Bryan has put up a very convincing argument. Though I fully subscribe to his logic, my vote is "NO"
Every brand activity, including advertising, should result in sales. But each one of them contribute uniquely and thats how they should be measured. The importance and weightage of each activity in the collective result will vary depending on the product category, brand strength and the intensity of the activity.
Statistical measurement modelling that I am involved with very clearly establish the fact that the ability of advertising to influence different levels of the brand pyramid diminish at each higher level.
Bryan - 15 years ago
I can't help but feel that selecting the second option smacks heavily of the 'It's too difficult to do' school of thought.
I agree that advertising alone cannot drive a business' sales performance but to abdicate any sales responsbility from advertising seems highly negligent to me.
You could argue that there are already clear targets for Brand advertising such as improved awareness, increased understanding, etc but unless these metrics are linked into driving sales performance then I see them as pure vanity metrics that are being used simply because we know we can measure them not because they are of value.
And if you are linking these metrics into sales performance (by econometric analysis I'd suspect) then there is no reason why you shouldn't be tracking sales performance and including that within your success or fail criteria for a campaign.
Advertising expenditure is treated like any other buinsess expenditure by Chief Financial Officers, it's supposed to be an investment that realises profit for the business. Chief Marketing Officers (especially now!) are increasingly under pressure to justify to their CFO why they should be allowed to continue to spend the money they do. The problem is, the CFO is interested in the bottom line profit performance of the business and trying to explain to them that the communications investment is driving better awareness or better consideration is simply not good enough to hold off the budget slashing skills of an under pressure CFO.
Accountability in communications is not something that is going to go away. We can argue with the CFO's all we want that 'Brand' advertising shouldn't be measured against sales performance but just take a look a the growth in client expenditure within Search versus all other channels. CFO's are more than happy to invest in activity that they can see £X in has delivered £Y revenue (or profit back). This isn't going to change and I believe as an industry we have to adapt to this and find the ways and means to build sales focussed approach into all our measurement activities.
The idea of Brand isn't new. It's been around for 5,000 years has has helped consumers to differentiate, have confidence in the quality of a product and ultimately to help them make a buying decision. At it's inception, I'd argue, branding was about driving better business performance and I've yet to see a logical argue to suggest it should be doing otherwise today. As such, we should measure according to this overarching business objective which means I'm sitting, currently, in the minority camp that answered yes to this poll.
I'll now step down off my soapbox and prepare for the inevitable brickbats that will come my way.
Top blog by the way, very interesting reading!
Bryan has put up a very convincing argument. Though I fully subscribe to his logic, my vote is "NO"
Every brand activity, including advertising, should result in sales. But each one of them contribute uniquely and thats how they should be measured. The importance and weightage of each activity in the collective result will vary depending on the product category, brand strength and the intensity of the activity.
Statistical measurement modelling that I am involved with very clearly establish the fact that the ability of advertising to influence different levels of the brand pyramid diminish at each higher level.
I can't help but feel that selecting the second option smacks heavily of the 'It's too difficult to do' school of thought.
I agree that advertising alone cannot drive a business' sales performance but to abdicate any sales responsbility from advertising seems highly negligent to me.
You could argue that there are already clear targets for Brand advertising such as improved awareness, increased understanding, etc but unless these metrics are linked into driving sales performance then I see them as pure vanity metrics that are being used simply because we know we can measure them not because they are of value.
And if you are linking these metrics into sales performance (by econometric analysis I'd suspect) then there is no reason why you shouldn't be tracking sales performance and including that within your success or fail criteria for a campaign.
Advertising expenditure is treated like any other buinsess expenditure by Chief Financial Officers, it's supposed to be an investment that realises profit for the business. Chief Marketing Officers (especially now!) are increasingly under pressure to justify to their CFO why they should be allowed to continue to spend the money they do. The problem is, the CFO is interested in the bottom line profit performance of the business and trying to explain to them that the communications investment is driving better awareness or better consideration is simply not good enough to hold off the budget slashing skills of an under pressure CFO.
Accountability in communications is not something that is going to go away. We can argue with the CFO's all we want that 'Brand' advertising shouldn't be measured against sales performance but just take a look a the growth in client expenditure within Search versus all other channels. CFO's are more than happy to invest in activity that they can see £X in has delivered £Y revenue (or profit back). This isn't going to change and I believe as an industry we have to adapt to this and find the ways and means to build sales focussed approach into all our measurement activities.
The idea of Brand isn't new. It's been around for 5,000 years has has helped consumers to differentiate, have confidence in the quality of a product and ultimately to help them make a buying decision. At it's inception, I'd argue, branding was about driving better business performance and I've yet to see a logical argue to suggest it should be doing otherwise today. As such, we should measure according to this overarching business objective which means I'm sitting, currently, in the minority camp that answered yes to this poll.
I'll now step down off my soapbox and prepare for the inevitable brickbats that will come my way.
Top blog by the way, very interesting reading!