Creative Engineering: Building ideas with logic, data, and performance
Summary The combination of creativity with logic and data is essential, but rarely applied due to the resistance to focusing on KPIs, the "cult of the idea" and the difficulty of strategic planning adapted to the real needs of media and budget.
What I'm going to present here isn't new, but the combination of creation and data is rarely applied. Why? In my opinion, there are three main reasons:
The work of focusing on KPIs• The work involved in focusing on KPIs;
• It goes against the "cult of the idea";
• Nobody wants to be the annoying person who says "calm down there."
It's pure math: the higher the volume, the greater the work. If we know that a single 30-second video isn't enough, that you can't simply "adapt" it to 15 seconds, and that each medium requires its own timing in production, why do we still see OOH ads that are just snippets of TV commercials? Why don't bumpers (short videos) communicate anything? Why, even with high media frequency, doesn't the 15-second video of famous A and/or B change?
I know that thinking about all the creative assets needed for a campaign before even having an idea may seem unusual. But to talk about performance, we need to remember McLuhan's old maxim: the medium is the message. In other words, the way we deliver the message matters as much as (or more than) the content itself. Ignoring this is wasting media and effort. And this brings us to the second point.
The "cult of the idea"I'm creative. I love ideas: creating, seeing, discussing, remembering, forgetting, writing, crossing out, exchanging. But please, for Washington, Houston, we have a problem.
Yes, in specific cases—such as buzz-focused, top-of-funnel, or unlimited-budget campaigns—the idea comes first. But this shouldn't be the rule.
The reason is simple: with increasingly tight budgets, the "trial and error" game has become a "trial and error as soon as possible" game. And how do we do that? By being the annoying "hold on there" guy.
The annoying "calm down there"– Hold on, how does this idea adapt to OOH?
– Hold on, it's 3 months with a 6x weekly frequency. That's about 18 15-second videos, the famous 'A', okay?
"Hold on, we only have R$200,000 for production and 34 videos, 10 photos, and 6 GIFs with cropped backgrounds. Wouldn't it be better to go to a studio and remove the camel part?"
The annoying "take it easy" approach is supposedly what "limits" creativity. Traditionally, the logic is "let's think of the idea first, then adapt it to all formats." But we know that doesn't always work.
You know what always works? Create with the knowledge:
• All the arguments you want to use.
• All media where you will be present.
• All the variations you will need due to frequency.
• All available production budget.
Because, let's be honest, everyone already knows how to build ideas based on logic, data, and performance. People probably just don't have the patience to do it.
(*) Luiz Barella is Vice President of Creation at Jotacom.
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