it serves. The digital world and all of its channels have given way to an explosion of content and the need for powerful creative platforms that can renew our industry and breathe life into our brands, making people feel inspired again.

The Next Frontier

So, what is the next frontier? It’s solving the problem of real-time creative, storytelling and content building at the same time, in concert and linked uniquely to media context, targeting and placement. But this isn’t one ad spread across the internet in a clever media buy, or even a campaign that can drill down to geo or basic target demographics. We all know when some brands get it right: everything about the creativity, the context and the media placement is in harmony. This is big, bold contextually relevant creative and content that matches in a millisecond all the power possible as platforms make targeting, and placement decisions. It’s video, it’s rich content and it’s dynamic imagery that engage consumers.

And, it’s my prediction, that when agencies, data companies, and platforms start paying attention to how to enable, infuse, curate and build amazing ads across the digital ad ecosystem, we’ll achieve stronger campaign performance and higher ROI’s. 

The Next Creative Frontier will not only be more beautiful and captivating, it will be much more effective too.