Core year-on-year findings
In analysing the performance of the 36% of returning brands and agencies that have completed both the 2021 and 2022 Marketing Effectiveness Roadmap, it is evident that a dedicated approach to marketing effectiveness has helped strengthen marketing effectiveness culture in two ways:
It has helped brands and agencies either strengthen or maintain their effectiveness culture year-on-year:
- Effectiveness culture for brands has improved 10%, scoring 7.2 (2022) versus 6.6.
- Effectiveness culture for agencies has maintained equilibrium at the higher level of 7.6.
For brands, it has helped create consistency in how their marketing effectiveness performance is viewed, with a tighter range of scores across each of the effectiveness quadrants.
Core 2022 Roadmap findings
There are also findings in the 2022 data that reinforce findings from the 2021 roadmap, including:
The biggest single increase in marketing effectiveness culture is when the effectiveness journey is started
For brands it increases (+88%) and for agencies there is a more moderate 33% increase from a higher base (4.3 v 3.8).
Having an effectiveness roadmap is revalidated as a key component of creating a strong(er) marketing effectiveness culture.
- It increases perceived marketing effectiveness culture by 37% for brands and 38% for agencies. There are also improvements across all other marketing effectiveness quadrants (fig 1). Brands and agencies with a roadmap score consistently higher for effectiveness culture across all stages of their effectiveness journey.
- It helps create a more balanced approach to value creation within brands and agencies.
When a roadmap is present:
- Brands are 41% more likely to believe that their organisation balances the long and short term and 71% more likely to believe long term brand effects are crucial.
- Brands are also 86% more likely to disagree that their organisation focuses solely on the short term to create value.
- Agencies are 14% more likely to believe in balancing the long and short term.
More brands and agencies need to create an effectiveness roadmap.
26% of brand respondents and 37% of agency respondents claim that their brand or agency does not have an effectiveness roadmap
There are some key new findings which will help prioritise how and where brands and agencies can improve their effectiveness cultures in the next 12 months.
From a Focus perspective, not only do more brands and agencies need to create their own roadmap, there is also an opportunity for agencies to create effectiveness roadmaps for and with each of their key clients, to really help push a strong effectiveness partnership. At the moment, only 20% of agency respondents claim their agency has an effectiveness roadmap for their key clients.
From a People perspective, there are three areas agencies are already prioritising to improve their effectiveness culture:
- Putting effort into helping the whole organisation better understand the agency’s effectiveness approach increases effectiveness culture (+63% from 5.4 to 8.8)
- Helping clients understand that the agency is a creator of value rather than a cost to brands (+50% from 4.8 to 7.2)
- Not allowing effectiveness to be siloed within planning, analytics or other departments (+43% from 5.6 to 8.0)
From a Process perspective, brands which are adopting a more clearly defined planning process are already positively improving effectiveness culture in three ways:
- It increases their own effectiveness culture (+43%)
- It also increases their agency’s effectiveness culture (+31%) when their work has a process to feed into
- It increases the chances of both their own and their agency’s effectiveness recommendations being activated
From a Data, Tools & Measurement perspective, both brands and agencies agree that this is where the biggest effectiveness challenges lie in the next 12 months. Of particular importance is the finding that the biggest data challenge faced by individual agencies is the lack of (or perceived lack of) data sharing from and with their clients, and also from and with other agencies that work for the same client.
In its conclusions, the report makes a number of rallying cries to the ad industry, including:
- for more agencies to start or reignite their effectiveness journey with an effectiveness roadmap;
- for agencies and brands to start building effectiveness roadmaps in partnership with each other;
- for the industry to rally around one definition and one framework for understanding how to improve marketing effectiveness;
It also calls for an increase in applications for IPA Effectiveness Accreditation from IPA member agencies, for which applications open in spring 2023.
You can download the full report here.