The Huffington Post ran a headline a few years ago: When Science Meets Creativity and Has Babies. That title is the epitome of a perfect definition of good marketing. There is definitely a heavy data and analysis side to marketing, but there is just as much art involved as there is science. That artistic requirement involves creativity. Creativity is fun! It allows for play and exploration. And when it works to capture the attention of customers and clients, attracting new business, the magic is even more rewarding. Clock Tower Insight is here for you, to be your data partner and allow your creativity to flourish. Here’s a little bit on how this actually works.
“An overreliance on either side of the data or creativity proverbial coin is the quickest path to failure. Instead, both must learn to live harmoniously without one being sacrificed for or detract from the other.” *
How Data Can Drive Creativity
Data provides the trends that become signals to marketers to indicate that the moves they are making are the right ones. As Elea Feit, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Drexel University, was quoted, “In the end, the analytics won’t tell you the next big creative idea, it will tell you when the next big creative idea is working.” Data scientists use the information that they collect and observe as data points. These data points help to guide marketing content, connect to consumers and test the messages.
Data is one of the most important components of information, as far as marketing is concerned. Afterall, without data there is no way to understand what actually works and does not work. Data is information that is run through an analysis filter. Without this, the information is not helpful and it is next to impossible to tell how effective marketing is. With good data, however, the effectiveness of marketing can be pinpointed and good marketing campaigns can be designed from it. This is where creativity comes in. Creativity is necessary to come up with copy, images and approaches.
How Play Opens Up Creative Pathways
While some people are more naturally creative than others, the act of play can help even the least creative people open up creative pathways in their brains. Creativity is, “not just your ability to draw a picture or design a product. We all need to think creatively in our daily lives, whether it’s figuring out how to make dinner using leftovers or fashioning a Halloween costume out of clothes in your closet. Creative tasks range from what researchers call “little-c” creativity: making a website, crafting a birthday present or coming up with a funny joke – to “Big-C” creativity: writing a speech, composing a poem or designing a scientific experiment.
Psychology and neuroscience researchers have started to identify thinking processes and brain regions involved with creativity. Recent evidence suggests that creativity involves a complex interplay between spontaneous and controlled thinking – the ability to both spontaneously brainstorm ideas and deliberately evaluate them to determine whether they’ll actually work.” *
Play instigates creativity by sparking imaginative thought. Take Steve Jobs, for instance. “I decided to take a calligraphy class…. I found it fascinating. … None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.” * While a calligraphy course may not be play, per se, it certainly is exploration of an art – which is akin to play. There is enough certainty that play instigates creativity that the Lego Group, operating foundation, is investing in corporate training and school-based play in its bet that playing with legos will actually increase creativity. Forbes, and other publications have written extensively about the transformative power of play.
Creativity Is Critical in Good Marketing
The literal definition of marketing is ‘the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.’ Good marketing requires an intersection of art and science. This means creativity is equally as important to the process of effective marketing as data science. To keep the creative juices flowing, people need to have engagment in the parts of their brain that instigate creativity. This differs between scientific creativity and artistic creativity, recent studies show. * However, both channels are opened in an environment that fosters creativity – those that are fun. Brainstorming sessions, playing with toys like building blocks, and other games can really help. These games can be a lot of fun, in addition to helping the marketing team do their job, which helps to make marketing fun!
*Sources
https://www.emarketer.com/content/the-greatest-marketing-intersection-is-where-data-and-creativity-meet-sponsored-content
http://theconversation.com/new-study-reveals-why-some-people-are-more-creative-than-others-90065
https://medium.com/@Dropbox/creative-energy-play-why-creative-people-are-often-successful-f7c60fdec34b
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5318918/