Creative Excellence: Are Things Looking Ominous for Omnichannel?

In a new series for LBB, Tag suggests it is time to rethink that overused, and often under-delivered, term: creative excellence. During the coming months, experts from across Tag’s business will argue that the changing world of marketing, commerce, digital production technology and localisation are forcing a rethink of creative originality, inventiveness and imagination.

We kick off with strategy director Dan Davies, who thinks channel native, connected commerce and marketing personalisation are re-inventing omnichannel, ending the ‘create it once and run it everywhere’ culture, and placing the responsibility for creative excellence on every person and technology involved in delivering a client’s brief.

So, the question is, are things looking ominous for omnichannel? 

What has omnichannel got in common with Fleetwood Mac? Omnichannel has charted in the top marketing trends for 15 years, and ‘Rumours’ has charted in 15 different years since 1989.  

My point? They both feel like they’ve been around forever. The band has stood the test of time, but is omnichannel becoming somewhat of an ‘Albatross’? (One for the Macs there).  

Marketing heresy? No. Retailers are stepping beyond omnichannel towards unified commerce. Brands are open sourcing themselves for us to own, and we the people are claiming creative control of the way they appear and talk on social media. 

Channel-native is on the rise and rise as new channels emerge. And personalisation is the new black. All this is screwing with the traditional command and control approach to omnichannel.  

Why should creative minds care? Isn’t omnichannel just a word in the bull@”*t bingo you play in meetings?  

Not exactly and here's why. The creative handcuffs are off.

Omnichannel has become a byword for ‘one and run’: create it once and run it everywhere. The world where ‘a big idea’ is the creative currency, re-using a TV idea in other channels and cross-posting too often wins the day, and questions like ‘how will it work at point of sale?’ hold the casting vote. But channel native, dynamic content optimisation and unified commerce are changing the script.  And they will re-write how we seek creative excellence. Why? Because they are asking agencies to see creative originality and impact in a new way. 

What do I mean?

Instead of cross-posting or adapting an existing asset, we will take a brand idea and creatively and natively federate it into every channel). Rather than work on big campaigns that bring brand and creative fame, we will create well-placed social worms that wriggle themselves into viral UGC and elevate brand (and creative) fortunes. Chumming up with AI will bring deeper creative insight and make for way more creative dynamic content that will triangulate a moment, an individual and a brand.  

It's happening already. Ryanair is leading the way in channel native, giving us all control of the brand we love to hate or hate to love whichever way you look at it – just look at their UGC versus their other channel marketing (it’s fantastically and deliberately unhinged). Solo Stoves show what is creatively possible when you start with the question ‘how will it work at the point of purchase?’ and then create great social work; I reckon the Snoop Stove and the ‘Smokesman’ campaign does more for the brand than any ‘big idea’ campaign could. And Doritos Triangle Tracker work is a doozy of how a brand idea (the shape) could spawn a channel native campaign that is creatively brilliant and commercially on the money.  

What seems bad news for omnichannel is great news for creative teams. But is it good news for the big agency groups that have voraciously vertically integrated to deliver omnichannel? Yes.  

Omnichannel isn’t dead but arguably it needs to be rewired to deliver a new world of connected content, connected commerce and connected customer experience. Agencies that join up the dots of their omnichannel network capabilities differently, will likely be the winners.  

Think spaghetti, not silo.  

What if we conjoined creative people and AI, so they became best buds: a partnership built on mutuality, where AI feeds creative possibility and creative people make AI work smarter?  

What if we spawned media creative teams, drawn from the specialist media agencies in a network who delivered more creatively connected ideas - rather than wearing separate media and channel ‘hats’ and contributing to a strategy yet all the time protecting income? And what if they became part of the agencies’ creative teams?  

What if we lived and died by being through-the-funnel not through-the-line, and held Tier 2 (consideration) and Tier 3 (action) as dearly as Tier 1 (awareness)? And we created funnel teams of CX specialists, strategists, shopper marketers and data wizards to ensure campaigns lived effectively in the funnel.  

What if we saw production as a source of creative advantage as well as an efficient delivery machine? And we created trinities of media, production and creative people? And we saw the production stage not as the final part in the process but as a springboard for the next stage in the creative process and content and channel optimisation? 

And here’s my parting thought on creative excellence. In this rewired world of omnichannel creative excellence is no longer the sole preserve of a creative mind it must occupy every person who touches a marketing brief. And the digital tech that enables it (there will be a blog on that in the coming weeks).

At least one big global network is already thinking this way (no prizes for guessing).   

There is a future for omnichannel, but it will likely take a different form. Think omnipresence not omnichannel: a world where brands are relevantly encountered at each touch point, because they uniquely combine creative and native. But will omnichannel be around as long as Fleetwood Mac? Probably not.