Visible World had a front row seat today as the space shuttle Enterprise cruised right by our windows overlooking the Hudson River. We're more used to looking towards the future, but sometimes it's good to take a minute to appreciate some of the amazing technology of an era that's coming to a close. And it was great to welcome the new arrival to the neighborhood!

With the changes at Canoe, what will happen to EBIF?

Leslie Ellis of Translation Please comes by for a chat about the state of the state of TV advertising.

There once lived a powerful ruler, the Chief Marketing Officer or CMO, who directly and through key lieutenants relied on the help of specialists to communicate with consumers and prospects far and wide.  He relied on Poets to create messages that would please his mass audiences. He relied on Quants to figure out efficient ways to broadcast his messages. And even though the CMO was hardly aware of them, he also relied on Minions to get the messages out to the people he wanted to reach.

The Poets relished in their craft of messaging. The Quants aimed for efficient ways to reach the people.  Both were affected deeply by a powerful spell of specialization that had taken over the land. As such, the Poets really did not particularly care about the work of the Quants, and the Quants pretty much ignored the work of the Poets. And the Minions just made sure that the work got out, not caring a whole lot about what the messages had to say or who they were aimed for.

One day, an emissary from Visible World arrived to share a vision of more effective communications that would eventually spread all over cable lands and beyond. He first approached the Poets, suggesting technology could make their messages more potent, but they found it hard to believe any such thing. He then approached the Quants, only to be told that their focus was on audiences, not on the messages. He even reached out to the Minions, offering new ways to make their work more bearable, but they worried that if life was too easy for them, far fewer Minions would be needed. On the odd occasion that the stranger from Visible World got an audience with the CMO or one of his lieutenants, they were too busy or too distracted to really listen. And so, the emissary was told to come back some other time, or to reach out to the Poets or the Quants.

One particularly bright day, the visionary from the Visible World managed to get some quality time with the CMO and discussed with him the serious predicament that was getting in the way of more efficient and effective communication with his millions of consumers and prospects. He pointed out to the CMO that the Quants can efficiently reach broad masses, but find that it is expensive to reach more targeted consumers or prospects. The Poets realize that their messages reach all sorts of people, so they just keep trying to make them entertaining, interesting and informative. And the Minions are just glad to get their job done, and largely lack the capacity to deal with more targeted messages.

The answer to this great quandary, the emissary from Visible World professed, requires for the CMO and his lieutenants, along with the Poets, Quants, and even some Minions, to acknowledge each others' strengths and weaknesses, and together figure out how to embrace a solution that makes it possible to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of their campaigns. A solution so easy that Poets grow to appreciate its simplicity, and so clear that Quants begin to understand how targeted messages enhance what they already do. And so plain, that even ordinary Minions marvel at the super power that makes getting more targeted messages to all sorts of audiences as easy as it once was to send out mass communications.

Behind the vision from the emissary from Visible World was some truly magical technology that enabled a powerful and simple solution. Beyond the ability to use big data to figure out which messages are best suited for each target segment, the system literally took over the job of making sure all of the targeted messages got to their destinations: easier, faster, and with more precision than ever before.

The CMO was intrigued by the logic and practical demonstration from the visitor from Visible World. But he sought proof and asked for evidence of prior results. The emissary from Visible World shared with him that the major barons of cable land, as well as other highly regarded brand lords, had found that using more targeted messages delivered double-digit improvements in achieving desired results.

And so the powerful CMO embarked on a quest to reach his many consumers and desired prospects using these new abilities. He encouraged his lieutenants, Poets, Quants, and even a few Minions, to put it to a test. And with the help of folks from Visible World, they began tapping the newfound capabilities. In just a few months, the CMO could see that he had made a wise decision. The more targeted approach made the Poets’ messages more effective than ever before. It also allowed the Quants to continue reaching mass audiences as efficiently as in any recent times.  And the Minions were happy to see that they could get their work done, so much easier and faster that it was possible to get far more relevant messages to their destined audiences. And the CMO, well, he was the happiest of all, as he now realized that his relationships with millions of consumers and prospects were set to grow and prosper.

If you would like to learn why targeted TV advertising is so much more than a fairy tale, please let us know and we will send an emissary from Visible World.

A recent MediaBizBloggers.com blog post by Tom Cunniff raises the question of whether Big Data can really help us make sense of a largely unstructured world so as to be worth the cost and effort associated with plowing into reams of data in search of transformative insights. Tom takes the point of view that those who seek answers in Big Data may be short changing the value of Big Magic, his euphemism for creative ideas that are so powerful that they defy expectations as to their impact on consumers or even society. But Tom also recognizes that the power of Big Magic is elusive and unpredictable, and that even highly talented creative folks that can sometimes hit singles, doubles, and maybe even triples, may not ever hit a magical grand slam.

I agree that it is likely impossible to use Big Data to come up with a formula to generate Big Magic. However, what I really want to draw attention to is the disconnect between how creative folks perceive, misunderstand and fear Big Data relative to its potential to assist in making more effective advertising. While Big Data will not in itself help us come up with a formula for better creative, it does enable the ability to classify consumers and their detailed interactions in a manner that helps us better understand and leverage insights about specific groups or even individuals. All too often, the creative quest to get at the essence of consumer appeal results on missed opportunities to drive ad effectiveness by making campaigns more contextually relevant to specific target segments, content or even timely situations.

In direct marketing, there is general agreement that the effectiveness of campaigns depends on three key components: list, creative and offer. List refers to the various target segments associated with each particular creative and offers. It is also notable that direct marketing campaigns typically set up a matrix of control groups where portions of each target segment is exposed to each creative and each offer, which serves to better understand the relative response rates associated with each component. The relevant insights derived are then used to enhance ongoing performance of subsequent campaigns.

Fans of Big Magic may look down on direct marketing as an ugly duckling that may be okay for promotional messaging but will not likely achieve a high “buzz” factor or win major creative awards. That may be true, but there is little doubt that what direct marketing may lack in creativity, it makes up in delivering measurable outcomes and insights that help improve subsequent campaign results.

Other forms of advertising communications such as print and out-of-home campaigns also provide evidence of campaigns can adapt the creative messaging to capitalize on the context of the placement. Absolut (vodka) and BMW have effectively use such campaigns that borrow from the media placement context or geography to enhance consumer message relevance, and improve advertising effectiveness.

Yet, when it comes to TV advertising, there is still this overarching fear that focusing on anything but the power of the underlying creative idea may actually inhibit campaign results. A proof point that is sometimes offered to support this perspective is that successful campaigns are singularly focused on a powerful idea. While there is undisputable value in having a powerful underlying campaign concept, great campaigns are also said to have “legs” able to support multiple and ongoing creative execution.

So why not leverage Big Data to enlighten creative development? Data-driven insights may help identify a powerful underlying idea that may have broad target appeal, or far more likely, the data may reveal insights that can inspire various ways to express a powerful creative concept to make it more appealing and meaningful to specific consumer target segments or viewing occasions. 

The next time your creative team is putting together “the next big idea”, check to see if it passes a hypothetical Big Data test. Does the concept support message differentiation based on key consumer segments? Is the big idea able to support tailoring of messages to make them more relevant based on placement or geographic context? If not, maybe it is not such a big idea after all.And if you actually have access to Big Data, or any amount of data that may be relevant to better understand your target consumers, you can begin to apply a more practical approach to your creative assessment. How does the idea stack up against specific, identified consumer segments? What can be done to make the idea more relevant to each target consumer segment, across mediums and placements? These are all questions where relevant data can help drive and refine just about any powerful campaign idea.

In the end, we will come to realize that Big Data and Big Magic are not mutually exclusive forces. Together they can be used to craft advertising that is more relevant to viewers and more effective for marketers. Big Data may not help bring on magical grand slams, but appropriately used with Big Magic, it will likely result in advertising campaigns that predictably deliver singles and doubles. And that is a game winning formula.