Advertising, in its current form, is still not driving the growth it should be, according to a WARC’s Anatomy of Effectiveness study released at Cannes Lions.
The update on the original 2019 study is designed to give brand marketers, advertising agencies and media owners a fresh perspective.
“In 2019 we noted a sense that advertising, in its current form, was not driving the growth it should be,” says David Tiltman, SVP content, WARC.
“This was backed up by researcher Peter Field declaring a 'crisis in creative effectiveness'.
“Today, there’s no sign that the crisis is over. In fact, there are a host of new questions and issues to resolve.
“We’ve had a pandemic that saw budgets switch out of brand investment into performance marketing; we’ve seen the rise of ‘retail media’ platforms that are reshaping the media landscape; and with the impending death of the cookie we see a growing lack of confidence in advertising and media measurement.
“This updated edition of our white paper draws on new thinking and the latest evidence to present the key building blocks required to deliver commercial impact today.”
The five key building blocks of effective marketing: Invest for growth; Balance your spend; Plan for reach; Be creative; Plan for recognition.
Nancy Smith, President and CEO, Analytic Partners, says: “Understand the impact of your spend. Leveraging the intelligence of thousands of brands and budgets, Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome shows that the number one driver of business growth is the level of spend on marketing and advertising. This outperforms all other drivers like creative quality or executional elements.”
Mudit Jaju, Global head of e-commerce, Wavemaker, says: “The consumer who watches TV while making dinner is the same individual who is desperately looking for the right diaper cream on the Amazon app.
“The only way in which brands win is by planning across the entirety of the purchase journey and not in individual silos.”
Adelaide’s Karen Nelson-Field, Founder and CEO, Amplified Intelligence, says: “We can now directly link attention to mental availability (MA). MA measures the likelihood of your brand coming to mind, compared to competitors, when a purchase occasion arises.
“It is a metric that is closely related to market share change, both growth and decline, and is widely accepted by marketers as an indicator of brand strength.”
Anastasia Leng, CEO, CreativeX, says: “The marketing and advertising industry has a significant blindspot when it comes to ROI: the creative. A vast 84% of marketing content is visual yet it's the least understood and analyzed element of the marketing mix.”
Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor and Associate Director, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, says: “Humans might be made from stardust, but brands are made by memories. A buyer’s memory is one of the most efficient sources of information (even for a Google search you need to remember what to type). Advertising can refresh memories for a specific brand, to make the brand easier to retrieve.”
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