“70% of advertising effectiveness depends on the creative”
Ross Jauncey, Head, Create With Google

Having worked with performance marketing for 15+ years, it sadly never felt like creativity is what we spent 70% of our time on. Often, we never even saw the creative, but merely optimised a campaign from numbers. The creative part was deciding whether the “buy now” button should be red or green (admittedly, a machine decided in the end). 

I started out my career in 2007 working for Google. For a long time since then, I was a digital specialist, but I’ve now moved more into strategy and business development. I would say that I’ve never been strictly fascinated by media, more so by people. Technology isn’t what sparked my passion, rather it was a means to achieve my ideas. I think people are awesome, more so than tech. Look at what’s happening on TikTok for example. It’s a platform full of unfiltered creativity and it’s always blowing my mind. The production cost is close to nothing and humour + zeitgeist are driving forces. Things have never been more “real” than they are now because ads have evolved into people.

However, as automation and personalisation are gaining traction, we’re faced with issues of originality and differentiation. There’s way too much content out there already and we can’t consume it all with only 24 hours in a day. 

So what’s left of marketing when content is a commodity and technology optimises your campaigns? 

I’m going to say creativity.

I once had a colleague tell me over a beer: “People in marketing are the ones that don’t know statistics”. After another sip I replied “Show me one original idea that doesn’t involve a flowchart or an excel sheet”. 

I’ve always believed imagination to be far more important than logic. At WeThink, I’m looking forward to bringing imagination back into digital marketing and creating value through meaningful connections. Continuing the ongoing development of WeThink Social as a fully established social media agency, I hope to drive the contrast between editorial content and paid advertising home for our clients, so the value of both can be properly appreciated.