Ad world wrestles with x-factor

By DITA DE BONI

If the smoke and mirrors of creative advertising and clever marketing were cleared, would measurable results that affect a company's bottom line emerge from the ether?

And with those results, would corporations be more inclined to incorporate advertising and marketing expertise at the top of their organisations?

Would they acknowledge that the main functions of a company are, in fact, the successful advertising and marketing of products?

Big advertisers have long held the belief that creative genius engenders brand awareness, and marketing gimmicks, executed with panache, successfully sell.

But the encroachment of things such as direct marketing on ad spending has forced a rethink of the creative area's distance from the mechanisms of measurability. Corporations and ad marketers alike are looking for ways to proclaim that clever creative campaigns = spending = profit.

An industry based on trying to provide that often expensive reassurance to agencies and clients is fast emerging.

Three separate events in Auckland illustrate that the new buzz words for the industry are measurability, results and "how much profit will this make me?"

The first two events launch services from market research companies. The two systems aim to turn a spotlight on consumer behaviour in areas that corporates do not often understand but long to exploit.

ACNielsen proposes to give the definitive solution to tracking audiences, advertising and user activity on the internet, launching the Nielsen//Entertaining system.

The company promises to show not only the depth and width of audience exposure to an online campaign, but demographic profiles of users and where they come from and where they go to after a site is visited, among other things.

"Businesses in the new economy seek reliable, standardised, worldwide comparable information to justify their competitiveness and substantiate their investments in the face of a shakeup in the internet jungle," says Brian Milnes, Pacific managing director of ACNielsen eRatings.com.

Across town a day later, competitor NFO CM Research regales marketing managers with a service designed to "measure, manage and monitor stakeholder relationships for competitive advantage."

For a minimum of $25,000, the TRI*M system promises to measure the levels of commitment and motivation customers, employees, shareholders and the public have towards a company.

The visiting head of the Global TRI*M centre in Munich, Dr Joachim Scharioth, says: "A market has never bought anything ... people do. What affects a person's purchasing power is their perceptions of a company and the quality and strength of their relationship with that company."

Unitec lecturer and ex-marketing practitioner Phil Bretherton is not familiar with ACNielsen or NFO CM's new products, but says that sometimes research companies are guilty of "trying to sell the universal snake oil."

While he agrees that measurability is becoming more important as companies globalise and need to keep track of sprawling marketing efforts, he says most companies that offer market insights are not able to transform a business.

"Measurement systems have some use to measure tactical activity, but sometimes, other than some sexy lingo, it can be twaddle. Nothing will substitute for getting your clients to tell you what they like and don't like."

Hamish Pringle agrees. The director of marketing strategy for the British Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) is in New Zealand to speak at a seminar, sponsored by the Herald, on how advertising effectiveness awards teach practitioners about what works, what does not and why.

He will also attend New Zealand's advertising effectiveness awards, at the Auckland Town Hall tonight.

"It's often a good idea to get a third party to get objective measures of client base. But some marketing research companies suggest they have a `black box' solution and unnecessarily cloak their methods in mystery."

Awards encourage agencies to examine for themselves how much impact a campaign has had on profits, says Mr Pringle. Each agency submits a 4000-word submission with proof that a campaign has led to more business, although "manifold" effects, such as increased loyalty, better employee morale and the upgrading of a company's financial rating, can be included if it is proved a specific campaign was responsible.

From 18 years of the IPA awards in Britain, 650 examples are on file of attempts to measure above-line campaign effectiveness.

"We are trying to get that culture of effectiveness, of accountability, into agencies," says Mr Pringle. "With clients spending 10 to 15 per cent of their sales on communications programmes, advertising agencies simply have to be accountable in the same way lawyers and accountants are.

"On the one hand, those involved in advertising are constantly under attack from those who see it as an exploitative activity. On the others, critics really don't understand how difficult consumers are to impress these days - they are very media savvy. But ultimately, if it isn't measured, it doesn't matter."

Another reason for agencies to look for measurability from campaigns is the desire of advertising and marketing practitioners to have their function taken seriously by the corporate hierarchy.

Anecdotal evidence from New Zealand practitioners also indicates a reluctance by some corporate managers to recognise that marketing is a key function of business.

Mr Pringle says an IPA-sponsored project showed a depressing reality in British corporate life. Top managers were not receiving key facts underlying marketing efforts and this was aggravated by an often quick turnover of marketing managers.