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