The Principles of "Effectiveness"

1. Be creative

The first principle of ‘‘Effectiveness’’ is creativity. Based on research conducted by Peter Field, (The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness’,IPA,2010) the best way to get effective campaigns is to run highly creative work.

According to his research, Creativity makes the single biggest known difference to sales.

Clearly, consumers do not know or care whether the work is award-winning however, highly creative work sells more because(a)it is more likely to appeal to the emotions than to reason, and (b) it is more likely to achieve higher coverage and frequency after being passed on via social media and PR.The result is greater exposure of a more powerful appeal.

The evidence is clear that creativity, leads to more exposure than the client paid for. More exposure = more sales. In fact, in Field’s research using the IPA ‘Effectiveness’Awards, campaigns that had been recognized for creativity outsold the less creative campaigns by 11 times per unit of media weight. McKinsey reached the same conclusion after analyzing campaigns entered for German ‘Effectiveness’awards. It concluded,“The more creative a campaign, the higher the like lihood that the featured product will sell… Other things being equal, creativity is the advertiser’s best bet.”Even further evidence comes from the WARC Social Strategy Report which shows that originality continues to be the most important feature of a successful social campaigns irrespective of how much budget there is behind it.

2. Set hard objectives

While creativity makes the biggest difference to sales, Broadbent’s second principle was the importance of the campaign objectives. Setting hard objectives sell best. Campaigns are five times morelikely to sell when the objectives are set in terms of sales, profit or market share than when they are set in terms of soft objectives (such as awareness, or image etc.). Hard objectives force rigour and enable honest evaluation and ongoing optimization.

3. Aim for fame

Effective campaigns are those that enter the currency of conversation.  Campaigns that become part of the pulse of contemporary culture and exploit social media and PR to create more exposure than the client paid for increase the brand’s fame. ‘Fame campaigns’sell more than campaigns with any other strategy. As Broadbent points out, fame is more than awareness. ‘A famous brand need not be the biggest in the category or the biggest advertiser, but it is the leader in perception. It makes the most waves, get stalked about most, is most cited by journalists’. More exposure = more sales. 

4. Brands with Purpose

One key wat to be in the currency of conversation and to give brands a better chance of connecting with culture is to connect with ‘Purpose’ and to have a point of view on the world. Brands that connect with social and cultural issues create more exposure through third parties, which leads to more sales.Research has consistently shown a correlation between brands with purpose and what Millward Browncalls “BrandVoltage,”a measure of how likely it is a brand will grow.The correlation holds true globally and a crossall product categories.

5. Penetration first

Broadbent’s 5^thprinciple is about prioritizing penetration. Making the brand known beyond its current buyers is not wasteful— it’s a good thing. It helps attractmorecustomers,whichwethenkeepvialoyaltycampaigns. This overlaps with Byron Sharp’s insights in ‘How Brands’ Grow’ His evidence shows that the less penetration you have among category buyers, the lower their purchase frequency of your brand. Get more customers, and behavioral loyalty comes as a consequence. In other words,  abrand’smarketsharemainlygrowsordeclinesasitspenetrationgrowsordeclines,so penetration comes first.The Warc ‘Seriously Social’ report underlines this by highlighting the need to invest in 'paid social' to drive reach.

6. Leverage the power of ‘Moving Image’

There is a common myth that the TV is dying.. Nothing could be further from the truth. As Robert Davis, Head of Digital, Ogilvy USA and Ed Laczynski of Zype point out, ‘The  business of television is being radically redefined, but viewers still want the content. The digital revolution has fragmented the concept of TV into thousands of pieces, infiltrating every conceivable Internet enabled, video-capable device to the point that a TV-like experience can be enjoyed everywhere. And that’s the rub. The Internet isn’t killing television; it’s making it even more ubiquitous.’ In their 2016 analysis of IPA ‘Effectiveness’ case studies, industry experts, Les Binet and Peter Field, found that cases that achieve long-term effects have a shared tendency towards TV and video. The same study suggests that digital platforms can be used to make so-called 'traditional' media more powerful than they used to be. 

7. Appeal to the heart

Psychology, neuralscience, behavioral economics and the analysis of effective campaigns all suggest brand choices are usually made emotionally. Rational calculations of utility come second, if at all. Mostly what happens is that first we want something, and then we come up with a rationale to justify why we want.  Low attention processing may see a new discovery, but it was described by the psychologist Walter Dill Scott in his book The Psychology of Advertising as long ago as 1903. According to Broadbent,  emotive campaigns, out sell informative campaigns one very business metric: 17% more profit, 30% greater market share, 19% higher sales.

8. Integrate channels

Multichannel campaigns sell twice as much as single-channel campaigns per unit of mediaweight: market share increases by 1.2% for single-channel campaigns but by 2.4%for multichannel. An Ogilvy study suggested that, adding social media along side other media significantly increased purchasing among those who were exposed. In four out of five tests, social media together with another medium sold best. 

9. Creating ‘Talkability’ and Interest

Millward Brown’s analysis of both IPA and Cannes‘Effectiveness’winners suggests the biggest difference between effective  ads and average ads is that the most effective are more likely to be considered“ different from other ads” driving engagement and ‘talkbaility’.  As an example, the Belgian ‘Mud Soldier’ campaign for Flanders Fields used a single poignant sculpture in Trafalgar Square to engage and generate media interest which had a significant leverage and amplification. One powerful activation leveraged in Social media  created the ‘talkability’  to engage over 100 million people in 65 different countries.

10. Keep spending

Too many companies still seem to regard marketing as a luxury. They assume sales will be stable without it..  The evidence however shows that incompetitive markets, a brand that unilaterally cuts spend will probably decline relative toother brands. This has been shown repeatedly by Millward Brown studies which point to the clear connection between share of market (SOM) and share of voice (SOV). This research shows that the higher the share of voice compared to actual market share, the more likely a brand is to grow its market share in the subsequent year. Cutting spending to save costs continues to be a poor growth strategy.

Summary

As an communication industry, ‘‘Effectiveness’’ is the road to our sustainability and continued relevance. The principles outlined above remain a valuable route map. The challenge however is to make ‘‘Effectiveness’’ a daily habit and to build the skills to evaluate and evidence our success and course-correct in partnership with our clients through constant optimization. As an industry, we need to hold ourselves accountable to David Ogilvy’s mantra ‘We sell or else’.