A banker will tell how his refinancing package has saved the company; a management consultant will tell how his six sigma project has saved the company millions of dollars and the IT consultant will tell you how his technology product has saved time and money. The marketing guy will say we spent a lot of dosh and made some really great ads that everyone liked. When will we be able to "value" the contribution our marketing campaign made to a product launch or a sales spike?
The root of our failure to take a seat at the top table, therefore, is our inability to quantify in a meaningful way that the dollars spent on advertising delivered a return to the company. Until we can say that the $10 million spent on advertising was directly responsible for delivering $20 million in sales (or similar) we will always be at that second table; the nice to have around but not sure what value you really add. Little wonder that we have seen advertising dollars seeping into below-the-line and direct response campaigns where the response is measurable.
We spent 'X' dollars and we got 'Y' dollars of sales. Which brings me to the holy grail, ROI - return on investment.
The industry has been searching for a marketing ROI almost since birth and it has proved elusive. Media specialists, rooted in data, are now stepping up to the challenge. Smart modelling tools are cheap. Econometric modeling, for example, is no longer a buzzword, for it's here in Asia and agencies are busy building models for clients with varying degrees of sophistication.
And I see a new sense of partnership with clients. Two years ago only one client in Asia gave Zenith detailed sales data; now we are awash with sales data from numerous clients. And the language is changing; words such as regression, correlation, coefficients and metrics are now used as often as reach, SOV and GRPs. We are learning the language of the top table.
So there is hope. The proliferation of sophisticated statistical modeling tools, the ease at which huge quantities of data can be analysed using simple database tools, the presence within media specialists of people with the required analytical background to make sense of it all and a willingness of clients to share confidential business data, means that the hunt for ROI is hot.
The real question is not whether as an industry we can get there, we surely must believe we can, but whether we are hungry enough to change the way we work and learn the language of top table diners. We can do it.
