Why We Must Eliminate ‘Tick-box’ Culture

Have you ever worked in one of those offices where peo­ple do things, yet nev­er know why? Some­one I know once dubbed this ‘tick-box’ culture—an envi­ron­ment where peo­ple tick the box­es of what they think has to hap­pen dur­ing a mar­ket­ing cam­paign, but nev­er ask for rea­sons why things are being done, or ques­tion whether they are hav­ing an effect.

You may have noticed that Adobe’s Dig­i­tal Europe Expe­ri­ence Blog has been going through a few changes as of late. More con­tent post­ed more fre­quent­ly, on a site with bet­ter nav­i­ga­tion. Why? Because it would be chal­leng­ing for us to preach about the ben­e­fits of trans­form­ing your busi­ness into an expe­ri­ence busi­ness if we didn’t con­stant­ly strive to pro­vide a bet­ter expe­ri­ence for you—our read­ers. We want to ban­ish ‘tick-box’ cul­ture from our online pages because when it comes to hav­ing a voice in our mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ty, we know the best voic­es are loud and clear, not ano­dyne and beige.

But, it’s not only con­tent that needs to be fresh and engag­ing. Accord­ing to Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing Mag­a­zine, even the mar­ket research we con­duct needs to have rel­e­vance and pas­sion. In a recent arti­cle, they report­ed that research is used wide­ly by 84 per­cent of com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sion­als, but on aver­age, less than half of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion-based cam­paigns deliv­ered are actu­al­ly shaped by qual­i­ty research. Too often mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als con­duct research shaped sole­ly by the need for data points, for­get­ting that the best strate­gies com­bine heart AND head. (If you’ve ever seen the famous Fritz Lang movie Metrop­o­lis, you’ll already be convinced.)

Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing mag­a­zine says: “A grow­ing per­cent­age of research is now a tick-box exercise—led by DIY method­olo­gies that typ­i­cal­ly yield sim­plis­tic results. Good research—the kind that empow­ers sto­ry­telling and intrigues audiences—relies on a rigour that’s too often a casu­al­ty of the self-serve mod­el. An effec­tive research part­ner will under­stand the sci­ence of mar­ket research, and, in con­trast to insu­lar DIY approach­es, they’ll take a con­sul­ta­tive approach to the devel­op­ment of pro­grammes that dri­ve action­able insight.”

In a nut­shell? Hav­ing a bunch of irrel­e­vant num­bers won’t help if you don’t think about the deep­er insights and emo­tion­al con­nec­tions that are revealed through more rig­or­ous analy­sis and detail. Tick­ing a box might be easy, but it rarely reaps rewards.

The next time you are tick­ing off that to do item on your ‘how to put togeth­er a mar­ket­ing cam­paign’ list, ask your­self why you are doing the activ­i­ty and what you hope to achieve. If you were a con­sumer, would you engage with the action being undertaken?

What are you doing to remove tick-box cul­ture from your mar­ket­ing depart­ments? And while we have your atten­tion, what changes would you like to see us make in the Dig­i­tal Europe blog to make your expe­ri­ence more enjoyable?