Finding creative opportunities
The early stages of the creative process, either for pitching for new business or for selling-in campaign ideas, tends to look a bit like this:
In this stage, the quality of the creative process hinges on an agency’s ability to identify powerful creative opportunities, based on new insights about consumers.
But, the enduring challenge facing many agencies is how to continually improve the quality of their thinking to maintain their creative edge. How do you differentiate when everyone’s got access to the same tools: google, focus groups or listening?
Social data has the potential to break this deadlock, just not in the way most people currently use it.
Beyond listening
Most agencies have some form of social listening platform in place, which can be good for monitoring brand-related noise. But it’s not insight. It’s just more data. Most of the information generated by listening relates to activity (who, where, what), not explanation (why). Keywords and sentiment are clues, not an answer.
It’s right to see the potential in social data, we just need to look at it differently.
For developing and testing creative ideas, social data is unique. It’s real people, having real conversations about the things they’re really interested in. I’m not really talking about brand related lovers and haters. I mean the normal conversations we have with our network about everyday things. You know, life.
It’s this rawness that holds the real value.
Reading between the lines
When you reflect on thousands of comments from the social conversation about the same thing, a number of things start to happen:
- You see what people actually want to talk about.
- You see how they talk about it and why.
- You can spot patterns and creative opportunities between the lines.
- You have the evidence you need to help sell-in the resultant campaigns.
To do this you need to learn from social data, not just listen to it. It’s thinking that creates opportunity.
About us
We’re an insights agency that uses social data to help brands + their agencies find new opportunities for growth.
If that sounds good to you, drop us a line and we’ll get straight back to you. If you want to hear more stories from social, then sign up to our blog (As heard on social) below.