NEW YORK: Marketers aiming to maximise the payback from their increasingly stretched budgets might benefit from enhancing their creativity and share of voice, according a new paper published by Warc.
The paper, entitled What We Know About Marketing Budgets, draws on work from leading practitioners and academics, as well as award-winning case studies and the opinions of senior client-side executives.
As a starting point, it argues that the advent of hugely detailed datasets has allowed for the more precise allocation of funds, but has equally heightened the demand for accountability on the part of CEOs and CFOs.
Resources also have to be spread across an expanding array of channels and, in the case of many brands, spent in diverse ways in separate countries, meaning consistency is almost impossible to achieve.
Looking beyond the numbers, strong creative can often make the difference in terms of the impact of a campaign – even if it is difficult to predict this outcome in advance than with more functional messaging.
"Either way, research indicates that creative campaigns work harder," Warc's paper said.
Research from the UK, for example, showed that campaigns winning awards for creativity and effectiveness outperformed those recognised for their effectiveness alone, despite typically having lower media budgets.
Another strategy brands can employ to try and improve the return on their investment is to understand the relationship between their share of voice and share of market in order to establish benchmarks.
That task begins with the question, "How much does a brand need to spend to generate the attention it needs to capture the interests of its target audience?"
Geico, the insurance provider, boosted awareness among American consumers by augmenting its share of voice in such a fashion – and the brand's striking creative only served to reinforce the beneficial effects of this.
"Not only did it increase its voice, but the appeal of its messaging made a strong connection to consumers under the age of 30 – a group that gave the brand further recognition via social media," Warc's report said.
The paper, entitled What We Know About Marketing Budgets, draws on work from leading practitioners and academics, as well as award-winning case studies and the opinions of senior client-side executives.
As a starting point, it argues that the advent of hugely detailed datasets has allowed for the more precise allocation of funds, but has equally heightened the demand for accountability on the part of CEOs and CFOs.
Resources also have to be spread across an expanding array of channels and, in the case of many brands, spent in diverse ways in separate countries, meaning consistency is almost impossible to achieve.
Looking beyond the numbers, strong creative can often make the difference in terms of the impact of a campaign – even if it is difficult to predict this outcome in advance than with more functional messaging.
"Either way, research indicates that creative campaigns work harder," Warc's paper said.
Research from the UK, for example, showed that campaigns winning awards for creativity and effectiveness outperformed those recognised for their effectiveness alone, despite typically having lower media budgets.
Another strategy brands can employ to try and improve the return on their investment is to understand the relationship between their share of voice and share of market in order to establish benchmarks.
That task begins with the question, "How much does a brand need to spend to generate the attention it needs to capture the interests of its target audience?"
Geico, the insurance provider, boosted awareness among American consumers by augmenting its share of voice in such a fashion – and the brand's striking creative only served to reinforce the beneficial effects of this.
"Not only did it increase its voice, but the appeal of its messaging made a strong connection to consumers under the age of 30 – a group that gave the brand further recognition via social media," Warc's report said.
Data sourced from Warc
