Is data-driven marketing killing creativity and agencies?

Four successful female agency entrepreneurs from Worldwide Partners agencies at the panel discussion moderated by Liz Marks, AdForum at the Advantgarde Summit in Paris on "Is Data Driven Marketing Killing Creativity and Agencies?"

Four successful female entrepreneurs in the agency business from UK, France, USA and Germany, Julie Clair, Clear, Iria Marques, Aressy, Christine Kilman, Gelia and Ingrid Wächter-Lauppe, Wächter & Wächter Worldwide Partners, discussed future trends in B2B marketing under the moderation of Liz Marks, AdForum.

New business areas around digital transformation

It was extremely exciting how the four ladies assessed the tension between marketing automation and branding, between data and creativity, and what solutions they offered. All of them accompany the use of MarTech systems with their agencies and support their customers on the stony path of digital transformation, even if they view the hype around it critically. A realistic assessment of opportunities, hurdles, urgencies and implementation consulting, including change management and digital transformation consulting, promises success, both for the customers and for agencies that see new business areas for themselves. They see digital disruption as an opportunity if you open yourself up to new things. Pioneers here are Ingrid Wächter-Lauppe, Wächter & Wächter Worldwide Partners, who has long been active in change management with her Brandguards and is now increasingly concerned with digital disruption and innovation, and Iria Marques, Aressy Worldwide Partners, who with her agency has already done a lot of work for and with leading technical groups in the field of introducing marketing automation systems. Unlike their consulting competitors, who focus on technology and channels, Worldwide Partners agencies offer comprehensive strategy consulting, including business leadership and creation. This remains individual, does not become commonplace and cannot be taken over too quickly by robots, no matter how clever.

The panelists agreed with Liz Marks that there is still a need for more than technical marketing systems. Even when targeting is refined, individualization is improved with new algorithms, and hopefully AI will eventually put an end to stalking, where people continue to be harassed for months, even years, after they have long since decided for or against a product. They agreed that creativity will also be needed more than ever in the advertising industry in the future.

Digital technology is good, human creativity is better

Everyone's heart beats for creativity. You might think a lot of BtoB agency work - three of the four ladies come from pure BtoB agencies - is boring, but the 4 on the panel set their creativity standards way high and prove with their work that this is a successful approach for the brands they serve. For them, creativity means not just bringing in rational arguments, but appealing to emotions.

"With all the technological change we are currently experiencing, which offers endless new channels and points of contact, we must not forget that brand communication is about appealing to people, about overcoming their perceptual barriers and touching them at their core so that the message also takes root." says Julie Claire. "The processes in a person's brain have not changed in tens of thousands of years. The psychological research of the last hundred years proves how important it is to address not only ratio but also emotions in a targeted and creative way, i.e. attention-grabbing. We must reach not only the head but also the heart", added Ingrid Wächter-Lauppe, whose agency guarantees extraordinary success for its customers not only in B2C, but also in B2B and pharma with extraordinary, emotional campaigns.

All four ladies were also convinced that while activation and sales support are important, branding is essential for clients' long-term success, and especially so in B2B. "Great B2B agencies are brand builders, not just sales supporters," this saying is aspirational for the four Worldwide Partners agencies on the panel and for many on the floor. They see their rosy future in all-encompassing creation and consulting and in global brand building.