Better understand and justify the value of our creativity

How to ensure that the creative assets you develop are commercially effective - and how to prove it. Gurdeep Puri, tutor of the IPA Advanced Strategic Effectiveness Course explores why we need to better recognise and demonstrate the value of our creativity.

In the creative industries we ride two very different horses. One is invention and creativity. The other is commerce and business. The key to staying on top, as always, lies in our ability to keep the two running together in the same direction.

At this point it’s worth looking at your own business and your own accounts and asking yourself a few simple but important questions. For example: are you confident that you know the true value of your creative activities? Are you setting the right objectives that really matter to your clients’ C Suites? And, at the end of the day, can you actually justify the investment in marketing communications on the brands your work on? In these days of shrinking budgets and penny-pinching procurement teams, this really matters.

75% of all marketers struggle to tie their creative activities to commercial return

If you find yourself unable to put your finger on numbers that could justify your work, you’re not alone. In a recent survey, 75% of all marketers said they struggled to tie their creative activities to commercial return. And if you can’t do that, you’ll find it almost impossible to help your clients justify continued investment in your agency’s strategic and creative assets.

It's not getting any easier, either. The fragmentation across client and agency-side is increasing dramatically, while the amount and complexity of available data is growing exponentially. It’s never been harder to demonstrate the value that matters and that helps develop stronger agency-client-C Suite relationships.

Recognise and demonstrate the value of our creativity.

If you find yourself nodding along to some of the challenges outlined here, and if you want to learn more, and gain the knowledge and confidence to better understand and justify the value of your creativity, then this is the IPA Advanced Strategic Effectiveness Course session for you. No matter which type of creative or media agency you work in, or what role you play – Strategists, Client Services and Creatives – you will benefit from this session.

Powerful framework for effectiveness

So, to the details. The session will take you on a journey. You will look at the state of the industry and why we find ourselves in the situation we are in as marketing professionals. You will learn how to set the right objectives on the accounts that you work on. You will discover a powerful framework for effectiveness and learn how to populate it with the right KPIs to demonstrate commercial value from start to finish.

The session will be lively, varied and interactive. There will be breakouts where you will be in competing teams to create your own Effectiveness framework on a case study. There will be a group session looking at a typical dataset on a brand and discussing if the brief was right or not.

By the end of this session, you will have the knowledge and confidence to set the right strategy and develop the correct framework for demonstrating value at a commercial, behavioural and perceptual level on the brands that you work on.

So you can know – and prove – just how well your work works.

Gurdeep Puri is Founding Partner of The Effectiveness Partnership

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.