For our September event, Beth Sibbring from Tangible Impact walked us through the concept of a “creative intervention” when it comes to digital creative. But, before she could get to that, emcee Dave Culbertson closed his eyes and took us all the way back to 1979 — the year that Compuserve was founded:

He assured this was a number of years before he worked for Beth there!

Beth then walked us through common pitfalls she sees companies fall into when it comes to developing, testing, and optimizing the creative for their digital campaigns. She opened with this statement from comScore ARS Executive Vice President Jeff Cox:

“Based on our years of research…we’ve determined that the quality of the creative is four times more important than other characteristics of the media plan in generating sales.”

Yet, as Beth noted, a slew of other factors often drive the actual creative that hits the internet:

• Adherence to production specs and brand standards…without the creatives being accountable for campaign results
• Existing creative that already exists…even if it’s not the most appropriate for the campaign or tactic
• Deadlines that slip in the planning and buying phases of the effort such that the creative becomes a “just get us something as fast as you can” exercise
• The design opinions of one or more members of the brand team…who do not have training or knowledge about best practices for the medium

And, of course, Beth used several examples to illustrate the importance of testing multiple creative approaches and planning for and committing to mid-campaign optimization!

Beth’s complete slide deck is below:

As an added bonus for the (WAW) old-timers at the event, the third original co-founder of Columbus WAWs wayyyy back in 2008, Scott Zakrajsek, made his triumphant return to central Ohio after an 8-year hiatus in Boston. Three weeks after his return to Columbus, he returned to WAW!

(Is it, then, only a matter of time before Monish Datta, too, returns?)