What is the Value of Creativity?

I just attended another AWESOME session at SXSW interactive called, “Is too much math killing marketing?” This is a question I’ve wondered about for a long time, and one that has often frustrated me a lot. At work I find myself getting upset when my co-workers are unwilling to try anything new without data to back up that it will be worth it.  Mike Teasdale, one of the panelists, described my frustration perfectly when he quoted Douglas Bownman, a creative director for Twitter, who said, “Data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.” The more math you try to put into the marketing process, the more you prevent your employees from being innovative in the work process. And for a long time I’ve felt like Dave Trott when he said, “It is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right.”

But this session changed my mind. Too much math isn’t killing marketing, being lazy is what is killing marketing. Because there is plenty of room to be both interesting and right, it just takes far more effort than before to do both.

Rand Schulman, another one of the panelists, made an amazing point when he said, “Creativity without conversion= ZERO.” It’s not an option to be JUST creative and JUST take huge leaps of faith. We as marketers must take the time to measure things that are difficult to measure and to continue crunching the numbers to find out if we are making an impact.

You must ask yourself exactly what Schulman asked us, “What is the value of creativity if nobody hears it?” The answer, again, is zero.