In another AdAge.com article this week (‘Industry Unleashes Flood of Studies to Prove Its Worth: Harsh Times Demand (Even) More Concrete Evidence of Effectiveness‘ by Jack Neff) Accountable Marketing is getting more press. As economic fears increase, advertisers are demanding more and more quantification that their media dollars are working – in response, a bevvy of media companies, agencies research firms and marketers themselves are conducting elaborate studies to prove that their efforts are working.
The trend excites me, because we all win when accountability is demanded from marketing / advertising activities. What concerns me is that the studies ask the right questions, enough data (of the right categories) id collected to support immediate and long term analysis needs and that the studies ask the right questions and the marketers themselves are prepared to adopt a continuous improvement model to benefit from their learnings. If the goal of the studies is to simply placate the accountability requests of marketers or validate that the media is working, I fear that the true impact of Accountable Marketing is lost. If you start with the premise that everything can be improved (or even replaced) then performance / accountability studies are used to identify opportunities for improvement and then implement them through a continuous improvement change / test model – all parties involved will benefit from sustainable long term improvement and competitive advantage.
Accountability is more than an economic necessity and ALL Marketers should look for ways to not only Quantify Benefit but continually Quantify Opportunities for improvement throughout the marketing value chain. What do you think?
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This is great info to know.