• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, May 22, 2014

Alan Schulman, VP, global digital marketing & brand content, SapientNitro, surprised attendees during his keynote at OMMA Video this afternoon, announcing that “I’ve got a new job.” Even more surprising, it’s a title you’ve never heard of before -- but if his presentation is right, you will.

“I’m in addressability at scale,” Schulman, a long-time Madison Avenue creative executive, quipped. But it’s not a job he may have much longer, he implied, saying: “We’re automating ourselves right out of the idea business -- into the automation business.”

Schulman, of course, was talking about the role that data-driven marketing science and programmatic advertising and media-buying now have in changing the advertising industry. So far, he’s not even sure what that is, asking: “What does data-driven creative look like?”

He then showed three examples of data-driven creative, including a “mass one,” a hype meter created around the ESPN X Games, and a mid-scale one developed by Nike that used an RFID chip placed in a marathoner’s running shoes to create “art” from the data measuring the run. And finally, a one-to-one version: an app that matches a person’s features to find a lookalike pet available for adoption in dog shelters in Australia.

“I bet you weren’t thinking of one-to-one as one-to-animal,” Schulman quipped, after showing a video of the campaign.

Schulman said the campaigns, especially the last one, are good examples to shoot for in the application of data-driven creative -- otherwise the industry might be “putting the plumbing ahead of the poetry in the business.”