Stuck in the middle

For some years now, our agency has been pioneering in “Data-driven Creativity.” If you talk about this concept, a common response is, “yeah yeah, we know.” Or even, “of course, we do this too.” Only to quickly realize we’re talking about different concepts. Some of them refer to creativity inspired by data; others simply confuse it with data-driven marketing. But none of these concepts cut it.

When people combine the words data and creativity, they get an image of creativity that’s defined by some form of data-source. Typically this means one of two things: an insight or a graphical presentation of this data. So this is what I call data-inspired creativity - your concept relies on the data for conception or representation.

Data-driven marketing is the other side of the spectrum. This typically gets put in the performance marketing basket: using (live) results to tweak the campaign and try to improve the results.

Data-driven Creativity sits right in the middle.

I love being in the middle. I believe innovation is the result of combining things. The union in set theory. The fertilisation. The emergence of new life. But being in the middle isn’t always easy. Especially not in a sector where people love their classifications. Here’s a typical conversation:

• So, you’re a digital agency?
• Well .. sure we’re an ad agency, and our DNA is pretty digital, but we don’t really like the term because it doesn’t mean anything ..
• Ok, ok, so you’re a digital creative agency?
• Yeah, we definitely do that, but we also code and animate and..
• Oh a studio?
• If you like, but then we also buy media in a pretty advanced way.
• Oh I see, a performance agency.
• Pff, we just want to enroll in the things our clients need and love. We believe that’s an integrated story, so we do whatever we can to work integrated. And that’s always a combo of technology (including code, media, data, ..) and creativity.

Communicate more relevantly by using data and signals to tailor a message to a specific recipient