Why you should complete the Effectiveness Roadmap Survey

The IPA Effectiveness Roadmap Survey may be short but it forms part of a much longer movement, including the contributions of Binet and Field, Byron Sharp, Mark Ritson et al., that has brought marketing effectiveness into the mainstream. And I’d argue that demonstrating marketing is delivering a return has never been more important than it is today.

Brands are continuously facing challenges around marketing budgets and questions around the value that marketing is driving are becoming a core part of the agenda at management meetings.  

If you’re not consistently showing the value created by your marketing expenditure, then it will be perceived purely as a cost, and it will be the first place that finance turns to when it is faced with tricky trading conditions and looking for cuts.

Mixing art with science

Modern marketers must have a good working relationship with procurement, data, digital, technology, and, crucially, finance. They should have regular check-ins with these teams to share data and discuss performance, but also to position marketing budgets as a form of investment from the outset.  When this is the case, marketing teams are seen less and less as the ‘colouring in department’ and more as multi-faceted SMEs able to mix art with science, and keep data at the heart of what they do.

For brands, effectiveness measurement is critical – and whilst these days there is more happening in-house with attribution, econometrics, and brand tracking – we client marketers still look to our agencies to consult on the direction of travel for our own measurement roadmap, especially when it comes to test and learn, access to media owner BETA tests, and to helping pilot our course to making constant improvements in learning. At its best, the client-agency relationship can be a true strategic partnership in all forms, reflected in the agency’s PRF (Performance-Related Fee).

IPA Effectiveness Awards and Accreditation

The IPA Effectiveness Awards should be the ultimate accolade for clients who place marketing effectiveness at the core of their work. They are a great opportunity for brand and agencies to partner together on a submission, demonstrate the great measurement frameworks that have been put in place, and to showcase brilliant creative, planning and media buying.

If winning an IPA Effectiveness Award is the ultimate recognition, IPA Effectiveness Accreditation – the biennial free endorsement process for agencies that convincingly demonstrate their commitment to effectiveness culture – should be the core ongoing element for brands to monitor, to see which agencies are taking this seriously and investing in building their culture, and to monitor the progress those agencies are making. 

Accreditation shows that agencies understand the four pillars of effectiveness (focus, people, process, and data, tools & measurement) and know how to put them into practice.  This shouldn’t be a ‘one and done’ accreditation, it is an indication that an agency is on a journey and it provides evidence of progress. Why wouldn’t any brand want to partner with an agency that puts effectiveness at its core in this way?

Take stock of where you are today

You don’t have to wait until the next Accreditation in 2025 to start the process or take stock of where you are today. Fill in the IPA Effectiveness Roadmap Survey now, and share it as widely as you can with others in agencies or clients. Organisations that submit five or more responses will get a free detailed one-pager on their effectiveness culture and there is an option to purchase a bespoke report on your company's marketing effectiveness culture vs the market (please see example). That will provide you with a snapshot of where you are.

I was a judge in the 2023 Effectiveness Accreditation Process. I saw first-hand the steps that agencies go through to embed culture and process, training, and access to tools. As a judging group, we all got an extra thrill from recognising those agencies that had really taken stock of where they were, that understood the gaps that they needed to close, and were starting out on that effectiveness roadmap journey. 

Completing the survey will give you this starting point.  It will also benefit brands – it helps us know that our strategic agency partners take this seriously and are up for the opportunity to partner with us on our shared journey. And this will hopefully translate into long relationships between us.

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.