There is a bit of discussion going on right now about what is relevant to measure in advertising. Some are claiming that only ROI is relevant, while others defend measuring intermittently and on different parameters like recall and recognition. So, who is right?
Well – I would love to agree with the “only ROI is relevant”-side. Because in the end, ROI is obviously all that matters. But they are also missing the point of measuring in the first place. Or rather, they regard measurements as something you do to evaluate how things went after the dust settled. It’s kind of like saying that happiness is the only relevant parameter of measuring success in life. While that might be true when you are knocking on heaven’s door, other measurements are tools to intermittently guide efforts to the ultimate goal of good ROI.
Back in my engineering days, we would have talked about feedback loops, and modeled them something like this:
In the “only ROI matters” model, there are no feedback loops for real time adjustments, because no intermittent parameters are being measured.
Consider an airplane. In an airplane, the ultimate goal can be to arrive at JFK, but we still need to intermittently measure ground speed, bearing, and altitude to intermittently adjust our response to different errors and disturbances, and ultimately end up safely at JFK. And really, this is EVEN MORE important today when campaigns are live and in real time. You need to measure ALL THE TIME to adjust and end up at the JFK of ROI.
So while I don’t agree with the writers claiming that ROI is the only relevant parameter, I do agree that our present parameters are not very realistic. We need better parameters, better methods, and better models. We also need live responses in this world where brands are created in real time collaboration between company and consumer. We need to stop thinking campaign, and start thinking real time participation. We need to create brand management FLOW.
The “Flow Man” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (perhaps the world’s hardest name to pronounce) can teach us a lot about this. Consider his model applied to our world of branding and, if you have the time, check out his TED-talk. Who knows, you just might get inspired.
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