Why there is creativity left in the media
Forget A/B testing, in a piece that first appeared in Encore, Telstra’s Christopher Whitmore says the future of media lies in the hands of creativity.
In a recent meeting I attended, a senior business leader stated “there is no creativity left in media”. He made the point that creativity can now only be found in the realm of content creators, while the rest of the industry is entirely consumed with the unimaginative task of increasing revenues and lowering costs.
As a product manager, I would never be one to argue against profitability. Media, after all, is a business like any other and my role is built around profit and loss responsibility. Even the ABC and SBS have an obligation to the taxpayer to spend their budgets wisely. But in a time of old media’s declining profits, and new media’s continued adolescence, we have become so focused on making money we have lost sight of what it means to be creative.
Prior to launching its new compact format, The Sydney Morning Herald made much of the use of “neuro-testing” and eye-tracking technology to empirically understand audience interest in its content. Yahoo!’s new CEO Marissa Mayer is infamous for A/B testing 41 different shades of blue when developing a new toolbar during her previous role at Google. While there is no doubt these approaches are incredibly powerful when problem solving, has it now got to the point where we are simply outsourcing our creativity to our audience?
This piece seems to be assuming that A/B testing is diametrically opposed to creative solutions. It’s not. A/B testing, done right, allows creatives to sanity-check their designs against their audience and prove to numbers-focused executives that their creative expertise makes a difference. Leave A/B testing 41 shades of blue to Google.
I have to disagree about the point where Netflix is a content powerhouse … House of Cards and the new season of Arrested Development was basically based off a excel spreadsheet where Netflix was guaranteed a return on investment if they produced the show, similar to how Relativity Media made money in movies a few years back (http://www.esquire.com/feature.....naugh-1209) .
It’s changing the way content is produced but it isn’t revolutionary.
I would argue it’s about the talent in the creative, rather than the creative in the talent for Media’s future.
Hi Merus, thanks for your comment. I completely agree that A/B testing is a great tool for sanity-checking. But you must first have a creative idea to check. My concern is more to do with an over-reliance on these and similar tools for decision making. I worry about what I see as a shift in the internal culture of media business – where long-term “creative” vision is often lost in the short-term number-crunching. As Amy Jo says, it is creative talent that needs to be nurtured to build successful business. And it is these business that will ultimately fund the next generation of content production.
4 comments, enough said