In the land of the blind, the map reader is King

By Tom Mabon

Like most of you reading this, I believe that there is a link between brand advertising and sales.  After all, it’s what has created many of our jobs, and we can all make reference to a plethora of empirical research for proof.  No wonder then, that billions of pounds are spent every year on media campaigns.  However, whilst the research shows an encouraging link, it stops some way short of revealing how to invest budgets in an optimal manner to generate the best ROI.

This uncertainty has meant that the “experts” find themselves in a position similar to that of the map reader in a Duke of Edinburgh expedition.  An understanding of where to go, without necessarily an understanding of the most efficient route to get there.  But the rest of us blindly follow, because they’ve got the map, and we haven’t.  Some agencies are better map readers than others, whilst some veer wildly off course every now and again (we’ve all seen some very lazy ad planning in our time).  So when Kasper Rorsted of Adidas announced a couple of months ago that he was adjusting media spend by channel and focussing on more digital content, he had effectively ripped the map out of the leaders hand, shoved them over and shouted to the group that they were hiking off course and that he could read a map better than the last guy.  With the checkpoint yet to be reached, it’s far too early to say if this is brave or foolhardy.  But we all know no-one enjoys being in the group that follows a new path and is then forced to re-trace their steps because it’s gone more off course than before.

Rorsted stopped short of declaring “the King is dead, long live the King”, but went with more of a “the King is being moved to a retirement home, out the way to make room for the much more popular Prince to take over”.  The only problem is, I’m not sure how thorough the examination of the old King was.  BARB data for March 2017 showed the average person watched roughly 24 hours of TV a week.  And viewing figures for one week of March showed a total reach of 55.5 million people.  That’s a lot of eyeballs in front of a lot of TV.  The King isn’t just not ready to be in a retirement home, he’s still striding towards that next checkpoint.

To be clear, I’m not saying that all others should be excluded for the sake of TV, or that it is the flagship media channel; I am saying you disregard it at your peril.  A recent report by Kantar Media found 75% of consumers were positive towards traditional offline advertising, 14% above online advertising.  And when they looked at the top 3 preferable mediums for advertising, they saw a similar message: Cinema, TV, Magazines.  20% of the consumers had online ad blockers, a proportion I expect to grow in popularity.  But the use of ad blockers doesn’t mean that they are against advertising.  Of those with ad blockers, 47% were positive towards advertising – a clear indicator that online advertising isn’t hitting the right note with their audience.  The channel is in its infancy compared to television, so I’m not surprised. However, we all know there’s work to do and that in the future online will only continue to become more powerful.  We can’t ignore it, though it might be a bit too early to put all your eggs into this basket.

Now, I admit I am a little biased.  I love a good brand advert.  Who doesn’t remember the Guinness surfer ad with the horses coming out the sea, the Heinz beans ad where the older brother shares his beans with his younger brother, or the Kylie Minogue Agent Provocateur cinema adverts.  Anyone remember that memorable banner ad where…what about…OK, so there’s scope for improvement there.  There have been some good online campaigns, don’t get me wrong.  The Faroe Islands Sheep View is a fantastic example, but I would bet a pint or two that some of you had to Google (other search engines are available) what it was.

It is this point that forms part of the answer to this long-standing problem.  The first stage, as with any analysis, is to collect and integrate all the possible data sources.  Look for the context; we’ve all been to conferences around “big data”, we can’t ignore it (as much as the terms turns us off).  A recent study found that those organisations that harness big data by integrating analysis and insight into their business planning cycles outperformed the rest in terms of growth.  Doing this enables you to look at the relationship between the channels, and begin to piece together the jigsaw and understand which channels are being levers on which other pieces of data.

However, when looking at the performance by channel, do consider that the sum of all contacts is not the same as the reach.  Firstly, media differ in their ability to engage the audience, therefore the impact of reaching 100,000 consumers is different for different media channels.  A cinema advert is generally more engaging for example.  Secondly, media campaigns differ in the extent to which their content is memorable.  Some campaigns linger in consumer memory for a longer period after the campaign has ended than others.   Finally, as demonstrated above with the Guinness or Heinz recall, the creative itself is a major factor in determining the impact of a campaign. A stronger creative typically needs less exposures to generate the same effect.  Don’t forget: the consumer’s memory doesn’t reset at midnight every Sunday evening.

Once you understand all of this, and are able to weight your media plan accordingly, you’ll be able to understand a lot more effectively exactly what the relationship between the marketing mix and sales is.  You can then spend your time predicting and optimising to ensure each channel is delivering optimum ROI. This approach isn’t me ripping the map from the hike leaders and heading off with a splinter group (believe you me, you don’t want me reading a map, just ask my other half).  Instead, what it is doing is replacing the Landranger map with an Explorer map and discovering the first few footpaths to guide the leader towards the next checkpoint.