I have always been a fan of marketing being accountable. A payback analysis should be part of the development of any campaign. However, in these increasingly digital-days, we measure just the last ‘click’, ignoring all the marketing that may have gone before to build brand awareness, or the multitude of emailings that generated initial interest. In this economic climate, we are therefore seeing masses of very similar emailings from all the hotel chains and websites that say little about the brand, but simply prompt you to reserve a room. This makes me believe that this need for accountability is destroying creativity and innovation in marketing, at a time when what we really need is exciting new ideas.
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1 response so far ↓
1 Rob Baldry // Oct 14, 2009 at 12:21 pm
This trend is compounded during difficult trading times, as budgets are squeezed and every penny spent is looked at closely for a direct return. This would lead to general awareness campaigns, which are more difficult to measure, whatever the media, being reduced, with a move towards more tactical, results driven communications.
Marketing does need new ideas and creativity to keep the customer interested. It has also never been about just doing one thing – a communications plan needs awareness activity to support tactics, and vice versa.
Maybe we need to get cleverer about measuring the impact of awareness and brand building campaigns, to be able to prove their true worth ?
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