Changes in advertising and marketing: Is “creativity” out of favor?

"Advertising is not art. The purpose of advertising is to sell products. Otherwise it is not advertising." This sentence comes from David Ogilvy, who is known as the "Father of Advertising". Decades later, this sentence is still not outdated and even more appropriate.

This year's special circumstances caused offline business to be in shock for a time, and online traffic was in deep anxiety. Against this backdrop, the first department to suffer is naturally the department that spends money, with advertising and marketing being the first to bear the brunt. Cutting budgets and striving for survival, these changes in the ultimate goal have made "growth" the top priority of advertising. Advertising and marketing that is sales-oriented and can bring real growth is good.

Advertisers no longer talk about "Cannes" and "brand", but instead talk about "conversion rate", "effect" and "sales promotion".

The good news is that growth-driven advertising is more efficient. The old curse of "I know half of the advertising budget is wasted, but I don't know which half" has been broken. Precision conversion under the influence of big data can better quench your thirst.

But the bad side is probably unavoidable. Over-emphasizing creativity for immediate growth will lead to the selective neglect of long-term brand value. We can even see a lot of short-sighted growth ideas that sacrifice brand tone.

As a matter of reality, the advertising and marketing industry is making great strides towards growth, but is this really a good thing? Can the long-term and short-term effects of advertising and marketing creativity be balanced? Are traditional creative people about to be disrupted?

1. Creativity is out of favor, but it makes growth more fierce

There’s no doubt that “big ideas” are falling out of favor.

• Publicis was forced to reorganize the production department of its New York creative agency due to P&G's advertising budget cuts;
• At the end of last year, advertising giant Dentsu Group was reported to be laying off employees, with layoffs affecting business lines in seven countries including China, Britain, France, Germany and Australia, with as many as 1,400 people laid off;
• This year, Omnicom Chairman John Wren confirmed that agencies across the Omnicom Group are undergoing layoffs, salary cuts and furloughs;
• WPP, the world's largest media giant, has taken cost-cutting measures this year, stopping various discretionary costs including travel, hotels and award participation, and postponing its 2020 salary increase plan;
• WPP's Ogilvy & Mather has fired its chief creative officer Leslie Sims in the United States.

Everything has just begun. More and more CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) have become CGOs (Chief Growth Officers), and marketing departments have become growth departments.

In this context, focusing on "big ideas" such as telling brand stories and shaping brand tone is naturally not a top priority. It is difficult to measure when and how much conversion a deeply rooted advertising slogan can bring.

When survival becomes the top priority, the marketing that coexists with it must also be immediate and effective. After all, the worst case scenario is not damaging the brand, but the company going bankrupt before the brand story is finished.

However, focusing only on growth and not on creativity is a superficial approach - the mechanical conversion actions of discount promotions/traffic trading can certainly gain sales, but this is a one-time thing and will cease to be effective once the investment stops. Even performance advertising that focuses on growth still requires creativity.

I once had a long talk with Alan Lan, Managing Director of Twitter Greater China, about the advertising and marketing strategies of Chinese companies on Twitter. He believes that the main content of communication of many brands is how to convert, how to sell products, and how to get consumers to download. However, from the perspective of the marketing funnel, brand awareness and reputation must be achieved before purchases will naturally occur. Only the final step of purchasing is actually a sale supported by data.

"They only see ROI and think that spending one dollar to make two dollars is good marketing. If you only focus on conversion, it will become increasingly difficult to obtain volume, and competition will become increasingly fierce. All advertising platforms have bidding. If you only focus on conversion, the more refined and better you do, the more expensive the volume will be, and the volume will be small."

Therefore, no matter whether it is the brand secret or the effect trend, the ultimate secret still comes back to "creativity". When traffic conversion campaigns become standard, the difference lies in "creativity".

Chinese brand Mobvoi collaborates with tech guru Zach King on a humorous and creative video ad

With the demand for growth, creativity becomes more important, not less important.

Bytedance has come up with a new term, “growth creativity”, which actually quite clearly points out the current trend in advertising and marketing creativity. On the one hand, we focus on growth, use data to drive insights, and use technology to improve efficiency; on the other hand, we use creative means to improve ROI and help companies break through growth bottlenecks.

• Technology makes it possible to improve the efficiency of tool-based creativity. The easy-to-use operating system allows creativity to be replicated in large quantities in a short period of time, making it scalable and sustainable.
• Technology and data can also allow marketing creatives to test at any time whether their ideas can stimulate growth, making creativity quantifiable and iterative;
• Creativity, as a trigger that connects with users' emotions and achieves long-term impact, can further optimize growth.

But this is a relatively idealized state. It is not easy to balance creativity and growth. People always talk about "integration of product and effect", but real front-line practitioners understand that the synergy and balance between product and effect is by no means the ultimate addition of the two.

2. The road to growing creativity is long and arduous

The challenge is clear.

First of all, in the current media environment, information channels are fragmented, scenarios are diversified, and growth is not a one-time investment that determines a lifetime. This requires a massive amount of advertising creative production.

Taking the simplest way of increasing followers of a public account as an example, when you launch GuangDianTong, you are usually advised to prepare at least 5 sets of creative copy. What’s more, for advertisers with big budgets, a large amount of diverse creative materials are like bullets used in war, the more the better. At the same time, technology and data give advertisers the opportunity to see the shortcomings of their creativity, so constant optimization is necessary. If an idea doesn’t work, it must be replaced and updated, which further increases the requirements for the number of advertising creatives.

In the past, traditional creative companies produced a single-digit number of advertisements per month, but now they need to produce hundreds or even thousands. Such quantitative changes are the basis for growing creativity.

And although the platform provides tools for efficient creativity, scaling creativity remains difficult. What is more worrying is that if everyone uses tools to copy ideas, will there be a situation of monotony? What’s more, those textbook-level “big ideas” that make a splash are most likely impossible to replicate.

Volvo Trucks Advertisement Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme

Secondly, in the context of growth, the expression of creativity may be restricted.

We have seen that many classic advertisements do not sell products themselves, but rather convey a spiritual core. This kind of advertising creativity that is not oriented towards immediate growth often makes people think about it. In the longer term, it is definitely a powerful tool for brands to establish emotional connections with consumers.

However, such creativity seems to be gradually disappearing from the center stage because its growth effect is uncertain. Creativity is subjective, growth is objective, and the difficulty in judging the value of creativity forces advertisers who need to report to their superiors to turn to cold numbers.

The benefits of growth creativity for performance advertising are obvious, but the difficulties are particularly obvious in brand advertising. How do creative people dance with the shackles of "growth"? So far, there is no perfect answer.

3. Keep your faith, even if it requires you to sacrifice everything

Of course, the biggest challenge lies in the practical aspects.

Using technology to link content creativity and data-driven efficient growth is certainly a good way to achieve growth creativity, but the vast majority of creative people currently do not have the technological insight and application capabilities.

In some teams, traffic buying and selling and growth creativity are actually managed by different teams. With fragmented coordination, the results can be imagined.

Jason Shen, managing director of Accenture Interactive Greater China, clarified the new capability requirements for creative people: "Creative people must understand business very well. They need to capture the rapid changes in consumer demand and scale effects from multiple dimensions, and then truly help drive business growth."

This is probably not an iteration that can be completed overnight.

Let’s go back to the question raised at the beginning - how does the advertising and marketing industry dance with growth? Can the short-term and long-term effects of marketing creativity be balanced? Are traditional creative people going to be subverted? There is not only one answer. The general trend of creativity moving towards growth is irreversible, and whether the proposition of "growth creativity" can be finally realized depends on the improvement of creative people and the leap in overall thinking of the advertising and marketing industry to overcome the difficulties together.

Author: Liu Yalan

Source: Deep Sound