Marketing effectiveness has little or nothing to do with creativity - that's one insight that could be drawn from this month’s issue of Campaign. It's a bit more complex than that, though - at least that's what this adtech PR agency thinks.
Quoting a line from the IPA that “there is a crisis in creative effectiveness”, Gurjit Degun looks at fresh analysis of Cannes Lions winners from System1 to reveal that 48% of UK and US ad work that won a trophy had limited potential for long-term brand building. Conversely, winners of IPA Effectiveness Awards rarely win creativity awards.
System1 measures the emotional response to ads among the general public and uses that to predict long-term impact on market share, and short-term impact on sales. System1 found that creatively-awarded work has tended to focus on short-term impact on sales and less on long-term brand building. A great example of the latter is the John Lewis & Partners work by Adam & Eve/DDB.
This is partly down to the trend of Cannes juries awarding more purposeful work in recent years – particularly with the post-Covid heightened awareness of purpose.
So, do our major awards events need to remember the importance of brand-building and reframe the conversation back to business results? Or is the focus on purpose an important reminder that businesses need to think about more than their bottom line if they're going to engage their audiences?
As an adtech PR agency, we love the work that System1 does to cut through the chaff and help us to understand the components of marketing success.