Moving from “Fire & Forget” to In-Flight Mission Control for Data Driven Marketing
Advertising has long been governed by a “fire and forget” approach, but this is becoming obsolete. Brand leaders need to adapt or fall behind in a world where live creative optimisation is fast becoming the norm, says Automated Creative Global Head of Creative Strategy, Amy Wright.
In-flight mission control for digital campaigns is a non-negotiable for ensuring that you make the most of your creative. Think of it as a space flight mission to Mars - you wouldn’t want to launch a rocket and “hope for the best.” Instead, effective data driven marketing relies on live optimisation backed by dynamic, continuous insights developed from data.
The balance of power has shifted
In her article for Performance Marketing Week, Amy observes that TV-first campaigns often leave digital and social platform creatives as an afterthought, simply adaptations of the one big spot. Now, however, “nearly 60% of global ad spend goes to digital,... with TV accounting for less than a quarter of spend.”
What does this mean? “There can be no more long lead times, no hunches and, surely we can’t still be okay with handing our digital campaigns over to be handled by someone else’s hidden algorithm… can we?”
We are all consuming media quickly, on multiple platforms, and with a short attention span. We are also giving real-time feedback to advertisers on all the elements of the ads we like and don’t like. Therefore, digital marketers need to stop creating ads and shooting them into oblivion, without any post-launch adjustments. It’s time to start optimising campaigns in line with audience behaviours, using a blend of data and human analysis and intervention. This in turn can provide illuminating consumer insights that can inform broader brand platforms and thinking.
So, how does one start?
Using live campaign data is essential, but it’s not just a case of “all data is good data.” You need to start with asking the right questions to get to the useful insights that can guide your strategy and implementation.
“Asking the right questions around creative triggers through testing allows you to position your audience not just as prospects, but as a consumer focus group - albeit one that doesn’t even know it’s being tested. They are responding to different prompts, whether that’s messaging, imagery or placement, without ever being ever asked to think about something directly.”
Adapting to this new approach to advertising gives marketing leaders a dual reason to smile: creative becomes more effective thanks to optimisation, while campaigns are also becoming a source of insight to build on for future work.
Live creative optimisation can also change the creative process and bring in efficiencies that unlock more productivity for teams. Working with Brown-Forman on the Jack Daniel’s Flavours launch in the UK, for example, we not only outperformed their benchmarks - we also created “a real step change to the way [Brown-Forman] are approaching messaging and creative,” according to Laura McCarthy, Senior Brand Manager. She and Megan Davies, Digital Marketing Lead for UK and Ireland, shared how the learnings from using live creative optimisation could be expanded on to other brands in the Brown-Forman portfolio, improving effectiveness and efficiency, at MAD//Fest 2023. Read their story and watch them speak about working with Automated Creative here.
In conclusion:
Brands need to focus on asking the right questions and creating hypotheses to test with the data they get back from their ads
Real-time audience insights combined with human marketing expertise and decision-making can optimise creative in-flight, unlocking more value from all your campaigns
Being able to react quickly, effectively, and at scale is key to staying competitive as the industry wakes up to the benefits of live creative optimisation.
Read Amy’s article here and get in touch via the form below to learn more.