Being direct... AdVantage Sep 2003
'Promises are Promises, and Facts are Facts !!'
Most awards in the marketing and advertising world are made to acknowledge pure creative achievement. Like the movies awards, ad awards acknowledge the creative contributions of the individuals who actually execute the material. Also like movie awards, peers normally judge advertising awards, and rarely - if ever, do they reflect the opinions or reactions of the audiences for whom they might have originally been intended.
Each year at about this time, I join many others active in Direct Communications in South Africa, to judge our very own Assegai Awards. Now, before I go any further I need to mention that like all the judges, I signed a non-disclosure agreement, so I do not intend to go into the where's and why-fore's of any specific entry, nor discuss reasons why any specific one could-have or should-have: won or lost.
By the time you read this too, the award ceremony itself will have taken place, and the embargo will be over. My comment today however, has more to do with the substance of the entries overall, and the motives (or lack thereof) for some of them even being there in the first place.
Being a competition for direct or one to one marketing/advertising, the Assegai Awards are different from other advertising awards, in that entrants not only have to provide rationales to describe the strategic and creative objectives underlying their campaign or project, but they are also required to submit specific data to demonstrate a measurable return on Investment, for each of their entries.
I think that I probably read the details of some 30 entries in 4 categories on that specific Saturday, and quite frankly, I have never read so much airy-fairy, fudged claptrap, as was described on so many of them. It scares me that people either have no actual idea of what they spend their marketing communication money on, or they have even less of an idea how to properly measure the results thereof! Or it's about trying to get the award any way they can!!
One gets the impression that for some of these entrants, the business of marketing communication is a means in itself, and that as long as the results of all their efforts (on average) are OK, then it's OK to do more of the same, next year.
The impression that I got (I can't verify this because all entries were 'blind' - we had no clue as to 'who' exactly had entered) - was that the decision to enter was perhaps made by the agencies concerned, probably motivated by the 'creativity' of those entries, and that the ROI measurements were either beyond their capability, or were hidden behind the 'sorry, we can't divulge this kind of information statements' that - quite frankly - should have disqualified them from entry, in the first place.
I keep asking myself why it is that otherwise intelligent, rational (and indeed creative) individuals - would either ignore or fudge the most critical element of uniqueness of these awards? Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to quote anything that formed part of any entry for obvious reasons, but I was left with the distinct impression that accountability was considered less important than words and pictures by some entrants, and that sadly, lip service seems to have been paid to any interactive measures that would provided the judges with verifiable results.
Lets give you an example of how they could have done it: We recently sent out a mailing to a segmented part of the customer base for a client. It was a one-to-one personalised letter that included a voucher for a price-off offer on a specific product. We know exactly what the mailing to 100627 customers cost: R316 535.00. We identified exactly which customers responded to the offer: 21804 of them or 21.7%. We are able to summarise exactly how much money those customers spent during the days of the promotional period: R6 326 962.00. We were able to calculate an exact ROI for the project: R19.98 gross revenue for every R1.00 spent. Or a return of some 1800%
This data could additionally have been sliced and diced any which way you like by including or excluding all sorts of other fixed/variable costs - but the truth remains that anyone assessing this data can see clearly that the specific direct communication was indeed successful.
Now, if we can do these measurements - then why can't others do so too? And by the way, the so-called 'sensitivity of the information' is pure hogwash! Telling someone about something after the event - makes absolutely no difference at all to the success or failure of that event, and the fact that people may become aware of the results of any competitive strategy these days, certainly does nothing to empower them to do anything at all serious about it.
Whilst I thought that the standard of many of the entries was fantastic from a creative and even from a utilisation of new media perspective, I really was disappointed that so many did not provide detailed evidence to validate what an effective and measurable communication tool, direct marketing really can be!!