Adam Ferraro is a multi-hyphenate strategist, having held roles across media and creative strategy in some of North America’s leading agencies. In his current role as VP of strategy at Performance Art, he oversees strategic planning for the agency’s clients across CPG, finance and tech. Adam’s approach to strategy is to make sense of the ‘messy middle’ between media planning and brand experience to create a holistic customer approach. When not writing briefs and co-creating with clients, you will likely find him riding trains for sport.
Speaking to LBB as part of the Magic Numbers series, he delves into data-driven creativity and highlights some of the industry's best practices - as well as some of its biggest blind spots.
Adam> Our clients aren’t necessarily coming with questions for us to solve, per se. Instead, we’re seeing a trend of clients wanting to 'jam' with us, which has been great. They bring to the table observations or data points they have hypotheses about, then we workshop the situation together, examining what we observe in the data and identifying new customer needs and opportunities we can address.
Adam> I tend to separate the need versus the solve, and break things down to specific tasks:
For new creative solutions, I like to look for ways to solve a problem in a manner that feels holistic, instead of over-engineering each individual data point into a series of single solves. For optimisations, we treat what’s working as a jumping off point for new opportunities. If we see that website conversions are key factors in driving loyalty, we can apply that to areas like social content or commerce tactics. The goal is to be inspired by the data, not use it to create matching luggage everywhere.
Adam> Earlier this year, we started working with the ScottsMiracle-Gro company. We used a social CX approach to building journeys for their Scotts Lawncare and Miracle-Gro brands. We unpacked people’s relationships with their lawns and gardens and how they use them as expressions of their desire to bring people together and foster community. We leveraged data to find insights about how magnetic and moment-driven the lawn can be, which led to the launch of our ambient and always-on 'Lawnstream' platform.
Adam> There are plenty of reasons why brands should focus on first-party data. I think the most important tenet is to establish a practice rooted in loyalty and retention. Most of the brands I really admire use first-party data to create deeply personalised opportunities and experiences for their customers. As a marketer, you can be the brand that customers give burner email or phone numbers to because they don’t really want to connect, or you can strive to be the one that gets into the same kinds of DM conversations as their partner might. That’s the kind of difference that can be created if you use first-party data well.
Adam> It can be really challenging to approach a situation with an open mind and the willingness to solve a problem creatively. For part of the process – you have to be willing to not think so rationally or literally. The crescendo of an emotional piece of work is not as simple as plotting out Y=mx+b. To use data in a creative way, I think you need to workshop the data and the resulting insights with people whose point of view is different from yours.
Adam> That can be really difficult, but that’s where it gets interesting. Part of data interpretation in advertising is that it is put through a cultural lens, which is inherently filled with bias. Marketing is not medicine – there’s an art to it. Every time the data passes through a new context, new means of achieving effectiveness may be discovered. What’s important is to have a diverse group of people apply their lens to something to look at multiple ways in to a solve.
Adam> My interest in this is rooted in how data is acquired. There is often an issue with how data is collected in broader contexts, and consent about providing that data is important. There are systems in which targeting data or behavioural data is bought and sold in marketplaces and customers aren’t fully in the know about it. On the flip side, in the luxury category for example, there is a lot of precision strategy put into creating spaces and interactions across digital and physical retail where data is consensual and feels like a long-term exchange. It’s a bit of ceremony.
Adam> It’s about being comfortable with fragmentation. Data regulations between North American countries is diverse; then add into the mix the UK, EU and China, and there are massive differences in data governance (that’s without even getting into things like how mobile OSs impact that regional fragmentation).
Here’s what may help operationalise the process:
Adam> Ideally, it holds to some core principles, such as:
Adam> That data only highlights the needs and opinions of the loudest voices. As an example: I bet if more brands engaging in Pride campaigns could look at data around how customers feel about being represented, instead of listening to small, but very loud mobs of anti-trans people – they’d find new ways to connect with customers beyond the month of June.
Adam> This is a bit off topic, but I’m really interested in the economics of food and eating and how data will impact food prices. Between the North American launch of Too Good To Go, the everyday cost of eggs, and dynamic pricing coming to food delivery, there are reems of data, infinite ways to price shop, and lots of consumer stories and experiences to unpack.