While there has been no shortage of general coverage on the 2023 Cannes Lions festival, I thought it useful to recap one of the most well-attended and “Linkedin-able” sessions. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) chose the festival to release new research titled “The 3rd Age of Effectiveness”. On a cracking summer’s day on the Terrace stage, the presentation was warmly received by the 5,000 attendees as the headline act of day two, presented by one of the “godfathers of effectiveness” Les Binet, Dr Grace Kite of Magic Numbers and Tom Roach of Jellyfish UK.

It was a big session for a reason. Perhaps other than the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, you’d be hard pressed to find an institution that has informed marketing and media planning in the last decade as the IPA. The IPA’s work in analysing years of award datasets to gain insights into what drives marketing effectiveness has led to such influential work as Binet & Field’s The Long and the Short of It - hailed by Mark Ritson as “a brilliant, evidence-based, stupendously simple way to get companies to understand and then execute marketing in a better way.”

Ritson’s praise is in response to some who question the methodology of the IPA - making the quite reasonable argument that the aggregation and study of award entries may be flawed from the outset, given that only a minority of marketing work would make it into a case study, and how reliable a dataset this would therefore form. Doubters usually align themselves more closely with the Ehrenberg-Bass camp, enjoying each time Byron Sharp launches an offensive on the methodology, as covered by Mi3 previously – and more recently, here.

Perhaps it's the feud itself (rather than the research) that is energising the marketing community, as marketers of a certain age reignite a long dormant flame that flickers for either Tupac or Biggie, Blur or Oasis, Beatles or Stones.

I digress… but you can see why this new IPA research was well anticipated.

The 3rd Age of Effectiveness continues to deep dive into award data, augmenting this with aggregated, anonymous econometric data from multiple analytics agencies (perhaps in response to the EBI’s criticisms?).

The central finding based on the datasets was that after a period of over-reliance on short-term promotional or digital tactics, we are getting better at marketing effectiveness, and attributes this to a better grip on the flaws of digital attribution and great appreciation of long term over short term tactics. Another central theme was that as media consumption and budgets continue to shift into digital, marketers are still on a maturity journey in how to build brands online – particularly given a perceived “attention problem” in online and mobile environments.

Below I’ve summarised the topics unpacked by the three contributors and the slides that were presented to the Cannes audience (which can be found here: https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/videos-podcasts/the-3rd-age-of-effectiveness/). The research is presented across 3 key themes: Measurement, Impact and Creative.

Les Binet / Measurement 3.0:

As pondered by many for the last decade, Binet argued that digital media led us down a false path of short term tactics due to short term attribution. Binet’s work focused on a lack of incrementality due to digital attribution – that for years, marketing budgets were assigned to tactics that only drive sales that were going to happen anyway (e.g. brand SEM), rather than in long term growth (e.g. brand building activity).

Digital attribution over attributes by a factor of x2 to digital and under estimates long term brand building by x3-10.  Binet pointed to acknowledgement of the digital giants on the shortcomings of short-term tactics and measurement as evidence of a shift toward more effective marketing practices. For example, he cited Meta’s 2022 research that acknowledges the significant long term effects that can be driven by TV advertising, and Google’s 2018 publication Three Grand Challenges: Measuring Effectiveness, which cites the need to move away from reliance on one form of marketing reporting towards a triangulation or unification of digital attribution, econometrics and testing.

Key take out: Triangulate with a unified approach to marketing ROI: make the most of econometric modelling, testing, digital attribution without an overreliance on a single source.

Dr. Grace Kite / Impact 3.0:

Kite surmised that the digital hype cycle of the late noughties and early 2010s threw too much money and attention into short term digital media and the IPA dataset records diminishing effectiveness through that period.

We are starting to see improvements in recent years, due to improved adherence of marketers to brand growth principles and the long and short of it. This is substantiated by findings from the ARC econometrics dataset which shows both ROI and profit returns from advertising increasing on the same curve.

Furthermore, the data pointed to a growth in businesses that primarily transact online – these have had better datasets and a higher level of maturity in digital media so are ahead of the curve in improving marketing ROI, once brand growth principles are balanced with digital short-termism.

Key takeout: Brands that are moving up the funnel with digital excellence are winning the MROI game.

Tom Roach / Creative 3.0:

Roach focused on the creative opportunity challenges and opportunities facing marketers looking to build brands and increase effectiveness in digital. The key challenges being that many digital tactics struggle to gain the necessary attention to build memory structures, and that marketers are still coming to grips with the formats and storytelling capabilities of these platforms.

Recycling TVCs in digital environments, or failing to effectively use influencers/creators has contributed to poor effectiveness in the past. Creating fit-for-platform creative which both differentiates a brand and elicits an emotional response yields both stronger on-platform results and long term effectiveness. As Roach put it, “we’ve been making TVCs for 75 years, TikToks for three … we’re still figuring out what works”.

The research came together in the below ABCDE Principles:
A: Get attention fast
B: Integrate brand and product
C: Tell a story
D: Differentiate
E: Generate emotion

Summary:

Although many of the themes presented in this new IPA report were not new, much of the research and data points were, and form valuable evidence for how marketing can generate stronger long-term returns, and therefore command more respect and budget within an organisation.

As discussed by Les Binet, no dataset or measurement is perfect or can be used in isolation. Balancing the award dataset with econometrics was a nice step forward, and reflective of the broader challenge that brands face in combining multiple points of reference to reach a conclusion. So even if you’re more of a Byron Sharp fan (Sharpies?), the IPA/Effworks is delivering a strong empirical body of work that deserves a central position in the marketer’s toolkit.