Adquants and Creativity: Opposite sides?

(This post is inspired by an article on CNNMoney.Com on adquants.)

A lot of people think that people are either predominantly right- or left-brained.

If one is predominantly right-brained, he or she is more likely to be creative, more "feeling"-orientated, more open to new things, and more open to the possibility of the absence of structures. Organized chaos, according to common wisdom, is their mantra.

The left-brain orientated ones are far more structure-driven, more about equations and proofs and evidences, more about organization - less about chaos. For left-brain orientated individuals, they seek evidence and proof more than hunches and gut-feeling.This belief I think is at the root of the "adquants versus creatives" debate in advertising.

Creativity demands an openness to possibilities and connections that no one ever thought existed. For that to happen, it is believed that one has to be as "right-brain"-oriented as possible.

But these challenging economic times demand that marketeers be prudent and judicious in their investments of marketing dollars. The "left-brains" then come in - because they are the ones who have the numbers, the scenarios, the 'evidence' whether certain decisions are are logical and thoroughly-researched, and would increase the probability of success.

Is there - however - a middle way? Can adquants and the creative types co-exist?

My answer is yes.

And it goes beyond more than just making the two sides be in one room, in one department, or in one meeting.

Both will have to learn from each other in their quest for an effective marketing campaign.

Adquants have to look at the ability of the creative types to create stories out of numbers - to weave stories based on numbers, and understand - beyond t- and F-tests, beyond eigenvalues and eigenfactors, beyond regression lines and probability - the impact of their formulas and equations.

Adquants need to adopt the ‘right-brain-ness’ of the creative types to go beyond stat tables, the software results, spreadsheets and simulations, and all the crunched numbers to answer questions that creatives have also been tasked to answer.
Creative types have to look at the ability of adquants to dissect problems and to work on a "question-hypothesis-test-course-correct" basis, and be open to possibilities that may seem to be "uncreative". They will have to learn the structures, limitations, and findings that adquants create out of their inquiry of the world (from a numeric perspective) – and move within it.

When creative types create solutions within the parameters that adquants may have uncovered – and know the parameters deeply so they can be incorporated into a campaign (and broken, if necessary), that’s when they will have worked together effectively.

The greatest challenge in the adworld today is not merely to marry the two disciplines - it is to marry the two mindsets that define those disciplines.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine from college on phenomenology, something that I think both adquants and creatives are very much involved in:

In phenomenology, you are essentially trying to explain something possibly unexplainable as objectively as you can whilst admitting that your mind cannot be perfectly objective. To do this, you break down the phenomenon into its pieces – you create abstractions – and you understand each piece individually and how each relates with other pieces. Then after you’re done, you bring it all together again – knowing that even if you have done so to the utmost of your ability, there is still more of that phenomenon that you cannot – and perhaps, never will – understand.

That is what I believe is necessary for adquants and creatives to coexist, work together, and be better thinkers and solutions-providers: the ability to think within – and outside – the parameters their expertise demand.