In 2013 British Airways created an ad campaign called Look Up. It involved digital billboards which would point to planes flying overhead, telling you where each one was travelling to or from. “Look there’s the BA475 from Barcelona”. It used a livestream of data which aligned with the creative to give the impression that the billboard was alive and interacting with the world around it. To this day I see this as a masterclass in how creative and data can work so beautifully together, to make truly engaging, next-generation ad campaigns.
We would have expected then that in our world of infinite data sources and AI that campaigns like this would be everywhere, but they’re not. The reason for this is not technological, it’s actually very human.
The strongest work happens when data, technology, media and creative thinking are connected throughout the campaign process. The opportunity is to bring those different areas of expertise together as early as possible, so that data doesn’t only inform targeting or optimisation, but can help inspire the creative idea itself.
We live in a world of abundant data, but there is still much more creative potential to unlock from it. The most effective campaigns when it comes to leveraging data for creativity will be the ones that centre data at the heart of creativity. By asking early on “what data sources do we have?” we can then explore the creative opportunities they open up.
We saw this in action with a leading FMCG ice cream brand looking to drive sales during key consumption moments. Knowing that ice cream sales naturally surge when the weather warms up, the campaign moved beyond treating hot weather as a broad seasonal backdrop. Instead, data helped unlock a much richer creative concept of linking real-time environmental moments directly to product desire. By connecting postcode-level audience insights with live weather forecasts, local sales and stock signals, the data informed the creative storytelling in real time – shifting the messaging to feature single-serve ice creams with contextually relevant copy the moment warm, sunny spells hit. Data didn’t just dictate where the ads appeared; it shaped what was said and when it was said, transforming weather signals into a creative invitation that drove a sizeable sales and ROI uplift.
With AI’s ability to help iterate campaigns in the form of dynamic creative optimisation, it should be easier than ever to create hyper-relevant campaigns based on live data sources. A campaign can be informed by live weather data, real-time changes in shopping habits, live sports scores, variations in footfall. All this data is ready to optimise a campaign in real-time provided the campaign has been designed with the data in mind.
And we don’t mean data teams taking over the creative process. It’s about bringing complementary expertise together: data teams uncovering new signals and behaviours, creative teams turning those insights into compelling ideas, and media and technology teams helping bring them to life. Data can become a creative launchpad that opens up new possibilities for everyone involved.
The opportunity then is to not simply make existing creative more responsive. It’s worth thinking about the role data can play in the first place. We saw this in a recent travel campaign with TUI. Audience data revealed just how differently people think about their ideal holiday. Rather than treating the audience as one homogenous group, the data showed an opportunity to build a much more nuanced picture of what different people actually want from their travel experience. That insight changed the creative opportunity. Instead of simply promoting a broad range of holidays to everyone, the campaign was built around matching different audiences with the destinations, products and experiences most relevant to them. Data didn’t just determine who saw the advertising; it helped shape what we said to them and the creative possibilities available to us.
The most interesting campaigns, for me at least, are the ones where data becomes part of the idea itself – not just an input used to personalise, measure or optimise an ad. Bringing data insights and creative thinking together can help shape stronger campaigns. That means moving beyond questions like “how do we make this campaign more relevant?” and also asking, “what does our data tell us about how differently people think, behave and choose – and what creative possibilities does that open up?”
My advice for marketers now is to understand what data sources you have available to you, and bring that understanding into the creative conversation as early as possible. When data and creativity inform one another from the beginning, the opportunity isn’t just to optimise existing ideas, but to create entirely new ones.
Genevieve Brown
Genevieve Brown is Data Strategy Lead at WPP Media.
