• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, October 22, 2019

Earlier this year, Energy giant Centrica awarded its $125 million global consolidated marketing communications account to WPP after a six-month process.

In a recent debriefing about the pitch, the company’s Group CMO Margaret Jobling said that the decision basically came down to two drivers, she told David Indo, partner in ID Comms, the consultant that helped her run the pitch.

No. 1 was creativity. But not the old-school creativity, where people “sit in a vacuum” trying to come up with big ideas. “That’s gone,” she said, and has been supplanted by creativity “enabled” by data.

So basically, Jobling meant that the No. 1 driver was creativity driven by a robust data practice — a practice that creatives need to be on board with and be curious about because going forward, data will drive what they produce. That is, engaging content that fuels the hopes and dreams of consumers and ultimately is able to change their behavior.

And the No. 1 driver: chemistry. Yep, that’s right, in a world driven by 1s and 0s, algorithms and numerous virtual relationships, how you get along face to face with people still matters in this business. And probably always will.

But Jobling had a lot more to say about the pitch and what she and her company learned from it. Watch the full debriefing here.