Measurement is not the be-all and end-all of effectiveness

I got cross recently. The source of my disquiet was the Language of Effectiveness 2024 report, published by Marketing Week, which, to my mind, focused too much on measurement as the means to an effectiveness culture.

There is a common misunderstanding that marketing measurement is effectiveness culture. It is not. It is an integral part of building a strong and healthy effectiveness culture, and it is often the starting point. But focusing solely on measurement is short-lived and creates the wrong culture; a culture of tail-chasing to explain performance, a culture of judgement, a culture of unhelpfulness.

Because of this, there is a danger that the measurement of marketing activity is becoming the be-all and end-all with any effectiveness approach.

A disclaimer: I set up and run Go Ignite, a marketing transformation consultancy designed to help brands and agencies build a culture of effectiveness. Our effectiveness culture framework is used to build the annual ‘Effectiveness Roadmap’ report published by the IPA, and is the foundation for the IPA’s Effectiveness Accreditation for agencies. In a previous life working in senior effectiveness roles at companies including O2 and Samsung Electronics, I learned that successfully implementing marketing effectiveness is about far more than just creating a measurement project.

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The risks of making it all about measurement

There is a pattern we see, based on our work both in and for brands, where the need to focus on effectiveness culture is identified at CMO level, due to a lack of clarity about the total value that marketing activities are adding. Then, an individual is instructed to build out an effectiveness approach that normally centres on measurement and building new tools and capabilities for marketers to use.

But then the approach gets stuck. There are several reasons for this.

1. Too much focus on outcome numbers

Firstly, the focus on measurement only centres on reporting numbers rather than creating a process that reviews what works and doesn’t, and then feeds that insight back into the beginning of the planning processes.

When I was head of marketing effectiveness at O2, there was a change of CEO, with the CFO taking over and introducing monthly committees. Each committee had a scorecard to demonstrate how they had performed. The reason? So that people would come to the committee able to say that activities were working well as planned, or that performance wasn’t as expected and work was needed.

The desired outcomes were achieved, but what happened was a recurring monthly panic to understand what was driving performance in key marketing outcome measures (think brand awareness and consideration) and why they had risen or fallen by X percentage points each month. The marketing measurement process had been set up to explain what was changing, but not necessarily the reason for that change.

2. Prioritising task completion over the big picture

Secondly, marketers are too focused on completing their tasks and have too much on their plate to change how they do things based on the effectiveness tools, capabilities and approaches that have been created for them to use.

The head-down focus on getting tasks done is a knock-on impact from Covid, where it has become easier to focus on what can be controlled rather than think about the broader picture of what the business is trying to achieve. Moreover, unless you help people understand the value of what you are creating with any effectiveness approach, then it is going to be met with resistance. People will either feel judged because of the measurement or feel like they are being asked to do more and more when their to-do list is already very long.

A year or so ago, I had a conversation with a brand team at an FMCG client, where we got pushback after explaining the performance of marketing in one its markets. A strategic review of marketing performance over the previous two years showed its approach to pricing and distribution strategy was limiting creative performance (the product was not priced competitively at key sales moments, or not stocked in stores with the best footfall). Until fixed, any positive campaign impact would be limited.

The pushback: “Just tell us what better creative we need to create.”

3. Temptation of off-the-shelf solutions

Lastly, and I may be slightly biased here, but I believe there are too many effectiveness measurement consultancies and marketing agencies guilty of delivering bespoke projects with insufficient consideration for how they will help make informed decisions, what the planning cycle is, and how to gain buy-in and credibility with the stakeholders that the project is aiming to influence.

This isn’t always the fault of the third party. When working at Samsung, I was asked to bring a number of markets together to sound out getting support for a global marketing mix modelling (MMM) approach. Halfway through the workshop to gauge demand and capture requirements, it became clear that one of the ‘pitching’ consultancies had already been appointed and had two days to collect all the required data from markets. The view from the senior marketer in the room: “There is nothing we can do, we just have to let it run its course and most likely fail.”

Anecdotally, we do hear from brands that there are an increasing number of effectiveness consultancies delivering off-the-shelf, 12-week programs to deliver MMM projects, and then leaving the tool with their clients to work out how to use it. This is a one-way street to failure.

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Identify ways to create value

The risk of over-indexing on measurement is the negative impact on the opportunity to identify the best value-generating opportunities.

The biggest praise I received for our approach to effectiveness when heading up the marketing effectiveness function at O2 came from the CMO, who said we had taken opinion off her table. Time spent debating the potential reasons for performance, both good and bad, was now spent focusing on the opportunities ahead.

So, how do you ensure that over-indexing doesn’t happen?

Creating a clear, integrated measurement framework is often a good first step in achieving this. But don’t think just about what is being measured, think about and plan for the process of how measurement helps inform better decision making, the story that the framework tells, and the accountabilities of who tells it and when.

A good measurement approach should exist to help identify how best to create value, give confidence to the organisation that any planned activity will deliver what it is supposed to, then show and explain whether that value was achieved – and if not, why not.

But one thing is for sure, if your effectiveness culture is reduced to only the measurement itself, then be prepared for a short-lived journey and a lost opportunity to better create value for your organisation.

Put the principle of ‘helpfulness’ and not the action of measurement at the centre of your effectiveness culture.