Does martech limit
creativity?

Marketers – and their companies – know creativity is important. But how freely can they act on it?

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Q1.

Looking at your organisation’s marketing, do you feel it is:

Enterprise / SME comparison
UK / US comparison

Q2.

Thinking of your answer to the previous question, how do you feel this will change in the next 3 to 5 years?

Enterprise / SME comparison
UK / US comparison

Expert view

“It’s how you use the technology to make your marketing creative that counts.”

Qabil Shah
Global Enterprise Marketing, Nutanix

Can tech and creativity play together?

I don’t think technology takes away from creativity. I think it’s how you use the technology to make your marketing creative that counts. Using tech-driven insights, I can present you with an experience that’s tailored to you and feels special. It’s about having this seamless, unified customer experience that is finely tuned to whoever you’re targeting in a topical, relevant format. And that’s how creativity and tech coincide.

Pick another chapter

Did COVID make tech marketing braver?

Changing attitudes to creativity and risk

Does martech limit creativity?

How the pandemic changed engagement

Tech marketers have switched priorities

New channels for a new normal

Which channels are working now?

What marketers want from an agency

Key lessons and takeaways

Conducted in February 2021 by Opinium, Perspective 2021 is a survey of over 200 senior marketers in medium to large tech companies in US and UK.

Analysis

Does martech limit creativity?

Marketers might value creativity, but half are dominated by their tech. Our results are pretty unambiguous: tech marketers value creativity. So do their employers, and their organisations. But most are not creativity-led.

So what’s the problem? Instead of doing technology marketing, half the marketers we spoke to spend their time feeding marketing technology. And it’s pretty clear which half.

61% of small business marketers told us their marketing was dominated by technology, not creativity – compared to just 37% of those in enterprises. And if you think about it, that makes a lot of sense.

Working with limited resources, small-business marketers are under more pressure to get ROI from their martech, so they likely spend more time feeding the machine, and fixing any problems with it.

Meanwhile, martech in large enterprises could well be more mature. Maybe it’s embedded really well, or supported by dedicated Marketing Ops staff, meaning they spend less time on the plumbing, and more time thinking about what they actually send.

But either way, the gap is set to grow. Half of small business respondents said their marketing would become more technology dependent in the next 3-5 years. Just 22% from large enterprises said the same.

Back to results

1/2

Half of respondents say their marketing is not led by creativity, but tech.

61%

of small business marketers are martech-led – compared to 37% in enterprises.

50%

The gap is growing. 50% of small businesses will be more tech-dependent in the next 3-5 years.