5 priorities for effective advertising
Warc ‘s (2022) Anatomy of Effectiveness whitepaper is an updated edition, providing new frameworks and new insights for the five building blocks of effective advertising. We have already listed them for you below.
1. Invest in growth
Understanding how factors such as brand size, campaign investment and category dynamics determine effectiveness are important first steps when it comes to setting budgets and agreeing on objectives. Getting the investment framework right is crucial if a campaign is to unlock its potential.
2. Balance your spending
Establish the right investment framework to ensure sustainable success. Whether it’s long-term effects versus short-term sales impact, brand building versus performance marketing, broad reach versus active in-market buyers, or upper funnel versus lower funnel , plan for effectiveness across time frames, messages, audience types, and buyer journeys to achieve maximum growth.
Mudit Jaju, Global Head of e-commerce, Wavemaker, says: “The consumer who watches TV while cooking is the same person who is desperate to find the right diaper cream on the Amazon app. The only way brands win is by planning the entire purchase journey and not in individual silos.”
3. Plan for reach
Campaign reach becomes increasingly difficult to generate as media consumption continues to fragment. This forces marketers to rethink previous “fixed ideas” about reach and frequency management. Factors to consider include brand objectives, media selection, and consumer buying behavior.
Professor Karen Nelson-Field, founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence, says: “We can now link attention directly to mental availability (MA). MA measures how likely your brand is to come to mind, compared to competitors, when a purchase occurs. It is a measure closely related to changes in market share, both growth and decline, and is widely accepted by marketers as an indicator of brand strength.”
4. Be creative
Creativity makes all the difference and is a powerful weapon under the control of the marketer. There is widespread evidence that creativity is more effective when it is distinctive, engaging, emotional, and long-lasting. Recent research shows that only 8% of agencies are confident in convincing clients to invest in high-quality creativity and 12% of clients are confident in convincing the CFO to invest in high-quality creative assets .
Anastasia Leng, CEO, CreativeX, says, “The marketing and advertising industry has a major blind spot when it comes to ROI: the creative one. As much as 84% of marketing content is visual, yet it is the least understood and analyzed element of the marketing mix.”
5. Plan for recognition
Advertising must be associated with the brand behind it, if you want it to work that is. Planning for recognition involves creating shortcuts in consumers’ minds that make brands more memorable, impactful, and easier to remember. Failure to properly burn communication is a common pitfall. Investing in and nurturing distinctiveness ensures rapid recognition among consumers.
Jenni Romaniuk, research professor and associate director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, says, “People may be made of stardust, but brands are made of memories. A buyer’s memory is one of the most efficient sources of information (even a Google search requires you to remember what to type). Advertising can refresh memories for a specific brand, making the brand easier to find.”
