BrandTotal, the leading social competitive intelligence and brand analytics platform, announced the results of a survey to marketers on evaluating creative performance. While the results were almost split exactly down the middle, on what is the leading factor when it comes to a successful brand campaign, media (48%) or creative (52%), additional insights about results showcased that creative has a lasting impact on social advertising campaign performance, especially when you are tracking competitive digital and social advertising campaigns from your competitors.

Marketing Technology News: Strata Introduces Identity Orchestration Platform for Multi-Clouds

• Surprisingly, only 37% of respondents noted that they benchmark their creatives against their competitors advertising creative by using a creative intelligence tool, but 87% of respondents said they had a tool to measure the impact of creative performance – meaning, a majority of those who are using a creative measurement tool are not getting inputs or automated competitive insights and analytics on competitor’s advertising creatives on social media.
  • 82% of survey respondents shared they have shifted campaign creative based on what creative ads their competitors were leveraging in the market, creating an inefficiency in how this data on competitors is getting to CMOs.
• Because a majority of CMOs reported that creative teams are stretched too thin, its surprising that more have not invested in an automated tool that would allow insights on competitors creative to come to them vs. manually screenshotting or discovering competitor’s creative campaigns from time to time as 67% of respondents answers.
  • 86% of survey respondents shared that a shorter cycle from ideation to campaign launch would positively affect their marketing and advertising initiatives this is especially important given tectonic shifts by consumer facing brands into the fast paced eCommerce, D2C and Social Commerce.
  • 58% of the same group shared the primary reason this is not happening, is the current creative team is tasked with too much.
• 82% of survey respondents admitted to shifting their brand creative because of what they saw a competitor doing and when the shift happened 77% reported that it resulted in better campaign outcomes.
• More than 90% of respondents noted that they employ A/B testing of their own media creative on social media with 41% noting the motivation is to improve campaign spend efficiency, and 29% noting this tactic is to improve conversion rate.
  • Only 25% of survey respondents shared their reason is to ensure the creative appeals to consumers and they have a favorable opinion of the brand.
  • 86% of respondents saw better campaign outcomes when creative shifted.
• The survey revealed that nearly two-thirds of respondents rely on in-house employees to drive creative, with 22% noting that creative is driven by a C-suite leader such as the CEO or CMO. 25% have an in-house creative lead and 25% have created an in-house creative agency / team.

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Navdeep Saini, Co-founder and CEO at DistroScale

“As a former ad agency creative strategist, I know that insights based creative is the most effective, and when you layer on category competitor knowledge to first party data that is available to the brand, it combines the knowledge you have about your customer, with what will stand out in the current media landscape,” said Alon Leibovich, co-founder and CEO of BrandTotal. “While there has always been a friendly rivalry between media and creative teams, doubling down on creative concepting by leveraging brand marketing analytics and competitive creative intelligence, will only make media spends more efficient in terms of consumer engagement and sentiment and allow for better brand outcomes and making better insight-driven creatives, faster. I hope that today’s CMOs see this data as a wake up call and will double down on architecting effective creative, and committing to measuring it!”

Leibovich continued “The data from this survey surprised me, while CMOs are consistently seeing great results by shifting creative (especially if they are keeping an eye on their competitors) they are choosing to make it a manual process and not have a tool that provides insights to them directly. BrandTotal creates a bridge between media and creative teams and ensures that marketers are supporting a message that is differentiated from competitors and resonating with their core consumer base.”

Marketing Technology News: 4 Best Practices For Managing A Remote Tech Workforce