Media and Creative Teams Join Forces for the First Time to Host a Seminar. «Advertising Performance Measurement» will be led by Peter Felser and Urs Schneider (photo below).
WW: Half of all advertising spending is a waste of money. But no one knows which of the two halves that applies to. An old saying. Have we made progress since then, or does this still hold true? Peter Felser: The saying is indeed ancient, but it still holds some truth. I don’t know if it’s really 50 percent. With a significant portion of advertising, we’re unsure whether it works and how it works. There is therefore a legitimate need to know more about it. Urs Schneider: In Switzerland, over six billion francs are spent on advertising annually, and the trend continues to rise. The question of the efficiency of the funds allocated therefore plays an increasingly important role. However, questions about measuring efficiency in marketing communication remain uncomfortable. Nevertheless, only proper advertising research can help identify new insights and thus develop relevant strategies. Half the budget yields results—the other half is a waste: Which of these two categories does research know more about? Felser: Both are difficult to understand. After all, the same approach doesn’t work in every industry, nor does it work the same way in every situation. The market situation is a key factor. Where does the brand stand? What is the starting point? What is the competition doing? All of these factors interact to determine whether something works or not. Then there’s a new phenomenon: cross-media and viral brand management. Viral marketing, in particular, is difficult to predict. If the media picks it up and consumers get involved, the ball keeps rolling. Testing this in advance and making reliable predictions is, of course, very challenging. What tools are available for an agency to test its work? Schneider: There are various methods for measuring advertising success. We want to provide a general overview of this in the seminar. The goal is to help participants see: What’s right for each individual case? You can’t measure every ad the same way. Personally, I tend to always measure precisely. As a media planner, what ultimately matters to me is sales or actual market success. But I also have to view that in the context of advertising exposure. To that end, I always try to figure out: Where are the benchmarks? What level of advertising exposure is necessary? The answers to these questions give the client the assurance that, on the one hand, they aren’t spending too little. If they spend too little, they’ve essentially wasted their efforts. But you can also assure a client that they aren’t spending too much on advertising. There are a wide variety of approaches you can take to achieve this. That’s the perspective of a media specialist. How do you test the creative? Felser: I like to distinguish between the strategy phase, where the question is: What are we actually saying? What is the core message or the core benefit we want to communicate?« And then there’s the actual implementation. We can significantly influence advertising success by building a solid strategic foundation. The positioning concept must be relevant and coherent. To that end, we often rely on market research. We try to crystallize consumer insights. Conversations with consumers provide us with data that gives us confidence. In practice, we sometimes test strategic concepts in advance. We check: Do our concepts convey the message? Are they relevant to the audience? In my view, advertising tests during and after implementation are less useful. Once we’ve found the right execution idea, we trust our expertise and experience. A pretest with layouts and storyboards offers little additional assurance at this stage. Doesn’t the ever-increasing number of measurement tools lead to a mental conflict for the creative? Felser: We must not neglect relevance. The core message must be relevant and consistent with the brand. The creative is indeed limited in this regard—and rightly so. We must work in a goal-oriented manner and implement the strategy. We’re not looking for just any idea, but for brand ideas that dramatize the central brand promise as strikingly as possible. The direction is set; creativity isn’t restricted, but it is channeled. Is the pressure from clients to measure success noticeably greater today? Schneider: I believe the pressure is greater. In any case, people are talking about it more. But I haven’t yet noticed that people are actually conducting more performance measurements. There’s almost a gap between what people say and what they actually measure. I think that’s why the seminar is also beneficial for advertisers. Afterward, they should know: How can I measure and analyze the success of an ad campaign? You can also learn from a failure and improve the next campaign. That’s the most important point. Are there also performance-based fee structures? Felser: For many clients, we include performance-based components in the fee structure. We find it interesting when you can earn a bonus that’s linked to the success of the advertising. However, a compensation model based exclusively on performance-based components is only conceivable if the agency were involved in all key decisions—including the size of the advertising budget.The internet offers advertising that is, in part, measurable through click-through rates. How has the internet influenced research on advertising effectiveness? Schneider: In my view, the internet hasn’t necessarily made advertising success more transparent. The internet has made it clear how many people have the opportunity to see something. And you can measure how many people responded to that opportunity. These are certainly measures of advertising success, but I think it needs to go further. After all, readership research and telecontrol have been around for a long time. But the almost mythical notion of measurability on the Internet has led many to believe that everything can now be measured there. A great deal still remains unclear, especially regarding usage habits and target audiences. But things will improve with Net Metrix. Felser: The internet has certainly fueled the discussion regarding measurability. People argue that everything is measurable on the internet, but not in traditional advertising. That’s not entirely true. Besides, the internet is capable of much more than what is actually measured. For example, if simple banner ads are measured solely by click-through rates, the power of this tool is underestimated. Well-designed banner ads achieve more than just a click. That would be the same as saying about an ad: »Only those who send back the coupon have responded to the ad.” That would mean all contacts where someone merely read the ad, understood it, and then found the brand appealing would be worthless. Someone who clicks on something hasn’t bought anything yet, nor has their attitude changed. Felser: Exactly. That’s why I don’t consider digital media to be significantly more measurable than traditional media. I see problems with both, as well as opportunities for improvement. With the internet, people always claim that you know exactly who has responded to an ad. We can determine which computer the response came from. But there’s a big difference between whether Papa Felser or Daughter Felser clicked on a website on the family computer. Advertising doesn’t work rationally. People process it emotionally. How can emotions be brought under control? Felser: “Brought under control” is asking too much. But the point is to understand emotions. The emotional piano, after all, is an instrument with many keys. It’s about understanding: Which emotional keys do we want to play? To hit the right ones, we need to know as much as possible about our target audiences. Will the influence of strategists in advertising continue to grow? Felser: I believe that strategy is crucial to success. If the strategy is wrong, everything that follows is a waste of time—and may even be counterproductive. That’s why strategy is the foundation. But I don’t see that as conflicting with creativity. Once you’ve established this foundation, the second step is to create advertising that’s as spectacular and creative as possible—to effectively implement the strategy. The Effie, as an award for measurable success, is still struggling to gain recognition in certain circles. Why isn’t it yet the gold standard? Schneider: The Effie should be viewed differently because it effectively incorporates measurable success. From that perspective, the cases honored by the Effie are more interesting to analyze than the ADC’s “Dice” campaigns, where only creativity is evaluated. When I look at the cases that have won awards, the Effie is certainly based on a track record of performance. There’s a lot to learn from that. Is an Effie more desirable today than ADC Gold and similar awards? Felser: Awards are one currency—actual success and the satisfaction of the client and consumer are another. In the end, it’s the long-term partnership that counts. Measuring success is not a science that can clearly distinguish between right and wrong. It’s a soft science. There isn’t one single truth—there are various tools, all of which have their pros and cons. From that perspective, measuring advertising effectiveness is a highly complex matter. I had the opportunity to write a dissertation on this topic and realized: You can’t simply say, “This is how you do it,” and then know what’s successful and what isn’t. It’s complex. Measuring advertising success also involves substantial investments. In the small Swiss market, it makes little sense to invest another 100,000 francs in advertising effectiveness research when the advertising budget is half a million. The ratio just doesn’t add up. Abroad, where budgets are much larger, the math tends to work out better. If you invest too little money, you risk getting invalid figures. This data is dangerous and heavily dependent on personal interpretation. Is measurement a matter of character? Felser: There are various tools and methods. But in the end, you have to interpret the results. What even constitutes a good result? What about a bad one? In practice, the correct interpretation of market research or test results is crucial. You can have the same results, yet one person might draw one conclusion while another draws the opposite. Interpreting results is a science. But in the end, it’s also a matter of character. Do I want to take risks? Do I want to polarize, or do I want to please everyone and thereby risk boring some people? If something goes wrong: Where can I make the most corrections—in the media mix or in an ongoing creative campaign? Schneider: There’s a lot you can correct. Finding the ideal media mix takes patience. It often takes a long time before you can prove which media really drive growth and which have no impact. Of course, you can learn from other cases: What are the ideal media mixes for a specific product? We already have long-term analyses available here and can also demonstrate where, for example, digital media ideally complements direct marketing. Felser: When developing a campaign, we can distinguish between three possible testing phases. During the pre-test, I can verify whether the platform and the consumer insights are correct. In the post-test, I can determine whether the campaign was understood correctly. After that, it’s conceivable to track the campaign’s performance over time. Added to this are the constant questions: How can we determine the optimal media mix? How can we implement this mix across different media? How much budget is needed for the campaign to be most effective? Finally, it’s also interesting to ask: What additional impact has the campaign had on brand value? Can such tests also be conducted in-house? Schneider: That’s best left to independent professionals. Advertising agencies and media agencies are generally not market research firms. Moreover, it’s not the case that the agencies conduct such tests; rather, it’s primarily the client who does so. We believe it’s important that advertising and media agencies have a good understanding of the topic, can contribute to the discussion, and can ensure that it’s handled professionally. After all, incorrect measurement of advertising success can also be misleading.And is that one of the things the seminar aims to prevent? Schneider: One of our goals with the seminar is to demonstrate just how important it is to monitor advertising success. To that end, we want to highlight: What can actually be measured? This is followed by interpretation. Many things are declared to be advertising success when they actually aren’t.Felser: Every agency should address this topic, even if they’re critical of advertising tests. You have to know what’s possible and what isn’t. What are the opportunities, and where are the limits? What options are there to have a say in the matter and avoid mistakes? Simply being against it isn’t enough. Knowing the arguments for and against leads to better solutions. What would be the right approach? Schneider: If you run tests, you also have to be able to draw the right lessons from them. It’s always possible to change a single aspect—but not the entire campaign, otherwise we’ll be starting from scratch again. Unfortunately, this happens very often in practice. You measure success, aren’t satisfied—and suddenly the campaign is scrapped instead of just tweaking it a bit. With this mindset, even a new campaign will usually amount to little more than “trial and error.”Your advice?Schneider: Tracking the campaign’s impact—that’s actually the right approach to success monitoring. You always need a roadmap that specifies what will be changed or improved.Felser: What makes this seminar special is that we do this together. The media agency is responsible for impact, and the creative agency is responsible for the message. Everything has to align for a campaign to be successful. It requires a good strategy, spectacular execution, and visibility across the right channels. If these three elements don’t work together and are not coordinated, and if everyone isn’t pulling in the same direction to optimize, then you’ll never be truly successful. It’s relatively new for us to analyze this so intensively together and now to incorporate it into a joint seminar. How will you measure the seminar’s success? Schneider: By the participants’ satisfaction. If they say it was inspiring and gave them new ideas. And if it confirms our intention that the course is very practice-oriented. Felser: We don’t want to hold an academic seminar, but rather one that’s relevant to the Swiss context. That’s why we’ve invited many speakers from Switzerland. They’ll explain what works here and what could still be improved in Switzerland. Interview: Andreas Panzeri
BSW Intensive Seminar: Possibilities and Limitations of Measuring Advertising Success:
From June 15 to 18, a BSW intensive seminar on this pressing topic will take place at the Gerzensee Study Center. The course will be led by Peter Felser (Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett) and Urs Schneider (Mediaschneider). Other speakers include Marlis Ackermann, Caspar Coppetti, Barbara Domeyer, Regula Fecker, Christof Lenhard, Stefan Rüssli, Cary Steinmann, Martin Radelfinger, Christoph Theler, and Volker Trommsdorff. The intensive seminar is aimed at
Primarily aimed at employees of BSW agencies, especially ambitious, holistically minded account directors, consultants, and planners, as well as creatives and media strategists. Clients are also welcome. For more information, visit .
