After twenty years, Prof. Dr. Marc Drüner, one of our founders and namesakes, has retired from the executive board.

A Visionary Data Pioneer

Prof. Dr. Drüner is the author of several economic publications and has held a professorship at Steinbeis University since 2002. In 1999, he teamed up with Prof. Dr. Volker Trommsdorff and Lars-Alexander Mayer at the TU Berlin to found TD Reply, originally named trommsdorff+drüner. Over the next twenty years, we became one of the world’s leading specialists in the field of data-driven marketing. Today, we employ over 100 people at our offices in Berlin, Beijing and Munich and work with a long list of global industry leaders.

His strategic foresight has played an important role in the success of TD Reply. Earlier than most, at the very beginning of Web 2.0, he discovered the potential of online customer interactions and communities for generating actionable insights. Consequently, we became one of the first specialists to develop effective concepts for the use of digital data and quickly established ourselves on the market.

Remains as an Adviser

Prof. Dr. Drüner has now decided to devote more time to his work of establishing new academic centers in China, retiring from company management tasks.

However, we are happy to state that he remains as an adviser on a number of our projects and will continue to share his ideas, experiences, and extensive contacts with us.

Every year, the German Association for the Digital Economy (BVDW) releases an authoritative ranking of German digital agencies. We are proud to say that the Reply Digital Network – which TD Reply is part of – has been awarded the pole position this year!

What made Reply Digital Experience stand out is the whopping 26,7 percent growth we experienced last year. That is the second highest gtowth rate among the first ten positions. Moreover, Reply Digital Experience was the only contender to surpass the 100 million revenue mark.

TD Reply joined the Reply network in 2016.

There continues to be a huge buzz around digital data in business. Yet the debates still seem to be guided by hype, rather than substance. We think that the attention should focused more on the real key question for businesses: How can data be turned into actual business value?

That is why we put this question at the centre stage of dataX 2019, the third and biggest edition of our annual client conference yet. Close to 100 data pioneers from some of the world’s leading blue-chip companies such as adidas, BMW, Coca-Cola, FrieslandCampina, SAP, and Telefónica came together at the BMW Welt in Munich to exchange their ideas in between thought-provoking keynotes and one-to-one breakout sessions.

We are happy to report that the event was a full success, marked by an incredibly positive atmosphere with lots of smiles and great ideas!

Watch the dataX 2019 aftermovie for a short glimpse:

The Answers: Using Data to Drive Business Success

Ever since its first iteration in 2016, the keynote speeches are at the heart of dataX. Most of them are held by representatives from our clients and consist of real-world case studies. This year, the keynote speeches provided plenty of great answers to the key question outlined above and were chock-full of interesting insights. Below you will the key takeaways from all the speeches this year!

1. TD Reply: Announcing China Beats

The first keynote was held by Anja Kielmann, Senior Director Creative Strategies at TD Reply Berlin, and Martin Schmoll, Senior Creative Strategist at TD Reply Beijing. Their introduction revolved around the growing importance of the Chinese market for international companies, as the Chinese middle class is projected to grow to 550 million people by 2022, according to the World Bank.

For this reason, gaining a solid foothold in the Chinese market becomes an imperative for an increasing number of companies. However, as the speakers stressed, it is impossible to do so without truly understanding the market and its actors – and understanding them better than the competition does. Then, they seized the moment to announce China Beats, a new business intelligence suite developed by TD and set to be released in the third quarter of 2019. Utilising the latest in machine learning, natural language processing, and data analytics for advanced social listening, China Beats will not only allow users to gather player, brands, and market data in a hitherto unparalleled quantity and quality, but also to intelligently interpret it. As a result, the users will obtain valuable insights into the Chinese market and the preferences of Chinese consumers, granting them a head start vis-à-vis the competition and setting a course for long-term business success in China.

Follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to always stay up to date on China Beats and other new TD developments!

2. Telefónica: The Virtue of a Virtual Marketing Assistant

Florian Wilken, Manager Analytical Models & Foresight, Telefónica Germany then followed with a speech focusing on the Virtual Marketing Assistant (VIMA), developed by TD Reply. VIMA is a unique AI-powered module for marketing dashboards, which can deliver automated alerts to all users. These alerts consist of information about KPI development, context information and, most important, analytical derived causes and effects.  

By translating raw metrics and data into a written-out fact description, VIMA provides real insights and guidance in a highly digestible form. The risk of getting lost in a massive amount of metrics is minimised, complexity reduced. This way, the marketers can fully focus more on optimising marketing performance, rather than spending resources on making sense of raw data. VIMA can also be integrated into our Pulse dashboards.

3. SAP: Why You Need to Think New

Next in line was Christian Wehner, Business Development Senior Specialist and Digital Ambassador at SAP. Wehner emphasized that the mankind is moving from the competition of knowledge the competition of creativity. Already today, creativity has become one of the most valued skills in business, according to the World Economic Forum.

Against that background, Wehner stated that creativity cannot be fully unleashed within the comfort zone: the “magic” can only happen if you leave it. To substantiate the point, he prompted everyone in the audience to draw a picture of the person sitting next to them. Many started laughing immediately, others looked visibly embarrassed to share their “portraits.” Then, he made the point that such reactions are common in business, where employees feel uncomfortable to share their ideas, out of fear that others may consider them to be too wild – something that needs to be changed, as he finally maintained. After all, transformation can only come from new ideas, and those ideas need to be shared to materialise!

4. BMW/MINI: Enabling Data-Driven Marketing Decisions

After the one-hour lunch break, a trio from BMW & MINI consisting of Annkathrin Dangmann (BMW Brand & Communication Management), Hanno Holzer (MINI Brand Management/Digital Marketing), and Jan Kubik (BMW Group Brand Portfolio Strategy) talked about BMW Data Analytics Center and MINI Marketing Dashboards, which have been developed by TD Reply on the basis of the Pulse insights platform.

The basic idea behind the DAC/MMD is to enable data-driven decision making within the BMW Group by consolidating data silos, creating a global unified KPI set, gathering data before, during, and after any communication activity, as well as allowing for ad-hoc brand and product steering. As a result, the marketing efficiency is increased, manual efforts for marketing performance management decreased, while the data skillset within the company evolved.

5. FrieslandCampina: Goodbye to Traditional Advertising

Frenkel Denie, Global Director Digital Commerce at Royal FrieslandCampina then followed with a speech on the future of advertising from the perspective of international companies. Traditional advertising, Denie argued, provides less return-on-invest than personalized digital commerce in the form of paid ads on leading platforms such as Facebook, Google, or Amazon.

For this personalized digital commerce to be successful, however, companies need to obtain precise insights into target markets and must prepare the right content for the right audience. This is why Royal FrieslandCampina works with the data experts from TD Reply, who deliver key insights into the potential of new regional markets, provide sophisticated marketing mix models, and can identify effective content ideas based on digital data.

6. adidas: Predicting Franchise Success with Lifecycle Management

The last keynote was held by Sven Bähre, Manager Strategic Insights & Analytics at adidas. Bähre first pointed towards the importance of iconic franchises in many industries. As he maintained, for adidas the adidas Originals Superstar sneakers are one of the franchises which provides vital design and tech cues for both the development of new products and brand steering – that way, they help build the whole brand.

To better understand consumer perception and demand of these important franchises, adidas, together with TD Reply, developed a novel Franchise Lifecycle Management system. With digital consumer data at the centre stage, the system allows for both anticipating all lifecycle stages of a franchise as well as steering franchise campaigns to reach their highest potential.

We are proud to announce that dataX is back for the third time! A hundred leading data executives will come together at BMW Welt in Munich on April 11, 2019, one of Europe’s most spectacular convention centers, to exchange experiences and talk business. This year’s theme: Data. Business. Creativity.

At dataX 2019, we are delighted to host a variety of top companies representing a wide range of different industries. Among others, we will welcome our partners from AkzoNobel, Adidas, BMW, Coca-Cola, Condor, FrieslandCampina, Infineon, Hyundai, Kaufhof, L’Oréal, Lufthansa, Miele, MINI, Mondelez, SAP, SevenOneMedia, Stadtwerke München, Telefónica, UniCredit, and Uvex.

We are also thrilled to inform the visitors about our newest developments in our data intelligence, data creativity, and product development teams.

Unique Meetup of Data Leaders

While the impressive venue marks an important milestone in the history of dataX, its concept remains largely unchanged. The first dataX was conceived in 2016 as an interactive platform for our partners to learn from each other and get inspired. With a mix of insightful keynotes and a lively programme of one-on-one conversations and breakout sessions, we were able to achieve this goal. At the second dataX held in 2018, the visitor count almost doubled, while at the same time, both the range of topics and their relevance strongly increased. As a result, the visitor experience improved overall. This year, the special location coupled with an outstanding portfolio of topics, visitors, and speakers makes us certain that we will deliver the best dataX yet!

Follow Us on Social Media for More

Though visiting dataX 2019 is possible by invitation only, our LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook channels will offer exclusive insights for anyone interested. This will include live impressions directly from the venue.

That said, stay tuned. It is going to be datalicious!

Big Data continues to generate a lot of buzz across virtually all industries. According to IDC, the value of the global Big Data market has increased by 130 percent from 2014 to 2016 – from fifty to 115 billion Euro. By 2020, it is expected to hit the 180 billion Euro mark. Needless to say, the importance of Big Data in the marketing word is likely only getting bigger – both online and offline.

The marketer’s dilemma

Marketing decision-makers face a big dilemma. On the one hand, they are supposed to embrace data-driven marketing by basing more decisions on data. On the other hand, a number of studies show that the benefits of Big Data are still questioned.

What the marketing world needs now is CHANGE

Losing sight of the bigger picture seems to be a common side effect of a higher degree of specialization in different areas of marketing. Therefore, what is important here are inter-departmental meetings to make common decisions based on data.

Even though handling data seems like a fairly new idea for companies with no current set rules, getting into the subject matter is well worth it. The common goal must be to move from the established input-orientated definition of Big Data, through the so called “3V-perspective” (volume, velocity and variety of data), to a more output-oriented perspective, where the concrete questions to be answered are defined before the data is gathered. Through this we can develop a fourth V: Value.

From Big Data to Smart Data – the new 4P’s of data-driven marketing

As established, it is not just the volume of data gathered, but its precise selection and combination. The answer to questions critical to marketing success is ‘Smart Data’, not Big Data. And since most companies seem to have the same kind of questions, Smart Data practices are just a scalable as Big Data ones.

1. PURPOSE: Without absolute clarity concerning the decisions to be made, “metrics that matter” can’t be clearly defined. Goals must be strategically defined before gathering data. Only a small fraction of all available data has to be gathered at a central location.
2. PEOPLE: All “Data-driven Marketing” is automatically a “Change Project”. Responsible employees of all marketing divisions and agencies need to work together to profitably implement recommendations for action.
3. PROCESS: Traditional data silos need to be cracked open and new processes must be defined, which incorporate the expertise of all stakeholders. Mixing is important. Through the combination of traditional market research data and new, mostly digital, data, the value of Smart Data becomes apparent. This Smart Data supports the much-needed process of change towards data-driven marketing.
4. PLATFORM: Replace elaborate IT solutions with intelligent, streamlined and significant data science concepts and dashboard solutions. Replace “we can explain everything” with “we explain what we need to explain and can implement”.

The main benefits of Smart Data

• Transparency helps an holistic understanding of the customer
  It is crucial to understand all marketing processes holistically. Optimizing individual sections without taking into consideration the whole picture would probably be counterproductive.
• “Closer to real-time” marketing control increases marketing efficiency
  Transparency can help companies continually increase their marketing efficiency. Ideally this happens through an iterative learning process. The goal is not to immediately increase your Marketing ROI, but to gradually improve and gain a better understanding of the customer. This will lead to better brand management and thus a better brand experience for customers.
• Data-driven marketing planning leads the way from paid media to owned media-driven traffic
  Through learning and created efficiencies, money can be saved, which in turn can be used to create original, exciting content and implement innovations that improve the customer experience. Both better content and targeted innovations, based on data driven marketing decisions, pave the way from paid-media-driven traffic to owned-media-driven traffic. Online and offline!

What is happening now?

Nobody working in marketing can avoid the topic “data”; simply ignoring it could cause severe competitive disadvantages. Dealing with available data has influenced all agencies involved in value creation. Creative minds feel that their creativity is threatened by data monitoring. However, the fact is that while creative, high-quality ideas are still needed, their success can only be measured through data.

In the future, new sources of data will help to manage marketing excellence – for instance through location-based marketing used to predict regional marketing performance, or marketing automation which will enable less complex tasks to be performed by semi-automatic processes.

What is essential in all of this, though, is for businesspeople to stay virtuous. Data needs to be handled confidentially at all times. At present, a marketing decision maker’s success is judged not only by whether they can offer their customers the best experience possible, but also whether they can further their business success.

A few years ago, “Mr. Media” Thomas Koch cited Amir Kassei  stating that he does not see anyone in the market research industry who derives insights from the vast amount of available data to create real value. The truth ist that although Big Data is all the rage on client side, the industry has not done much more than putting up Big Data as a buzz word on the agenda while continuing to promote their traditional products.

As more than 80% of the German population is online and of which more than 95% use Google, there is no data source out there that is closer to covering the knowledge about consumer behavior. Of course, our opinion is backed up by Google. Evidence for a changing market is shown by the chart below presenting that Google searches for market research have continuously dropped over 68% within the last 10 years in Germany and international figures show similar results:

What should market researchers do?

Instead of optimizing their tools within traditional market research areas they should widen their perspective to see the big picture. Digital data of all kind holds many insights that – if integrated with traditional market research data and knowledge (!) – brings companies closer to their customers than ever before. To do so, we at td follow 5 key principles when conducting data science:

1. Customer first
Open the black box by arranging your data along the customer journey: New, digital data will help you connecting customer behavior with underlying attitudes. If done properly you will be able to understand the cause-and-effect chains that drive your business.

2. Do less! More often!
Too many huge market research studies focus on too many too detailed questions. While we do believe that it is important to understand drivers behind people’s behavior, we do not believe that these drivers should be understood in every market research study. To be able to isolate single impacts high data frequency is needed. New data sources can measure consumer behavior in real-time. If combined with market research results, always-on behavior becomes visible.

3. Better be roughly right than exactly wrong!
We are big fans of Nate Silver’s work and fully endorse his perspective on over-fitting models explaining incomplete observations. While they show high R²-values, they totally miss out underlying relationships and can only lead to wrong predictions by producing false positive results (see Silver 2013, The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction).

4. Enjoy the ensemble effect!
Joined in an ensemble of models, predictive models compensate for one another’s limitations. The ensemble (of models) as a whole is more likely to predict correctly than its component models are.

5. Stand on the shoulders of giants!
Re-usage of qualitatively proven theories (think of Rogers innovation diffusion theory as base to develop differing predictive algorithms based on the market adoption status of a product), combined with implicit industry knowledge and scientific state-of-the-art methodology will open your eyes on your data. While nobody can disagree with scientifically proven theories, integrating them into the story you let your data tell will help you make your insights become more viable.

What traditional market research needs now is change

In order to be future-oriented, market research professionals have to actively break down closed data silos. Those they have built themselves around their knowledge to make it easier for other professions to see the value of traditional market research. And those of other data professions by being more open to integrate data from other, new sources (e.g. web analytics, search, social, CRM) into their daily work to increase the value they deliver.

Therefore…

LET’S BREAK DOWN DATA SILOS TOGETHER!

1.6 billion people, 9,596,961 sq km, 1 political party, 1 currency, 1 time zone. Great producer and exporter of electrical equipment and apparel, inventor of ice cream and noodles. Driving engine of the global automotive market, somewhere between dominating the 21st century and a bursting bubble of deep economic crisis.

There’s a lot to know and even more to learn about China. And there is a whole lot to misunderstand, over-interpret and underestimate. Which is why we have a myriad of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true. In other words: myths.

If you wonder if you should expand to China and do business in the Middle Kingdom, or are just an unbiased and interested person with a good sense of style and humor, here is what you need to know about marketing in China and what might or might not be true. Your trusted China experts have gathered the greatest insights behind the Great Wall. Lean back and marvel.

Myth #1: Black is the new gold.

And so is pink. Black is not the new discreet color to express nonchalance and understatement. In China, pink rules the landscape, not only in attire but in luxury cars alike.

Myth #2: Western styles rule the world.

Western brands have been serving as a leitmotiv to develop tastes and orientation – the classic Westernization. What we see now though is more and more Chinese in China and elsewhere: in a Chinese sense of style and expression, and an easternization of the West. The individual gains ground not only in terms of an emancipation from the West, but ideally also from an exuberant collective.

Myth #3: The internet will revolutionize China.

China is always on. True that. This has led to an increased understanding of consumers’ rights, the shaping of tastes through the means of interchange. Also true: When online, China’s internet users grumble, but they are not yet ready to rumble. China’s digital era remains uniquely Chinese. Beijing allows for a blank canvas of self expression and material gratification, but retains the veto power to control public discourse.

Myth #4: China is lagging behind Western marketing development.

Chinese consumer taste is not yet as mature as the highly developed Western consumption palate. Well of course not, and why would it even want to be like the Western one? The new Generation Y (those aged 15-35) is endowed with a completely different set of values, beliefs, interest and lifestyle. Their tastes and demands are developing at hyper speed, giving way to completely new and unique patterns and tastes. Marketing measures have to adapt to this and be flexible enough to answer to the ever-changing preferences.

Myth #5: The Chinese consumer is inscrutable.

In a way we have to believe this. China’s unique characteristics are manifold, unpredictable and completely undecipherable for a Western palate. Almost. Truth: The collective myth of Chinese consumers is a challenge, but (mostly) dispelled: We are facing a new generation of brand-conscious individualist, and individual as they are, they are still part of consumer groups the size of Germany, or rather twice that size.

Myth #6: The Chinese are the new Dutch.

Nice thought. But no, not yet. But we are getting there. Fact is: Travel and the great outdoors is one of the hottest trending pastime in China. Number of inbound as well as outbound trips are skyrocketing. Watch out there, producers of hiking goods, cameras and travel maps!

Myth #7: Translation is the biggest challenge of marketing in China.

We have to admit: We love Chinglish! Point is, translation as such is beside the point. It is about adaptation. It’s not about grammar, and more than solid advertising skills: Marketing concepts that are to be brought to China need to hit the finely tuned Chinese string. In China, Oreos come as a stick, and the Wackeldackel is the cutest ice bear ever to be rescued by Volkswagen.

Myth #8: Confucius says: Be humble. Silence beats noise.

Well of course: It’s Confucius!
Sorry, but no: In China, it’s all about to see and to be seen. Size matters as much illumination.

Myth #9: Mobile marketing is text message only. Or: You need a proper website to be digital.

Yes, and the world is a disc. By all means, take a very close look at WeChat to get an idea of how mobile is changing the game. China has taken a leap, and this is only the beginning.

Myth #10: E-commerce will surpass the US in volume within this year. And will continue to grow.

No myth here. Completely true.

Myth #11: It’s made in China.

While our parents’ China might have been something similar to “Red China”, our China is dominated by “Made in China” – but our kids’ China will resemble the idea of “Invented in China” more than anything else.

The growing self-confidence and assertiveness reflecting a sense of pride in the Chinese culture and ingenuity is reflected by a growing number of brands that chime in the swan song of the Chinese work bench that is giving way to Chinese innovation.

Myth #12

There is no number 12.
Truth is, there is no number 14, but that story is still to be told. Stay tuned.

With the big data buzz pervading the marketing world with relentless force, the last few years have been fruitful for marketing tool providers. Yet the boom has also fuelled wrong expectations about the understanding of digital customer journeys on the part of both consumers and businesses.

Consumers fear that companies can combine all their data into a holistic picture of their personalized journey throughout the internet, and the NSA and Facebook data scandals have supported that notion. Companies on the other hand believe that they have the data to derive any kind of customer journey based real-time segmentation, allowing perfectly customized offers and messages just with a turn of your finger.

To some degree, these beliefs are the unfortunate by-products of misleading advertising efforts with over-promising value propositions on the part of many tracking technology and service providers.

It’s high time to clear up the biggest misconceptions about customer journeys!

1. Everyone knows what a customer journey is

A customer journey is not a customer journey is not a customer journey. Technically speaking, a customer journey can be subdivided into the following parts:

• The Inter-Site Customer Journey refers to all the websites users visit before they visit the final website. Tracking these sites with time stamps and a unique identifier generates lots of data. Challenges are to match the data to a content ontology and to transfer it to the analytics platform.
• The Referrer Analysis is actually a subset of the first point and describes the last link before entering the analyzed website. This analysis is well sophisticated due to the need for attribution modeling – a main component of online media performance management.
• The On-Site Customer Journey commonly referred to as “customer journey” by e-commerce companies depicts all of the user’s interaction on a specific site.
• Finally, if available, the Login Customer Journey comprises of all parts behind an individual user login gate.

2. I can identify each customer on every step of his journey

Most service providers do not even follow a data-driven approach to derive an analytical understanding of customer journey; they rather draw up a qualitative and exemplary customer journey based on their target group insights. But even when the customer journey analyses are based on data, they often lack unique identifiers mainly due to complex multi-user situations and insufficient cross-device tracking solutions. Further, many ad blocking tools disable not only cookies, but also tracking infrastructures. Hence, customer journey insights can only be derived on an extrapolated perspective filling data gaps with projected information.

3. You can analyze your entire customer journey with one tool

Holistic customer journey tracking is an intelligent combination of inter-site digital customer journey tracking architecture, well tagged web-analytics for on-site and login customer journeys combined with the reach of third party cookie data and complemented with search and buzz analysis. From our experience, the only service portfolio provider coming close to a holistic customer journey tracking is Google.

4. Data-driven analysis is only limited to online touch-points

The concept of digital customer journey tracking techniques, even though not on a 1-on-1-perspective, can be extended to non-digital touch-points such as out-of-home, TV or radio. Search or buzz data can work as a way more effective resonator than traditional unique links and QR codes.

5. Existing segments can be instantly deducted from the customer journey

A common misconception is that existing customer segments are directly mirrored in the customer journey. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Segments, as used for personalization or marketing planning, have to be built in an iterative learning process. Setting up such a process and building the required database takes time and constant efforts.

6. I know everything about customer journey tracking

This is probably the most definite lie. The landscape of tracking providers is highly fragmented. Concepts and technologies are rapidly evolving side by side to almost infinite numbers of potential relevant touch-points. Asking the right questions as well as the smart selection and integration of data service providers and the corresponding analysis will remain an ongoing challenge.

When the Cannes Lions festival hosted its annual“Creative Data Lions” [LZ1] show this year, even the most reluctant creative had to acknowledge that there is no way around this “big data thing” anymore. However, many creatives are quite intimidated by big data’s abstract vagueness and imperative B.I.G. capitals. Plus, the concept is riding a tsunami-sized buzz-wave which doesn’t help promote clarity either.

Big Data’s hyper-imposing promise of objectivity, certainty and predictability must surely be the worst enemy of any creative, killing the spontaneous and intuitive magic of their art… or not?

Well, there are two big misconceptions in place here:

First, a real creative has very little in common with the stereotype of the right-brained magician that blindly and impulsively follows sudden intuitions. Instead, any good creative combines contradictory attributes: the analytical with the intuitive, the sequential with the experimental, the curious with the goal-oriented etc. He or she applies combined right-brain and left-brain thinking. Actually, processing (sometimes quite big) amounts of data has always been part of a creative’s problem-solving kit, which is especially true for those working in other fields than marketing, eg. architects or interaction-designers.

Secondly, data as such isn’t as objective as it may seem. Data won’t provide any answers by itself. There’s always a human being at the intersection that selects, contextualizes and interprets. It’s not a 1/0 decision: Big data certainly does not equal certainty. But even if it did, certainty wouldn’t be its greatest power: immense quantity may have given it the name (Big Data), but it’s the quality we can derive that makes things interesting (Smart Data).

A whole new world opens up here. We might call the ones who can make sense of it and use it effectively “Data-driven Creatives”. They are a new breed, a new genre so to say, and a necessary one. Today, social data enables us to measure the success of creativity in great detail. At TD Reply we have developed the “Data-driven Creativity Index”. It is based on a tri-step formula that follows from creative conception (Endorsement + Involvement) to creative realization (Execution + Conversion) and creative impact (Sustainability + Engagement) and thereby establishes a convincing and unbiased measurement-model. Ultimately it can demonstrate that jury-picked, award-winning ideas are not always the ones that resonate most with audiences…

Our creative credo at TD Reply reads as follows:

Creativity is nothing if it doesn’t aim for relevance and impact.

To start with, it’s quite obvious that data supports the first of the two pillars: Skilled data analysts will increase the preciseness of briefings by pointing into the direction that matters to audiences most and precisely the audience any communication asset is meant to reach out to; thorough testing and iteration leverage relevance of any creative output by allowing for qualitative feedback that can be integrated and thus drive ideas to the core of what matters to audiences.

Here, the second point comes into play: Yes, data can strongly increase creative impact – if it is approached unconventionally. Using big data to avert risk will just lead to safe ideas with little impact, the mediocre ideas that everyone else will also come up with. Data-driven creatives do it differently: they team up with data-analysts to approach data playfully and with curiousness. They take an unusual point of view to find the quality within the quantity, the inspiring meaning in the numbers, the “Wow, really? Now that’s interesting!”. They balance data with intuition and try to blur the line.

“Teaming up” is not an easy task though. It involves establishing a common language between analyst and creative for a collaboration that goes well beyond data-fueled briefings. This way data does not prevent risk but actually gives confidence to take the right risks.

Both is possible: Data can kill creativity. And data can drive creativity. It’s up to us to make the latter happen.