Big ideas still deliver the best value

For those who have been around the advertising business for long enough the days of acetates and colour separations are fast becoming a fading memory. So too is the studio with its heady scent of cow Gum, SpayMount and the occasional slip with a scalpel!

This brings to mind the current debate around art versus science in advertising, and which is now the dominant. If you were to believe all that you hear and the copious blogs on the subject you’d be forgiven for thinking that the balance is in favour of the number crunchers. The impression is that as data becomes more abundant and easily available then reaching your target audience becomes an exacting process and so the need for big ideas will diminish.

However, there is an assumption here that all data is good, well understood and that things used to be unexacting. The point is that while an abundance of data is freely available it doesn’t necessarily mean that marketing is any more precise. Indeed, some would say that the hours spent pouring over creative concepts and artwork gives a far deeper understanding of brand values, demographics and market segments. The impression is that we have gained data but lost out on attention to detail.

This then raises the question about whether more data makes you more effective. Well perhaps not! That’s why at This* agency we think carefully about what we want to say and who we are saying it to. So it’s not unusual for us to create more than one communication around the same message to distinguish between market segments.
However you look at it though knowledge and experience can’t be replaced. And although big data plays its part it is still the big ideas that create the lasting memories when it comes to influencing big audiences.