For years, the marketing industry has spoken of breaking down the walls between media planning and creative development with the same fervent regularity that people speak of finally cleaning out the garage. Now, according to a panel of senior marketers gathered in London, some brands may actually be doing it.
The occasion was the Digital Marketing World Forum, where executives from PepsiCo, JCDecaux, Virgin Experience Days and Kimberly-Clark convened to discuss what happens when creativity, media, data and artificial intelligence begin operating as a single system rather than as departments that meet only when the artwork is due.
Marek Tomalak, the global chief marketing officer at SodaStream, which is part of PepsiCo, offered what might be called the philosophical position. "Brands that shape human identities," he said, arguing that modern marketing has moved beyond moving units toward shaping behaviors and values. "It's not just about sending more products or more messages. It's actually about how many people will stand up and stay with those people."
(One does not typically hear the phrase "stand up and stay" at marketing conferences, but Mr. Tomalak seemed to mean it.)
Kate Tovey, director of customer engagement at JCDecaux UK, the outdoor advertising company, suggested that the industry continues to leave what she called "effectiveness on the table" by involving media planners only after the creative work is nearly finished. "Media should inform creativity — not dictate it," she said. "But when creative understands the strengths and constraints of a channel like out-of-home, it becomes sharper and braver."
The panel, moderated by Jenni Baker of The Drum, repeatedly returned to outdoor advertising as an example of creative and media working in concert. Christie Gray, head of brand identity and design at Kimberly-Clark, described a campaign that succeeded largely because the physical location became inseparable from the idea itself. "If you take that same idea and run it in another city, another location, another audience, it just wouldn't work," she said.
Artificial intelligence, inevitably, occupied much of the discussion. The panel positioned it less as a threat than as a capable but undiscriminating assistant. "AI can speed things up really quickly," Ms. Gray said. "But you still need to know what your brand stands for. Without that, that's when everything starts looking the same."
Noel Eves, chief marketing officer at Virgin Experience Days, noted that his team's recent brand overhaul relied on traditional methods — customer immersion, focus groups, in-person collaboration — before artificial intelligence helped extend the work. "What we still needed was real human emotion," he said. "That's the good stuff."
The garage, it seems, remains only partially cleaned.
Original story published in The Drum: "‘Media should inform, not dictate’: How brands are achieving creative synergies | The Drum"