The Data-Driven Approach to Creative Execution

From the creative professional's perspective, Feinstein agrees, noting that today's creative team needs to be able to translate data into a highly meaningful messaging platform that can spread across all channels. And that, he says, takes good analytics to pull out the insights.

For the time being, there's no lack of data available for marketers to plug into analytics software and spreadsheets. Of course, not all of it is going to be useful in every segmentation scheme or marketing challenge. But both Feinstein and Herman caution against bringing any preconceived notions to the analytics process. "The principle driver is you just never know what the predictive variable, or variables, is going to be. By instinct, never want to rule out any data," Herman explains. He takes it a step further, pointing out that a creative professional might see something in a list of descriptive elements for an audience that sparks the focus of the creative execution, and that idea might never have come to the statistician running the analytics process.

While the emphasis of most marketing challenges is on the predictive power of data, Herman adds that the efficacy of creative versioning comes down to the descriptive qualities of the data to build an accurate, meaningful picture for the creative group to capture. "That's the real balancing act," he states.

This connection between the analytics and creative processes can take different shapes; Feinstein points to the creative brief as the repository for the data insights and Herman referred to segment snapshots developed from syndicated segmentation schemes. Regardless of the presentation, both agreed that behavioral data weighs heavily in the mix.

"If you know that someone's had an experience, then you can refer to that experience and make decisions off of it," says Feinstein. "A perfect example would be the travel industry; if I know you've been to Paris and I know that you like to travel to Europe, I can then serve up pictures of Paris, Rome, Florence ... and what's wonderful about experiential things is they touch your target deeply."

The Big Decision
For a creative professional, the ability go deeper into the audience's head and design a more appealing message is exciting, says Feinstein. "On the other hand," he notes, "it's more work and so it's more expensive for the marketer as more creative is developed. But it all goes back to getting better response for more targeted creative."

That brings up another element that influences how a marketer approaches creative versioning: cost. At some point, what drives how deep the segmentation process and creative execution goes is the financials. Marketers need to calculate at what point does it stop making sense for them to segment, Feinstein says.

Along with the march of media proliferation, however, has come the analytical capabilities to determine where this drop-off occurs and manage for it. "That's the beauty of direct marketing," Herman reminds.

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