Current Issue Summary
December 2022 (Vol. 62, Issue 4)
Managing Creativity in the Age of Data-Driven Marketing Communication: A Model for Agencies to Improve Their Distribution and Valuation of Creativity
Kicking off the December issue is a study that calls for advertisers to be more strategic in addressing the challenges of managing creativity and creative teams. In doing so, authors Annette Kallevig (Kristiania University College, Oslo), Wilson Ozuem (University of Cumbria/Anglia Ruskin University, U.K.), Michelle Willis (University of Cumbria), Silvia Ranfagni (University of Florence), and Serena Rovai (Excelia Business School, France) turn to leaders of industry-acclaimed agencies from Norway, Italy, France and the U.K. Their focus: exploring differences in how creativity is valued between traditional advertising departments and specialized digital marketing agencies. The goal: to create a roadmap for managers to use for improving the creative integrated marketing communication process.
The research suggests that more incremental forms of creativity often are overlooked at the expense of more radical ones. “Creative agencies need to show that they value all creative contributions, not just the type of radical creativity that wins awards,” the authors write.
Among the takeaways:
- Although marketing communication services provided by advertising agencies have diversified in recent decades, applied creativity has not, and it probably has not been adapted, prioritized, or implemented equally across services.
- Managers should take the first step of doing an overall assessment of their creative resources, using the model offered in this research as their guide.
- This will enable them to adopt “strategies and tactics that improve overall creative distribution and valuation” while strengthening an agency’s creative profile.