WARC has bought out a new report looking at the effectiveness of advertising. And the report highlights some very interesting factors.
Here a number of topics are looked at such as “are you spending enough based on your brand size and market size”, or “are you investing enough based on your market share” and “are you maximising effectiveness or efficiency”?
Some of the highlights inlcude the following breakdown based on what effects advertising return:
Next up:
Here the report looks at which decisions you can make regarding “long-term effects vs. short term sales effects”, “the purpose of brand building vs. performance marketing”, and “audience size – either the broad market or niche clients”. These factors all contribute to the effectiveness of your advertising.
One great insight from the report is this, which states that long-term brand building should never be underestimated for the long-term business success, even though today more and more short-term thinking based on sales and performance figures are being practised.
Following is a section on the importance of being creative:
Here the facts highlight that all things being equal, and having done everything correcty at this point, creativity is what makes the impact. It cannot make up for advertising spend, however it can sky-rocket the performance of your ad spending if done well.
The eveidence highlights that award-winning advertising does indeed increase business performance, usually because the advertising makes a lasting impression in a cluttered world. This may not be new to some, but it surely is something which needs to be addressed at the C-level table.
When planning for reach it all depends on the following topics, “objectives between brand-building and activation as well as the brands audience”, “whether the channel selection is central to the creative strategy or indeed whether the strategy is channel led”, and “the budget available”. Most often channel selection is driven by budget size, which seems to make sense due to the constraints some budgets have.
And then finally:
Here the advertising needs to fit to the brand if it is to work. Does the recipient understand the brand within the category? To anchor the message of the advertising within the persons mind within that category and finally to act as a stimuli bridge so that the person can relate one piece of advertising with another from the same brand.
Here you can download the white paper: http://makeit.warc.com/home