Bright Ideas in the Waste-Bin
Uncovering the Obscene Cost of Rejected Creativity
Hey folks, let’s dive into some not-so-glamorous topics. While municipal solid waste generation is predicted to grow from 2.3 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050, in the marketing and advertising world, no one pays attention to the elephant in the room — the staggering amount of waste it generates. You know, those brilliant flashes of creativity that never make it to implementation and the piles of cash spent on creative assets that might as well be sitting on a shelf collecting dust.
Hemorrhaging Cash
Here’s a dirty little secret: marketing waste is a huge issue. Agencies and in-house teams spend about 80% of their time and budgets developing these big creative ideas and content pieces. Yet, only a fraction of that effort — less than 20% — goes into activation and promotion that works in ways that drive tangible business impact. It’s a classic case of the 80/20 rule gone wrong.
It’s a bizarre paradox — creative teams will routinely capture 24 hours or more of raw footage just to produce a 30-second TV commercial. Think about the immense costs sunk into talent, locations, crew, and equipment rentals for shooting such a mountain of content that largely goes untapped. Then consider the fact that it will be routinely shot in 4k, and then stored in terabytes of cloud space. All that investment for half a minute of the final video that modern audiences may skip past anyway. While some overages are expected, this level of production bloat is staggeringly wasteful. Adopting a more judicious, modular approach focused on repurposing elements across campaigns could dramatically reduce this type of excessive waste.
But what’s the real cost of all this waste? Picking down the last coin is tough, but we’re talking about significant figures here. According to LBBOnline, around $5.5 billion is spent annually on content that never gets used. Shockingly, about 70% of content never sees the light of day, and 35% of ads are duplicated according to Optimizely.
Untapped Value
Just like typical municipal waste holds huge recycle and reuse value, could this be a treasure trove of untapped resources? What if we built an entire industry focused on collecting, curating, and licensing these neglected audio-visual elements to other creators at a fraction of the original cost? Or, what if brands started to catalogue and revisit their creative cast-offs for new campaigns?
The potential to transform marketing waste into actual wealth is huge!
1KPI and A/B Testing
Now, I’m not saying we should resign ourselves to waste as an inevitable byproduct of creativity. Far from it! Some of the sharpest teams are already finding ways to nip waste in the bud. Take 1KPI planning, for instance, which focuses your entire marketing effort on achieving one single, critical performance indicator. This strategy ensures that every dollar and every asset is tied directly to driving that single metric, leaving no room for wasteful detours or extraneous nice-to-haves.
Another smart move? Leaning into rigorous A/B testing of creative concepts using real audience data. This method ensures that more ideas get their chance at success. Too many times, personal prejudices for subjective reasons kill out potentially effective ideas. Before investing heavily, A/B testing will also allow brands to make objective decisions based on real data that can affect ROAS.
Final Thoughts
In summary, marketing wastage isn’t just about money left on the table — it’s about missed creative opportunities and ROI that could have been — consider the opportunity cost. It’s high time we marketers start treating our million-dollar ideas with the reverence they deserve, whether that’s by extracting value from the waste pile or preventing the waste from occurring in the first place.
If you’re fed up with watching resources drain away into creative waste and are ready to maximize every ounce of value from your marketing efforts, it’s time to rethink your approach. Consider implementing lean marketing operations strategies that will transform your team into a well-oiled, waste-slashing powerhouse.
Start today, and watch your creativity — and your bottom line — soar.
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