Marketing 2020: creativity or science?

Completing the Marketing 2020 survey proved to be a time-consuming chore last week (probably its completion felt to last at least 30% longer due to the tropical circumstances). However, the questions addressed some very interesting topics and thereby enticed me to complete the full questionnaire.

The Marketing 2020 survey is a worldwide initiative by WFA (World Federation of Advertisers), ANA and EffectiveBrands. Offline and online, hundreds of CMOs, marketing agencies and other seasoned marketing professionals are asked about their vision of marketing as a discipline, today and tomorrow. Its aim: establishing a firm understanding as how “marketing can best focus and organize to support business growth”.

Especially in B2B the marketer has a plate full of change to handle. In 2013 and in the years to come until 2020. Recent Accenture and IBM surveys show that CMOs worldwide are increasingly worried about their lack of accountability and relative lack of power to get achieve the must-wanted digital transformation. Marketing therefore has a lot more to do than handing over sufficient marketing qualified leads to sales. ‘Transform or die’ is the motto. Marketing should undergo a transformation into a ‘creative science’. With a strong focus on building better customer insight by building and leveraging more complete customer data, measuring what works (and what does not), and by ‘closed loop marketing’ through the use of smarter technology such as marketing automation. Whilst maintaining creativity. Creativity to befit the buyer instinct. Creativity is no random act either. Thanks to deploying existing and new insights from disciplines such as behavorial economics, customer psychology and neuromarketing mankind has developed a better understanding of itself as human species (and buyers) than ever before. This helps to also better ‘read’ and interpret customers’ and prospects’ response to commercial messaging such as advertising, banners and content including whitepapers, videos and blogs.

That’s why I look forward – just as many other peers – to seeing the Marketing 2020 results. To what extent do the scores ‘now and then’ indicate a strong belief in the need for change? I do hope to see a very unanimous outcome to the question below (translation of illustration below: ‘I consider the focus on data and KPIs to be creativity’s enemy in marketing). Creativity and science can go hand-in-hand in my opinion.