The drive for accountability may actually be making marketing less effective, not more. The obsession with return on investment (ROI) may actually be destroying profits, not increasing them. The strategies and metrics that marketers use to guide their campaigns are mostly the wrong ones. Widespread assumptions about the way the media landscape is changing may be totally false. These are just some of the controversial conclusions to come out of a new IPA publication: ‘Marketing In The Era of Accountability - Identifying the marketing practices and metrics that truly increase profitability’ to be published on the 14th June.
14/06/2007
The drive for accountability may actually be making marketing less effective, not more. The obsession with return on investment (ROI) may actually be destroying profits, not increasing them. The strategies and metrics that marketers use to guide their campaigns are mostly the wrong ones. Widespread assumptions about the way the media landscape is changing may be totally false. These are just some of the controversial conclusions to come out of a new IPA publication: ‘Marketing In The Era of Accountability - Identifying the marketing practices and metrics that truly increase profitability’ to be published on the 14th June.
In this most comprehensive analysis of the communications process to date, authors Les Binet, European Director, DDB Matrix, and Peter Field, Marketing Consultant, have drawn key quantitative findings from 880 national case studies taken from the ‘IPA dataBANK’ . They have come up with the critical success factors for highly effective communications, as well as exposing what doesn’t actually work.
Says Les Binet, “So much of what is written about marketing is based on ideas about how it SHOULD work. We've looked at what actually DOES work, in hard business terms, and our findings suggest that a lot of received wisdom about marketing is actually quite misguided."
The 'IPA dataBANK' is a database containing detailed marketing information on over 1200 case studies entered over the last 25 years into the IPA Effectiveness Awards; the internationally recognised gold standard of the evaluation of effectiveness. This new report is part of the IPA dataMINE project, which aims to use the dataBANK to produce general learnings about how marketing works. It represents the first full analysis of all the data in the dataBANK, and is the culmination of over three years' research."
Says Peter Field, "This publication will hopefully enable a step forward in the 'professionalisation' of marketing and communications - at a single stroke, gut instinct can be replaced by informed judgement across a wide range of critical decision points".
Says Janet Hull, IPA Consultant Head of Marketing and Reputation Marketing, "This compelling new publication, borne of many hours of blood, sweat and tears, applies that old adage of 'just because it's easy, doesn't mean it's right' to the marketing profession. It teaches how clarity of understanding can save the industry time and money, and most importantly defend it from setting unachievable objectives and expectations; both vital in the era of accountability."
A breakfast briefing to launch this publication took place at 8.30am, Thursday 14th June 2007, at the IPA, 44 Belgrave Square, SW1X 8QS.
Hard copies of Marketing in the Era of Accountability can be purchased directly from WARC for £75 or a PDF version for £65.