Sorry Rory, but I respectfully disagree

Legendary behavioural economist and Ogilvy ad-exec Rory Sutherland recently wrote a characteristically smart piece about the tension in ad-land between creativity and performance. You can find the article entitled "Advertising is in Crisis, but it's not because it doesn't work" here, I highly encourage you to read it.

While it makes many relevant points and represents a point of view that should be heard, not least coming from such an esteemed mind, I’m not sure I agree with the premise of what Rory is saying, and find his message troubling.

Let’s start with the apparently problematic “Martech Industrial Complex” that has created the “Efficiency Bubble” that has been placed at the heart of the issue.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with business results and achieving them efficiently. If that constitutes an efficiency bubble, then I suspect the majority of well run companies with solid marketing strategies happily reside inside the bubble while those that don’t look in through the windows asking how they can get inside.

In fact if any blame can be laid it may be that agencies have generally failed to make the transition to measuring effectiveness and efficiency in terms that genuinely matter to business, and continue to focus on proxy metrics (impressions, clicks, likes and so forth).

Rory asks us to consider the opportunity cost of the investment in efficiency. That turns the argument into a binary one - a choice between efficient marketing and creative marketing.

But it's not binary. One does not need to exist without the other. There is no proponent of efficient marketing (that I know of) who would argue that the message doesn’t matter. After all its about the right MESSAGE at the right time and the right place. In fact the message comes first in that over-used cliché.

Rory says it is strange that technology companies like facebook and Google agree with the research that demonstrates a significant positive link between creativity and performance. I don’t think that’s strange at all. To borrow from Rory’s own words, no one is trying to solve the “who to talk to” and “what to say” clues independently of one other. So to make it seem that there is some tension here I think does little service to the efforts of the industry.

The reality is that the tools that underpin this "efficiency bubble" are here to stay. This is one bubble that is not likely to burst, because the technology works, and performance improvements are incremental especially in a world where the vast majority of platforms the customers of most clients are engaging on are digital.

Just ask the many DTC companies that are building huge businesses (at the expense of traditional businesses) by creatively making use of the available technology.

Just because something is well targeted, does not mean it can’t be creative. In fact I would (and have previously argued) that creativity matters MORE with targeted advertising. Not only is there a bigger opportunity to engage in a meaningful way, but there is a responsibility to do so. And an increased risk of great annoyance if a brand fails to do so.

And I’m not just talking about better tactical executions achieved through DCO. I’m talking about better creative ideas.

Let me give you an example for Postit notes in Russia which is one of the most genius creative idea I have seen. In this case, the creative team not only understood the potential role of technology (in this case simple retargeting), but were inspired by it to create a wonderfully simple and smart idea that is absolutely on brand.

So much so that I sometimes think this should be a service / product that Post-it notes should launch (feel free to suggest it to 3M). I'd use it!

So ultimately Rory's call to arms I think does more harm than good because it exacerbates one of the biggest issues in our industry and continues to pitch performance vs brand, Delivery vs creative, Tech vs Pens and pencils.

Shaming people because they are over investing in efficiency is not going to cause a tide of people running back to big creative ideas, delivered however.

Instead, we should focus on why creatives are feeling disconnected from or at odds with the "Martech Industrial Complex" and not contributing in a healthy and productive way to the "efficiency bubble". Why are we not inspiring them and educating them to work with these new tools to do marketing in a way that drives business results?

It's also not binary because there is still such a thing as marketing mix, and that different types of creative and channels play different roles. And I agree that there is an underinvestment in “brands”, whatever form that may take.

But blaming efficiency for some kind of inherent under-investment in creativity and the resulting "crisis in advertising" is poor targeting.