As marketing teams face higher expectations to prove campaign results, leaders expect data-driven work from every department. This means once siloed teams must find smarter ways to work together.

• Data-driven creative is the most significant creative production opportunity for brands and agencies (70%), per a July 2024 survey from Digiday in partnership with Celtra.
• Lack of collaboration across teams and functions is a top challenge (34%) for US and UK content and creative professionals measuring digital content performance and ROI, per an October 2024 Canto and Ascend2 survey.

“Production is thought about at the end, when the creative and media strategies are locked,” said Priti Mhatre, chief product and AI officer at WPP agency Hogarth. “At that point, there is not much movement available.”

Through the right AI integration and cross-functional collaboration, marketers can launch data-driven strategies while efficiently creating content for multiple channels at once.

Making data integration a group effort

Once a siloed expectation, more teams are now charged with integrating data into their work. Marketing teams are using 230% more data than they were in 2020, per a 2025 Supermetrics report.

• 56% of marketers say they don’t have time to analyze their data thoroughly, and 38% say a lack of data integration and reporting tools makes it hard to optimize their marketing, per the report.

Implementing a data-first mindset across departments from the start of every campaign makes actioning that data a shared responsibility, said Mhatre.

“It’s gone from this linear handover where creative does their thing, media does their thing, and then production takes over to these disciplines working together with all the data democratized,” she said. “Everyone has access to the audience insights and the production strategy.”

Front loading content for future use

While production has historically considered the TV commercial asset core to every campaign, fragmented consumer behavior and unique channel needs have enabled more cross-channel collaboration.

“When creative comes up with an idea for a TV commercial, the media planner is already thinking about how it can transform into paid, owned, and social environments,” Mhatre said.“For more nuanced shoots that we do with talent, we’ll create all the different virtual variations, plus the behind the scenes and content for social platforms in one shoot. That's the most efficient way for brands to execute.”

Finding the right AI integrations

Marketers say AI and machine learning will have the biggest impact on multichannel marketing (70%), per a May 2024 Ascend2 survey. Adopting an AI platform inherently supports cross-channel collaboration, said Mharte.

One way to increase production times while maintaining quality is developing digital twins, she said, which help make production “work harder throughout the supply chain.” Instead of reshooting a car for every new model, for example, a digital twin can make that update and different market variations.

“Once you've put in the effort to create digital twins and have modular content captured through shoots, stringing it together into different formats becomes far easier,” Mharte said.

Slating ROI as a shared initiative

The key to collaboration between media and production teams is developing shared KPIs while convincing clients to prioritize results over quantity of deliverables, said Mahtre.

"Getting clients to move away from thinking about cost per assets makes both parties responsible for delivering outcomes,” she said. “Production creates the right content, media optimizes it, and as a team we are driving outcomes that become a growth engine for brands as well.”

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