I recently watched an episode of “The Crazy Ones” which shed light on an issue I think about frequently – the collision between qualitative and quantitative marketing. The sitcom, in which Robins Williams stars as Simon Roberts, the head of a successful Chicago advertising agency, often highlights the difference between traditional and modern approaches when it comes to advertising. Marketing and advertising may not be one and the same, but they share enough qualities to make the show sufficiently relevant for the discussion at hand.
During the episode, Simon finds out that Regal Kitty Cat Foods, a potential client, only considered the agency after hearing that it’s shifting to a new emphasis on hard numbers, and recently hired a senior quantitative analyst to join the team. For Simon, a quirky, creative, numbers-averse advertiser, the whole idea of data-driven advertising goes against everything he believes in. He quickly dismisses the analyst’s (aka “The Quant”) reliance on algorithms and calculations as a means to target customers and increase market share.
After Simon et al. come up with a funny campaign pitch (where cats watch YouTube videos of silly humans), he praises them for being the “best team of creators” in the country, and then this dialogue ensues between him and The Quant:
The Quant: “The data shows otherwise…There’s no guarantee that humor can sell cat food.”
Simon: “No there isn’t – because advertising is an art, not a science.”
The Quant: “It was an art, but Quants like me are trying to make it into a science. The research clearly states that we should focus on the easy-open can. Your creative ads might start conversations, but the ads that my computer-generated are more persuasive – any day!
At the end of the episode, the Quant pitches an awful, cheesy, 100% computer-generated ad with a horrible jingle to the Regal Kitty Cat Food execs, who end up being speechless – because it’s just that bad. Then, Simon storms in and cues a presentation full of music and live dancing to the tune of the can-can (cue laughter), which the execs love. The Quant may have initially succeeded in wooing the client based on his figures and analysis, but ultimately, his campaign generated zero emotional response.
The truth is, maybe I’m rooting for Simon because I too consider myself a “qualitative” person. I don’t like numbers, and numbers don’t like me. Yet, wherever I turn – whether it’s a local B2B event, job postings or a new article on Social Media Today, it’s become impossible to escape them. The fact of the matter is that marketing is quickly transitioning from a qualitative to a data-driven, analytics and quantitative field, and there’s no avoiding it.
Why is this happening? Because it can.
Up until recently, marketers – particularly social media marketers, had no way of measuring performance. It was unfeasible to track which conversions were generated from social media, and even harder to measure the ROI of these activities. Today, any company developing a new marketing solution or tool knows that in order to be successful, it has to offer measurement capabilities. Why would a marketing team continue to blindly produce content, launch social campaigns and generate white papers in an isolated manner?
Any forward-thinking company knows that to survive and succeed it must closely track its marketing efforts, optimize its strategy based on the results, and improve its efforts going forward. More than that, no serious client would consider working with a marketing team or technology that can’t produce the hard data or analytics to back up its pitch.
For myself and other word-oriented individuals, there’s no place to hide. Numbers and data are here to stay. They’ve become a critical, inseparable part of planning and implementing marketing strategies, and I can either accept this and learn to adapt, or risk being left behind.
In the episode, Simon’s campaign wins, but not because it’s entirely based on spontaneous creativity and impulse. He actually discards the idea of cats watching YouTube videos of humans, and builds on the initial research conducted by the Quant, which found that the can’s easy-open feature appealed most to target audiences. The decision to utilize only parts of the data- rather than create a campaign from start-to-finish using a computer, and combine it with artistic creativity, proved ideal.
As marketing shifts away from traditional paradigms towards number crunching, we can’t forget that audiences today still seek to forge an emotional connection with content, and feel most loyal towards brands they can personally relate to. When it comes down to it, the numbers might drive the strategy, but the creativity and passion are what attract the audience.
So, is marketing an art or a science? Honestly, it’s neither – at least not in the sense that it solely belongs to one category or the other. Marketing is business. Many marketers may fear that the qualitative part is gradually slipping away in place of fiscal-driven tactics backed by science. But just because marketers need to express results and vouch for certain decisions, doesn’t mean that “creativity” needs to be abandoned, it just needs to find its own, unique place among the deluge of data.