The conflict between accountability and effectiveness

Les Binet, European director of DDB Matrix, and marketing consultant Peter Field discuss the measures used to assess effectiveness (doing the right thing) and accountability (being seen to do the right thing).

The conflict between accountability and effectiveness

Les Binet and Peter Field

Accountability sounds good doesn't it? You require people to measure the value of their actions, and you incentivise them to ensure that they meet pre-defined targets. Occasional raising of the bar drives continuous improvement, and the business prospers. The trouble with applying 'accountability' to marketing is that the evaluation is widely flawed, the targets are usually the wrong ones and the result too often leads to the destruction of shareholder value. Those are the most worrying conclusions of our meta-analysis of 880 national case...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands