Decoding Creativity x Effectiveness: In conversation with Ian Mackenzie

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Title of the work:

Publicly Traded

Interviewee:

Ian Mackenzie
Chief creative officer
Performance Art

(Mackenzie was the CCO of FCB/Six during the making of ‘Publicly Traded’)

Please provide a brief summary of ‘Publicly Traded’.

The global head of marketing for LifeStyles Healthcare had seen some of our other work and was curious to partner with us. They wanted to explore the potential for creative-data work that could build the brand and drive engagement. We worked with the LifeStyles team to develop this campaign, which delivered on engagement and pushed the brand into new space from a creative e-commerce standpoint.

Tell us why your team decided to enter Publicly Traded into the Creative eCommerce Spike.

We’ve always loved Spikes Asia, and although this project was developed in North America, it ran in Australia. So we felt we had a great opportunity for this work to compete with other great pieces from the region. And because an innovative approach to e-commerce is at the heart of the work, the category was a natural fit.

Every team has their own way of coming up with a campaign idea. In the case of Publicly Traded, how was the idea conceived?

After developing the brief, we worked up some ideas we were excited about and presented those to our clients. They were supportive, but something told us we hadn’t quite nailed it yet. So we re-briefed ourselves and went into a phase of rapid iteration, where we set the goal of having as many ideas as possible (like 30 or 40) over the course of a few days. During that period, the creative and strategy team of Hemal Dhanjee (copy), Steve Ierullo (art) and Eli Ferrara (strategy) cracked the idea of a stock-market-inspired index that tracks STI rates. The idea’s strengths were immediately clear to us, so we went about developing it.

As the Grand Prix winner of the Creative eCommerce Spike, can you elaborate on how Publicly Traded demonstrated innovation and optimisation of the customer journey which led to increased consumer engagement and commercial success?

This work does a nice job of putting e-commerce at the heart of a platform-grade advertising idea. It’s not simply a hard-working conversion layer at the bottom, it’s an entire program with e-commerce threaded throughout. It’s also designed to unlock more lifetime customer value by acquiring email addresses and establishing a 1:1 relationship, which is, we think, uncommon for condom brands.

“When creativity is effective and effective work is creative, it has even greater power to positively impact people, brands and the world.” What are your thoughts on this statement?

I love this statement and agree. Because CRM is our foundation, we tend to start with a natural connection to measurability and accountability, and also an ear for how data and technology can work with creative ideas to supercharge their effectiveness. The industry is at its best when it doesn’t put creativity and effectiveness at poles.

Can you spotlight a recent piece of work done by your team that encapsulates the perfect partnership of - creativity at its heart but driven by marketing effectiveness?

Performance Art just completed the #ThanksToVeterans campaign for Veterans United. The creative and strategic insight behind the campaign is that when a Veteran moves into a community they add value and make it better. The brand starts with a true reverence for and mission to serve Veterans. Add to that a push to make sure we’re getting the storytelling and brand act of giving houses away right, and we believe, together, we’re achieving great outcomes for Veterans, while building awareness and attribution of Veterans United as a purposeful, functional partner for Veterans. As of the time of writing, we don’t have results, but early feedback is super promising.