Here are the ten best charts on marketing effectiveness from the work of Les Binet and Peter Field as chosen by Tom Roach at BBH. Steal them, share them, use them as you see fit to nudge those around you onto the path to effectiveness.
Les Binet and Peter Field have been researching marketing effectiveness for over a decade. Their findings have shaped the way we think about marketing accountability. Tom Roach, Managing Partner at BBH recently wrote an article for the IPA and packaged up a number of their charts which he felt had the most impact. Here are the ten most useful charts with a little bit of context.
You can download all the charts as a pdf here plus six additional bonus charts not in this article.
1. The difference between brand-building and activation effects
Central to Peter and Les’ research is the distinction between these two effects that marketing produces. If you read their work you will hear a lot about ‘the 60/40’ rule. This is the balance of brand building and activation activities that the data shows is more effective. Before we get into that, it is important to understand the difference between the two.
Related content: Download Media in focus
2. How different channels skew the effects
No two channels deliver exactly the same balance of brand building and activation effects. Multi-channel campaigns must take this into account to deliver the optimum balance of media.
3. What the data tells us about the ideal split between brand-building and activation
Related content: Buy: ‘The Long and Short of It’
4. Timescales
Brand building and activation effects are not generated by marketing campaigns in the same way across time. This chart illustrates why it is easy to end up overdoing short-term activation measures if you are in a business environment that values short-term results.
For a quick understanding of what Les and Peter mean by ‘business effects’ and the metrics they use to measure success take a look at this infographic.
5/6. Should you focus on existing customers or new ones?
The answer is, definitively, new ones. As the following two charts show.
7. Reach trumps targeting
Continuing the focus on a broad, outward approach, Les and Peter’s research has shown clearly that reach delivers the best results in the long term. And TV is the top performer – there’s a bonus chart in the package illustrating that.
8. Fame!
Campaigns that are specifically designed to create fame for a brand outperform other campaigns on all business metrics. In addition, emotional campaigns also perform better in almost all metrics, particularly in the long term (there is an extra chart in the download package illustrating that).
9. Creatively awarded campaigns perform better
And highly creatively awarded campaigns perform even better than the chart below shows again (there is an extra chart in the download package illustrating that).
Read about the study of Creativity and Effectiveness carried out by the IPA and Thinkbox
10. Looking to the future
Using the data in the IPA Databank from 1998 to 2016, Peter and Les have identified a number of worrying trends. Those trends have been driven by both a business environment that prioritises short-term results and the digital revolution, which with its real-time dashboards has only exacerbated the desire to gather them. The good news is that the research being done by Les and Peter, and by organisations like the IPA is gaining traction. Help it along by sharing some of these charts with your marketing colleagues.
Related Content
You can download all the charts in their raw form here.
Download Media in focus
Watch Les Binet and Peter Field present a preview of ‘Media in Focus’, chapter 1 of ‘Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era’ at EffWeek 2016
Watch Les Binet and Peter Field present ‘Media in Context’ a preview of chapter 2 of ‘Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era’
Understand the different metrics used by Peter and Les in this infographic
Get an overview of the background to ‘Media in Focus’ and the data used in this infographic
Buy The Long and Short of It
“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 Effectiveness Week. 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.”
Chris Combemale, Group CEO, DMA