Headed to Advertising Week Europe with Kraft Heinz: Q+A on Data-Driven Creative

As we ramp up for Advertising Week Europe, we sat down with our two fireside chat speakers, esteemed client, Matt Cosad, Head of Data & Analytics at Kraft Heinz and our VidMob Head of Central, Eastern Europe & UK, Menno Wagenaar. Here, they answer some questions on the data-driven creative process and how data and creativity work best together. 

1. How do you see data and creativity coming together?

Matt: Data and AI-based content analytics allow us to assess our creative output at scale. They aren’t the answer to creative excellence but they’re a big chapter in the story, giving us insight into individual assets and our overall approach to production.

Menno: Take out subjectivity and have data inform you on which creative elements drive effectiveness.

2. Who do you involve throughout your production?

Matt: We’ve recently set up the Kitchen, our internal creative agency, staffed with producers, designers, directors and other standard agency roles. It’s been an efficient and effective addition to our agency roster and is proving invaluable for its ability to integrate with our brand teams to really imbue our content with brand DNA and cut down feedback and production times. Another key unlock has been to leverage the right technologies, like Vidmob, and aim for minimalistic workflows, to not stifle the magic of the creative process. 

Menno: Our typical client decides if they want to optimize their assets themselves, based on the insights that VidMob provides, or whether VidMob takes care of the new assets for them. Clients can leverage VidMob’s production and collaboration technology and work with our expert talent network to build custom high-performance ad campaigns delivered in days, not weeks and across all digital platforms.

3. What types of creative do you find performs best?

Matt: The best campaigns have an “it factor” you can’t replicate with a template or define with a data set. What technology like Vidmob allows us to do is cost-effectively scale up the number of channels we can be present and compliant on without sacrificing creative quality or channel best practices. 

Menno: The ones that are fueled by VidMob’s creative intelligence perform best. On average, VidMob can drive a 2-5X increase in ROAS, a +75% ROI lift and a 2X increase in CTR and VTR.

4. What’s your process for refining campaigns? 

Matt: We don’t treat creative as a fixed output, it needs to move at the speed of culture. So the ability to rapidly iterate is critical, and sitting next to the brand teams is a no-brainer. We built a production studio in our actual offices to enable this working relationship, and are exploring the value of generative AI and digital studios to give us more options as well. VidMob provides creative learnings and the ability to produce asset variants at scale, to give this new breed of content the best chance of success in the wild. 

Menno: Creative makes up 60-70% of marketing performance, however up till now most marketers would only optimize media plans when in flight. Thanks to VidMob’s AI and Machine Learning technology a marketer now has access to historical and real-time data on what creative elements drive performance and how to optimize their creative assets.

5. How do you envision the future of data-driven creative?

Matt: We’re in an era of creative proliferation driven by Generative AI but people’s time to consume media isn’t increasing proportionally. Standing out amongst all this new noise will require every tool and skill brands have, with zero party data and creative insight, in particular, serving as differentiating competitive advantages. I also think a new category of creative will emerge: that which is consumed wholly by AI. We see precursors of this type of interaction now, with spam filters junking legitimate emails from brands, or Ebay auto-rejecting offers below a seller’s tolerance level. Understanding how personal assistants will triage offers and other ads for their human clients will open a completely new marketing channel driven predominantly by data and algorithms.

Menno: Data-driven creative will actually empower human creativity to become even better. More and better data will fuel human creativity to develop amazing ideas and it will improve the creative journey no matter where a customer is.

Join Matt and Menno on stage at AdWeek on Wednesday 17 May at 12pm BST to continue the conversation on Creative Effectiveness.