6 December 2023

Over drinks, someone asked me: “How the hell are you going to capture that for a Gluesletter?”

Truth is, I’m not sure.

Deep breath, here goes with three thoughts:

First, short-term effects: The room afterwards was truly “up”. Everyone loved Laurence Green’s easy mix of anecdotes, quotes, humour and thoughtful provocations.

Second, day-after recall: actions to take into work. For example, how should we value our brand? 

Third, the long-term effect: Laurence offered a clear set of principles, rooted in true experience, on how to create an effectiveness culture.

But, to paraphrase “The Long and the Short of it” and the words of Les Binet and Peter Field, we may be looking here at “manifold” effects.

This will become clearer as we look at some of the more detailed provocations Laurence offered:

1. We must all become translators. The world of effectiveness has its own language. It can be (over) academic. We must translate our language into boardroom language.

2. There is such a thing as too much data.  Laurence shared a quote from a large media company he had visited recently: “We are not in the media business. We are in the measurement business.”

The amount of data we can access has grown exponentially. We love it because it gives the illusion of certainty. So the answer is not less data. The answer is not even AI and Chat GPT. The answer is equal application of humanity and creativity.

3. Lessons from the outside. We have spent the last couple of decades (mainly due to The IPA Effectiveness Awards and meta-analysis of their databank) learning new models for effectiveness, new ways of measuring. Maybe it’s time to look outside at how other sectors use their data, how they measure their effectiveness, and the lessons they’ve learned on how to do it … and how not to do it!

Laurence gave us two examples:

Beware the McNamara Fallacy. In this world of “too much data” there is a danger we grab one easy number. US Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara did this when he reduced the Vietnam War to a KPI of “net body count” (on the logic that there were more enemy casualties). Shockingly brutal, but also shockingly wrong. He forgot we are hearts and minds, not just bodies. And the US lost on that dimension.

Beware Goodhart’s Law. This states that when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good target. It distracts focus and effort. It distorts the machine. Laurence’s example was VW and the emissions testing scandal, when it was discovered that some VW vehicles had software that could detect when they were being tested, changing the performance to improve results.  It made me think they should have made the brand the CEO of the board that day. The VW brand is a broad set of nuanced, holistic measures, all roughly expressed as “the consumer’s reliable friend.” A focus on one metric was no friend to that business.    

4. Be a weighing machine not a voting machine. One of the outside voices Laurence shared with us was that of the legendary investor, Warren Buffett: 

“The stock market is a voting machine, investment strategy should be a weighing machine.”

Laurence suggested the ad industry has a stock market mindset where every trend is the next big thing. But the most important thing isn’t just to keep up. In the words of David Wheldon OBE, former RBS CMO: “Don’t be the dog that barks at every passing car.” 

Laurence suggested that over the next decade we should look more to brand effect vs individual or campaign effect. Certainly, I firmly believe every company should have some kind of model for brand valuation as part of their measurement jigsaw.

5. Make effectiveness, don’t just measure it. One of the problems is that the capability called effectiveness has become synonymous with the term measurement.

This is, Laurence argued, “slightly wonky.”

It suggests effectiveness is simply a back-end capability, retrospective in nature and pseudo-scientific. Laurence called on the audience to focus equally upfront, not just at the back.

An effectiveness culture should be as much about learning and developing the skills that make effective work. 

Over the last ten years we have begun to learn some of the components such as fame and emotion. But how can we learn more? How can we share learnings from the current users of effective creativity: the Duo Lingos and the Oatlys?

6. Aim for 10! Laurence reflected on some of the effective creative successes of his career: “It’s a Skoda. Honest,” Sony Bravia’s “Balls,” Cadbury’s “Gorilla.” The effect of this work was exponential. They were more than tens – they were elevens on the dial!

I have only worked with one business leader who expressly directed the marketing team to “aim for 10” – Andy Fennell at Diageo. Andy learned with Guinness “Surfer” that aiming high had powerful commercial benefits.

But as Global CMO, he translated that personal experience into an explicit corporate practice. 

And maybe that is what an effectiveness culture needs to start with. An agreement that creativity is a worthwhile business tool, not vanity, or a personal predilection.

One that’s likely to deliver the best investment returns available to a board. One backed by the CEO and the FD, not just the CMO.

7. Creativity is “an original and appropriate imaginative leap with advantageous consequences.” Laurence pointed out the dangers of a word like creativity. It can too easily be seen as referring to the execution. It can be dislocated and separated from its effect.

So he shared with us his favourite definition (the line quoted above) and an example of creativity beyond execution: Iceland helping to fight food poverty by offering its customers short-term microloans of £25 to £75, uploaded to a dedicated Food Club Card.

Effective creativity is about “imaginative leaps” to “advantageous consequences”.

The challenge is that Laurence’s three most successful pieces of effective creativity were either “not measured, badly measured or unmeasurable in advance. They were unmeasurable stuff that made immeasurable difference.”

So how do we measure the immeasurable?

Laurence made me reflect that we have come a long way on this question.

The IPA Effectiveness Database has been a treasure house of learning for more than 30 years.

Digital media and its data have given us clear sight on measurement of the bottom of the marketing funnel.

The IPA believes that we are approaching The 3rd Age of Effectiveness – an age where we learn to glue together ‘long and short’. Dr Grace Kite and the WARC database is brilliantly providing new evidence and learnings on that topic.

But beyond this practical step I think Laurence set the audience (and the industry) an even bolder set of ambitions.

How do we become more effective at MAKING work that has an “immeasurable effect”?

How do we create the conditions for success to support that effort? In particular, can we celebrate its commercial benefits in the boardroom more effectively?

How do we create a culture of maximum effective creativity?

We were present at a fascinating evening full of humour and provocation in equal measure.

So, how do we measure the success of that evening with Laurence?

I think we must go back to “The Long and the Short of it” and the world of Les Binet and Peter Field.

The effect was “manifold.” For which, Laurence, we are very grateful.