As the world gets smarter with new technologies and ever-evolving tools, marketers’ creative power needs to stay ahead. Yesterday’s creative solutions just don’t fit the problems of today: a more intelligent, more iterative, and more structured form of creativity is necessary. The intelligent creative process integrates all of today’s capabilities to unite creativity with data, empower teams, and ultimately create truly transformative experiences.
Intelligent creative is an approach to creating repeatable, personalized experiences throughout the entire consumer journey. It’s the result of intuitive human creativity combined with AI-assisted data–and it is how good work becomes great. Intelligent creative is the path towards creating work that stops people in their tracks, just like how the right SEO analysis can irrefutably determine a page title or product name. Whether it’s for clients or consumers, intelligent creative has the power to fortify experiences and determine future outcomes.
Creativity is no longer an abstract process that relies on intuition or good luck. Today, creativity is galvanized by accurate, real-time data that is “more readily available, more iterative, more connected to the creative concepts and themes and the creative measurement tests,” says Dora Fong, director of iCrossing’s analytics. Now, we can test out creative ideas faster than ever before—getting more connected to our audiences and closer to the big ideas faster.
AI is a huge aid to the creative process, assisting on almost every level from data acquisition to executing concepts. As data tracking evolves into a cookieless future, AI could be the way to solution to creating targeted advertisements while maintaining user privacy.
Integrating AI into the creative process is essential as we evolve into a cookieless future because it can process different types of data in many formats, like custom preferences, search history, or demographics to discover patterns, which can then be utilized to create more personalized targeting based on user’s preferences and interests.
AI-based solutions can also group and cluster users into audiences based on contextual information and browser history, becoming a powerful alternative to cookies. With the use of machine learning, online commerce sites can predict what a typical visitor looks like or is searching for by using machine learning. AI can enable marketers to make more accurate predictions such as completing a purchase transaction and/or other conversion activity, ultimately becoming the solution to cookie-free targeting that maintains user privacy.
Replacing cookies with AI is just a small demonstration of how an intelligent creative process can build an incredible amount of marketing solutions. With an intelligent creative process, team members are onboarded to new projects with more relevant information, gaining a deeper understanding of the task at hand. Now better informed, creatives are then able to form and flesh out their ideas with more agility by using programs like Chat GPT or Dall-E 2. Like previous groundbreaking innovations such as the printing press or the Internet itself, AI can free up the creative process and make it smarter, better, more composable and more iterative. Integrating AI into the creative process isn’t just an upgrade: it’s a necessity.
As important as data is to intelligent creative, a human-centric foundation is just as essential as the process celebrates individual personality and human joy while being fueled by the speed, accuracy, and scale of today’s technology.
The intelligent creative process helps integrate any technology in a way that doesn’t compromise that exciting human element. Without the human touch, data gets lost in a sea of itself—which is why skills like data storytelling or user research are so essential. AI helps humanize technology and data, joining the team as a digital worker and uniting disciplines in new ways.
iCrossing is uniquely positioned to execute an intelligent creative practice because the agency is fueled by a human-centric philosophy. Our core vision relies on creating progress for clients, allowing them to solve their own problems by marrying analytics, artistry, automation, and accountability to create human-centric solutions…for everyone. Simply put: we just know that data and humans need each other to bring out the best of both.
This process refreshes creativity but also improves various functions across disciplines. The intelligent creative process is “imperative for orchestrating personalized solutions, to pitch and win new businesses, for media and campaign execution, and to build global design systems,” says Lori Wilson, head of iCrossing’s creative services. Teams can quickly tackle challenges like complicated pitches because the process disrupts siloed work, allowing teams to collectively create. Overall, the process encourages more exciting, relevant work that gets done faster.
The process energizes teams by balancing each discipline and filling gaps as they inevitably occur due to new employees, freelancers, or other unplanned delays. Creatives, analysts, strategists, and other departments can think cohesively and arrive at big ideas sooner because each problem solver is fully prepared with a deep understanding of the problem and solution. Execution becomes swifter, teams can move with more agility, and problems just get solved.
And perhaps most importantly, this process helps give a more profound meaning to our work.
Intelligent creative allows our messaging to transcend the buying process and become something beyond itself. This is how we get to the most relevant, monumental work that generates buzz and captivates hearts. Intelligent creative plugs marketers into the moment, equipping them with the latest technology, and allowing them to share our work faster than ever before.