At first glance, delivering effectiveness in advertising could seem like a box-ticking exercise.
Set clear goals, understand the communications task and your audience well, outspend your share with some impactful, well-branded creative on attention-grabbing channels and measure your outcomes. A collection of theories, rules and formulas to follow.
However, the road to success is a meandering one, that relies not only on doing every part adeptly but also on ensuring the environment is conducive to success. There are many elements to consider, but sometimes the simplest elements are the most valuable.
Strong relationships
The difference an open, trusting agency-client partnership makes to the resulting work shouldn’t be underestimated.
In my time client-side at ALDI, it was quickly apparent how a strong relationship created the transparency and intimacy for genuine business challenges to be shared and debated. And while a clear, considered brief is still essential to identify the specific role of communications, this backdrop sets up a foundation of understanding that makes the 40-slide appendix far less necessary.
Sharing challenges, not prescribing solutions, leaves space for the expertise of agency partners to do what they do best. It paves the way for better problem definition, galvanising teams to get curious with their diagnosis and unlock the attitudinal and behavioural shifts required.
Crucially, strong relationships also remove the fear factor which so often leads to conservatism and wasted effort justifying work. Silly ideas, strange ideas and side-chat ideas are welcomed – encouraged even – so that true divergent thinking can unleash the creativity needed to drive effective outcomes.
Recent analysis by Aprais and WARC highlighted that, when evaluated on the strength of their client-agency relationships, those partnerships that had won effectiveness awards were much more likely to rate the relationship above average, compared to those that hadn’t won. And “challenge” was identified as the behaviour with the biggest gap in ratings for the award winners. I’d argue that a willingness to challenge the status quo and push boundaries starts with creating the psychological safety to do so.
But trust doesn’t magically emerge from a few top-to-top meetings. It’s built gradually, often by the most junior team members delivering time and again on promises and making an effort to get to know each other. It’s these incremental, and often overlooked, advances that produce the conditions for bravery on both sides.
Asking the simple questions
Against a backdrop of increasingly complex methods for information gathering and data extraction, asking the simplest questions can still yield the greatest returns.
For example, when we’re trying to identify how we might use communication to encourage a particular behaviour, one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is “why aren’t people doing this already?”
Answering that apparently simple question belies the knowledge and understanding needed to do so. It means that we understand precisely the task of the work we are creating. We have translated the desired business outcome into a behavioural goal.
Establishing what’s holding that behaviour back requires an in-depth grasp of the audience we’re talking to – their barriers, reasons for rejection, preferences and their habits.
And if we can answer this question well, we unlock solutions that capitalise on that understanding to drive the change we’re hoping for, in a way that’s relevant and authentic to our audience.
Next time you’re focused on finding answers, consider the simplest questions that might help. And if you can’t think of a question, channel your inner four-year-old and keep asking “why?” until you get closer.
Not letting creativity stop where measurement starts
It almost goes without saying that accurately measuring the outcomes of our work is the only way to really know whether it’s effective. But too often, measurement is an afterthought at best – not treated with the same thoughtfulness and care as other parts of the process. Then, we find ourselves beholden to generic metrics, force-fitted to tell us whether the work has, in fact, worked.
There are so many ways to measure impact; I’d advocate for far more proactivity from all parties when it comes to how we go about this. When we tailor the measurement to match the task we’re rewarded with a far clearer picture of what worked – and what didn’t, so we can move forward. Without measurement we are blind to the impact of our hard work, so let’s make it as useful as possible. And perhaps even interesting.
Fostering the right conditions for building strong partnerships, empowering people to ask the right questions and applying creativity to measurement are true drivers of success. While these are less visible to observers, the environment they create is vital to allow the more obvious aspects to thrive.
When we embrace these unsung heroes, we create the foundation for campaigns that don’t just work – they resonate, endure, and ultimately deliver lasting impact.