- Stewart Pearson
What are the Three Secrets to Growth?
WARC has just published the Effective 100, its annual marketing effectiveness rankings for global campaigns.
The top 10 winning campaigns in the rankings demonstrated the power of marketing to find new and innovative paths to growth. And all of these paths are not through traditional media but through people: our own people, existing customers and trusted influencers.
The three top ranked campaigns are all from one market...India. This is unsurprising. India is the world’s last democracy and my partners there keep me closely informed of the creativity and innovation happening there at scale.
In country rankings, despite the population imbalance, the UK was a close second to the US. Again, unsurprising in the light of the culture of consumer insight and brand planning strongly rooted in the UK but often absent in the US.
The winning campaign for music label ‘Saregama’ had a minimal media budget, was rooted in product innovation, and used influencers, social engagement and early adopters to achieve a 230% increase in the company’s share price.
From the UK, France and Australia came a global campaign ‘True Match’ for L’Oreal Foundation launched through influencers, followed by programmatic digital, and only then by mass media. Brand metrics shifted significantly, and brand sales rose from 5th to 1st in share.
Created in the U.S., adidas’ ‘Original is never finished’ is a three year campaign delivering multiple business outcomes in sales, advocacy and buzz.
The judges of the awards took three learnings from the most effective marketing:
1. Balance long-term and short-term planning: with suitable dashboards and metrics.
2. Develop distinctive brand assets: and leverage them consistently to engage people.
3. Be creative, be emotional: use creativity to elicit emotional responses.
Short and long-term balance. Brand value. Creativity and emotional engagement, personal and social.
These are absent from so-called MMM, Marketing (or Media) Mix Modeling.
It is little surprise MMM fails to enable a holistic understanding of marketing effects, or as a methodology to deliver predictive guidance and actionable forecasts.
It’s time for a new Brand Growth Model.
A Single Solution to Measure, Forecast and Scenario Plan the Path to Growth
Stewart Pearson is the Founder of Consilient Group, a multidisciplinary network of experienced professionals and partners.