My business partner and I attended the Web Summit in Vancouver in May. There were some real gems among all of the talk about AI, which was the overall theme. My unexpected favourite was one from Jason Carmel, the global lead of Creative Data for VML. VML is one of the largest global creative companies and advertising agencies, as well as one of our clients.
He was very entertaining, especially for a data guy, and he made a lot of sense about how about how we usually use data in marketing. We tend to use it at the start of a project to predict outcomes, and at the end to measure whether it worked. But the bit in the middle, where the actual idea gets made, data hardly touches and that gap is where the interesting stuff should be happening.
He also pointed out that 15 years ago everyone wanted big data. Now everyone has it, so it doesn’t really count for much on its own anymore. The valuable thing now isn’t the data – it’s doing something with it that people actually care about.
A few examples stuck with me: The old British Airways billboards that changed based on the precise location of the planes flying overhead. Spotify Wrapped, which is really just a marketing message, except it’s about you so people share it everywhere. A food delivery app that used eye tracking to work out what you were actually hungry for and then made suggestions based on that.
The main takeaway was that creative people and data people need to be working together in the same room, not one team handing work to the other. And that it won’t happen on its own. Most companies are too siloed for it, so you have to make it happen deliberately.
It’s a dynamic that’s becoming increasingly relevant to how Orangebox and our sister company Redspot Creative Studio work together. When clients come to Orangebox, bringing their data, the natural next question is: what could you do with this that’s genuinely creative, something that pushes beyond the expected? That’s where the collaboration with Redspot comes in. Having a creative team to think alongside the data work means the interesting stuff in the middle – the gap Jason Carmel was talking about – is exactly where we’re keen to go.
You can watch his presentation here:
https://vancouver.websummit.com/summaries/van26/making-the-case-for-creative-data/
About Thomas: Thomas co-founded Orangebox with Stephen Bennett in 2003. The Orangebox team helps clients bring order to complexity, aligning people, data and systems so campaigns run with greater clarity and efficiency, the kind of creative-meets-data integration Thomas writes about here.