How Marketing Is An Art & A Science
Marketing is all about creativity and expression, so it must be an art, right? Not necessarily. While marketers once relied purely on instinct, they now rely on data-driven insights.
On top of that, cutting-edge technologies and analytics have shifted the focus of marketing farther toward the science side of the spectrum. Armed with so much data, marketers can now track the impact of each dollar spent on their bottom line.
In today’s world, the best approach to marketing combines both disciplines. And there’s a distinct balance to the craft — a strategic mix of interpersonal empathy and tactical analysis. Neither side of the mix can be isolated or ignored, or the results will not be pretty.
In this article, we’re discussing how marketing is both an art and a science, and how your brand can leverage this to impact your bottom line.
The Art of Marketing
Psychologists believe the brain is separated into two distinct functions: the left-brain and the right-brain. The right side of the brain is responsible for creative thinking and artistic intuition.
Many traditionalists view marketing as an art form, believing a successful campaign takes experienced marketers who understand the importance of the creative process. And to some extent, that is true. Regardless of industry, marketers are influencing human beings — not robots — which means they should not rely on data alone.
Think about it. The most out-of-the-box, standout campaigns have not come as a result of science. They’re a product of human creativity, often involving skilled storytelling
As an art, marketing is all about understanding the nuances of human behavior and determining how to make an emotional connection with the customer. More importantly, some level of art is needed to create brand standards for your company, including the logo, messaging, and overall visual identity for a brand.
Right-brained marketers focus on the creative — the copy, graphics, and emotions tied to the message. They are the ones responsible for some of the most iconic brand slogans of all time, like Nike’s “Just Do It” and Dunkin’s “America Runs on Dunkin’. These slogans both express a complex emotional concept in just a few words.
Or, think about the best-performing advertisements of all time. They include beautifully designed print ads, captivating videos and ad spots, and interactive ads that are way too visually appealing not to click.
The Science of Marketing
Yet science is playing an increasingly bigger role in marketing today than it ever did in previous years. Just as creativity comes from the right-brain, science-driven marketers are predominantly left-brain thinkers. When you think about it, the concept of marketing as a science makes perfect sense.
Think about it — the very purpose of marketing is to influence the behaviors of other people, which involves intricate knowledge of human psychology. Studying how people react to certain stimuli has become a focus for marketers over the past few decades. The better you understand those who you are looking to influence, their habits, and receptiveness to certain messages, the more successful you will be.
The science side of marketing tells us to let the data guide what strategies will be most effective. Marketers are now reporting the need for digital-first expertise including digital proficiency, data analysis, and data science. With science, marketers adopt an outcome-centric mindset that helps them curate smarter campaigns.
Data also helps marketers frame campaigns, and it includes more than just vanity metrics and web analytics. Itv boils down to why and how consumers buy certain products and favor certain brands, and how specific types of marketing are more prone to resonating with them. However, there’s only so much data we can mine about one individual’s emotional response to a certain marketing message or stimuli, which is why it’s important to strike a balance between the art and science of marketing.
Over the past few years, there has been an evolving prioritization on data-savvy talent. In 2020 and beyond, brands will need to focus on recruiting talent that can understand the complexities of AI and machine technologies.
But when we reflect on earlier times, marketing was defined as the predominance of traditional advertising, like television, newspapers, and direct mail. Today, it ropes in digital channels, social media, mobile devices, and integrated, complex campaigns. And just as consumers today are more tech-savvy, employees should be able to match — and exceed — their expertise.
Brands Getting It Right
It’s important that brands continue to prioritize creative, engaging campaign messages while also focusing on key insights and performance metrics for optimal results. Let’s look at some top brands and their efforts to strike the right balance between art and science.
Burger King’s “Whopper Detour”
McDonald’s restaurants are practically everywhere in the United States. Burger King, a fast food chain that is outnumbered 2 to 1 by the Golden Arches, needed to find a way to drive consumers to its restaurants. But how do you compete with those odds?
By selling their Whopper sandwich for just one penny — but only to those people located incredibly close to a McDonald’s restaurant. Awarded Mobile Marketer’s Campaign of the Year for 2019, Whopper Detour exemplifies a combined effort between data-driven and relationship-centric strategies.
Burger King’s Whopper Detour Campaign stemmed from the fact that digital ordering was becoming a major business initiative for quick service restaurants (QSRs). While they already had an app in place, they needed a way to generate more app downloads.
The Whopper Detour was an experiential stunt that relied on geolocation data, push messaging, and mobile geofencing to steer customers away from McDonald’s. When customers came within 600 feet of McDonald’s, Burger King’s promotion unlocked, automatically sending them a mobile coupon for a 1-cent Whopper. Burger King reportedly geofenced 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants across the U.S.
The creative was exceptional as well, including uniquely designed billboards and a promo video telling consumers how to do the Whopper Detour. While the campaign only lasted nine days, it was immensely successful. The Burger King mobile app was downloaded more than 1.5 million times, a 37.5% increase in a record nine days. This campaign equal parts science and art, showing that both disciplines brought something unique to the campaign.
Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”
As we previously mentioned, there is a three-step process that helps marketers combine art and science. Scientific research leads to an important finding, that important finding guides the creative for the campaign, and scientific analysis can then be used to measure and track the performance.
In 2010, Old Spice followed exactly that process. They turned an insight about body wash into a cultural sensation, leading to one of the most popular, interactive campaigns in history. Prior to 2010, Old Spice was the go-to brand for body wash for men. But as the category grew and became increasingly competitive, Old Spice was losing a share of sales to newer brands in the category. Upon research, Old Spice found that 60% of body wash purchases are made by women, and the concept of using body wash struck some men as unmanly. How could the brand market the body wash to women, yet still cast the product in a masculine light?
The answer was a campaign called “Smell like a man, man” released in February, right after the Super Bowl XLIV. The ad amassed 220,000 YouTube views in the few short hours after the Super Bowl and continued gaining 100,000 views every few hours. Campaign Live called this campaign the “defining moment when advertisers started to get a proper handle on social media marketing.”
Starring ex-American football star, Isaiah Mustafa, the ad spot featured iconic dialogue. “Hello, ladies,” says Mr. Mustafa, standing in a towel in a bathroom. “Look at your man. Now back at me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped using ladies’ scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me.” And when questions from fans and celebrities came flooding in from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and more, ad agency Wieden+Kennedy filmed 186 unique video responses. These response videos amassed millions of views as well.
The results? The campaign has a massive impact on Old Spice’s bottom line. By May of 2010, sales of Old Spice Red Zone Body Wash had increased 60% from the previous year. By combining the science of research and the art of great content, Old Spice created one of the most viral marketing campaigns in history.
Starbucks’ Branding Strategy
Now that we’ve referenced some campaigns, we want to discuss a company that combines art and science seamlessly into its overall branding strategy — and that company is Starbucks.
Despite all the coffee brands that have launched, the coffee chain’s green Siren logo continuously garners the most attention. Thanks to the strength of the marketing and consistency in branding, they are one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Think about it. There’s no mistaking one of Starbuck’s iconic beverages, like the Tie-Dye Frappuccinos or Pumpkin Spice Lattes, for a beverage made by any other brand.
Starbucks’ latest rebrand, which it rolled out in 2019, includes heavy use of illustration and colors, and even a “Starbucks Zodiac” that defines each astrological sign with a certain beverage. It introduced an expanded palette of greens rooted in their iconic green apron, a family of harmonious typefaces
Everything from the brand’s in-store signage to its social media content maintains a simple, modern look and feel, and most importantly, it’s consistent. It’s the right-brain marketers — the artists of the world — that ensure this creative consistency. The way it comes together is all too poised, and unmatched by any other coffee brand out there.
But besides having an iconic visual identity, Starbucks doesn’t just sell coffee in nice-looking cups. It also gathers a huge amount of data from its millions of customers and transactions. This data has made Starbucks a pioneer in loyalty programs, seamless payment cards, and mobile apps. The coffee chain continues to harness data, artificial intelligence, and the IoT to maintain its competitive advantage.
Conclusion
The debate over whether marketing is an art or a science is nothing new. When it comes down to it, successful marketing relies on both the data of a logical approach and the fluidity of an artistic approach. Science and marketing fall at opposite ends at the spectrum, and your marketing strategy should fall somewhere in the middle.