How people decide which products and brands to buy is fascinating, but complex.
Even in the offline world, consumers take a complicated path to the checkout which varies from category to category and individual to individual.
In providing a near-limitless supply of information and e-commerce options, digital has added many other layers of interaction to purchase behaviour.
A new report from Google’s consumer insights team, working with the Behavioural Architects company, calls the area between initial trigger and final purchase the “Messy Middle”.
Using literary reviews, shopping observation studies, search trend analyses and a large-scale experiment, the report analyses the cognitive biases that people use to deal with the scale and complexity of information and choice online.
These biases shape and influence people’s purchase behaviour. While many hundreds of these biases exist, the report prioritises six.
Category heuristics: Short descriptions of key product specifications can simplify purchase decisions.
Power of now: The longer you have to wait for a product, the weaker the proposition becomes.
Social proof: Recommendations and reviews from others can be very persuasive.
Scarcity bias: As stock or availability of a product decreases, the more desirable it becomes.
Authority bias: Being swayed by an expert or trusted source.
Power of free: A free gift with a purchase, even if unrelated, can be a powerful motivator.
The Google team that wrote the report – Alistair Rennie, Research Lead, Market Insights UK, Jonny Protheroe Head of Market Insights UK, Claire Charron, Product Manager, and Gerald Breatnach, Head of Strategic Insights UK – argue that, although this purchase behaviour appears convoluted, it is just normal shopping for people.
They offer advice for brands of all sizes, including:
Ensure brand presence so your product or service is strategically front of mind while customers explore.
Employ behavioural science principles intelligently and responsibly to make your proposition compelling as consumers evaluate their options.
Close the gap between trigger and purchase so existing and potential customers spend less time exposed to competitor brands.
Build flexible, empowered teams who can work cross-functionally to avoid traditional branding and performance silos that are likely to leave gaps in the messy middle.
A new scale to plan and evaluate the effectiveness of communications campaigns, uses the metric of ‘Creative Commitment’.
The Creative Effectiveness Ladder was launched by Cannes Lions and its sister company, WARC.
The Ladder graduates the effectiveness of communications marketing in six steps from the lowest, influential idea, up to the top grade, enduring icon.
Future judging of Creative Effectiveness Lions Awards entries will use the scale, which is also available as a free download to employ as a planning and evaluation tool.
The Ladder concept is based on analysis of nearly 5,000 case studies from 2011 – 2019, and has drawn on research from the IPA Effectiveness Databank to test and frame its insights.
The ladder was unveiled by James Hurman, author of ‘The Case for Creativity’ in a presentation with Peter Field, author of the influential IPA report, The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness, during the virtual Lions Live 2020 festival.
Their research argues that the principle of ‘Creative Commitment’ – correlates tightly with effectiveness.
The ‘Creative Commitment’ metric is measured by a brand’s investment in budget, campaign duration, and the number of media channels used in one of its marketing campaigns.
The authors have analysed the body of cases and argue that the more that brands have increased these variables – spending more, running campaigns longer and over a higher number of media channels – typically, the more likely they are to achieve more creatively effective work.
However, there is some evidence that the benefits of such an approach can plateau or even fall back when a brand’s commitment is increased beyond optimal levels.
They warn that in recent years marketers have tended to run more short-term campaigns, using fewer channels, with the result that creative effectiveness is decreasing in overall terms.
This finding is in line with research published by the IPA, which has shown a shift away from long-running brand building campaigns to more activation-oriented marketing.
The study also identified the most effective individual media channels for brands at different stages of the creative ladder.
Watch a short video presentation on the Creative Effectiveness Ladder. You can also download a free white paper on the creative effectiveness research.
Key messages from the EffWorks initiative about the need to get businesses to invest more in brand building were warmly received at the Australian launch of the B2B Institute, the think tank founded by LinkedIn, an EffWorks partner.
Fran Cassidy, a consultant to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, who wrote the analysis in The Board-Brand Rift, into how business leaders have stopped building brands, and a related report on Building Bridges with Finance delivered one of the key presentations at the B2B Institute event.
Cassidy, (pictured in red), the head of Cassidy Media Partnership, outlined how marketing and finance teams could be more aligned in ways that would enable and make more visible the ability of creative and disciplined marketing to help businesses deliver their objectives to secure future cashflows, reduce risk, increase margins and provide sustained competitive advantage and value.
Her advice included:
Investigating ideas to strengthen the relationship between marketing and finance such as presenting jointly to senior leadership or holding monthly meetings where marketing teams explained the reasons for spending on some http://www.thenewportbuzz.com/buy-phentermine-online budget lines, and not spending on others
Encouraging marketing teams to use more financial language, such as referring to brand effects as margin protection, and to explain marketing activities in financial terms (such as explaining why acquiring more customers could improve a company’s margin)
Embracing an evidence-based mindset to help marketers seeking the business case for investment in brand building
Greater agreement between finance and marketing teams on shared, commercially relevant metrics
These insights were echoed by Jann Schwarz, global director at The B2B Institute, who argued that businesses needed to focus on long-term growth and its drivers, which she cited as “brand, emotion and aligning marketing with finance.”
While acknowledging that short-term sales activation has its role, Schwarz added: “But you don’t win the respect of the C-suite and the boardroom by being very good at tactics. You have to have a long-term vision. You have to build the brand.”
You can listen to a podcast of the event’s speakers, who included marketing columnist Mark Ritson, here.
We published Culture First, an initial examination of the prevalence and level of effectiveness culture in brands. At EffWeek 2018 we followed up by releasing two pieces of research which delve deeper, with a wider range of brands.
One of the five prerequisites of a marketing effectiveness culture identified in Culture First was a focus on language, on how we communicate with other functions. It highlighted a need for marketers to ensure that the language and metrics used with other functions, particularly finance, was associated with an agreed value. Words like “brand halo” need to be underpinned with an understanding of the specific role it plays in, for example, customer satisfaction, market share protection, or churn reduction. It also highlighted that given the focus on marketing effectiveness being seen across many organisations, there was a need for improvement in the communication and understanding between marketing and finance.
Alternative language suggested in 2017’s Culture First report, to help build an understanding of the value of brand outside marketing teams
This year the improvement of that relationship between marketing and finance has been a focus for one of the research pieces. Fran Cassidy has done further work on this issue and will be presenting her findings at EffWeek. Complementing her presentation will be a quantitative survey of brands in partnership with ISBA, which seeks to benchmark the progress towards effectiveness culture and better understand where we are now.
Finance departments themselves are in a state of flux. Finance roles are migrating right across organisations. No longer solely a “number-crunching” function, their role is being transformed, partly by an intense focus on the use of resource, and partly by automation, which is taking over many basic reporting tasks. “One online respondent put it well,” says Fran. “They told me that they are no longer doing the numbers in the back office, while everyone else is at the strategy meeting. They are now organising and running the strategy meetings.
Fran’s research found that this greater integration of finance was leading to some positive changes. “We found that there was a huge increase in CPD training, both formal and informal, taking place between finance and marketing disciplines,” she says. “Both disciplines are learning each other’s languages.” Although this was, in general, a positive trend, she still came across the complaint that financial literacy is still an issue. There’s still a need to take note of Professor Patrick Barwise…
Understanding finance for long-term marketing effects
The other standout finding of the research involved a striking evolution in the way that some organisations are thinking about budgeting.
“This change is very much about applying a different mental attitude to marketing effectiveness expenditure,” says Fran. “It isn’t a change that is necessarily easy for organisations to implement and will no doubt require some trailblazers. However, there were a couple of big brands that indicated they were exploring adopting this mindset. If they did I think we would see a significant shift in the way marketing is budgeted for, and a far greater understanding of the long-term benefits and risks associated with it. There was evidence that marketers wanted to move away from the concept of the marketing funnel. It suggests too much of a conversation ratio for all marketing activity. As one of my respondents put it, ‘we need to start thinking about, and understanding more about how to raise the water table of brand value, not focussing on the flash floods of short-term promotion.’”
Media industry grandee Stevie Spring CBE is to bring her agency and client-side experience, expertise and energy to the IPA Effectiveness Awards, in her role as 2020 Chairman of Judges.
The Chairman of the British Council, Spring, will join Convenor of Judges Sue Unerman and Deputy Convenor Harjot Singh in analysing the submissions into the Awards before presiding over the client judging day and rewarding the winners at a dazzling gala ceremony in October 2020. The deadline for IPA Effectiveness Awards entries is 31st March, 2020. Find an entry pack and other information on resources for entrants here.
Says Stevie Spring: “Over the course of my career, I have enjoyed working both client and agency side. While these experiences have been very varied, the core, shared understanding from both sides is that effective communication can transform buy ambien buy kamagra online online businesses. It is the Holy Grail. Which is why I am delighted to be presiding over the judging of this prestigious competition – to be privy to the details of the incredible communications activities underpinning companies’ success stories.”
Entries are welcomed from communications agencies, media owners or advertisers around the world. They can involve any product category, country or size of budget. Brand activity can be anything from advertising to sponsorship or digital experiences to the development of new products or services. The IPA also encourages entries comprising more than one party and those from non-IPA members. New to the competition for 2019 is Nigel Vaz’s President’s Prize which will award the paper that demonstrates the most effective use of technology to help reimagine how a brand engages with its consumers.
The growth of ad technology has led some to downgrade the importance of planning for marketing activity to appear in specific contexts.
As part of EffWeek 2019, organisations representing a range of media platforms collaborated on an event to collate research and thinking to reaffirm the case that the context in which marketing messages appear is crucial to their effectiveness.
The morning was supported by the AOP, Advertising Association, Magnetic, DMA, Newsworks, IAB, Digital Cinema Media, Pearl & Dean, Outsmart, Radiocentre and Thinkbox.
Evidence cited included neuroscience insights into brain reaction to marketing, eye-tracking and qualitative research on the audience’s need states.
Reimagine Effectiveness & Creativity – that was the request to speakers made by the EffWeek 2019 Conference. Adidas, Enders Analysis, Publicis Sapient, adam&eveDDB, MediaCom and Deliveroo were among those taking up the challenge.
The day also included a session on “Lemon. How the advertising brain turned sour“, a major publication arguing that current trends are making advertising de-humanised and less effective. There were also sessions on the importance of digital customer experience to future brand growth, the challenge of making effectiveness into an everyday habit and advice from film critic Mark Kermode on what makes a great movie. The event was held at the Science Museum in London on 15th October 2019.
You can download event presentations from this page.
When even award-winning work generates fewer business results and adopts short-term goals, you know there is a crisis.
But do marketers realise that bad decisions undermine the power of strong creative and leave their brands lagging the competition?
Using evidence from the IPA Databank, effectiveness expert Peter Field shows the rise of negative trends and the huge performance gap opening up between brands with good and bad creative practices.
The EffWeek conference was a sell-out success again in 2019. For those who couldn’t be there, here’s a summary. More information & tools in our Learning & Resources section.
Setting the context
The CEO opportunity – Stephen Maher, CEO of MBA & Chair, IPA Effectiveness Board
The FT’s Board-Brand Rift research reveals that half of business leaders rate their knowledge of brand-building as average to very poor.
Eff Works is launching a campaign to convince C-suite executives of the value of investing in the long-term health of brands – beginning with a series of full-page ads in the FT.
The UK media landscape – Claire Enders, CEO of Enders Analysis
UK is world’s most advanced online advertising market. Online advertising (primarily Google and Facebook) has been a boon to UK small businesses over the past 15 years, particularly the growing ranks of micro-businesses.
Netflix and Amazon are massively increasing spend on content production. This ‘avalanche’ of streamed video is changing the way we watch – particularly among younger audiences.
UK broadcasting regulations provides a safe environment for brands and audiences alike, but new streaming players don’t face the same scrutiny – creating a risk for brands and for UK society at large.
21st century brands in the US – Neil Barrie, Global Managing Partner, Twenty First Century Brand
21st century brands are built from the centre, not reverse engineered by the marketing department. They’re built on four pillars of excellence:
a.) purpose-led (e.g New York Times doubled paid subscriptions within a year with its relentless focus on ‘truth’ )
b.) community-driven (e.g. Glossier actively involves customers in product development)
c.) tech-enabled (e.g. mobile banking app N26 offers enhanced UX compared to high street banks)
d) narrative-focused (e.g Airbnb’s ‘Why Vacation somewhere when you can live there’ campaign)
The China Brandscape – Viveca Chan, CEO, WE Marketing
Technology has changed the culture of China, merging the offline and online worlds.
At Luckin Coffee, customers must order and pay via the company’s app. The fast-growing start-up – which IPO’d just 18 months post-launch – has 2,000 pick-up locations, most with no seating. By saving money on rent, the company aims to offer coffee that’s better quality than Starbucks but 40% cheaper.
Behave like a 21st century brand – Sue Unerman, Chief Transformation Officer, MediaCom and Convenor of Judges, IPA Effectiveness Awards
How are brands building resilience to succeed in the 21st century? Here are examples from last year’s IPA Effectiveness Awards: diversity (British Army), purpose (Barclays), frictionless (Ella’s Kitchen), personal and personalised (IKEA), culture (Guinness), data (32 Red), open source and partnering (Suzuki & ITV), experience (AirBnB), integrated media and messaging (Audi).
Wants to see a wider variety of entries to next year’s awards: not just advertising but case studies of effective CRM, UX, sponsorship, use of data, etc. If you can prove effectiveness, please enter.
The value of experience – Simon James, International Lead – Group VP of Data Science & AI, Publicis Sapient International
Service brands are spending 5x more on customer experience than marketing, yet it’s challenging to measure the return on investment. Where are the Binet and Field of CX?
Publicis Sapient used qualitative focus groups to measure the value of CX in the personal banking sector. They developed three metrics: Experience Stock (memorability, quality, frequency of experience), Reputation Stock (mentions, sentiment) and Net User Growth (acquisition, retention).
Key findings: reputation in isolation is not the main growth driver for banks. Instead, digital experience is driving reputation and growth. Digital disruptor banks have higher ‘Experience Stock’ than legacy brands (and are growing faster as a result).
Marketing should own CX, because it’s a key growth driver.
PANEL: New brand behaviours – Cheryl Calverley, CMO, EveSleep / Oliver Snoddy, VP Brand and Creative, Deliveroo / Abba Newbery, CMO, Habito
On the difference between challenger and legacy brands AN: There’s this belief – especially in fast-growth businesses – that if you make a great product, they will come. We have to balance a great product and a great brand, distributed and marketed in the right way. OS: Not everything can be built through conversation – acting somewhere between a traditional brand and a new brand is the answer. CC: Something that big corporates should fear is how fast small businesses, start-ups, are sprinting and “learning and trying again and again until we get it right”.
On the role of data AN: Other businesses would love to have the short-term data we do, but the hardest thing for me is to not let marketing be judged in the short term. Because it does work in the short term, but we need to look long term. OS: We’re drowning in data – the challenge is looking at longer-term metrics. Half my job is getting the business to focus on emotion-building and long-term perceptions.
On purpose CC: Purpose is really customer insight, taken to the powerful place it should be. OS: The hardest bit of the job is deciding what to do and what not to do. The only answer is to have a very clear idea of what your brand is and its purpose.
Data
Decide based on evidence – Lucas Brown, Chief Strategy Officer, Total Media
According to the 2018 Gartner Hype Cycle, data-driven marketing is sliding down the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’ into the ‘Trough of Disillusionment’.
We need to: blend the short and long-term, embrace a data culture, triangulate data and encourage innovation in evidence metrics.
Marketing effectiveness practice that makes a difference to investment – Adam Ben-Yousef, Global Marketing Effectiveness Director, Diageo & Andrew Geoghegan, Global Planning Director, Diageo
Diageo launched its effectiveness drive – including an education programme and new platform, Catalyst – as part of a company-wide productivity drive. The aim was to improve profits by optimising spend, rather than cost-cutting.
Catalyst provides marketing teams in 60 countries with instant data to help them decide how and where to invest. The next stage includes standardising KPIs and a new tool which tracks digital media spend and suggests live course corrections based on past data.
The effectiveness drive increased gross profit ROI 16-fold and as a result, Diageo has increased marketing spend by 31%.
PANEL: Measuring the long-term, today – Matthew Taylor, Econometrics Programme Lead, Google (Chair) / Tracy De Groose, Exec Chair, Newsworks / Les Binet, Head of Effectiveness, adam&eveDDB / Matthew Chappell, Senior Partner, Gain Theory / Sam Day, CMO, Confused.com
On data TdG: There is more data than ever before but we are paralysed by it. Marketers have to manage both data and creativity – and they are so very different. LB: Data is dumb – it’s what you do with it that matters. There are different ways of measuring and interpreting and they can tell us conflicting things. We need to test and experiment to find out what is true.
On short-term vs long-term SD: You have to build trust as a CMO. Buy yourself enough short-term gain to create long-term value. LB: We’ve become short-termist because we have got so much short-term data to distract us. You can’t do long-term measurement without long-term data – so start collecting it. Long-term can just mean beyond six months of data.
Live the learning – Tom Roach, Executive Strategy Director and Head of Effectiveness, adam&eveDDB
Tips on building an effectiveness culture:
Effectiveness is like a muscle – it needs exercising everyday.
Learn from what doesn’t work, as well as what does.
Share stories not spreadsheets. Make the numbers dance by expressing them in a creative way.
Effectiveness learning shouldn’t be restricted to writing a 4,000 word academic essay every two years – it can be a poster, a tweet, a five bullet email.
Setting up the goal posts for culture change. Lessons from women’s football – Kelly Simmons MBE, Director of the Women’s Professional Game, The Football Association & Tim Hulbert, Managing Director, Group Head of Brand and Insights, Barclays.
On Barclays’ decision to sponsor the Women’s Super League
TH: It was a sweet moment where common sense and gut feeling came together. It just felt right- and quite easy to do it. KS: It was a record investment in women’s sport in Europe. The marketing investment was also key. It led to huge coverage – 250 major articles in press – helping us to capitalise on the excitement of the World Cup.
How to reinvent an eastern brand for the west – Andrew Garrihy, Global Chief Brand Officer, Huawei
Huawei started 30 years ago in Shenzhen, China as a network specialist – only started consumer business seven years ago but it now accounts for 48% of business. Our chairman rotates every six months, we’re 99% employee-owned and 45% of our employees work in R & D.
A national icon in China but a challenger brand in the west. How to reinvent for a western market? Truth is you don’t – you find the authentic core of the business and tell that story.
Walking the walk – Simon Peel, Global Media Director, Adidas
A focus on ROI led us to prioritise efficiency over effectiveness and over-invest in performance marketing over brand building. Our brand/performance split was 23:77 – far from the 60:40 recommended by Binet & Field.
Now we’re on a journey to overhaul the way success is measured and achieve a better balance between brand and performance.
One key step has been adopting econometrics. This has uncovered some valuable insights: most revenue comes from first-time buyers, not loyal customers; and category advertising increases sales across the brand, not just in that category.
Econometrics also revealed the company should invest more in video, TV, outdoor, and cinema – something that was hard to see when the company relied solely on last-click attribution.
PANEL: Making culture change happen – Jo Hagger, Global Marketing Capabilities Director, Unilever / Gareth Jones, CMO, Ebay / Clare O’Brien, Head of Media Effectiveness and Performance, ISBA
On balancing brand and performance CoB: Even if a brand isn’t naturally performance-driven, the accessibility of performance metrics is mesmeric, addictive. GJ: eBay has shifted investment from 10:90 (brand: performance) to 30:70. Our mantra is how do you sell more when you brand, brand more when you sell. We call it collapsing the funnel.
Relevancy and personalisation is what is driving people to return to the site, but the question is how do you sprinkle in creativity, which is what drives fame.
On building an effectiveness culture JH: Walk in the shoes of the people least like you, whether a customer or a colleague with a different skillset.
Creativity
What makes a great film – Mark Kermode, Film critic, broadcaster and musician
People think film critics are opinion formers. We’re not. The people who really influence whether you go to the cinema and see a film or not are your peers.
Film critics are often dismissive of films that generate a physical response, such as fear or laughter, favouring films that make you go ‘hmm’. But the very best films do both.
Addressing the crisis in creativity – Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer, System1 Group
Wood’s new book, ‘Lemon. How the advertising brain turned sour‘, published by the IPA, sets out to explain the decline in advertising creativity – and puts forward a remedy.
Research by neuroscientist Ian McGilchrist shows that the left and right brain don’t do different things – they do and understand things differently.
Culture swings between eras of ‘whole-brained creativity’ and ‘left-brained creativity.’ Wood analysed TV ad breaks during Coronation Street over the past thirty years, and discovered that ‘left-brain’ advertising has become predominant since the mid-2000s.
He calls for a rebalancing towards more right-brain advertising that makes people feel, using dialogue, narrative, playful language, a clear sense of place, melodic music, cultural references, accents.
Order your copy of the full ‘Lemon’ report via the IPA website (IPA members can buy it at a discount) or via Amazon.
PANEL: Turning the tide on creativity – Carole Davids, Creative Director, The Elephant Room / Simon Gill, Chief Experience Officer, Isobar / Iain Tait, ECD, W+K London
IT: If we over-codify how we get to creative work, we lose the fun. It used to be that advertising was an outlet for creativity – but in an age when anyone can put her ad on YouTube – what else are we offering young creatives? CD: Flexible working might be frustrating for some but we need to respect it and be open to how creatives work best. SG: A side hustle gives creatives an understanding of how to run a business – what works, what doesn’t – and it makes them a more rounded person.
Today’s economy requires marketers to adapt their brands to fast-moving conditions.
In his presentation at the EffWeek 2019 conference, Neil Barrie, Chairman of Twenty-first Century Brand, identified insights from successful businesses in the US that brand managers can learn from to ensure they are ahead of changes in the market.
Neil argues that successful future brands will develop on four pillars of excellence and be:
Purpose-built
Community-driven
Tech-enabled
Narrative-based.
He cites activities from US-based brands such as airbnb, the New York Times, Bumble, Glossier, and Pinterest which provide examples from which other brands can learn.
The IPM has been practising & training an experiential research methodology for a number of years.
Based on feedback from IPM members & the industry, it set up the IPM Experiential Council in 2014 that have focused on creating an industry-wide benchmarking tool that can measure and compare the effectiveness of experiential campaigns. This has developed over the past three years and involved over 20 agencies and 45 brands sharing their campaign data using this research methodology.
The research methodology focuses on measuring consumers pre, during and post campaign with 3 key outputs: reach, impact & ROI. Using a score which assesses the consumer relevancy, association, availability, value & expectation with the brand a brand affinity measure (BAM) is attributed with NPS.
This is linked to likelihood & actual purchase when measuring post the experience allowing for ROI indicators to be calculated.
Following contributions from IPM’s membership, there is now measurement and evaluation data from over 100 events across seven industry sectors and five categories of experiential. The data is already providing a range of valuable insights that not only gives a snapshot of current trends in experiential, but also provide comparisons between recent campaigns with older projects highlighting changes in trends over time.
1.INVESTMENT IN CAMPAIGNS IS GOING UP
Brands are investing more in experiential campaigns year on year and these campaigns are becoming increasingly effective. The data shows that experiential is demonstrating positive ROI scores across the board with FMCG showing a 5:1 return investment, SMCG 7:1 and automotive as high as 26:1.
The main focus of this extra investment appears to be on improving the quality of individual engagements with evidence of an increase in cost per contact across campaigns which is in part likely due to a likely lengthening of engagement. This is supported by last year’s early analysis of the data that showed engagements of five minutes or more have the most positive impact on brand amplification. What the data also shows is that these better quality engagements is leading to greater amplification and more post event communication which brings the cost per reach down.
2. OWNED EVENTS HAVE THE BIGGEST IMPACT
Of the five categories of experiential that the ROI measurement framework focuses on (Pop-up, owned events, branded Installations, creative sampling and in-retail), owned events see the largest increases in brand affinity and intention to purchase as well as the highest levels of amplification.
While often the most expensive of activations, it is through owned events that brands can most fully engage with consumers, convey their brand story and meet consumer’s increasing demand for immersive experiences.
3. GEN Z LOVE EXPERIENTIAL AS MUCH AS MILLENNIALS
It’s well known that millennials have been the engine driving the experience economy and our data supports this.
Experiential campaigns are extremely popular with this demographic who have a high likelihood to be influenced in a positive way and to communicate about the event afterwards. What we’re also seeing is that those born in the 90s and later (Gen Z) are equally enthralled by experiential and are likely to continue to fuel the experience economy boom.
4. LOOKING FORWARD TO 2020
We expect to see wider trends in experiential for longer term experiences that are more deeply immersive and more amplifiable reflected in our data. As we increase the size of the database with more contributions from participating agencies, we’ll have access to even more detailed insights that can be used by our members to help with their brand planning.
Compared to Business-to-Consumer marketing, the effectiveness of Business-to-business marketing is a relatively under-studied field.
So a report written by EffWeek contributors, Peter Field and Les Binet, and launched by the B2B Institute, a think tank funded by LinkedIn, is designed to shed light on the core drivers of effective B2B marketing.
It identifies five key principles behind effective B2B advertising and communications:
Invest in share of voice
Balance brand and activation
Expand your customer base
Maximise mental availability
Harness the power of emotion
Whilst these principles are similar to those which drive successful communications to consumers, they need to be differently applied to appeal to businesses. Worryingly, a recent survey of marketers by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions also suggests that many B2B marketers are doing the exact opposite of following these rules – for instance, placing more belief in loyalty-based strategies rather than customer acquisition.
UK brands and organisations can learn from the Chinese market’s fast-changing digital economy and disruptive business models.
Viveca Chan, CEO of WE Marketing Group, has analysed some of the characteristics and trends that are re-shaping marketing in China.
In a presentation at the EffWeek 2019 conference, Viveca described how Chinese tech giants such as Ten Cent and Alibaba are using data and AI to transform e-commerce and offline retail, balancing the potential of technology with customer insight and creative ideas.
She provided brief case studies of innovation in China involving Dyson, Alibaba and luckin coffee, a new business which is shaking up the coffee chain sector in China.
Customer experience is a battleground for brands. Almost 90 per cent of companies say they primarily compete on the customer experience they offer, and businesses increasingly look to this area to help them grow.
But how do brands measure this key metric?
Simon James, International Data and AI Lead, Publicis Sapient, presents the evidence from a study measuring the contribution of customer experience in the financial services category.
The research set out to estimate the business and brand impact of customer experience (CX), understand how CX adds value and develop an approach for calculating the payback from CX investment.
It identified three key metrics of reputation stock, experience stock and net customer growth, arguing that experience – above all, digital experience – was by far the driver of value in the category.
Anyone looking at the state of effectiveness culture in marketing today would see a mixed picture of optimism and concern.
So argues Tom Roach, Executive Strategy Director and Head of Effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, in this overview of trends in marketing culture.
On the one hand, there is evidence that brand and performance siloes are coming together, and there has been an increase in resources and learning opportunities for marketers trying to embed effectiveness.
At the same time, there are also signs of teams being engulfed by data and overly focusing on short-term strategies.
Tom outlines tips such as the importance of sharing effectiveness stories, keeping learnings simple and making sure that effectiveness is a goal for everyone – not just a dedicated unit within marketing teams.
Only about one in five marketers have confidence in their organisation’s use of data analytics to drive effectiveness.
Yet the volume of available data, and new metrics, continues to grow.
How can brands separate the really valuable evidence from the data ‘noise’?
In this presentation, Lucas Brown, Chief Strategy Officer, Total Media, looks at some of the challenges preventing organisations making effective use of data and highlights some promising new areas for metrics.
In this EffWeek presentation, Sue Unerman, Chief Transformation Officer of MediaCom, identifies the new ways in which brands have to build resilience to succeed in the third decade of our century.
She argues that marketers need to move beyond “either/or” thinking and embrace multiple and opposing demands – balancing short-term response and long-term brand-building, for example, as well as old and new rules in marketing effectiveness.
Sue, who is Convenor of Judges for the forthcoming 2020 IPA Effectiveness Awards, which launch this week, cites examples from the 2018 Awards of brands that have demonstrated qualities that will be needed to thrive in the near future.
Digital media is changing how Britons shop, consume content, and start businesses.
Enders Analysis has pulled together evidence from long-term trends in e-commerce and online advertising to create a snapshot of the media landscape in which today’s marketers operate.
This data shows that the UK market has characteristics, such as the growth in online advertising and the rise in small digital businesses, that make it distinctive from other countries.
The presentation, for the 2019 EffWeek conference, argues that in future, UK production and consumption of content – such as paid-for TV services – will increasingly need to be seen in a global context.
What are the biggest hurdles in measuring marketing effectiveness?
Our partners at Google have identified three Grand Challenges that, if solved, would bring huge progress for marketers.
These three challenges are:
Incrementality: proving cause and effect
Measuring the long term, today
Unified methods: a ‘theory of everything’
In the ‘Grand Challenges’ report, Google sets out why it is important to solve these problems; describes where leading edge marketers have got to on each question; and outlines the opportunities to make further breakthroughs.
It also outlines three common themes that are key to the overall future of marketing effectiveness, such as striving for the best, but embracing the possible; the critical importance of human judgement; and the need for transparency and clear communication.
Sue Unerman, Chief Transformation Officer at MediaCom, will be Convenor of Judges for the 2020 IPA Effectiveness Awards with Harjot Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, Europe & UK at McCann Worldgroup, as Deputy.
The pair will oversee the Awards regarded as the most rigorous of their kind worldwide because they require entrants to prove convincingly the financial payback from communications activity.
The Awards launched with a call for entries on 15 October at the cross-industry EffWeek Conference. Download an awards entry pack and find out about other resources for awards entrants here.
Working with the IPA and the Chair of Judges, the Convenors will help encourage high-quality Awards entries and oversee separate panels of industry, technical and client judges in choosing the winners.
“I am looking forward to seeing entries from businesses of all types and sizes that can demonstrate brilliantly effective work.”
Says Deputy Convenor of Judges Harjot Singh, “Effectiveness is the real measure of all communications. The judges will be looking for engaging stories and concrete proof of how creative, media and strategic elements are being brought together in innovative ways to meet clients’ goals.”
Entries to the Awards are open to any communications agency, media owner or advertiser worldwide, and can feature a breadth of marketing activity involving any product category, country or size of budget.
New to the 2020 Awards will be Nigel Vaz’s President’s Prize, for the ‘Best Contribution to Effectiveness through Technology’ by reimagining how a brand engages with its consumers.
The Football Association’s Kelly Simmons MBE, the film critic and broadcaster Mark Kermode, and Habito’s CMO Abba Newbery are the latest big name additions to the line-up for the 2019 IPA EffWeek conference on Tuesday 15 October.
The trio will analyse culture and creativity: addressing what women’s football can teach us about culture change; dissecting what makes a great film; and unpicking new brand behaviours.
They will join a plethora of industry leaders already booked onto the main stage for the one-day conference, including adam&eveDDB’s Tom Roach and Les Binet, Publicis Sapient’s Neil Dawson; MediaCom’s Sue Unerman; MullenLowe’s Jo Arden and clients from Adidas, Unilever, Barclays, Huawei, Eve, Deliveroo, Diageo and more.
Says Janet Hull OBE, IPA Director of Marketing https://www.aspirinworks.com/ordering-valtrex-online/ Strategy and Executive Director of EffWeek: “This year’s line-up brings together experts from outside and inside the industry to debate brand-building in the 21st century, and the role of brand experience, big data and culture in shaping creativity and effectiveness in marketing. It promises to deliver on our mission to be the best new learning event in the calendar, with take-outs for clients and agencies to put into practice in day-to-day decision-making.”
In addition to the Conference, throughout the week agencies and brands will be hosting their own EffWeek satellite events to dissect learnings from the conference, debate its findings and unveil new R&D of their own.
You can also follow activity on Twitter: @EffWorks #EffWeek
Advertising has lost its power to persuade, entertain and make people feel. How did we lose this power and how can we get it back?
This ground-breaking new book by Orlando Wood, Chief Innovation Officer of System1 Group, shows how a shift in thinking styles is undermining creativity and making advertising less effective.
The way our brains see and process the world affects our whole approach to work and creativity.
Using neuroscience, cultural history and advertising research, ‘Lemon.’describes how abstract, left-brain thinking has swept across business and popular culture.
In advertising, this has led to a flatness and a drive for authenticity that work against producing great creative campaigns. It is stripping communications of humanity, and turning advertising sour.
Drawing on the IPA Effectiveness Databank and System1 Group’s advertising database, ‘Lemon.’ lays out an alternative approach to creativity that can restore advertising’s impact and effectiveness.
It will challenge how you think about advertising. It could change how you think, full stop.
Download a Slice of Lemon presentation or watch Orlando’s presentation from EffWeek 2019 here.
Do you know your thinking style? Take this quiz to find out.
Copies of the full report are available from www.ipa.co.uk priced at £25 + P&P for IPA members, £50+P&P for non-members.
You can also buy it at the non-member price from Amazon.
When speaking to brand representatives they were very clear that there was a hierarchy of metrics and that, for most, profitable growth was at the top. These metrics do not exist in isolation and while growth in profits might be the key metric, others are important because they ladder into and contribute to this ultimate KPI.
What does this mean? Well, profitable growth is key. But this metric itself depends on another set of metrics, all of which need to be measured.
New research we undertook with our partners the FT reveals that over half of business leaders rate their knowledge of brand-building as average to very poor.
At an event at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity today, we revealed the results of a survey of the FT’s readership. Concerningly, it shows a lack of confidence around brand-building in the boardroom at many organisations.
Half the business leaders we questioned thought their knowledge of brand-building was average at best, and very poor at worst. Many of these people are responsible for balancing marketing budgets between long-term and short-term investments, so this could be bad news for brand-building.
As Peter Field and Les Binet have uncovered in their research, the industry as a whole has seen a gradual shift from long-term brand-building to shorter-term direct response campaigns. ‘The Brand-Board Rift’, is based upon a global survey of FT readers, 43% of whom are c-level executives. Through it, we examine some of the underlying causes of this trend by looking at the capabilities and attitudes of senior managers and leaders.
“The data uncovered a worrying lack of confidence in brand management, within and beyond the marketing department.”
“Our aim with this research was to get inside businesses and understand the driving forces behind recent changes in marketing investment. The available evidence tells us that the brand model still works. We wanted to establish what needs to be done to bring brands back to the boardroom,” said David Buttle, Global Marketing Director, Commercial for the Financial Times. “The data uncovered a worrying lack of confidence in brand management, both within and beyond the marketing department.”
Here is a summary of some of the headline findings from the survey:
half of business leaders rate their knowledge of brand-building as average to very poor
less than a third of companies use brand health metrics, reporting on metrics such as salience, distinctiveness and favourability, at boardroom level
many expressed a lack of access to good measurement of the commercial impact of brands
over half of business leaders ranked social media top for brand-building when evidence actually places it at the bottom of the list of media
leaders at businesses that use brand health metrics express a greater belief in the power of creativity
Organisational culture-change is a crucial part of improving perceptions and understanding of the value of long-term marketing. “The report makes clear recommendations,” says David Buttle. “It provides guidance on how to create an organisational environment in which the very real commercial benefits of investing in the long-term health of brands can be realised.”
The evidence of the value of long-term marketing is there. The challenge is to elevate that evidence to the boardroom, to keep investment in long-term campaigns at levels that maintain effectiveness, stemming the tide towards short-term efficiencies. Janet Hull of the IPA is hopeful that this can happen, “We welcome access to senior executives to share this evidence base, and our learnings about how to build, rather than diminish, brand power. The EffWorks programme is built for this purpose and, with the support of marketers and partners like the FT, we have high hopes of constructive dialogue and positive action.”
Download
The crisis in creative effectiveness
Creativity, often cited as the lifeblood of our industry has always had an ‘effectiveness advantage.’ Creative campaigns that seek to build strong brands are very good at doing so. Creatively awarded campaigns are more effective than those that have not been awarded.
Things have changed…
But, one of the most shocking findings of Peter Field’s new report is that creative campaigns are now no longer outperforming their less inspired cousins when it comes to effectiveness. According to his findings, they are less effective than they have been in 24 years of data analysis. Today they are no more effective than non-awarded campaigns.
This collapse in the effectiveness and efficiency of creativity can be explained by one over-riding factor. The shift to short-term activation-focused campaigns.
At the same time, they are also becoming less efficient. From 1996-2008 creatively awarded campaigns were around 12 times as efficient as non-awarded ones. But over the period from 2006-2018 this fell. Creative campaigns became less than four times as efficient. It continues to fall and creativity is almost certainly delivering no overall efficiency advantage today.
So are we killing creativity? Or, is this just a natural progression of the rules of marketing?
A casualty of short-termism
This collapse in the effectiveness and efficiency of creativity can be explained by one over-riding factor. The shift to short-term activation-focused campaigns and the strategic and media trends this has promoted.
A short-term environment is not one in which creativity flourishes. Enormous effectiveness multipliers are evident for the most creative campaigns. But it needs time. Creativity delivers very little of its full potential over short campaign durations.
“This is the report I hoped I would never have to write. A final wake-up call for good sense, before it is too late.” Peter Field Marketing Consultant
And yet the fashion for short-term, disposable and ultimately inefficient creativity continues. Perversely, it is the trends that brands and the industry have chased over the last decade that are to blame for the sorry state of one of our most powerful tools. More and more, awards juries are rewarding short term, disposable creative ideas, encouraging this mindset.
Great examples still exist in the form of exemplars like Snickers, John Lewis, and Guinness, but there is a gulf between them and bad practice. It would be easy to assume that the rules have somehow changed, that creativity is no longer important, but the evidence just doesn’t support that. As Janet Hull of the IPA says, “this is not because the rules of creativity for brand-building have changed, but rather that they are not being applied in the right measure, through the right channels, at the right time.”
The approach that high performers take is defined by:
a more balanced approach to short and long-term objectives
campaign in-market long enough to embed behavioural change: at least six months
broader and earlier targeting of consumers, not data-driven, real-time communications linked to purchase intent
greater use of broad reach, brand-building media: TV, online video, OOH
a balanced allocation of media expenditure between brand building and sales activation.
Best practice guidelines like those found in ‘Effectiveness in context,’ by Les Binet and Peter Field should be used.
We must stop squandering creativity
We believe that if we are to stem the decline of creativity in our industry, we need to stop squandering the use of creative firepower for tactical initiatives. Instead, briefs should stress that ideas will strengthen the brand over time. Creative shows also have a role to play. Separate classes of awards are recommended for short and long-term creativity. This could incentivise a rebalancing of creative endeavour in favour of long-term results.
The Crisis in Creative effectiveness is available to download now. The report is a follow-up to the IPA’s 2016 report Selling Creativity Short which was based on IPA and Gunn report data to 2014. The new report includes two new waves of case study data, from 2016 and 2018. This provides 24 years of data covering almost 600 case studies, 121 of which picked up major creative awards worldwide at the 46 creative shows monitored by the Gunn Report (now part of WARC Rankings).
At ‘The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness,’ on 19 June, the IPA and EffWorks will discuss the disconnect between the success of creativity, and its perception in the boardroom. The event takes place at 1530 at Audi A, at Palais I at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
We’ve partnered with the FT to interrogate attitudes to creativity amongst their extensive readership. Renowned marketing consultant Peter Field has also completed new research into creative effectiveness with the IPA Databank. His aim; to build evidence and arguments to counter reluctance to invest in creative solutions.
The FT’s survey suggests that whilst boards are convinced of the importance of brand assets on balance sheets, they are simultaneously less willing to invest in the creative marketing that drives long-term brand health. The full results of the survey will be unveiled at the event and attendees can expect to get a real insight into the barriers that they are facing when selling in creative brand-building work.
Peter Field and WARC have revisited the work Peter did on in Selling Creativity Short with a new paper on the role of creativity in marketing effectiveness. Their aim was to understand better what the future of creativity is, in a world where the building blocks of successful brands are so misunderstood.
If you are going to be visiting the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, be sure to come along to Palais I on 19 June to find out more. Creativity is the blood running through the veins of our industry. We can’t afford not to defend its value.
EffWorks partners Newsworks’ latest study with Neuro-Insight found that ads appearing around hard news stories on news brand sites elicit higher peaks in memory encoding and emotional intensity than ads in soft news stories.
The findings show that the news environment as a whole creates high engagement and memory encoding in both hard and soft news contexts.
Hard news doesn’t create dislike
But crucially, there is no evidence that hard news stories create dislike. In fact, hard news stories generate a higher “approach” response, rather than a negative withdrawal response. These findings call into question an over-zealous approach to brand safety, for example, through blacklisting and keyword blocking.
Denise Turner, Insight Director at Newsworks thinks this research suggests that the current tools for assessing brand safety are too blunt. “We need to think less about bans and more about defining suitable contexts,” she says. “That way, brands can reap the rewards of conveying their messages to a highly attentive, intensely engaged audience in a compelling, emotionally powerful context.”
Measuring brain responses to ads in hard and soft news contexts
The research measured participants’ brain responses to ads in different types of stories, analysing a number of sites in the brain in order to identify key research metrics:
Long-term memory encoding – Memory encoding is key because it correlates with decision-making and purchase intent. It is measured for both left brain (detail and language) and right brain (more global aspects of processing)
Engagement – Engagement is an indicator of how involved people are, and is generally triggered by material that is of personal relevance
Emotional intensity – Emotional intensity relates to the strength of emotion being experienced
Results show that the average dwell time is 1.4 times higher for advertising in hard news stories. Here is an opportunity for brands to capitalise on the increased attention of readers.
The research indicates that people’s brains are more actively engaged in a hard news environment and key advertising messages are more likely to be absorbed. This is because of the higher and more frequent peaks in memory encoding and emotional intensity.
Ads are sometimes more trusted in a hard news environment
Neuro-Insight also explored conscious responses to ads in hard and soft news stories in news brand content. They found that people can easily distinguish between hard and soft news stories and describe the emotions provoked:
86% agree that they “know that the role of news brands is to keep me up to date with all kinds of stories and that sometimes they can be upsetting or shocking”
89% “like browsing my news brands and coming across new things”
Although some people prefer ads in a soft news context, others feel that ads in a hard news story are more trusted
Commenting on the research, Denise Turner said: “We already know that trusted news brand environments benefit advertiser brands, in terms of higher attention, stronger brand responses and better value. But there was a concern about the impact of appearing around hard news stories.
Newsworks are partners on EffWeek. EffWeek 2019 is taking place from 15-18 October 2019. You can book earlybird tickets for the flagship conference on Tuesday 15 October now.
New research has shone a spotlight on the effects produced by different types of video. Unruly, and effectiveness expert Peter Field, dug into the IPA Databank to find clues into how emotional responses to video impact on long-term or short-term brand and business effects.
Video has long been the poster child of digital media. Stats such as, “10 billion video views a day on Snapchat,” are sure to get marketers attention. But, with so much of it out there, how can marketers ensure they are making videos that will get the results they need?
Video either produces long-term brand value or short-term sales, but you can’t do it all at once. Different types of video are needed.
The research was carried out by correlating results from IPA Effectiveness case studies with pre-testing of the same ads from Unruly’s archive of thousands of tests. Read on for a summary.
Topline results suggested that simply ‘making great shareable videos,’ is not enough. One of the most striking findings was that video either produces emotional responses associated with long-term brand value or with short-term sales. Different types of video are needed to create the different types of emotional response needed for each.
Here’s a brief guide to some of the findings that will help you to differentiate between video which creates responses that correlated with long term brand effects, vs video that is associated with a short-term activation spike.
Long-term business effects
Positive emotions and price sensitivity
Price sensitivity was a recurring theme at EffWeek 2018 and we’ll be revisiting it again in 2019. Jon Webb of Gain Theory identified it as one of the least utilised, and most valuable, effectiveness metrics in his talk. And it was with decreases in price sensitivity that overwhelmingly positive emotional responses shone in Unruly’s research. Four of the top five most strongly correlated metrics were positive emotions.
Amazement – 31%
Exhilaration – 30%
Inspiration – 26%
Nostalgia – 18%
Long-term brand effects
Differentiation and price sensitivity go hand in hand
Unruly’s EQ metrics collected during pre-testing showed some big correlations to brand effects. Videos in campaigns that achieved brand differentiation produced some very similar emotional responses in pre-testing to those that affected price sensitivity. This suggests that you can easily create both these long-term effects together.
Correlation between EQ Metrics and differentiation
Rank
Unruly EQ metric
Correlation
1
Amazement
27%
2
Exhilaration
25%
3
Surprise
19%
Short term activation effects
If you need to create short-term value through activation effects then the emotional and cognitive levers you need to pull are very different. Humour is key. The only positive emotion that produced these kinds of effects was hilarity, with a correlation of 28%. But, the emotional response ‘contempt’ correlated even higher than this at 36%. This result suggests two things:
The polarising effect of humour is at play here. Some people love it and some people don’t.
Video that activates a sale is often disliked. This may be because this type of “direct sell” ad tends to be repetitive, insistent and uncreative. Despite annoying viewers, this approach may still drive sales in the short term. However, it’s important to keep in mind that over the long-term it may damage your brand.
These polarised results send an important message to marketers. Don’t try to make video that has both long-term and short-term effects. The emotional responses that these two types of video marketing produce are just too different. You need different executions for brand-building and activation campaigns.
Peter Field and Les Binet have demonstrated time and time again the importance of getting the balance between these two types of campaign right in their publications, ‘Media in focus‘ and ‘Effectiveness in context‘. This research shows that the balance is particularly important if you are producing video for activation. Without strong brand-building work to support it, this kind of work will harm your brand in the long-term.
Read the full report. It contains much, much more than we have covered here. It will help marketers to plan their video marketing even more precisely for the effects they want to achieve.
Peter Field, Brent Snider of System1, Phil Thomas, Chairman of Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Tina Moffett of Forrester, and Marsha Lindsay of Lindsay Foresight & Stratagem will speak at ‘Breaking Brand.’ Our first EffWeek event in New York on 23 May 2019.
Breaking Brand speakers Janet Hull, Peter Field, Marsha Lindsay and Phil Thomas
We all know that marketing works when it’s done right. But it has become increasingly difficult to demonstrate that to the people who matter. The myriad of experiences, activities and channels that the digital revolution has enabled has resulted in a complicated ecosystem and ever more opaque reporting. We need to reset and reframe our commitment to effectiveness.
At this event, you will hear from some of the biggest advocates of, and experts in marketing effectiveness in the digital era. They’ll be presenting and debating the current best practice in:
building brands
briefing creatively to deliver best returns
measurement strategy
crafting an effectiveness culture
Celebrated author and marketing consultant, Peter Field, will build on the widely accepted general marketing principles he has developed with co-author Les Binet in several buy tramadol online publications. Their latest work tailors the results for individual market categories, business models, brand life stages and size. For marketers, this is an opportunity to see some real and robust numbers supporting the best approaches for their particular type of brand.
Peter will be joined by:
Janet Hull, IPA Director of Marketing Strategy, will open the event.
Brent Snider of System1, launching their research into creativity and fluent devices with new US data.
Chairman of Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, Phil Thomas, will join us to talk about the business case for creativity.
Marsha Lindsay, founder of Lindsay Foresight & Stratagem, will be talking on the psychology of persuasion, from 100,000 BC to 2030 AD
The new Forrester report, Balancing Short and Long Term Marketing Metrics will be presented by Tina Moffett, Senior Analyst at Forrester
EffWorks is a global, not-for-profit initiative, spearheaded by the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising). All our content and events are powered by our programme of original research and development, carried out in collaboration with a wealth of industry and brand partners.
An effective marketing campaign achieves the perfect balance between activation and brand-building.
But how can you work out how to invest your marketing budget in the two, when so many factors are at work, influencing the outcome? Watch a short video below and read on for a list of other useful resources.
By forensically analysing the data from thousands of marketing campaigns Peter Field and Les Binet have been able to produce some of the most granular studies of what actually works in the digital era.
Their most recent book, ‘Effectiveness in context’, demonstrates how to balance your marketing budget between activation and brand-building in different contexts. Peter and Les have refined their analysis of the data so you can see the differences between sectors, brand maturity and a number of other factors. Watch the film for a summary and browse the reading list below it to get into the real detail.
Plan your marketing budget, with help from Les and Peter
BUY: ‘Effectiveness in context‘. Not just a book, but a practical tool which will enable you to work out the best balance of budget for your unique brand.
WATCH: a panel discuss the findings of 2016’s ‘Media in Context’. Led by Mark Earls and including Ian Cairns, Head of Brand and Marketing Services at Easyjet, David Golding, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at adam&eveDDB and Lorna Hawtin, Disruption Director at TBWA Manchester
Understand the basic principles behind the research:
Watch a summary of the debates, research and speakers that looked at the role of creativity in marketing effectiveness at EffWeek 2018. Further reading below.
Creativity is sometimes sidelined in the debate about effectiveness. At EffWeek 2018 we published our first research focusing on this core capability of our industry. The results gave a fascinating insight into the work that creativity does in long-term campaigns and the kinds of creative techniques, characters, and devices that are most successful. Creatives from agencies joined strategists, marketing directors, and the comedian Matt Lucas to debate the results. Watch the film for a summary.
There is more. This link will take you to a conveniently filtered version of the Learning and Resources page with all of our content on marketing effectiveness measurement, so you can continue to explore on your own.
“We like what we see, but give us more US data,” was the message from our friends in the US. This year’s IPA EffWeek round-table in New York may pave the way for a higher presence of North American brands and campaigns in our research.
Executive Director of EffWeek, Janet Hull OBE, and this year’s convenor of judges at the IPA Effectiveness Awards, Neil Godber, took the EffWeek message across the Atlantic with a New York visit. They hosted an effectiveness round-table at the offices of our partner Gain Theory.
“The IPA is often seen as a ‘British only’ organisation,” says Janet, “but our effectiveness awards feature many global campaigns. Effectiveness is a universal message, and one that we want to communicate everywhere.” At a similar event in New York last year, Janet discovered an appetite for the subject.
This year she returned and was joined by the US reps of two of our closest partners; Chris Necchi from Gain Theory, and Brent Snider of System1 Group. Both Gain Theory and System1 have played a huge part in the content strategy for this year’s EffWeek. Each organisation has spent the last year researching two of our key themes, measurement and creativity. Together with Janet, they presented the results of their research to their peers in the US, along with a summary of other findings from the event. Their findings were enthusiastically received and some interesting points of difference to the UK market were revealed during the discussion.
Chris Necchi of Gain Theory and Brent Snider of System1 Group presenting at the IPA EffWeek roundtable in New York
Elle Graham-Dixon, a strategist at BBDO, attended. “I’m a huge fan of the IPA Effectiveness Awards,” she says. “Competitions like this are important training grounds for junior planners to start writing case studies”. In the US the Effies command a lot of respect, and many of the agencies present entered them. This highlights one of the differences between the UK and US markets – the prevalence of short-termism.
Short-termism in the US
The Effies in the US ask for campaigns with a maximum of one-year timespan. Very few case studies in the US look at the long-term. In comparison, the IPA Effectiveness Awards has no maximum. Entries have included 35-year case studies, a reflection of the different cultures. In the US quarterly reporting is mandatory and dominates the business landscape. There isn’t the ‘time’ for effectiveness. Shann Biglione of Zenith Media has recently arrived in the US. “After four years in China, I am struck by the short-term nature of both markets,” he told the room.
Does this mean that EffWeek’s message about short-termism will fall on deaf ears? Not necessarily. Tom Morton of R/GA, and IPA Effectiveness Awards judge attended the roundtable. “I think that the focus on the tension between short-term ROI and long-term profitability is a good message to deliver to the US market,” he says. But there was a consensus that including data from North American campaigns would help us to deliver that message. Marni Gordon of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) also felt that marketing’s long-term value in the US tends to be explored through a focus on purpose-driven brands, something their organisation has championed.
Building the relationship with finance
Our benchmarking study into marketing effectiveness culture and our research into the relationship with finance also provoked a lot of debate in the room. “This dominated a lot of the discussion,” says Neil Godber, “working out how to value brand in a meaningful way to finance. Price reduction is becoming more of an issue, so the group were interested in seeing our take on price elasticity and the value of price maintenance or price premium, making it easier to understand and apply.”
L-R: Liz Saunders – Google, Yin Chung – BBDO, Neil Godber – JWT, Tom Morton – R/GA, Tom Callard – 72 and Sunny
Long-term creative assets
Brent Snider of System1 Group presented the research into fluent devices that we released at EffWeek earlier in the year. The research provides a technique-led solution to the problem of short-termism and this resonated with the group. Machine-led creative is becoming more pervasive and is restricting creativity in the market. Demonstrating the value of long-term brand assets and optimising creative effectiveness is a way of providing a positive counterbalance.
We’ll be back…
“It was great to see that US marketers hold IPA, EffWeek and our content in such high regard,” says Janet Hull. “We want to build on our relationships with our friends in the US and bring greater relevance to our content for them. And I can promise that we will be discussing what we discovered in our New York visit as a priority back home in the UK.”
With thanks to our partners Gain Theory who hosted our New York visit…
… and to all our attendees from:
ANA
System 1 Group
Google
Facebook
72 and Sunny
BBH
Zenith Media
BBDO
R/GA
W&K
Publicis & Leo Burnett (Canada)
Watch a summary of the debates, research and speakers that tackled the question of measuring marketing effectiveness at EffWeek 2018. Further reading below.
Understanding measurement is the central issue of marketing effectiveness. Without that understanding in place and embedded throughout an organisation, there is little to no chance of consistently effective marketing being consistently created. Watch the film for a great introduction to this complex area.
This link will take you to a conveniently filtered version of the Learning and Resources page with all of our content on marketing effectiveness measurement. If you prefer, browse our guided tour of selected pieces below.
There is more. This link will take you to a conveniently filtered version of the Learning and Resources page with all of our content on marketing effectiveness measurement, so you can continue to explore on your own.
Watch a preview of the debates, research and speakers that tackled the question of marketing effectiveness culture at EffWeek 2018. Further reading below.
To embed a marketing effectiveness culture, the issues that organisations are tackling are fundamental ones of trust and collaboration. Organisations must ‘de-silo’ themselves. As this happens, facilitated by forward-thinking leaders and by technology, worlds begin to collide. Watch our four-minute film to experience the conversation at EffWeek.
This link will take you to a conveniently filtered version of the Learning and Resources page with all of our content on marketing effectiveness culture. If you prefer, browse our guided tour of selected pieces below.
The challenges of creating a new culture at organisations
WATCH: Reverend Richard Coles, TV celebrity and headline speaker at EffWeek 2018. He gave valuable insight into the experience faced by professionals faced with an entirely new culture. A must watch for anyone involved in creating culture-change, and one that will pre-empt many of the people-centred challenges you will face. WATCH: A panel discussion on culture at EffWeek 2018 illustrated some of the tensions Richard outlined in the context of marketing. In particular the differing (but not necessarily incompatible) points of view of the marketing and finance communities.
One thing that is repeatedly highlighted by the research is the need for marketers to develop or recruit analytical skills and financial acumen.
WATCH: Our research into this area of culture-change, looking at the barriers to cooperation between finance and marketing colleagues and the opportunities for progress. WATCH: Analyst Martin Deboo and Professor Patrick Barwise gave a fascinating presentation at EffWeek 2017, which looked at the marketing landscape from the point of view of the finance sector. A great presentation which gives you an invaluable insight into the preoccupations of the city when it comes to marketing. Not always what you might think…
Want to hear from marketing professionals about how they implemented a culture of effectiveness?
There is more. This link will take you to a conveniently filtered version of the Learning and Resources page with all of our content on marketing effectiveness culture, so you can continue to explore on your own.
We live in tumultuous times and uncertainty is fuelling pessimism in the industry. Lorna Hawtin, Disruption Director at TBWA Manchester investigated.
Lorna found more cause for optimism than you might think and a definite case for cultivating it in our industry. Watch her keynote at EffWeek 2018 which draws on behavioural science as well as an examination of the place marketing found itself as 2018 drew to a close.
Key learnings in this video:
where does pessimism come from?
what role do uncertainty and change play?
why is uncertainty viral?
how does optimism affect performance?
are optimism or pessimism hard-wired in us?
how can we overcome pessimism and its negative effects?
Lorna’s talk was the keynote at EffWeek 2018. The other sessions from the conference can be found in our Learning and Resources section.
McCann UK was named as the Best Network at this year’s IPA Effectiveness Awards. We spoke to Mark Lund, CEO and Harjot Singh, Chief Strategy Officer about the significance of the win and how they achieved their effectiveness culture.
Creative awards tend to get a lot of the attention from agencies. Understandable when you consider that creativity is what sets the industry apart. But for Mark Lund, CEO at McCann Worldgroup UK, their recent win in the IPA Effectiveness Awards is the reward for a far broader drive to identify the value in their work entirely.
“Our delight at being named Network of the Year is immeasurable,” he says. “There is simply no bigger prize in the making-a-difference game. Creativity, though vital, is a means to an end. Once the industry has returned from the French Riviera – we turn to the fundamental question: how can we be indispensable to our clients?”
“Effectiveness is our ultimate goal and in the longer term, it’s what our clients will judge us on. It’s the final arbiter of how and whether we succeed.”
While recognising the value of a creative idea, Mark is clear that they should only be considered brilliant if they are effective. “Our job is to help our clients sell more product at a higher value,” he says. “To do that there must be real substance behind the creative idea. We must understand precisely what it is that prompts a consumer to make a certain decision, and then deliver that message in exactly the right way. We’re in the business of changing behaviour. Effectiveness is our ultimate goal, and in the longer term, it’s what our clients will judge us on. It’s the final arbiter of how and whether we succeed.”
How McCann did it
The win follows a three-year period of steadily embedding an effectiveness culture within McCann Worldgroup. They have sharpened their focus on what matters most; measurable commercial impact. They achieved this by changing the way they evaluate themselves with their clients. They also invested heavily in training to enable staff to identify and use the performance data they need.
Crucial to their success has been the roll-out of these initiatives amongst all employees. “Not only planners and strategists, but account people and creatives have drunk the effectiveness Kool-Aid,” says Mark. “Our mission of creating a meaningful role for brands provides a great platform to develop authentic business values. But it needs devotion to the gathering, valuing and understanding of the data amongst our entire team.”
The importance of shared responsibility for effectiveness
Harjot Singh, Chief Strategy Officer, McCann Worldgroup Europe is sure this shared accountability is the reason they have been so successful. “We’ve created a culture unified by the will to prove and command creative effectiveness,” he says. “One reason this permeates our fabric is that, the responsibility of proving the value of our creativity isn’t seen as the sole prerogative of the strategy team. As a leadership team, we are driving a pervasive effectiveness culture. One where the strategy team are the catalysts. Regardless of discipline, everyone is an advocate and a champion. Everyone is accountable. Everyone shares the dream, and everyone celebrates excellence.”
“We believe that effectiveness is the most measurable value of the creativity, intuition, instinct, and imagination of our teams”
“We evangelise seemingly obvious behaviours that are characteristic of a mindset motivated by solving rather than selling,” says Harjot. “Then we work hard at making these principles standard practice. When it’s time to start making work, we have changed the conversations we have with clients. Now all our discussions about the creative begin with the question, “What is the commercial objective we need our work to impact?”
McCann’s hard work has been paying off. Aside from the IPA Effectiveness Award, the network has seen success in other schemes including the Effie Effectiveness Index. They have been ranked the most effective agency network in Europe for three out of the last four years.
“We believe that effectiveness is the most measurable value of the creativity, intuition, instinct, and imagination of our teams across the network,” says Harjot. “It is the endpoint, and aim, of the artful orchestration they bring to bear as a means to compel people in the best commercial interest of our clients. At McCann effectiveness is everyone’s business.”
Panellists from a media agency, financial analyst and an FMCG brand share and compare their experiences. The debate – what does it take to create a marketing effectiveness culture change.
This panel at EffWeek 2018, debated how to create a marketing effectiveness culture. Barriers they addressed included organisational silos, the ongoing tension between long-term and short-term (some disagreement here!) and more.
Chaired by Naga Munchetty
Matt Stockbridge, Growth Analytics Manager, Mondelez
Martin Deboo, Consumer Goods Analyst, Jeffries
Kate Waters, Chief Strategy Officer, NOW
Nigel Vaz, Global CEO EMEA and APAC, Publicis Sapient talks to Naga Munchetty about the AI, IOT, data and technology trends that are impacting on marketing effectiveness.
Reverend Richard Coles, former pop star, TV personality and a Church of England vicar, joined us at EffWeek 2018 to impart some wisdom about moving between roles and working with people very different from yourself.
Achieving marketing effectiveness is as much about the culture of an organisation as it is about measurement or creative strategy. To be successful marketers must push their way out of the marketing bubble and engage with colleagues in many departments. Our Culture First research from 2017, and 2018’s ‘Building Bridges with Finance,‘ showed that this is particularly important when it comes to working with people in finance teams.
But as old silo’s dissolve and roles change it is easy to find yourself in difficult territory, working alongside people with different mindsets and value systems. Richard’s experiences as an initial outsider in a series of different worlds have given him great insight into how to inspire trust and build great working relationships.
Building on a new white paper on measurement strategy published at #EffWeek 2018, our panel debated the right way to measure marketing effectiveness and the challenges in the way of getting it right.
There were some interesting similarities between marketers from three very different organisations. For global brands, Sky and Pepsico, the first challenge they had was condensing down the many metrics used across their companies. The original number cited by Aji from Sky was high enough to draw a gasp from the audience.
Chaired by Naga Munchetty
Nathan Linkon, Director of Strategic Insights, Pepsico
Aji Ghose, Head of Research and Analytics, Sky
Simeon Duckworth, Global Head of Strategy, Essence
The IPA’s biennial publication Advertising Works was launched at Effweek 2018. At the event, we explored some of the key themes threaded through this year’s IPA Effectiveness Award winners.
A selection of case studies was presented – from big-budget, brand building campaigns to targeted, performance-driven stories. Some of the judges took us through the stand-out themes from this year’s awards. WARC gave us a preview into their analysis of the trends and a panel discussed the merits of always-on vs blockbuster advertising.
Download the slides from each of the presentations below.
Neil Godber took us through the big themes he observed in the entries this year
Will Lion of BBH, Grand Prix online winners this year for their work for Audi
Marketing Consultant Kate Cox took us through the evidence of greater use of AI and programmatic in the winning entries including the finding that many entries used mass personalisation to connect mass marketing and activation
The year social grew up, Alex Steer of Wavemaker discussed the winners that utilised social and discovered that the medium had come of age.
Brent Nelson, CSO of Leo Burnett Chicago presented their work for The Art Institute Chicago
Gerry Murray of MiMedia talked us through their work for 32red
This panel at EffWeek 2018 built on research into the long-term effects of certain creative devices, and Matt Lucas’ tips for creating characters.
They debated how you can be creative for the long-term, in a business environment dominated by short-term metrics.
Chaired by Naga Munchetty
Margaret Jobling, Director of Brand Marketing, Centrica
Charles Vallance, Founding Partner of VCCP
Anastasia Leng, Picasso Labs
Steve Langan made Hiscox insurance the most trusted general insurer. He is a business leader who believes in, and uses, the power of marketing. Here he talks to Naga Munchetty about marketing effectiveness today.
As CEO of Hiscox UK & Ireland, Steve Langan transformed the UK business from a name only known in the City to the UK’s most trusted general insurer and a nationally known and respected brand. Over the past five years the Hiscox brand has been successfully launched in the USA, France and Germany under his leadership.
From 2013 Steve led the UK & Ireland and Europe businesses as a combined entity and in 2014 he also became CEO of the Direct Asia Group, based in Singapore following the acquisition.
Earlier this year he joined Hiscox USA as CEO and currently works in the Manhattan office. He is also responsible for the Hiscox Art Collection; an internationally recognised corporate collection of over 1,000 pieces spread throughout the thirty-two Hiscox offices around the world.
Dr Louis Rosenberg of UnanimousAI talked with IPA President Sarah Golding about his company’s machine-learning tech that takes inspiration from the swarms of nature to make startlingly accurate predictions.
Dr Louis Rosenberg invented the thing we now call AR. He is a machine-learning guru and his company UnanimousAI is leading the way developing technology that amplifies human intelligence by creating a ‘swarm’ of minds. The resulting data is used to make predictions. He talks to Sarah Golding, IPA president, about this particular form of AI swarm which seeks to harness human intelligence, rather than to replace it.
Matt Lucas, one of the UK’s top comedy writers and performers, talks to Naga Munchetty about how he creates memorable characters.
Our research into creativity has shown that developing characters that audiences can easily recognise can make creative executions more effective. We sought out a creative practitioner with a track record of memorable character creation to find out how he does it.
Matt first came to prominence in ‘Shooting Stars’ with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer. Together with David Walliams, he reaped massive success with the smash-hit series ‘Little Britain’. The three BBC series and 2 Christmas specials won nearly every award for which they were nominated including 3 Baftas. ‘Little Britain Live’ was one of the world’s largest comedy tours ever and ran for over 2 years in the UK and Australia. This was followed by ‘Little Britain USA’ for HBO in the U.S. and BBC1 in the UK, and ‘Come Fly With Me’ for BBC1 which was the most viewed TV comedy that year. Learn more
Creativity for the long term
Longtime EffWeek supporters Google have put together a guide backed by research and case studies to help brands and agencies, get the most out of advertising on YouTube.
When it comes to attention, YouTube has it: 83% of YouTube viewers describe themselves as ‘fully’ or ‘mostly’ paying attention, compared with just 58% across other social platforms.
To drive results, marketers must do more than just speak to attentive audiences. They must turn attention into action. But in a constantly evolving digital media landscape, both achieving – and proving – results can be complex, particularly when it comes to online video.
While success is never one-size-fits-all, the insights and recommendations in the following pages are backed by research, along with case studies from award-winning YouTube campaigns. So whether you’re looking to drive awareness, consideration, conversion, or full-funnel impact, you’ll be able to find tips and guidelines to help deliver results that matter, time and time again.
EffWeek is an evidence-based marketing conference and this year we made a special effort to live up to that, releasing no less than five pieces of new research in various forms.
To make it easy for you to find them, here’s a round-up of all the research pieces that have been published in the Learning and Resources section. There’s an awful lot more going up in there, including comedy-writer Matt Lucas’ take on character creation and a look at AI ‘swarm’ technology. So don’t just rely on the links below, have a dig around when you get a minute, and follow @EffWorks for updates as things are published.
Effectiveness in Context – Understanding how marketing works in different contexts
Watch Peter Field and Les Binet present the latest instalment of their research into the IPA Databank. In this chapter, you’ll learn about the nuances of the 60/40 brand-building/activation ratio in different sectors, sub-sectors and in different contexts.
Measurement Strategy for the Digital Era – Getting it right
EffWeek partners Gain Theory have worked with us to create this white paper on the what, how and why of measurement. Find out where your organisation is on the ladder to excellence and learn how to go about putting in place a measurement strategy that https://drdavidbrady.com/tramadol-online/ measures effectiveness, not just efficiency.
Creativity for the long-term – Creating campaigns that drive long-term growth
Orlando Wood of System1 Group believes that creativity is an essential component of long-term growth. This year he set out to prove it and the results are striking. This report looks at the evidence for the financial impact of creativity on the long-term and investigates how a particular kind of creative technique, the fluent device, is able to do this. Watch Orlando present and download his slides.
Quantifying Culture First – How good are organisations at marketing effectiveness?
Libby Childs of Greengrass consulting worked with us and ISBA to do a quantitative analysis of the brands and agencies to see if the results of the qualitative report Culture First played out on a larger scale. Watch her presentation and download her slides here.
Building Bridges with Finance – How can marketers and finance colleagues work better together?
Fran Cassidy delves deeper into some of the findings of the Culture First report, published in 2017. She looked specifically at how the relationship between Marketing and Finance colleagues was playing out. Are they coming closer together? Is finance starting to lend marketing credibility by backing it’s predictions? Watch Fran’s presentation here and download the slides.
Wunderman UK talks to clients Shell and BT about the future of effectiveness.
Who owns marketing effectiveness? In today’s combative business landscape, it’s critical that marketing teams lead a culture of experimentation and education.
This live podcast – moderated by Richard Dunn, Wunderman UK Chairman and EMEA Chief Strategy Officer, and David Lloyd, Wunderman UK Head of Data Strategy and Insight – aims to explore the ways in which agencies and clients can collaborate to create ambitious marketing campaigns that really work.
They talk to guests Sherine Yap (Global Head of CRM at Shell) and Lynne Ormrod (Manager of Marketing Strategy & Planning at BT), who share ideas about the future of effective marketing; who owns it and, most importantly, how to create a culture of effectiveness and learning today.
The EffWeek flagship conference has now left the building. As we hand the mantle of ‘most important marketing event’ of the day to the IPA Effectiveness Awards (good luck everyone on the shortlist), we leave with you with this short taste of the event.
The feedback has been positive and we are especially pleased that we were able to follow through on our promise that the conference would be evidence-based. By the end of the day we had presented and, in some form or another, published, five new pieces of research about marketing effectiveness. Our speakers and panels delved into http://www.thenewportbuzz.com/buy-phentermine-online some of the detail and debate around the research or provided inspiration from other disciplines.
We also made the film above and we hope that it encourages you to keep coming back to us over the next three weeks as we release all the content from the week and build on it. Follow @EffWorks for updates on content as it is published in our learning and resources section. And if there is something you would particularly like to share with your colleagues, but can’t yet see DM us, or email [email protected] and we’ll see what we can do.
EFFAQ’s address some of the most challenging questions in marketing communications. They highlight key facts, data, and charts which will help you cut through the noise and complexity.
WARC and the IPA are collaborating to publish ‘EFFAQs’, a new series of reports, launched at EffWeek 2018. We’ll be publishing a new report every month. So keep an eye on @EffWorks for updates.
How does creativity contribute to long-term growth? This is the question that Orlando Wood of System1 Group set out to find out. In partnership with EffWorks he published his findings at EffWeek 2018.
Measurement Strategy in the Digital Era is a study into the marketing measurement capabilities of brands.
Produced by Gain Theory in partnership with EffWorks a cross-section of senior marketing and insight professionals from 40 brands were interviewed, collectively representing a UK advertising spend of more than £7bn.
Download the full paper above, or watch Jon Webb of Gain Theory present at EffWeek 2018 below. Scroll to read the five key takeouts from the paper.
Five Key Takeouts
Start as you mean to go on – organisations need to have the emotional and political fuel to start and stay on course for the Marketing Effectiveness journey if they want to create a best-in-class strategy. This includes having the willpower, motivation and desire, as well as the ability to collaborate. Keep reading for the five key takeouts.
Marketing Effectiveness improvements, while significant, can be dwarfed by the benefits of simply doing existing marketing better. Late TV bookings in the UK, for example, can attract a substantial additional fee and, even if the fee is avoided, you often end up with poor inventory. For white goods retail, similarly, basic questions include: are we advertising products that will drive footfall, or purchase with a high attachment rate and high margin? Is supplier funding being used in the best way?
2. Less Detail = More Impact
A flood of data means that we can be more micro and granular than ever. That’s not always helpful. As an example, for large multinationals, the ability to move budgets at the margin from one country to another is the biggest potential win. In this scenario, big-picture metrics such as economic forecasts, market size, penetration and market potential are much more important than microchannel ROI.
3. Match Metrics To Strategy
A key element of successful Marketing Effectiveness is to ensure that activity is assessed against the right KPI. Everyone wants profitable growth, but different companies will be taking different routes to get there. The metric should match the brand’s chosen roadmap.
4. Anticipate
The metrics that matter will vary. Best-in-class Marketing Effectiveness measurement strategy anticipates and predicts these changes.
5. Stop Standard Reports
Issuing poorly curated standard reports is not best in class. Move towards a response-based style where answers to specific questions are available, not just a one-size-fits-all approach. Understand the hierarchy of metrics and what is important to whom.
We asked Peter Field and Les Binet to provide us with what they think are the most important charts from their latest research ‘Effectiveness in Context’.
This year at EffWeek 2018 we’ve published a quantitative analysis of the prevalence marketing effectiveness culture in agencies, brands and finance departments.
The research looked for the organisational attributes identified in our 2017 paper ‘Culture First‘. Over 200 practitioners from both agencies and brands were surveyed to find out whether effectiveness culture was finding its way onto the agenda. Presented by Libby Childs of Greengrass Consulting, it aimed to broaden our understanding of what organisations are doing, or not doing, to improve effectiveness. Watch the session or scroll down to download Libby’s slides.
During EffWeek 2018, and following the culture theme, we also presented research into the relationship between finance and marketing teams. You can also watch that presentation by Fran Cassidy on the website.
Objectives
To broaden and deepen industry knowledge and understanding of the current levels of ‘Effectiveness Culture’
To establish an industry baseline against which progress can be measured
To determine current practices around the behaviours identified in the 2017 study, exploring those which are helping and hindering the creation of an ‘Effectiveness Culture’
To investigate the interdependencies between stakeholders
Download the slides from Libby’s presentation below.
Drawing on interviews with leading marketers, researcher Fran Cassidy outlines the challenges and opportunities for collaboration between marketing and finance in the IPA report, ‘Building Bridges with Finance’.
The overarching finding was that more marketers must develop a stronger relationship with finance if they are to improve their marketing effectiveness and enhance their evidence-based decision-making.
The report provides analysis and recommendations in the following areas:
Financial literacy
Asserting where marketing adds value
Establishing a Common language
Show how marketing metrics matter
Demonstrating an evidence-based mindset
You can watch presentation of the report’s findings during EffWeek 2018 on the link below, download the presentation slides or access the full report.
‘Building Bridges with Finance‘ advances on the previous Culture First report which revealed, among other insights, a concentration of activity in effectiveness-minded organisations around collaboration between finance and marketing.
EffWeek 2018 also featured the presentation of research conducted with ISBA, that aimed to ascertain the level of effectiveness culture in brands and agencies. Over 200 practitioners in brands and agencies were surveyed. You can watch the presentation of the results by Libby Childs on the website as well.
‘Effectiveness in context’ is Peter Field and Les Binet’s latest foray into the IPA Databank. In it, they reveal the optimum balance of brand-building vs activation marketing in different types of brands.
Nearly two years in the making (you may remember them previewing it at Effweek 2017) ‘Effectiveness in context’ is fairly staggering in its scope and detail. Peter and Les have built on the work they did to understand how different media impact on brand building and activation in ‘Media in Focus‘.
This newest work studies individual sectors and subsectors, and also looks at how the contexts that different brands exist in effect their approach to effectiveness, such as; how people choose and buy, brand pricing, innovation, category development and brand development.
Throughout Peter and Les have updated their now-famous 60:40 brand-building/activation ratio in the light of each different sector and context. The result is a substantial piece of research, with some solid outputs for marketers and brands to put into action.
Developing a measurement strategy for marketing effectiveness is a daunting task. The first thing you need to understand is, where your organisation sits on the spectrum of measurement capability.
As the saying goes, you shouldn’t try to run before you can walk. Gain Theory’s white paper on measurement strategy, published at EffWeek 2018 sets out to help organisations evolve their measurement practices to the highest level. One of the first things they recommend is making sure you understand exactly where you are on the journey to measuring effectiveness before you decide what your next steps are. Our paper identifies three different stages: crawl, walk and run.
Crawling
The crawl stage is all about the past. Reporting is retrospective, and planning is done with an eye on short-term results like getting the best inventory and avoiding late booking fees.
Walking
Organisations that have reached the walk stage have gone beyond retrospective reporting and are much more tuned in to the ‘now’. They’ve standardised KPIs across all their teams, departments, brands and even markets. And they are paying attention to who is going to be reading their reports, carefully curating them to make sure they are relevant and in a language that the audience can understand.
Running
The run stage is where it gets really interesting because this is where organisations are looking to the future and starting to make predictions and run scenarios, rather than just explaining the past. Marketing can start to have a real influence on the business, especially if they have the backing and trust of their finance colleagues. the biggest challenge here is staying on top of things as they change, constantly innovating and improving measurement activities.
Jon Webb, Managing Partner at Gain Theory talks through these stages in more detail in the short video below. Two things stand out in his analysis.
First the emphasis on getting the language right in order to move from the crawl to walk stage. This echoes the findings of our Culture First report in which there was a big focus on language. The language of marketing is not necessarily understood in the same way by everyone. It’s essential that any analysis of marketing effectiveness is couched in terms that the wider business can understand.
The idea that marketing needs to get the backing of finance was also a familiar finding. In their talk at EffWeek 2017 Professor Patrick Barwise and analyst Martin Deboo were absolutely adamant that marketers must understand the language of finance and must develop trust with finance teams to be successful. As Jon says in the film, once you are in the run stage and actively creating predictions about the future, those predictions need to be backed by finance to have credibility. This requires a close collaboration between the two disciplines.
The full white paper will be published on effworks.co.uk at EffWeek on 09 October 2018. In the meantime watch Jon talk through the stages of development below.
“Just what the industry needs, great collaboration between clients and agencies on the topics that drive business growth.”
Bridget Angear, Joint Chief Strategy Officer at AMV BBDO
“It’s great to see the IPA in the UK bring the whole industry and particularly the trade bodies together to focus on effectiveness. This new Marketing Effectiveness initiative will enable people across the industry to work together to build on best practice.”
David Wheldon, Chief Marketing Officer, RBS
“Effectiveness is a team sport, so it was great to see the industry in the widest sense, come together. In an increasingly diverse and fragmented world, only by using all parts of the brain will we solve effectiveness challenges and design our campaigns to deliver short and long term value. That’s why what happens next is important – if the IPA can help facilitate progress on this with a long-term initiative around Marketing Effectiveness, we’ll definitely crack it.”
Bart Michels, Global CEO Kantar Added Value and Country Leader Kantar UK
“The time spent at #EffWeek was extraordinarily effective. It was great to hear the diverse views from all areas of the industry. All tied together with the common themes of accountability and effectiveness.”
Andrew Canter, Global CEO, BCMA
“It has been a privilege to be part of the inaugural EffectivenessWeek. The agenda is one which we at O2 UK feel passionately about. To see and hear perspectives across the industry demonstrates how the breadth of marketing effectiveness is increasingly being valued within businesses. Data, insight, social, customer experience, test and learn, ROI, these are all fundamentals and were covered expansively at the event”.
Sandra Fazackerley, Marketing & Consumer, Telefónica UK Limited
“The full week of effectiveness events brought into clear focus the need for marketers to use data and insight to achieve the key business objectives of growth and profits. Marketers today are in a better position to quantify their knowledge of customers and measure the ability of investments in marketing to increase brand and shareholder value.”
