Advertising effectiveness has been “completely revolutionised” over the past 15 years, with marketers having more tools at their disposal than ever to drive impactful work, argues Marketing Week columnist and Mini MBA professor Mark Ritson.
Speaking at Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing today (3 October), Ritson outlined a playbook of 10 steps for advertising effectiveness.
1. Briefs
Client-side marketers are bad at briefs, Ritson said. He cited research from the BetterBriefs consultancy, which found the overwhelming majority of both marketers and agencies say it is difficult to create good work without a good and clear brief.
While marketers generally felt they did provide good briefs, this was at odds with their agency counterparts who overwhelmingly believe they get little to no strategic direction from the brand-side team.
Marketers need to get better at writing SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) objectives Ritson argued, or risk jeopardising the effectiveness of their advertising before their creative agency has even begun their work.
“There are lots of awards in marketing […] but one of the most special awards that many of you will have never experienced is when the agency partner comes around the table at the end of the brief and says, that was a good brief,” Ritson told the room of marketers.
2. Budgeting
Ritson stated it’s wrong for marketers to approach budgeting by working out their advertising budget as a percentage of expected revenue.
“If I’ve already worked out how much money I’m going to make next year, what’s the point of you?” he asked. “You’ve already become a cost, you’re ancillary, you’re not giving me growth. We’ve already got the growth.”
Secondly, the specific percentage of revenue that advertising spend represents is often an arbitrary number, dreamed up by the CFO, he argued.
Thirdly, Ritson said that finance telling marketing how much they can spend on marketing is the wrong way around.
Rather than pursuing this budgeting tactic of advertising spend as a percentage of revenue, marketers should instead pursue zero-based budgeting, he argued.
While zero-based budgeting can be off-putting to marketers because of the word “zero”, but it is the best way to position advertising’s role as a driver of growth, he said. Building a case from the ground up and clearly illustrating the potential returns marketing can bring is the best way to make a case for investment from finance.
Linking the investment with the returns it can bring is absolutely crucial in this approach, Ritson argued.
“You may not get the money you’re asking for,” he acknowledged. “If you have to go back and reduce the investment you’ve also got to reduce the amount of money you’re proposing to return. Never let those two figures become separated.”
Deploying the concept of excess share of voice can help secure more investment and win over the boardroom
3. Long and short
The Long and the Short of It by Les Binet and Peter Field has been one of the most impactful works of recent times for the marketing industry, but marketers should ensure the are using it in practice.
“Don’t think of this as long versus short, the most important word in the long and the short of it is ‘and’,” Ritson told the audience.
The only issue with the title of Binet and Field’s work, Ritson said, is that it is “under-titled”. It’s not simply that some stuff works long term and some works short term, he said, adding that it’s “way fucking deeper than that”.
“Long is about building brand equity, building our salience, building our association. Short is about harnessing and activating it,” he explained.
Crucially, the long is done over time. It can take decades to get this right, he said, pointing to brands like KitKat, which has centred comms on the same messaging for decades.
A relatively recent development is that research from System1 finds that long-term brand building can drive short-term results, but rarely does the short drive long, meaning there is something of an asymmetry between the two, Ritson explained.
There is no one-size-fits-all rule to the ratio of advertising spend brands should deploy on long and short; for example, category can have a big impact on what that proportion should be. Ritson pointed to a free tool from Tracksuit that will determine how brands should ratio spend.
“When you do that calculator, what you’re all going to discover, to your amazement, is you’re not spending enough money on long you are overspending on short,” Ritson told the audience.
4. Media
Diversity of media is crucial, Ritson argued. This means, not just diversity of people in your marketing team, but also using a variety of media.
There’s no bonified ranking of the “best” channel for marketers to use, he said, it all depends on many different factors. To determine which channels they should be investing in, marketers must firmly decide their strategy before moving to tactics.
The best approach is not to go big on one channel, but instead take a “synergy” approach, combining channels for the best results on effectiveness.
5. Brand codes
“In order for you to drive savings, the most important thing for your brand […] is to look like yourself,” Ritson told the Festival audience.
He cited the example of Cartier, which he said is an expert at deploying its distinctive brand assets across its advertising.
Consumers generally recall very few ads. What’s even more rare is for consumers to recall what brands are behind these ads. “If you want to drive up recall, you’ve got to codify it,” Ritson said.
Often brands and agencies get bored with distinctive assets they see every day, but the most important thing is to resist the temptation to change these up. Marketers need to remember that consumers are not paying nearly as much attention.
6. Creative
It’s hardly breaking news that great creative is essential for great advertising, Ritson admitted, but, having lived through an age where marketers were told the choice of media channel is everything, it’s still important to stress.
He quoted advertising executive David Abbott: “Shit delivered at the speed of light is still shit. You need to find a big idea.”
Research from Paul Dyson, finds the biggest driver of advertising effectiveness is how big your brand already is. But the second biggest driver is creativity. This means that challenger brands need to deploy excellent creativity and a “big idea” to truly challenge category leaders.
7. Emotion
The phrase “emotion is powerful” is a cliché, but also a truism. Emotion in advertising doesn’t have to be adorable puppies, Ritson noted. It can be anything; from startlement, to joy, to sadness.
While your CFO might not be all that engaged in the conversation about the joy you’re going to create in your new ad, research shows emotional communications are more profitable than rational ones, meaning emotion in advertising has real benefits for a company.
8. Pre-testing
Having once been on the fence about pre-testing, Ritson is now fully a convert, given the leaps and bounds that pre-testing capability has improved in recent years.
As he argued in Marketing Week, earlier this year, pre-testing is simply a “no-brainer”, something that every brand investing even £10,000 in advertising should be buying into.
The speed, depth and accuracy of pre-testing has rapidly improved in recent times, thanks to the like of System1, Ritson said. “You’re a muppet not to do it frankly.”
9. Wear-out (or lack thereof)
Good advertising does not wear out, Ritson stated. Having been trained in the 1980s and 1990s, Ritson was taught that ads take time to wear in, but then they also wear out, and that the trick is to pull them at the point where they are no longer creating value for the company.
However, once again more modern research has enlightened the marketing industry, as it found that ads do not wear out.
In Ritson’s opinion, the work between BBH and Häagen-Dazs in the 1990s is some of the greatest advertising ever. The brand and its former agency are now working together again, something that Ritson has welcomed with great anticipation.
“They’re going to do beautiful stuff, but my request for them is, just run the old ads,” he said.
10. Evaluation
Ritson’s final step in his playbook for advertising effectiveness is evaluation. Or put simply: “How do you work out whether the thing is working or not?”
Looking at sales and profits is not enough as the factors driving this are too multifaceted to trace back just to advertising.
If marketing teams have previously set SMART objective then evaluation will be a simpler task. For example, if the brand has hit its awareness goals.
Many marketers will want to go deeper than that though, and see precisely what drove the awareness. Brand lift studies are one way, or alternatively econometrics.
Ritson said the best approaches he has seen are the likes of Diageo and Uber, which combine econometrics with constant experimentation.
He concluded by acknowledging how much the marketing industry has learnt on advertising effectiveness and challenged the marketers of the room to “stand on the shoulders” of effectiveness giants, and deploy the knowledge they have accrued.
Source: marketingweek.com
