NoëlleNewboldonDataandCreativityforCampaign

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Group Creative Director Noëlle Newbold was recently published in Campaign, an online platform and community for creative and marketing professionals. In her article, “The Dangerous Dance Between Data and Creativity, she shares insights into how businesses can “build their bottom line as well as create brand love” with just the right amount of numbers.

To caution against an over-reliance on metrics, she cites concerns from former Netflix executives about the company prioritizing proven formulas over new types of programming. Alternatively, Newbold points to the success of canned water company Liquid Death as proof that a strong cultural point of view can be a data-free creative marketing risk worth taking.

The sweet spot exists somewhere in between, where data guides creativity in the right direction instead of declaring a destination. And in her experience, it starts with a well disciplined brief. “Creative brief writing is as important a skillset as conceptual thinking and design execution,” Newbold writes. “Identify the key data points and make sure they ladder up to a real and new insight. Now cut the rest to get the best out of your creative team.”

For Newbold, “creativity isn’t linear, it’s messy.” So she suggests that there must be a willingness to trust gut feelings, allow ideas to mature, and indulge in a little bit of risk when experimenting and executing creative solutions.

“Brands are fighting to engage their audiences with formulas and data, yet the brand that will win is the one that doesn’t strangle fresh, intuitive ideas,” Newbold says. “It will be the brand that finds the illusive sweet spot between data and creativity.”

Read the full article on Campaign