The unanswered questions of effectiveness

In creative effectiveness we know that emotional campaigns outperform rational ones on the majority of brand and business effects. That this is best delivered through right-brained advertising features. And that these must be executed with a well-applied palette of distinctive brand assets.

And in media effectiveness we understand that brands must reach all category buyers. That to achieve this their share of voice (SOV) must be greater than their share of market (SOM) and that on average around 60% of budgets should be allocated to brand building activity.

Mapping the areas we don't know well enough

But, in comparison to many other fields, ours is still relatively young. Byron Sharp’s ‘How Brands Grow’ was published in 2010, ‘The Long and the Short of It’ in 2013, and ‘Lemon’ in 2019.

As a result, I believe that what we don’t know far outweighs what we do.

So rather than debating the endless intricacies of the evidence we do have, I used my breakout session at this year’s IPA Effectiveness Conference to focus on the evidence that we don’t.

Six unanswered questions about effectiveness

1. How do we measure attention more holistically? The marketing and advertising industry has conflated eye-tracking and attention. But these are not the same thing. You can’t eye-track a radio ad, for example. So how do we measure multi-sensory attention?

2. What is the role of ‘low attention processing’? Over the last few years, we’ve learnt that an ad needs 2.5 seconds of active attention to be encoded into memory. But this focus on attention conflicts with the theory of ‘low attention processing’ (LAP) proposed by the likes of Dr. Robert Heath and Paul Feldwick. Is there a role for LAP, and if so how, when and where does it play its part?

3. How do small brands grow? Most of our effectiveness principles are based on studies of big brands, from FMCG categories, or from award winning campaigns. But do the same principles apply to small and medium sized brands and businesses?

4. What is the 95:5 rule in FMCG? John Dawes’ research, that found 95% of customers are ‘out of market’ at any one time, was primarily born out of studying B2B categories. But what is the ratio across consumer categories such as food, drink, personal care and home care?

5. If a brand strengthens its association with a category entry point, will it grow? We know that big brands tend to be associated with more category entry points (CEPs), and that those associations tend to be stronger. But we don’t know if strong associations cause a brand to become big, or if a brand becoming big causes associations to become strong.

6. What are the biggest drivers of pricing power? Increasing pricing power, or reducing price sensitivity if you’d prefer, is one of the ultimate aims of brand building activity. And yet it is rarely included in brand health trackers. Can we understand more about this metric and, crucially, how best we can achieve it?

A common theme across these conversations

Beyond these specific questions, I noticed an overarching theme across my three candid conversations.

The marketers that I spoke to had a firm grasp of the fundamentals, and were now eager to understand how to apply these principles to their specific situations. What is the ratio in my category? How should a brand of my size behave? Does this principle apply in B2B?

And so, with these questions still on my mind, my work here is not done. I’m continuing to look for the biggest unanswered questions in effectiveness.

At the IPA Effectiveness Conference 2026, I heard answers from around 100 marketers. But I’d love to hear from more. So tell me, what are the biggest unanswered questions in effectiveness?