Yes, I Believe Advertising is Better as Science than Art

It wasn’t all that long ago that any agency worth its salt embraced with religious fervor the concept of “The Big Idea.” Creatives would spend days, weeks, sometimes months banging their heads against the wall to achieve that MadMen-esque moment where everything becomes clear and the tagline and three print ads and two clever TV spots practically wrote themselves. The industry believed that the magical art form of the creative process was what created inherent, billable value in an agency’s final product. And thus, creativity was revered, honored and considered so sacred one didn’t dare question it.

We fed our addiction to epiphianic moments of creativity by converting as many clients as possible to “The Big Idea” religion. We led clients to believe that when an ad campaign was pure and brilliant and inspired, it had to be good. We produced artful, eye-grabbing campaigns with the greatest of intentions but at the time had few proven scientific methods of discerning what kind of results we were achieving.

Then the era of digital marketing came along and ruined our bacchanal existence.

Now, nerdy scientific conversations about analytics and tracking and metrics and search and measurement and ROI and hypertargeting are part of the brainstorm. Now, thanks to the infinite possibilities in the interactive marketing and digital space, our thinking is no longer limited to thinking in campaigns. And I’m thrilled.

I’m thrilled we’re in the era of accountability with our clients—they deserve it. I’m thrilled we’re able to discern with a high level of certainty whether our ideas are generating a return on investment—it feels good to find out that your work is working. I’m thrilled we’re building cultures of measurement—perhaps now our industry can garner some much needed credibility.

I’m thrilled to be a part of advertising history that’ll be known for worshipping “Big Results” above all other gods.

Image courtesy of Anirudh Koul.