When your gut says the creative won’t work

01:03 – Evaluating Intuitive Concerns and Gut Feelings

03:29 – The Role of Predictive Visual Analytics

06:50 – Balance Between Story and Simplification

10:17 – Collaborating with Creative Agencies

In this episode of Beyond Blue’s Comms Testing Nightmares, Jenny, Phil, and Sam discuss the intricacies of evaluating creative executions, offering insights into how gut instinct and data-driven tools can optimise marketing strategies.

Navigating Creative Concepts with Confidence

Jenny opens the discussion by highlighting a scenario many in the creative field are familiar with: arriving at a pivotal testing phase only to feel intuitively that the proposed concepts may fall short, despite being unable to pinpoint exact reasons. This feeling, as Phil emphasises, is not uncommon. Drawing parallels to the excitement and uncertainty of unwrapping gifts, Phil reflects on his experiences with concepts that seem cluttered or poorly structured, leading to immediate doubts about their potential success.

Intuition vs Experience

The conversation shifts as Sam discusses the balancing act between intuition and professional experience. Often, it’s challenging for new research managers or directors to voice concerns, especially when executional flaws are not immediately apparent. Here, Phil introduces a powerful ally: AI-powered predictive visual analytics. Replicating traditional eye-tracking methods, AI-enhanced innovative analytics tools provide an immediate visual representation of how an audience might engage with a concept, offering critical data to support or challenge those gut feelings.

Phil explains that with this AI tool, researchers can quickly identify potential issues like cluttered focus points or the inconspicuous placement of core messages, providing a data-backed basis for recommendations on concept adjustments. Although this technology streamlines analysis, Sam warns that it’s not always about straightforward fixes. Sometimes, executional layouts are so intrinsic to the narrative that simplifying them could strip away the story’s impact. An example of this is the use of multiple firefighters in a visual to depict urgency, which was flagged as visually complex yet essential to the narrative’s integrity.

Collaboration with Creative Agencies

The discourse then touches upon collaboration and the relationship between researchers and creative agencies. Phil cautions about the challenges of suggesting changes based on AI insights without offending the creatives who poured their efforts into the work. Jenny suggests empowering creative agencies by granting access to these tools, allowing them to see the analytics themselves, in essence, ‘marking their own homework’. This could transform the dynamic, fostering a collaborative environment where agencies voluntarily tweak and optimise their concepts based on clear, data-driven insights.

Key Takeaways

The episode underscores the importance of combining gut instinct with technological precision. Whether a creative agency or a brand marketing team, the key takeaway is that embracing predictive analytics as an empowering tool can streamline processes and enhance collaboration. This ensures that the creatives entering the market are not just intuitively sound, but also data-confirmed, maximising their impact and effectiveness.