We are living in the age of effectiveness. While once a great client-agency relationship might involve a blind leap of creative faith, in a time of data and research it is a rare client that will greenlight an idea without a clear underpinning of information showing it will (most likely) work for them and their business.

This is arguably not unreasonable: there is usually a lot of money at stake. But when amazing and unexpected creative solutions for brands can seem thin on the ground, it feels like we’re crying out for a bit of risk-taking. This makes the role of the strategy department more crucial than ever.

For Jo Arden, who joined AMV BBDO in March as the agency’s chief strategy officer, after stints as CSO at Ogilvy, Publicis.Poke and MullenLowe, effectiveness is key. “I think strategists now need to be much more numerate, and even if you are a creative strategist by trade, you still have to be able to understand an effectiveness story and how what you do translates back to the business objectives,” she says.

“And this is where strategists can be really useful to creatives,” she continues. “If you’re working with a client and you can prove the effectiveness of the vast majority of their marketing output, their spend, I think it gives you a license for the leaps of faith. So sometimes you go, ‘look, we’ve got a hypothesis. This is why we believe it will work. We haven’t got any data to prove it. But with everything we know, we think this is the one where you take a bit of a jump.’”