Facts versus Ideas
Is this an “either-or” situation? Apparently yes.
In an op-ed note by Joseph Epstein published last Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, the author of Friendship: An Exposé, philosophizes on the implications of one over the other, concluding that “in an ideal world, facts would reinforce and enrich ideas.” Epstein quickly reminds us that “this ideal world… hasn’t quite arrived.”
The dichotomy is logical: “the more facts one has at one’s command, the less is inspiration for ideas likely to arrive.” Facts are the very basic structure of knowledge and tend to grow as the walls of specialization. The stronger the facts, the highest and thickest the walls. This is probably the reason why innovation hardly happens within the strict realm of a particular discipline.
The case of the Advertising industry offers one of the clearest examples of this confrontation. The past decade has seen change at the speed of light and marketers are now under greater pressure to demonstrate the impact of advertising on their business. The combination of greater pressure on ROI and a fragmented media environment with infinite possibilities for dialogue (hear consumers back, quantify, measure, etc.) has led the industry towards previously unseen collaboration attempts between the science of direct marketing and the art of advertising.
The result: an inevitable clash of ideas versus facts.
Some agencies have merged and redefined themselves as the new breed of global groups. The most notorious so far is DraftFCB, which defines itself as a “marketing communications agency designed to build clients’ businesses by focusing on the individual and coming up with ideas that drive behavior in the most creative ways.”
In my opinion, the delivery of this promise depends on the ability of the Direct Marketing professional (who will rightfully lead the transformation in most cases) of not getting on the way of “conjecture, speculation, delightful mental footwork of all kinds,” and on the contrary, become an advocate for untested, factess, ideas. Ignorance drives innovation.
