Data + Creativity = Magic
Over the years two worlds have built their empires in parallel.
The Agency world built its foundations on Creativity — the ability to tell timeless stories through the eyes of the customer, building a deeper bond.
The Product world built its foundations on Data — the ability to predict customer needs/actions and use that information to build better, more meaningful products.
With time, the product world began to recognize Creativity and its importance — which is why we went from boring beige boxes to pioneering devices we willingly queued in line for days to buy. Yes, there have been plenty of disasters when product companies are too data focused; along with examples of why data alone cannot be the solution to every problem. But the Product world has found a magical alchemy through the combination of Data and Creativity. Something the Agency world has forever failed to understand and adopt. This is the reason why agencies have lost the data battle to product companies, and why (media) companies like Facebook today threaten and dictate advertiser spending. The agencies have focused too much on gut, intuition, and creativity. The storytellers the agency world has produced over the years have failed to use the greatest superpower the modern world gave us — Data.
The failure of the agency leaders to employ data as one of their differentiating factors to influence their work has sadly trickled into every design process over the years. Take the pitch process for example — Competition has become so intense the account executives are left with no choice but to suck up to every single client ask, RFP, or RFI. Agencies bring their best creatives together for a pitch, and in a matter of a few (excruciating) weeks almost all the creative work is defined, designed, and envisioned leaving very little time to take a step back and validate with the real customer. Before you know it you’re already presenting in front of the client with little or no customer validation. Post the win, project plans focus too much on the delivery and execution of the work; again, with very little time spent actually validating with real customers. Through out this process decisions are made largely through opinions of clients (and occasionally their spouses) or collective opinions of team members. If the team manages to get the client to pay for any kind of Research, “Lean Research” is conducted only to reshape existing work and minimizing any possible exploration of work not resonating with the audience. Yes, there are leaders who would claim other wise; refute and say they are “customer obsessed” and don’t make any decisions without the “customer in mind”. They’d only be lying to their conscience if they claim otherwise. The lack of data, and the inability to inform work through data, is a well known problem in the Agency world that sadly hasn’t been solved yet.
Designers are spatial thinkers. They embody their work by playing out the possibilities of how their design decisions impact the user experience. When you force designers to design in a silo, without empowering them with the knowledge of exactly how the user uses the product today you’re giving them only half a canvas to paint on. Designers, their craft, and the context in which they design demand the whole picture (or at least most of it). They need to have the ability to use data as one of the things that inform their design decisions. This is why I’m writing The Agency Innovation Playbook — to emphasize the importance of Data informing our craft, so we can bridge the gap between good designers from the Agency world and great designers from the Product world.
