At the judging session for The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas, held 63 floors above Manhattan in Stagwell’s World Trade Center HQ, a trio of industry leaders came to a surprising conclusion: data - long blamed for the death of creativity - might just be the thing that brings humanity back to marketing.
Richard Draycott, Jonathan Harrop, Victoria Lozano and Michael Treff
“Let’s stop focusing on the risks of AI,” said Michael Treff, CEO of Code and Theory, who as a Stagwell agency was hosting the event, “And start focusing on the opportunities.”
It was a sharp turn away from the usual narratives of automation panic and machine-driven blandness. But Treff’s point, echoed by his fellow panellists - Victoria Lozano, CMO of Crayola, and Jonathan Harrop, VP of marketing and comms for wholesale trading at Citi (speaking in a personal capacity) - was this: used wisely, data can make marketing more human, not less.
Rather than stripping the soul from campaigns, the right data can bring relevance, intimacy, even emotion - if marketers are brave enough to use it that way.
“We’ve all talked about ‘personalisation at scale’ for years,” Treff said. “It was marketing bullshit. Now, it’s actually possible. We can finally stop wasting time on menial work and focus on what matters: insight, strategy, breakthrough ideas.”
But that’s only if marketing evolves. The panel argued that the traditional silos - marketing, tech, data - are no longer fit for purpose.
Treff, whose agency operates at the intersection of creativity and code, believes we’re entering the age of the full-stack marketer - a new breed of talent able to move across strategy, tooling, creative, and even light engineering. “The old departmental divisions are collapsing. And the same is happening at the C-suite level. The most successful transformations are happening horizontally, across leadership functions, not in isolation.”
Harrop agreed, noting that respect for each other’s craft - particularly between marketers and tech teams - leads to stronger outcomes. “If you understand what you’re asking for, you get better work. You can set realistic expectations. You stop being the CMO who asks for a website tomorrow and wonders why people groan.”
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The idea of empathy came up again and again - not just for audiences, but for teams navigating increasingly complex environments.
Lozano described a “tale of two cities” within Crayola’s marketing department. “Some teams are already using AI and new platforms with a high degree of sophistication. Others don’t know where to begin. Bridging that gap is hard. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.”
Instead, she argued, marketers need to balance steady hands with bold thinking. “You can’t panic. You can’t overcorrect. But you also can’t keep doing things the way they’ve always been done.”
For Harrop, ongoing learning is non-negotiable - especially as new tech moves faster than many young hires can keep up with. “There was this assumption that because someone’s young, they get tech. That’s not true anymore. You need to create space for internal pilots and experimentation. You need to back curiosity.”
There was also a warning: data is only as good as the humans interpreting it.
Gayle Troberman from iHeartMedia, speaking from the audience, gave a sharp reminder that data can reinforce bias as easily as it can reveal truth. “We did a study with Malcolm Gladwell and found that most Americans still don’t know what an NFT is - but every marketer does. That’s bias. We use data to justify anything. But if you’re out of touch with the real world, you’ll make bad decisions, even if they’re data-informed.”
Harrop agreed: “In financial marketing, we’re using data to push behaviour - nudging people to redeem points for gift cards instead of cash, because it’s better for the company. But if we’re not careful, it becomes a manipulation tool. We have to think about what we’re actually trying to achieve.”
Treff took it further. “The problem with performance marketing is it’s been a race to the bottom. Optimise, optimise, optimise - but to what end? If we flip that, data should let us build real emotional connections. It should give us more context, more nuance, more humanity.”
As the jury prepared to evaluate the entries, they were united in one thing: playing it safe won’t cut it.
“We’re here to inspire, not reward yesterday’s playbook,” said Harrop. “Look for ambition - even if it didn’t work.”
“I want big creative ideas,” said Lozano. “Something fresh - whether it’s in the concept or the execution. Something that shakes up a tired category.”
Treff added: “Look for work that’s curious. That tries to meet people in new ways. Even the mistakes might point us to the future.”
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This year’s CEO judging session may have taken place in a tech-driven agency on the 63rd floor of a New York skyscraper, but it felt grounded in something deeply human. Emotion. Judgement. Curiosity. Empathy.
The age of data doesn’t mean the end of creativity. On the contrary - if marketers are bold enough to use it well, it might just be the thing that helps us feel again.
As Treff put it: “If you’re not excited to be part of a creative, tech-driven industry in 2025 - you’re probably in the wrong profession.”
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