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Established 2009

Is Your Ad Agency Bilingual in Data AND Creative?

Shopping for a full-service advertising agency partner? If so, “bilingual” should be at the very top of your wish list.

By bilingual, we mean the ability to speak both data AND creative.

At MindEcology, we predict that by 2020 the top 10 full-service ad agencies in any given major U.S. market will either have an in-house data scientist or will partner with another agency that does.

Those that don’t speak data will be seen as dinosaurs. Or worse: they will have already met the same fate as our giant reptilian predecessors did 65 million years ago. And their demise won’t be pretty.

In fact, in 2020 a full-service ad agency without mad data skills will be like a business person today who still uses pagers instead of smart phones and fax machines instead of e-mail. They will have missed the boat – leaving their clients stranded in the process.

Of course, any agency worth its salt still will need to “speak” brilliant creative, too. On-target messaging and gripping visuals form the core plot points of a great client-agency success story.

Idea: next time you are kicking the tires on a new agency partner relationship, try giving them a language test. Test them in their ability to speak all-things-data. Do they understand words like performance metrics, campaign analysitcs, predictive modeling, and psychographic segmentation? Do they speak Python and NoSQL? How about R?

Then test them on their creative skills. Do they have a body of creative work that shows explosive creative genius? Great taglines? Amazing visuals? Eye-catching banner ads? On-point TV and radio spots? Power-punching writing?

If they pass your language test, you can be sure they have what it takes to do great work for you. At that point, you can check off that first item on your new agency partner needs list: “Bilingual in both data and creative.”

Want to know more? Contact MindEcology today for a quote or to start a conversation.