art or science?
Of course marketing is a bit of both. But how much art and how much science?
The CMO of an Australian software firm believes that marketing today is 70% science, 30% art. His point: Every business should be using science (sophisticated analyses, big data, etc) to support decisions about marketing. At the same time, the creativity of art is key to developing marketing that touches hearts and minds.
Science is vital for targeting, in particular. A Google marketing exec points to the quest for 'right place, right time, right message' and how science can inform decisions about place and time. Yet art is needed for marketing that creates 'brand magic', in his words.
The CMO of an auto insurance firm observes that many marketers 'are so proud of their art but they don't know their science'. This firm is serious about the science of marketing, doing media buying in-house for tight control over targeting and timing. Still, given the intense competition in the insurance business, this CMO looks to art for the edge: 'We're not going to out-pend anybody. We're going to out-create them'.
Creativity is necessary to achieve breakthrough marketing campaigns that are memorable and drive results. And sometimes, as one agency exec notes, marketers have to take a chance and use intuition even when 'we know measurement is thin'.
The bottom line is, in reality, the bottom line--science (metrics and KPIs, for instance) can tell us how well the marketing is working. Creativity in marketing, the art, must have a purpose. Through science (planning, testing and evaluating) we can determine how well the art delivered on the marketing objectives. Art and science in marketing!
