shots 159: R is for Research & Data

Relying on research is a lazy way out, says Ben Mooge, creative partner at Havas Work Club

It’s too easy to make an enemy of research. Shooting animatic fish in an Ipsos barrel. Research has long been positioned as the creative department’s enemy – the Becher’s Brook of the creative process. It’ll cruelly wipe out half the ideas at a stroke.

You can hone for months, find that insight that feels true to you, write a killer line, have all your references going on, the music you won’t able to afford but that somehow works and then… a carefully chosen panel of Lees or Karls from Bradford or Bromley won’t get it. Or maybe the Lees and Karls have a slightly better idea. They should be writing ads. All their mates say so. That’s too easy. And I don’t think it’s necessarily true.

I’ve had countless evenings on the weird side of the two-way mirror, eating the samosas of fading strategy, the spring rolls of unrequited scripts, the awkward lights-up with the suddenly underwhelmed clients. And you know what, they’re important. They’re crucial. Maybe you’re not as good as you think you are. Maybe it is only an ad idea, and heaven forbid, maybe Lee and Karl actually consume this shit. Of course I’ve had triumphant nights when Lee and Karl are actually uncannily eloquent suburban savants who’ve earned every penny of that £30 and agree with my genius. Both scenarios can be true. Neither is right. Committees can’t write creative ideas. But audiences have a right to vote.

That’s not why I’m slightly allergic to research. I don’t subscribe to the apocryphal research tales – that the Sony Walkman bombed in research or that Cadbury’s Gorilla would never have made it through a link test. They had to make it first to prove it! Can you imagine? Betting on creativity!

Nope. I’m slightly afraid of research because I’m afraid it’ll make me lazy. “Leave it to research. Let the people decide.” That’s dangerous. Not having your own point of view is the true enemy. If you rely on lucky dip research you run the risk of not second and third guessing your crowd.

The truth is that the very best points of view shouldn’t need research, because they should already know their audience inside out. Know what the audience wants, but more importantly know what their audience don’t yet know they want. The Netflix model is maybe the modern-day Holy Grail. Netflix content needs no research. It’s entirely predicated on pre-existing audience taste and data. Netflix doesn’t do pilot episodes – research by any other name. It already knows that there’s a clear gap for an intelligent political thriller possibly directed by Fincher and members who liked Fincher also enjoyed the work of Spacey. That’s enough to commission seasons at a time… I love that data confidence. Put a bit of Netflix into your work. Trust your instincts, because you should already know your audience.

It’s time to stop being defensive about data, argues Tom Eslinger, worldwide digital creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi

I ran into one of my favourite people – not just in advertising, but real-life – at Cannes and I commented that I had just finished an exhausting, eye-opening stint on the Creative Data jury. I got a scrunched-up face in return, followed by an unexpected comment: “I bet the work is awful!”

Normally, this would make me feel a little defensive, like when I defend One Direction at dinner parties, challenging people’s assumptions that something so calculated and precise on the surface would be devoid of creativity and emotion.

But I felt something altogether different: disappointment. My friend assumed that work that had been informed by numbers, statistics and measurements would automatically mean that it lacked the elusive something that makes it Cannes-tastic.

This makes me think about the best reactions I’ve had when giving someone a gift: after some digging around to determine someone’s likes and dislikes, I add my creative interpretation to my final selection. Then I share the gift, along with the story of how I selected it, at the best, most precise time and place.

That’s exactly what combining data into our creative ideas allows us to do. We can go deep and precise or broad and timely, with combinations of tools, devices and processes. We can create multiple solutions and attack business problems from multiple angles, combining intuition and information. Best of all, we can let the data provide the backing our clients need to okay our more unusual proposals and the confidence for them to let us do it again and again.

Data can provide the ideas with the sharpness needed to get those ideas noticed by our customers and to garner cut-through at Cannes.

Data can also kill ideas that ignore the abundance of information available about almost anything. When was the last time you bought someone a gift without browsing their social media profiles and posts? Exactly.

Ideas woven from the data we can access from millions of sources are as exciting to me as HyperCard, Flash, QuickTime and mobile phones have been at different times in my career. The interaction between people and ideas that these tools and devices made possible are at the core of everything we make and call digital. I get really excited about how data coming out of virtually everything can be used to make completely unexpected ideas.

In an open, creative mind, all of this information is a prescription to break from the prescribed. To clumsily paraphrase a beloved boss – data allows us to create unexpected ideas that people never dreamed possible.