Effectiveness: Asking ‘Why?’ Not ‘What?’
“It’s simultaneously awesome and terrifying to hear that effectiveness is a new buzzword,” reflects 72andSunny’s Bryan Smith. “Awesome because hell yeah, that’s what we should be doing. And terrifying because hell yeah, that’s what we should’ve always been doing.”
As co-head of strategy at 72andSunny, Smith has questioned effectiveness with quite a bit of thought. In the days of buzzword-y big data and recession-burnt brands, many demanded to see an immediate return on investment which some interpreted as ‘effectiveness. Can numbers alone really provide any kind of meaningful insight? For Smith, the interesting question of effectiveness is ‘why?’ not ‘what?’
While a jump in sales might be a client’s El Dorado, Smith urges caution in using sales figures alone as a measure of effectiveness, advocating a more behavioural approach.
“Increased sales might always be the key marketing metric, but even with the tools we have today it’s hard to directly correlate the effect of advertising to sales,” he explains. “That’s why we like to anchor our thinking in effectiveness models. What are the behaviours that will lead to the sales increase we’re after? And what perceptions need to change in order to make those behaviours happen? Once we’ve defined that model, it’s easy to identify the real KPIs that advertising can reasonably be asked to achieve.”
It’s a similar case with social media metrics. Volume of traffic or number of likes alone – the sort that clutter the more frustrating breed of case study videos – are relatively meaningless. “Again, it’s about the overall effectiveness model. If you can demonstrate how increased ‘likes’ lead to increased perceptions of a brand, which in turn lead to increased sales, by all means, include social metrics. But to just say “our goal is to get 1k likes” is irresponsible. You need to know why the likes or tweets or what-have-yous matter.”
This balance of the qualitative and quantitative also feeds into Smith’s philosophy of the ingredients of a successful campaign: ‘creativity and strategy working hand-in-hand’. “A great strategy defines the problem, articulates an inspiring vision for solving that problem, and lays out what needs to be done to implement and measure that solution. Great creative work leaps off that strategy to ideas that break through, connect, and endure. Ideas that matter.”
“Creativity without an eye towards effectiveness is just entertainment. It might grab people, but it won’t do what all marketing work needs to do: change their perceptions and behaviours,” he continues. “Work without creative magic is just noise. It might say all that you want it to say, it might be engineered to solve the problem you need to solve, but it won’t touch people, and so won’t actually do what you need.”
To demonstrate this holistic yet specific model of effectiveness, Smith points to two 72andSunny campaigns that he believes have demonstrably changed things up for the clients in question by having quite specific, behavioural goals. “The Samsung “Fanboys” work changed perceptions of the Samsung brand from an also-ran to a genuine innovator – and in so doing helped put the brand on the path to a record year in sales,” he explains. “Our Call of Duty work last year helped convince gamers that a franchise in its 9th season was a totally fresh experience worth upping for, and in so doing helped it break records once more.”
For now Smith is in two minds about the growing industry excitement surrounding effectiveness. On the one hand it’s cool to see more people take an interest, but irresponsible assumptions are helpful to no one – to be of real use effectiveness needs to be considered in terms of ‘how’ and ‘why’. “We need more discipline in defining how communications are meant to work. Obviously a sales increase is the big win, but if we can’t explain how our work helped lead to that win, and support that explanation with real data, we’re not really on the effectiveness train. We’re on the assumption bus, and doing our clients a disservice.”
