Published August 5
More data. More creative assets. More channels.
That’s the common refrain from brands and agencies.
But WPP Media’s Louise Martell thinks that’s the wrong response to fragmentation. The OpenMind global head of strategy says brands should use data, AI and technology to make better creative decisions, not simply produce more content.
Martell spoke with The Current’s Zac Wang about creativity, effectiveness and how brands can stand out today.
This conversation was recorded during the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
What have you seen this week that tells you a bit about where advertising is going?
There’s so much to say, isn’t there? I’m lucky enough to spend a huge amount of time down in the Palais [where the work is on display], so I can see what’s coming through. I think, based on the evolution from last year, there is a real understanding now of how platforms, communities, the codes within that, the signals within that, the data that we can use, [are] all actually starting to not be the thing but help fuel the thing.
So I think creativity is getting even more exciting.
How have you seen people approach it? Last year, even a few years before, versus this year?
I was listening to Mark Pritchard yesterday, and he was saying [that] we’re in these two worlds where the fundamentals of marketing still remain — you still need to understand how people behave, but there’s just way more opportunity through platforms. We’re not going to master the complexity of fragmentation, which is obviously a key concern, there’s so many spaces, but actually how we become more choiceful in that. And I think that’s what creativity is about.
And that’s what we’re seeing is really interesting choices being made informed by data but not led by data. Data is not the thing. We saw a little bit of that last year where AI was maybe the thing or data was the thing, whereas now we’re seeing it actually being used in interesting ways to fuel insight and actually make experiences better for the audiences and for consumers.
I don’t think creativity is going anywhere. I think it’s more important than ever before. We’re just seeing that there’s more opportunity. It’s shining through in more ways than ever before, so it’s more diverse.
Could you take me inside a tough conversation with a client? What’s worrying people, what’s on their minds?
I don’t know if it was a tough conversation. There’s a real focus, probably for all clients, on how we deliver effectiveness in the modern landscape. It’s not as simple as it was, but the fundamentals are still there. Growth will come from delivering penetration to new audiences over time. The sustained growth, we have to bring new audiences into brands.
We have to make sure brands are still relevant to those people, and then we have to be able to understand what’s working and understand what’s working quite quickly.
The focus is really about effectiveness, about how we continue to really make brands famous in a world where we often don’t see everything. There’s a lot of fragmentation across media.
It’s hard to have those big moments in media, but it’s still really important that we’re delivering quality. That we are relevant in culture in the right ways for the brands that we use in context, and there’s more opportunities than ever before to do that. So those are the sort of conversations that I’m having about the work is exciting.
I don’t know, are they tough? They’re always good debates.
Is there a bit more urgency this year versus last year in terms of getting the efficiencies and outcomes?
That’s always been there. I think that’s always been a demand. More focus on some of the really gritty questions, perhaps around where out or where in or does it exist. But now, you’ve got moving to an always-on world where you’ve got many different types of content, many different formats.
And I reject the idea that it just needs to be more, more, more, more, more. That can’t be the answer, so how do we do better?
How do we be more choiceful? How do we know what’s working quickly and adapt? How do we know when to refresh? How do we know when we can reuse something after a hiatus? There’s a lot of almost quite granular questions around “what’s working now? What do we need to do now? How do we respond to something in culture now? Is that the right thing to do?”
I think those are the things that perhaps feel more urgent to crack. And there’s excellent work going on across WPP and across Nestlé in that space.
That sounds like it’s going to go even maybe harder. Having an explosion of data and AI sounds like it’s going to make it faster and easier.
Let’s hope it makes it easier. That’s what we want. Easier, faster, more precise — that’s how we should be using it. It’s a fantastic tool, isn’t it?