True ROI Accountability: Media or Creative?
One of the tensions in marketing these days is the fact that the creative execution has the biggest impact in the ROI of an advertising campaign but the money is spent in media. As business’ follow the money, the question of accountability has fallen on those responsible for buying media.
I was thinking about this again after looking at a presentation from a competitor (yes, I do sometimes get competitors work on my desk) with sheet after sheet about the contribution of television, outdoor, print, etc. No mention at all of the contribution of the creative material.
First let me be clear: I totally disagree with accountability looking at media in a silo. One needs to manage the creative and media simultaneously and look holistically at the successes and failures of marketing campaigns. It is never the media buy that is solely responsible for the failure of a marketing campaign.
Obviously, this is happening for a reason. It’s much more difficult to take the creative into account and understanding norms for the effectiveness of media is certainly useful. However, the industry needs to push this step further. We’ve moved past looking at only reach and frequency, and we’re creating accountability for media plans that show what is actually being delivered for the brands. The next step is to boldly put R&D budgets into understanding the interaction between creative and media in a way that we can predict the effectiveness of campaigns considering creative and media as one and the same.
Posted by Peter Kloprogge, Co-Founder
Welcome
Here I am, sitting on a train between Schiphol airport and Rotterdam, on my way to our annual strategy meetings. Outside it’s dark and grey and as this seems like a perfect timing to buckle down and write my first blog post. I decided to start a blog a couple of days ago with the promise to myself to write something every week. Will I keep this promise? Only the future will tell.
In 1993, Sjoerd Mostert and I started Pointlogic (then called PLS which stood for Point Logic Systems) with the business plan being applying software and mathematical techniques to help board room decisions. We’ve actually been very true to our first mission; our business still revolves around this core principle with the only addition being that our applications are mostly in the area of optimizing marketing ROI. So, that defines me in business and that is what I’ll be blogging about: mathematics, software and marketing ROI.
My personal background is in mathematics. I’ve always been intrigued by the tension between math and advertising, hard numbers versus creativity, rational versus empirical. I will use this blog to talk with you about these subjects and to reflect on the future role of mathematics and technology to optimize marketing decisions.
I hope you’ll enjoy it and to spark some lively discussions.
Posted by Peter Kloprogge, Co-Founder