By Phil Ely from Phil Ely Communications and Dr. Shannon Bosshard, founder and managing director at Neuroconsulting Australia
‘Creative strategy is about people, media strategy is about numbers and maths’.
An opinion uttered regularly around the industry. Surely the truth lands in the middle, right? Creative planners need to consider the story the numbers tell as much as media planners need to care deeply about how people consume and react to messages. An understanding of both factors enables planners to craft moments and experiences that give their message the best possible chance to have a meaningful influence on the PERSON who receives it.
The media industry LOVES a silver bullet. A killer tool, algorithm, metric or principle that easily shapes a plan and provides a strong enough rationale for a marketer to approve it. Last touch CPA and all the associated performance modelling, forecasting and 3rd party black box tools with the smartest algorithms have filled a big part of that role for a long time. Now, that’s all crumbling down. The hunt for the next silver bullet is on.
MMM seems to have separated from the pack as the preferred solution.
This is clearly a step in the right direction to a more sophisticated measurement and forecasting approach. One that, instead of simply chasing the lowest possible last touch CPA, looks to understand and incorporate the role of a range of audience experiences across a mix of channels and a longer timeline. The outcomes that drive an array of advertising performance metrics from the ‘top of the funnel to the bottom’. Effective advertising has always been about the sum of the parts over time, not just the last impression. The premise that brand works over the long term and performance in the short term is another oversimplification of an objective truth often taken far too literally. Something else to which the expanding use of MMM may bring a greater depth of perspective.
BUT…. Is MMM really the stand alone silver bullet for planning it seems many believe it is?
As MMM becomes more sophisticated and broadly accessible, it’s a weapon marketers and agencies will be crazy not to add to their arsenal. It seems a no-brainer as the new frontier in campaign measurement and analysis. However, if it’s used as the sole input for planning decisions, we risk losing sight of the key to truly incredible advertising and above average outcomes – the irrational, emotional, distracted, erratic, amazing PEOPLE that we are trying to influence.
Any new methodology must acknowledge the complexities of human psychology. Enter Neuroscience. The study of how people’s brains work.
The Yang to MMM’s Ying?
Early consumer behaviour modelling viewed humans as self-serving, calculating beings seeking to make rational purchase decisions. In the modern world, consumer decision making is far more complex and we recognise the impact emotional reactions to advertising have on effectiveness. The importance of context and the influence it has on message perception, attention and reaction. The diverse range of subconscious influences on how we interpret, process and remember advertising and the subsequent influence it has (or doesn’t) on our behaviour. The complexity behind the effectiveness of advertising that no algorithm can ever really understand and predict with accuracy the way Neuroscience seeks to.
Use of MMM to build models to forecast optimal future channel mix, investment levels and flighting cadence might be on track to become the baseline for average media planning that many will label ‘best practice’. If so, it’ll be a solid approach, giving marketers confidence in approving activity and a clear and reasonable rationale to pass up the chain ‘you never get fired for investing in IBM’.
Media agencies in particular should be actively working to do more. Advertising that creates outsized outcomes is always going to be crafted by curious strategists, planners and creative thinkers obsessed with the people they are trying to speak to and influence. Agencies and marketers that can combine the powerful intelligence that MMM provides on past activity and with a deeper understanding of how people react to and are influenced by advertising through Neuroscience principles will have a distinct advantage. Enabling them to develop innovative approaches to delivering experiences for real people that stick in their head more effectively and influence how they feel and behave. Continuing to deliver runaway success for their clients and brands while everyone else tries to find ways to explain their average outcomes to their stakeholders with some form of ‘I invested in IBM, you can’t be pissed at me for that’.
So, that next silver bullet. A tool alone will never be able to plan truly outstanding media. The complexity of optimal channel execution is too diverse and needs human expertise to craft. Maybe AI will get there one day, but it’s still got a ways to go.
Having said that, imagine a platform using MMM for cross-channel advertising effectiveness measurement that builds into a planning engine leveraging those learnings and combining them with sophisticated Neuroscience principles, refined through additional custom neuro effectiveness data. Significantly enhancing the predictive capabilities of MMM by incorporating insights into how consumers process information and make decisions.
An advertising analysis and planning platform that if used as a silver bullet would raise the bar for what average media planning looks like. For the best agencies, providing a powerful set of inputs for driven, innovative strategists and planners to develop the next wave of breakthrough work.
Anyone up for building it?
See also: ‘There is always a better way’: Phil Ely on launching the next chapter of his career
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Top image: Phil Ely and Dr. Shannon Bosshard