One of the hottest marketing catchphrases of 2012 is “data is the new creative.” The premise is that all the creative in the world won’t help you if your decisions are not data-driven.
Data is the new creative!
For those who are squarely in the analytics camp, this new sentiment must feel like a vindication for long years slaving away, gleaning insights from facts and figures without much appreciation (well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate, but sometimes it feels that way.) It’s about time colleagues and clients realize they could have avoided numerous mistakes if they had only taken the time to look at the data first. The argument is that for too long, people have used “smoke and mirrors” to sell clients programs with flashy creative that was not built on a solid foundation based on data-driven insights.