S C I E N C E - D R I V E N C R E A T I V E ?

Y O U R E L A T E !

Ken Roberts
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

FORETHOUGHT

Advertising is facing an uncertain future, one steadily eroded by the

cost-cutting activities of procurement. This is because procurement
places little value on the unfulfilled promises of creative agencies,
that the next campaign will deliver growth. Creative agencies need
to find a new way to demonstrate and validate their ability to supply
consistent, commercially effective work. The establishment of this lies
not in the muse of creative inspiration, but in the development
of science-driven output resulting in growth of market share,
margin and category.
AUTHOR

Ken Roberts opened the Forethought doors

and solved the first client questions in July
1994. He has since led the firm to be
ranked the most commercially effective and
innovative marketing intelligence consultancy
in Australia.

KEN ROBERTS
Ken is a serial innovator and inventor.
He has been lauded internationally for
frame-breaking and patented work in the
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
implicit measurement of emotion, along with
FORETHOUGHT
the rational drivers that lead to change in
consumption behaviour. His work has been
published extensively, including twice in the
prestigious Marketing Science journal.

He has made a powerful contribution to

the future of the marketing profession via
his commercial activities and previously as
Associate Professor at Melbourne Business
School, Australias mostly highly rated
business school. His contribution has also
included his role as member and past
chairman of the Advisory Board at the
centre of marketing education in Australia,
Monash University and also a member of
the Advisory Board of the newly developed,
MBS Masters of Business Analytics.
 SC I ENCED RIVEN CREATIVE? YOURE L ATE!

SCIENCE-DRIVEN CREATIVE?
YOURE LATE!

Those heady days of creative agencies making

solid economic returns have passed. The diligent
efforts of procurement have seen to that and
now creative agencies have been relegated
to price takers. First, because, the veil of
wizardry surrounding creativity has somewhat
faded; and second, and more importantly, the
tenuous or non-existent link between agencies
creative output and commercially effective
communications has invited a sceptical and
unchecked procurement office to set price
accordingly.

However, agencies can reverse this trend. The

agencies that repeatedly facilitate a change in
their clients relative market performance will
return to those days of prosperity. This requires
the discipline of using data analytics to dissect
behaviour into its constituent motivators, both
rational and emotional and to frame the creative
brief based on those scientifically derived drivers.
 SC I EN CE D RIV E N C REATIV E? YOURE L ATE!

ITS YOU, NOT THEM

Heres a thought: theres no such

thing as a price sensitive buyer;
just one who has grown indifferent
to your differentiation.

The same individual who buys an expensive Too often amongst the creative fraternity,
Porsche will also buy the cheapest toilet such personality marketing is a surrogate for
tissue. Its the product, not the person; itsthe meaningful differentiation. Alas, over time,
creative agencies, not procurement. Saying that agency is seen to be no more capable of
that the market for creative is increasing in producing commercially effective creative than
price sensitivity is a fanciful diversion that its competitors, and so the individuals aura is
avoids the reality that the creative industry progressively lostand with it, the agencys
has been ineffective in providing valued price setting discretion.
differentiation. With valued differentiation
comes price setting discretion. For a creative
agency, valued differentiation comes from
having the wherewithal to consistently produce
commercially effective communications.

With the predictability of a drunken

sailors gait, every now and then a creative
agency does produce commercially effective
communicationsthat is, work that enables
the client to raise margins, gain market share
or grow the category. Such notable success is
sometimes attributed to a high performing
individual from the agency.
 SC I ENCED RIVEN CREATIVE? YOURE L ATE!

DISTINGUISHING THE FUTURE

F ROM T H E PAST

In the advertising realm, ideally the future is reasons to believe with the discrete emotions most
represented by an agency that is capable of likely to bring about consumption behaviour.
interpreting advanced marketing analytics and Now this is communications driven by
applying a scientifically derived model that contemporary business analytics-based insight.
accurately predicts changes in market share.
The components of such predictive models are, In contrast, the past in advertising is more
indeed, the growth drivers of market share1. likely to be typified by an agency that relies
If the intention of the communications is on intuition augmented with vanilla findings
to effect change in market share, then these arising from focus groups, clippings from the
drivers are the valid candidates for the rational, internet, and surveys that are unable to provide
reasons to believe, and they ought to form the any predictive validity whatsoever of changes
basis of the creative brief. in market share. This is how the advertising
industry was 10 years ago and as it pretty much
Predictive models have been enhanced through stands today. It is also the primary reason for
the implicit measurement of emotions2. the tenuous link between general creative output
Creatives are able to encircle the rational and commercially effective communications.

THE LOWEST COST PRODUCER

The dire warning is that, on the current In addition, increasingly heard are stories of
trajectory, pricing for creative will yield no agencies that are pricing pitches to yield a
moreand perhaps lessthan the cost return below costs simply to access current
of capital. This is precisely what a dutiful period revenue to contribute to fixed costs and
procurement is facilitating. At that time, to keep the doors open. This is evidence that,
onlythe lowest cost producers will scratch for some, the end is nigh.
out an existence. As evidence that this process
is underway, agencies are already moving The most chilling fact of all is that there is a
production to low-cost countries, salaries growing feeling of deep concern and helplessness
are either stagnant or contracting, individual amongst the senior echelons of the advertising
workloads are increasing, and staff turnover is and marketing services conglomerates.
rising; in some agencies to catastrophic heights.
 SC I EN CE D RIV E N C REATIV E? YOURE L ATE!

YET ANOTHER GASP

In the 1960s, agencies had an idea. the in-market results are not always as expected
They introduced account planning as a means of according to the academic literature.
increasing the probability of success by building
the big idea based on consumer insight. The Indeed, we have seen examples such as in
problem was, the insight was indiscernibly general insurance where, guided by behavioural
better than gut instinct. Indeed, good gut economics principles, the reduction from a
instinct was probably better than average crowded set of options did not relieve choice
insight. This is a far cry from using analytics to paralysis nor cognitive overloading to facilitate
dissect behaviour into its constituent motivators, greater market share; on the contrary, it lowered
both rational and emotional. market share!

In what seems like yet another roll of the die, Like other behavioural economics principles,
and borrowing from inspiration from books such the paradox of choice is not a generalisable rule
as Nudge, The Paradox of Choice and Predictably of marketing, and blind application of such
Irrational, some advertising personalities have principles will not result in a higher probability
attempted to resuscitate account planning with a of success for creative. (Incidentally, even Barry
behavioural economics-based approach. Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice,
cautions that he does not know how much
The behavioural economics promise is that choice is too much choice).
there are a number of generalisable truths
that can be applied to increase the prosperity This is in no way an attempt to diminish the
of brands. For some, these behavioural contribution or the rigor of well-applied, test
economics principles have become the missing and learn-based behavioural economics. Its
tablets of stone of marketing. just that holding out a few intuitively appealing
principles and then blindly applying them to
The trouble is, for applied behavioural a big idea is not the answer to the long term
economics based on these principles, prosperity of the industry.
 SC I ENCED RIVEN CREATIVE? YOURE L ATE!

T H E DATA , T H E DATA

For the creative agency to change the probability To gain customers, we need to be able to
of producing commercially effective creative identify the rational and emotional growth
to be better than the toss of a coin, it must drivers and quantify their relative importance in
have the discipline to build its creative based driving choice.
on scientifically-validated models that use the
identified drivers of growth to predict change in Creativity thrives best not when it is lawless
market share. and ill-informed by loose insight, but
rather when it is constrained and guided by
In the context of communications, lets assume scientifically derived drivers. Prescribing to the
that there are just three non-mutually exclusive creative team the emotion to elicit and the
enterprise endeavours: rational reasons to believe to teach focuses the
challenge and produces the most commercially
effective work.

1 GROW MARKET SHARE

Through marketing science, we now know
precisely what we need to be communicating

2 GROW MARGIN to drive choice and, therefore, the acquisition

of new customers. Only now are we ready to
draft the creative brief. What remains is the

3 G ROW T H E C AT EG O RY substantial challenge of producing effective

creative; however, the greatest uncertainty
has been removed from the equation. Once
the creative is produced we can pre-test, with
pin-point accuracy, the efficacy of the creative
output in triggering the drivers of growth.
 SC I EN CE D RIV E N C REATIV E? YOURE L ATE!

I F IT WAS SO SIMPLE...

From the planners perspective, there are several

reasons to justify a reluctance to be inclusive of
marketing science. Perhaps they fear conceding
ground and allowing marketing scientists to
encroach on the agencys advice, income and
raison dtre. Perhaps they defend dearly their
creative integrity and consider marketing
science a threat to that integrity. Perhaps it is 1 The greatest impediment of all is
the insistent voices of the exponents
the scarcity of supply of marketing science led of the old way. Even in instances
insight and the search costs that one would where the client has directed that
need to encounter to identify quality marketing science-based predictive models be
science. Perhaps it is the atrocities of the past used as the foundation for creative,
when planners relied on analytics to inform the we have witnessed agency folks
big idea and it flopped. digging their heels in as they defiantly
cling to intuition and ways that have
It seems clear that there are three glaring served them and their clients so
impediments to the adoption of science poorly in the past.
driven creative:

2 Producing efficacious models that

predict changes in market share
leading to the formation of creative
is, for some clients, a new idea; and
for most, beyond their current skill
set. Clients tend not to have the data
analytics capabilities amongst their
communications and insights teams,
so there is an adherence to account
planning and creative briefs being
based on qualitative findings and
quantitative analysis - amounting to
little more than means, frequencies
and cross tabs coupled with the old
stock in trade, gut instinct.
 SC I ENCED RIVEN CREATIVE? YOURE L ATE!

3 For the most part, creative agencies

recruit the wrong people for their
Given that the scientifically validated growth
drivers that are the foundation stones of
account planning departments. In commercially effective communications are
manycreative agencies there is a known, pre-testing can be used to establish the
generalaversion to advanced analytics efficacy of the creative. This is a far cry from the
and, consequently, a low comprehension usual pre-testing approach, in which a bank of
of the appropriateness or power of questions with unknown relevance to market
predictive data analytics tools. The share, margin or category growth are measured.
fledgling rise of the data planner is
directionally correct; however, it is a Continuing the science-based approach,
long way short of applying predictive post-implementation in-market tracking
models to identify the rational and programs provide hard evidence-based,
emotional drivers of choice and then diagnostic feedback of change in business
briefing the creativeaccordingly. outcomes, and the causality of those changes
referencing back to the gain and retain drivers
and the business initiatives. This feedback
alerts and informs clients when intervention is
required, and allows for ongoing collaboration
between the client and agency partners.
 SC I EN CE D RIV E N C REATIV E? YOURE L ATE!

CONCLUSION

Could it be that many account planners are

working under the problem gamblers erroneous
belief that following losses, a win is sure to
come? Since the 19th century, the advertising
industry has conceded that the probability of
advertising achieving its growth objectives is just
a toss of a coin. My contention is that to date,
creative agencies have not availed themselves
with the contemporary tools that can change
that probability.

Like the lapping waves from an ever

encroaching high tide, pretty much every other
element of marketing is steadily undergoing
a displacement from managerial hunches and
guesses to the rigour and objectivity of business
analytics. As we farewell the intuitive marketer,
so too must we farewell those instinct-based
approaches so common in advertising.
Increasingly, business analysts will be seeking to
shine a piercing, rigorous light on the strength
of the causal relationship between an agencys
creative output and achieving the advertisers
business objectives.

The creative brief must be based on actual

scientifically derived drivers of the expected
business outcome. That is, the discipline of using
data to dissect behaviour into its constituent
motivators, both rational and emotional. It is
true that science-driven creative has been late to
be embraced. However, it is certainly not too late
for the innovative agencies that welcome change,
to claw back their price setting discretion as they
deliver growth to their clients.
 SC I ENCED RIVEN CREATIVE? YOURE L ATE!

REFERENCES

1
For example, see Danaher, P.J., Roberts, J.H., Roberts, K., 2
For example, see Roberts, Ken., Roberts, John, H., Danaher,
Simpson, A., 2011, Applying a dynamic model of consumer P.J., Raghavan, R. 2015, Incorporating Emotions into
choice to guide brand development at Jetstar Airways, Evaluation and Choice Models: Application to Kmart
Marketing Science [P], Vol 30, Issue 4, Institute for Operations Australia, Marketing Science [P], Vol 34, Issue 6, Institute
Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Hanover USA, pp. 586-594. (INFORMS), Hanover USA, pp. 815-824. (Nov-Dec 2015)
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