Reinvent your creative team

It is time to rethink campaign process tools to embed data, technology, digital and analytics at the core of its execution

A recent report published by Norwegian research company SINTEF says 90 per cent of all data has been generated in the last two years. Every 'click', 'call' and 'like' produces valuable data insights about consumers. In fact, networks like Facebook and YouTube are attracting much larger audiences than most TV channels. Welcome to the era of new marketing.

Brand managers across sectors are leveraging consumer data to build long-term relationships with their their target audiences. But the same is not true about their marketing initiatives. The question is whether their creative teams are using the data. Are they using it for campaigns?

A Gartner research shows by 2017, CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs. In fact, 81 per cent of firms are already thinking about chief marketing technology officer, a part strategist-creative-and-technologist. This also means, brand need to invest in building a new creative team. An advertising agency, in general, include copy writer, art director, social media team etc. But in this digital era, they need new players like database specialist, data analyst, and creative technologist.

Following are the new emerging roles in a creative team of an ad agency.

Fusing right with left brain creativity: The data analyst will help analyse and build interesting insights to understand customer behaviour and create engaging story ideas.

Campaign ideas to conversation ideas: With new digital technology platforms, digital technologist and community manager will help transform campaign ideas to conversation ideas. While campaign ideas have one-time creativity, conversation ideas are more intuitive, real-time and can be shared easily.

Fusing technology creatively with brand/product experience: Role of creative technologist is to help marketers embed technology into the product as a service or through user experience. A creative director is an experience specialist, who understands technology and integrates it with every campaign.

Think marketing as a platform: A technology specialist must propel 'thinking marketing' to infuse agility, deliver real-time marketing capability and integrate channels seamlessly. With product lifecycles becoming shorter, marketing campaigns will also become shorter, hence, lies a need to build a platform for campaigns that will be a key competitive advantage.

Change the thinking from 'prime time' to 'my time': Content specialists and campaign analysts will build special facet of campaigns that will help measure time customers spend on a brand.

From a data-deficit era to a data surplus era, it is imperative that we rethink the campaign process tools and know how to embed data, technology, digital and analytics at the core of a its execution. So, the next time you are developing marketing campaigns, just look around who's on the table.
By S Swaminathan, CEO, Hansa Cequity, and Nishad Ramachandran, senior vice-president, Digital Experience Practice, Hansa Cequity