Marketing is the essential function that every business must have to promote their products and services. It is the method that enables you to get the right message to the right people, turning leads into clients and customers. Now to bring up the age-old debate: is it more art than science? And how do you find the right balance for your business?
Art in Marketing
When you come across the various forms of marketing material in your day to day life, whether that’s print leaflets, social media or advertisements, you will find that some form of creativity and art has been a part of the process to produce it. Whether it’s the written word, with emotive, enticing language, or a carefully created graphic – art plays an important role in grabbing attention and creating a ‘brand identity’.
Marketing campaigns would be dull without art and creativity, and certainly would not be as effective or persuasive.
Science in Marketing
Nor would marketing be as powerful if we didn’t utilise scientific methodology. When we talk about science in marketing, we are considering methods and processes of prediction, testing, analysis and then refining activity as a result. This forms a marketing strategy.
We also take account of other sciences, such as psychology, harnessing the power of persuasion – even anthropology and sociology, ensuring we deliver the right messages to the right people.
Without data and analysis, marketing strategies would be blindly led… and how would we know that they are successful?
The Debate Which Sums the Argument Up
Recently, the UK government made a bold move, trying to encourage those within the creative and arts industry to ‘rethink, reskill, reboot’. As you can imagine, this created waves amongst social media, with memes of government MPs being put forward for ‘alternative careers’ themselves.
Let’s take a look at this advertisement, with the help of Sean Coleman’s review – @colemandesign
As you can see, there are many different creative industries involved in the making of this poster campaign. A typographer, photographer, copywriter, graphic designer, architect, furniture maker, hairstylist, makeup artist and a fashion designer. Simply put – a lot of art and creativity has gone into this marketing campaign.
Besides the fact that all of these professions were needed made this campaign possible, the whole message is incredibly upsetting. For those who work in the arts and creative industries, it undermines their careers, their life goals, their dreams. For all of us who enjoy music, theatre, cinema, art – the list goes on – it makes you question; ‘What is life without art? Without creativity?’
Ponder that for a moment.
How different would life be without the dancers, the dreamers, the musicians, the photographers and the rest of the creative industries?
The caption reads: “Fatima’s next job could be in cyber. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
However, it is very clear from the backlash that many believe that dreamers should still dream, creatives should still devote their time and energy to doing exactly what they want to do.
In response to the backlash, Boris Johnson’s spokesman explained: “This was part of a campaign encouraging people from all walks of life to think about a career in cyber security.”
However, the campaign has since been removed, acknowledging the gravity of general feeling that it was squashing hopes and dreams in an already challenging year for the arts. It has since been announced that more money will be poured into the industry, in a bid to rescue it.
The arts and culture industry contribute more than £10 billion a year to the UK economy, with £3 spent on food, drink, accommodation, and travel for every £1 spent on theatre tickets (figures from the Arts Council England).
The sheer number of complaints and the passion of the backlash is all that the campaign makers needed – inarguably showing that the campaign was not successful.
Finding the right balance of art and science in your marketing strategy
When thinking about your own marketing, how do you find the right balance between art and science?
- Use a scientific method to develop your marketing strategy – we use SOSTIC (see our previous blog on this)
- When developing your marketing materials, tap into your creativity and artistic skills to attract your audience
- Use data to see how well your campaign has gone, and what you should change next time
The beautiful balance of art and science is what inevitably makes marketing so successful: ensuring you get the right message to the right people in the right way.
What are your thoughts on the use of science and art in marketing? I’ve love to hear them!
If you’d like to know more about how we, here at Octima, can help your business develop a marketing strategy with the right balance of art and science, then get in touch today.
