Is Your Work Driven by Data? It's Time to Enter it

Why enter the DMAs if your work sings data delight? Caroline Parkes, Chair of the DMA Awards Committee, explains why the DMAs are the stage to showcase your creativity, strategy, and results:

I wrote an article for WARC recently about how data brings structure, surprise and soul to the best work in our industry. As agencies, brand, and marketing services people out there are thinking about which awards to enter this year, if your work sings data deelight, then you should defo be entering the DMA Awards.

Why the musical reference? I experienced Pete Tong’s Ibiza Classics at the Royal Albert Hall back in May. Strings, synths, anthems, and pure emotion, all underpinned by structure, timing, and technical mastery. I realised the magic wasn’t just in the music itself, but the collaboration, the surroundings, the beautiful spark of the unexpected. And it made me think about data.

Like music, data is at its most powerful when it’s more than just numbers. When it underpins rhythm: triggered programmes anyone? When it unlocks emotion (like Sela and Newcastle United’s work ‘Unsilence the Crowd’ which combined data and technology to create an experience for good). When it surprises you, with insights that drive culture driving work (like Marshmallow’s ‘Immigrants Welcome’ campaign). When it creates the conditions for something transcendent. At the DMA Awards we celebrate this every year: the work that hits gold plays with data.

With the passing of the new UK Data Bill, we’ve entered a new era, where we can responsibly unlock more of data’s creative power. The DMA champions the brilliant, ethical, emotionally intelligent use of data in marketing. And this year, we want to see more of that show up in the work.

I love to see work where data doesn’t constrain creativity but elevates it.

Set You Free: Data as a springboard for creativity

Data provides the emotional lift for work to capture hearts and drive change. The spark might come from a surprising stat or hidden insight. The Mayor of London’s ‘Breaking The Silence’ campaign (our Grand Prix winner last year) was powered by the simple, powerful truth that one single word peer intervention can stop harassment. That’s data not just informing strategy but lighting the way to culture-shifting creative.

Music Sounds Better with You: When Data Is the Story

Sometimes data doesn’t just sit behind the creative, it is the creative. Most famously, Spotify’s ‘Wrapped’, where personal data turns into cultural currency, this is an approach that brands with rich data sets like retailers, or apps (think Strava, Duolingo, Reddit) can turn into creative magic.

Sometimes data is the story because it’s so provocative that it demands to be expressed. Women’s Aid exposed a devastating stat: that domestic violence increases by 38% after football matches. When data has that impact, it becomes the story. Do you have a campaign where the data point has shown up in the creative? Enter it!

Sing It Back: When Data Drives Conversation

Used well, data turns CRM into something that creates a cultural moment. One of my favourite data driven campaigns ever (sadly, as it neither originated nor ran in the UK it wasn’t eligible for the DMAs) is Chipotle “Doppelgänger”. It created magic moments when any two individuals in US Chipotles who made exactly the order were pinged ‘you’ve got a doppelgänger!’ message. This resulted in TikTok going crazy with ‘OMG I have a doppelgänger’ content, turning data into conversation. Do you have a piece of work where data created conversations? If so, enter!

In an industry flooded with templated campaigns and automated nurture flows, cultural nuance is your remix button, to get create inbox standout. Social data (what people are posting, sharing, feeling) can be used to flex tone, timing, and topic, but all too often CRM teams often hit ‘send’ on their machine-driven trigger campaigns, forgetting that infusing them with in the moment content elevates them, and makes them pop in an in-box. Show me the CRM programmes where you’ve leaned into social!

Finally: Human + AI Creativity

We’re now in an age where AI can do astonishing things with data. For example, the Jose Mourinho work for Snickers where friends could WhatsApp their friend a ticking off message from ‘Jose himself’ built on the data they’d provided.

But just as a sampler doesn’t write a symphony, AI still needs human creativity to make the work sing. The future belongs to those who can orchestrate data, AI and human insight into something clever and captivating. Everyone’s talking about AI, so everyone’s using it right? Show us!

Higher State of Consciousness: Raising the Bar at the DMA Awards

This year at the DMA Awards, we’re encouraging all entrants to show how data has driven excellence across our three judging pillars: strategy, creativity, and results. No (Josh) winks at data please, we really want to see how it’s fuelled the work.

Strategy: What insight or data unlocked your approach?
Creativity: How did it shape or inspire the work?
Results: Not just what happened, but why those KPIs mattered. What in the data told you what success should look like?

We recently analysed eight years of DMA entries and found that highly creative campaigns were four times more effective than those that weren’t. The data is clear.

And each year, when the winners are revealed and celebrated, there’s a moment of beautiful synchronicity, the DMA Choir performing live, bringing together voices from across the industry. It’s a reminder that data-led creativity isn’t cold or clinical. It’s human. It’s collaborative. It resonates when it’s in tune. Just like great music. Even if some of the dancing is a bit dodgy (usually me, I’m always swaying the wrong way!).

One More Time: An Invitation to Do Your Best Work

If you’ve made work where data did more than inform, but where it transformed, we want to see it.

This year, let’s celebrate not just campaigns that worked, but campaigns that moved people. That made them feel something. That used data like a great track uses bass, not loud for the sake of it, but used just right.

Because when we get it right, advertising doesn’t just sound better with data. It becomes unforgettable: the kind of work that earns applause, moves hearts, and, just like the DMA Choir, reminds us that when we’re in tune, we make something special.

Enter The DMA Awards