Why marketing effectiveness matters to clients and agencies

What is marketing effectiveness culture?

Let’s firstly define marketing effectiveness:

"Marketing Effectiveness is the process of improving business performance from marketing activities, made easier and more impactful by people; data, tools & measurement; and a strong & clear focus".

How well organisations perform against this definition, sets their effectiveness culture.

Why effectiveness culture matters?

If we can agree that this definition of effectiveness is there or thereabouts, then we can be really clear that effectiveness isn’t just about the business value of the end product (the campaign, the experience, the product launch, etc.), but also in how you get there.

Understanding how you get ‘there’ matters.

Effectiveness culture is a culture of learning, from both successes and failures, and in creating the best possible foundations for increased impact and business value from marketing.

This foundation means getting the best out of everyone involved in delivering business value from marketing, for brands, for agencies, for the relationship between the two and, critically, for the operational benefit of the business.

An effectiveness culture helps promote integrated ways of working, and clarity of purpose around what you are doing, how and why.

Why is the Marketing Effectiveness Culture Monitor important?

This is the first Marketing Effectiveness Culture Monitor of its kind and covers the whole of the marketing industry. Its importance is determined by the clear benefits of what it will provide:

• a practical and diagnostic understanding of the state of marketing effectiveness.
• an assessment against each of the four marketing effectiveness pillars, evidencing which pillars need priority focus to improve marketing effectiveness culture.
• an industry benchmark and a comparison to peers, showing how marketing effectiveness is evolving year on year.

Specifically, for agencies, it provides:

• a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities that brands face in creating their effectiveness culture, and the business value that this can create.
• a view of how agencies can further positively influence their client’s effectiveness culture and better support through their own approach to effectiveness.

The agency view: Pip Hulbert, CEO, Wunderman Thompson and Chair of the IPA’s Effectiveness Leadership Group

At Wunderman Thompson effectiveness is not just a goal but a requirement across our entire business. We work hard to ensure effectiveness doesn’t work in a vacuum but is truly integrated. This is driven by a culture where every team member, across every department, is focused on effectiveness and what contributes to it. The culture monitor will allow us to better understand just how effective our own processes are, where we’re winning, but importantly where we can keep improving.

For brands, it provides:

• the blueprint/framework for setting and owning their effectiveness agenda for the benefit of the business as a whole.
• a clear and prioritised cross-business view of where marketing investment (£ and/or effort) needs to be made to improve business value.
• assessment of how their agency partners can be included with and better help build their effectiveness agenda.

The brand view: John Perella, Head of Marketing Effectiveness, Tesco and Chair of ISBA’s Insight and Effectiveness Group

From a Tesco perspective, I'm looking forward to understanding where we sit within the marketing effectiveness journey: where we’re currently strong and where opportunity lies. This will aid collaboration across the business to drive us forward and improve our marketing effectiveness. By completing the Effectiveness Culture Monitor we will all benefit from an individual business perspective – client and agency side – and crucially, will also raise the collective game, align our offerings better and boost the commercial impact of the work we produce.

Take the survey

We need as many brands and agencies to complete the survey, and multiple people within each brand and agency to complete the survey.

Marketers, financers, insight folk, all opinions matter – this isn’t just for marketers to judge their own effectiveness culture. We want the full 360-degree view as only then can we get the clearest view of marketing effectiveness culture.