Digital Craves Creativity More than Ever
Marketers are in a very precarious time right now. For years, we’ve gotten accustomed to data, targeting and personalized delivery of messages to consumers. All signs pointed to a future in which we’d get more data and get smarter with that data. Advertisers took that as a sign to get more targeted and nuanced in their message delivery with the goal of maximizing consumer relevance.
Today, we’re moving in the opposite direction. Browsers have all but guaranteed the end of the cookie, which has always been a far from perfect but often useful tool. Facebook, Google, Twitter and every other digital platform has limited the amount of data available to advertisers under the threat of regulation from governments and growing privacy concerns from users. Just this last week, Facebook announced that device IDs used to measure delivery and ad performance will no longer be shared with advertisers.
All of these changes are, on the whole, positive in my opinion. Consumer concern over privacy has reached an all time high. Advertisers and publishers got too greedy in interfering with consumers’ online experiences, bringing on the advent of ad blockers. For every force there is an equal but opposite force. We’re seeing that opposite force play out fully right now.
Of course, data to make digital advertising and data-informed optimizations are not going away completely. This is a correction that I don’t think will lead to an over-correction. What will change is the openness of that data from one platform to an advertiser. Things will become more black box between platforms and advertisers. Advertisers will be pushed to build their first-party data.
The data revolution changed the way we market and how we reach consumers, and despite efforts to find solutions to the data pullback, the edges are being dulled.
That’s where creativity comes in.
Creativity makes up the difference. What’s less targeted becomes more attention-grabbing, what’s less unique becomes more shareable. What’s micro to you becomes part of a macro conversation for many. What’s less relevant becomes more compelling. That’s the job of creativity. Creativity can and always had made up for the shortcomings of the medium, and the future of digital is made up of more shortcomings.
As marketers, it’s our job to find the right mix—mix of media and mix of approaches. Data’s role is going to recede, by how much is still in the air. But where data falls short, it’s creativity’s job to make up the difference. That’s always been its strength. Now, let’s see it flex.