Getting the effectiveness band back together

Elsewhere in the advertising village, though, there’s another rapprochement quietly bubbling away between our industry’s own combustible siblings: creativity and effectiveness.  (Roll with it.)

At the risk of overcooking the analogy, our very own Liam and Noel seemed to go their separate ways also fifteen years or so ago.  In our case, of course, there was structural change to explain the estrangement: the unstoppable rise of the tech platforms and their collective pivot to advertising businesses rather than ‘social utilities’, and – within this – to immediately measurable rather than enduringly valuable outcomes.  Not to mention the ongoing and problematic separation of creative and media, of content and context.

One narrative from there goes like this.  Creative awards begin to reward work that, whisper it quietly, might not have worked (witness all those one-off activations with impact measured in impressions).  Effectiveness becomes ‘charts and graphs’, one step removed from and arguably uninterested in the work. 

The industry’s poets and plumbers begin to work in parallel rather than in series, and the collective, self-reinforcing power of both, of ‘work that works’, is fatally undermined. 

An over-representation of the facts, maybe, but - whatever the historical truth – it does seem that something of a correction is beginning to take place.  Creativity and effectiveness are beginning to be talked about together again: in case studies, at conferences, in podcasts and beyond. 

From the global CFO of McDonalds crediting ‘Raise Your Arches’ with material sales growth on a quarterly earnings call to the bromance between Sir John Hegarty and Orlando Wood in support of the latter’s new training course, something is stirring.

This year’s edition of the Cannes Festival of Creativity leant more fully than ever towards outcomes rather than outputs, a change in the wind since compounded by Cannes showrunner Ascential’s mooted acquisition of the Effies’ brand.

While some of the developments above lap at the IPA’s own Effectiveness Awards and professional development shores, we welcome each.  We’ve been banging the drum for creative effectiveness for 44 years, after all, ever since one of the very first entries to our Awards noted that differences in copy explained more of their sales success than media weight.  (Much more.)

More recently - and, it should be said, anecdotally - our new ‘Effectiveness Files’ podcast reveals how market leaders like Tony’s Chocolonely and Lucky Saint, both borne of creative invention, continue to be powered by the same: whether that’s in the form of advertising, of packaging, or of promotion more generally. 

As we look ahead to our own, imminent IPA Effectiveness Awards and IPA Effectiveness Conference, these are the kind of success stories that fuel the industry’s imagination: creatively effective brands that don’t look back in anger, but rather look forward with optimism.

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