Art, music and dance can be incredibly emotional experiences when perceived under the right circumstances. The mathematics involved in every facet of these processes are less glorified than the perceptual and aesthetic pleasures but are just as important. Uncovering the symbiotic relationship between the arts and sciences will be crucial for agencies as brands begin to embed themselves deeper into consumers' everyday lives.

This intersection of creativity and science may seem far-fetched, but the two are deeply connected; the arts make people feel, and science attempts to explain these emotions.

Historically, these two practices had a great deal of overlap. Isaac Newton developed the color wheel while Pythagoras used math to explain why certain combinations of notes played simultaneously sound more or less pleasant. However, the 19th century saw the two disciplines begin to split as they became more specialized in their methods and teachings.

Fast forward to today, the arts and sciences appear to be reconvening, especially within the branding world. Brands will need to find ways to utilize data and science to enhance their creative and artistic outputs, not only to appeal to Gen Z but also to wider consumers. 

There are three ways that agencies and brands can start this journey:

1. Create a culture of acceptance on both creative and scientific fronts.

2. Invest in new technology designed to facilitate analysis and enable creativity, ensuring connected departments that work toward common brand goals.

3. Understand brand audiences, and don’t underestimate the power of diverse interests or common experiences.

Create a culture of acceptance

Let’s start with the first goal for agencies and brands, which may be the most difficult but is the most important to streamline the other suggestions. Companies must ensure that their teams are full of diverse thoughts and perspectives while accepting all the different viewpoints and backgrounds that go into the building of excellent branding.

Though many interdisciplinary masteries exist now at an educational level, specialization still dominates. This can often lead to single perspectives: Artists often feel that data cannot provide useful feedback, and researchers feel that they can solve every creative answer with ones and zeros. 

For true success, branding agencies and internal branding teams must accept that both are imperative. A culture and rhetoric of saying “and” rather than “but” is crucial for these two parties to work together and thrive as experts in their given disciplines.

Invest in new technology

This leads to step two, which involves investment in the right tools. The right tools will allow teams of diverse skill sets to focus on individual strengths while promoting collaboration and united brand goals. Creative tools can speed up artistic projects without abandoning the imperative human spark. For example, analysis tools can predict how creative output may be perceived. These data-driven predictions can (and should) be relayed to creative storytellers to interpret and expand upon for optimized and inspired productive output.

Expediency and quality of work tend to be inversely proportional in the modern advertising landscape as brands look to meet vast content demands in today’s short-form video asset-driven world. Placing data-driven and creatively inspired tech tools in the right hands can allow agencies and brands to keep pace in a content-hungry society while preserving and cultivating brand-consumer relationships.

New AI tools will be crucial to promote efficiency but will not replace the human design process. One of the most exhilarating parts of branding is that underlying every decision is the personification of the brand (this is especially true for Gen Z). As a result, the right tools in the right hands can lead to data-driven artistic decisions that promote the correct brand personification. 

Understand brand audiences

Lastly, agencies and brands must understand both the complexity and simplicity of their audience. A brand’s audience is more complex than a set of numbers, it’s well-known that personalities and tastes range immensely. A shift in a single-color shade or altered pitch in a musical score may create and instill different brand perceptions. This is a great thing! Just as friends see each other differently, people also perceive the same brand in unique ways.

Each brand or agency-based artistic decision will affect individuals differently; this is wonderful because these emotional shifts imply brand differentiation and uniqueness. Slight differentiation can also reveal similar trends. Larger data can help cultivate group thought in a sea of small differences. Recognizing that personalized differences exist in consumers can allow agencies and brands to make creative changes by speaking to different demographics while aligning with trends and wider brand perceptions.

This is why flexibility in branding is paramount. Many have hesitations when it comes to technology and data infiltrating the creative space. As someone who was drawn to music specifically by the emotional and personal aspects of the medium, I fully appreciate and understand those concerns.

However, as someone who also thinks that finding trends within human perception is important in the prediction of the emotional valences of consumers, I believe it will become imperative for brands to unite the arts and sciences in the pursuit of inspiring and effective advertising.

There is an incredible opportunity available to agencies and brands in the pioneering of the data-driven, creatively enhanced design process. The utilization of the irreplaceable creative mind in tandem with AI tools for asset confirmation and expedition will be crucial in 2024. The arts and sciences once worked together to enable global innovation. Why not once more?