MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Creative and research people have long been viewed as opposites and sometimes even adversaries in a family of skills that every marketer needs. More importantly, they increasingly need them working together.
Generally, all marketing companies buy research and use that research to inform the briefs that generate the marketing outcomes. But research and creative processes are generally different and distinct from one another. Creative people are perceived as artistic and emotional, in direct opposition to the rational and calculating personalities required by research.
Though these forces look adversarial, the ideal for many marketing companies would be for both to be combined, keeping everything in-house for the benefit of a client. This is exactly what the breakout ADNA Creative Intelligence agency offers.
ADNA is based in Singapore with five further offices in Melbourne, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Cape Town, and Beijing. With access to an audience spanning over 100 countries it has grown quickly, counting among others, DBS, Digibank, Ricola, Singapore Environment Council, Benefit Cosmetics, LVMH, Heineken, Kingfisher Mobile, McPhersons, and Samsung among its clients.
Ex-WPP and Ogilvy executive, David Mayo is ADNA’s Chief Operating Officer. Recently, adobo magazine was able to have an exclusive interview with Mayo, joined by ADNA’s Chief Creative Officer Matt Cullen to discuss several topics about their nearly one-year-old company and the advertising industry they are helping to evolve.
About the famous photograph and the people in it, Mayo explains that it was never about old men in jeans but about assembling an A-Team of talent to deliver for future-thinking marketing and research clients.
“Take Susie Hunt who is our China CEO,” Mayo begins. “She’s a big hitter with her unique blend of strategy, design and consulting; she adds a mega dimension, not just to China, but to the whole company. From Beijing, Susie is leading projects as far afield as Colombia, The Netherlands and the USA.”
Asked what drives ADNA, Mayo outlines a few things: “The first is, we exist because we believe that speed is no longer the enemy of good. We have a very positive tension in the company around the meta-relationship between data and creativity. We firmly believe that they can co-exist. In combination, the whole is much larger than the sum of the parts.”
From a business model point of view, everything is built around ADNA’s dynamic audience platform. “Our commercial business model is based on the knowledge that all marketing companies have separate budgets for marketing and research,” Mayo begins.
CCO Matt Cullen goes deeper, “Some businesses come to us just for research. ADNA delivers fast, accurate and accessible quantitative research with a lower error of margin than the usual industry standard,” he says. “On the other hand, there are people who come to us for top quality creative work and they also benefit from ideas that have been ‘co-created’ with consumers, leveraging our access to 320 million people in 100 countries.”
“We deliberately call this ‘creative intelligence’ because we’re trying to bring all of our skill sets into one fluid process,” says Cullen. “Not so long ago, our Industry was divided into separate businesses – creative, digital, research, media, production and so on, but clients now are seeking a more joined-up, frictionless process. Different disciplines in different places simply take the momentum out of ideas that move consumers and positively impact brands. Our research strategists and creative teams collaborate in the development of creative work, with the intention of getting better informed work done quicker, with no loss of punch or quality.”
Cullen and his creative partner, Gary Tranter have worked together as a duo for over 25 years. They famously founded Arcade and then went on to become the Regional CCOs at Digitas before leaving to join Mayo and Gomez to start ADNA.
Structurally, ADNA looks just like a data-powered creative agency – the holy grail of large agencies.
“Our secret is the speed, scale and accuracy in which we gather Intelligence” says Mayo, “In 48 hours, we can talk to over 3,000 of your customers with a margin of error around +/- 2%. ADNA’s agility is unprecedented in our industry.”
“We also put as much love into each research piece as we do into creative execution,” says Cullen. “Our audience is not paid to respond so it needs to be worth their valuable time. We go to great lengths to make the interface and the content as entertaining and user-friendly as possible. The result is a more engaged respondent and therefore more accurate first party playback.”
Speaking to Mayo and Cullen, it is clear that when conducting their quantitative research, they often need to keep their clients confidential, particularly if they are researching live creative work or concepts. But what about GDPR data compliance?
“Each piece is designed like a personal invitation. If you accept, you push start. The double opt-in process ensures compliance and protects your privacy.” explains Cullen who admits to being something of a data-geek now that he can see what it’s capable of.
To illustrate the way they work, Mayo tells the story of a global pitch which ADNA went on to win where the teams started with a long list of creative ‘jumping off points.’
“It was a very long list, but we put them all onto the platform to test. Within 48 hours, surprisingly we had the confidence of not just one but three ideas which eventually formed part of a trilogy. We won the pitch and our first global client.”
So, you have the first party data, you have applied it to creative outcomes. Production is as much an art form as the rest of the process now, isn’t it?
“Yes.” Says Mayo, “Once you’ve got the data and the intelligence, the creative brings it alive and then it’s time to produce and deliver.”
Mayo exclusively tells adobo magazine how they have been working on the establishment and growth of their own production hub.
“We create hundreds, sometimes, thousands of pieces of unique pieces of content in different formats, versions and languages,” he explains. “We have a delivery unit which can produce content at speed in multiple formats for multiple media. We archive and version-manage all content across all formats and markets and then we are able to feed back from the pixel feed and manage the royalty and production costs in real time,” he concludes. “Our intent here is to make content bites with the craft of terrestrial media content.”
Audience DNA has been around since 2017, however both Mayo and Cullen only technically joined up in August of 2020. With that in mind, Cullen muses, “Like any new business, the most painful and hardest moments are the early years. I remember when we did Arcade, It was a roller coaster ride. The good thing is we know that and are prepared. We’re learning to deconstruct the way we’ve been brought up and relearning how to live at this new axis of information and creativity.”
“I think it’s the market pressures that forced us to approach the business this way,” Cullen answers when asked why it took so long for an entity like ADNA to attempt to bridge the gap between research and creativity. “There’s financial pressures and there’s time pressures and there’s complexity pressures. We’re trying to simplify and accelerate everything into one fluid process.”
“In a world saturated by numbers and data, clients are increasingly risk-averse,” Mayo states definitively. “And creativity is under pressure like never before. After everything we’ve been talking about being brave, making decisions, about quality and speed, we are still working with an increasingly conservative client base. It’s not because they, as individuals are conservative; it’s because they have to get it right the first time. ADNA’s approach helps mitigate risk whilst driving creativity.”
Visit adna.global for more information.
