Advertising effectiveness cannot solely be thought about in terms of efficiencies, argued effectiveness expert Les Binet.

Speaking today (2 October) at Marketing Week’s Festival of Marketing during a session in association with the IPA, Binet claimed scale matters.

“Scale and size really matter and we’ve begun to lose sight,” he stated. “There’s an underlying assumption that if we improve efficiency, effectiveness and sales and profit follow.”

Binet encouraged marketers to stop focusing on measures such as short-term virality and social media likes.

“We’re all focused on ROI and we are all trying to do more with less, and the result is that small thinking actually reduces effectiveness, and reduces sales, reduces profit,” he said.

As well as balancing the long and short term, Binet recommended looking at earned media, which works “in a different way”, as well as investing in the creator economy.

Fellow panellist Tom Roach, vice-president of brand strategy at Jellyfish, said more focus needs to be paid to “creative fragmentation” alongside media fragmentation at a time when there’s a “weird dichotomy” between the theory and daily practice of what’s being demanded.

“The modern media landscape has become incredibly fragmented. Audiences’ time is now divided up into into smaller chunks than it used to be,” said Roach.

He explained problems in measuring effectiveness arise as these platforms “weren’t built for brand building”, but were built to gain the attention of audiences and for user generated content.

That said, Roach takes an “optimistic view”, stating that the more different types of media are used the better marketers get and “really interesting things can happen”, citing the burgeoning creator economy.

‘You don’t do it to get budget’: Marketers on the value of effectiveness

Binet agreed creators and influencers can have benefits for brands.

“You can hijack virality by associating yourself with things they [the audience] find interesting,” he added.

Roach claimed the influencer world is “getting better at measurement” and showing a sense of “maturity”, with video platforms helping brands create brand building content, rather than content solely about direct response. He cited H&M as a brand with effective influencer partnerships and claimed what was missing from the first wave of influencer marketing was getting the work to “add up to something” coordinated around a brand proposition.

“There’s definitely been a kind of course correction where the first wave digital marketers have now learned there is brand and it helps performance, and it’s a useful thing to do as well,” said Roach.

Going forward, Binet advised marketers to “think in financial returns” in order to appropriately set a budget for marketing and look to scale budget, media and creativity to reach all audiences, not just Gen Z.

“We need to devote a lot more time and expertise to the financial plan,” he stated, emphasising the importance of CMOs and CFOs working together.

Roach advised small brands to “double down” on social and “start on the free stuff”, including search, explaining “it’s almost impossible to start with a very large budget”.

He argued AI could prove helpful in terms of advertising efficiencies and could potentially help marketers get “quality from quantity”. Binet agreed AI could “make lots of little more profitable”.