intelligent measurement

Does Creativity Equal Results?

December 11, 2006 at 8:40 am Leave a comment

Last week I gave a presentation on evaluation at the First ISO and IEC Marketing and Communication Forum which took place in Geneva. The forum gathered communications and marketing professionals from all over the world working in the field of standards development.

My presentation focused on some of my favourite topics of evaluation, notably:

• Why don’t marketing/communication professionals evaluate
• The need for clarity in setting marketing/communication objectives
• How low cost evaluation can be undertaken
• The risks of being over creative in communications

On the last point, I used the example of the Got Milk campaign which has been lauded as one of the most visible and creative ad campaigns of all time (notably by the advertising industry). However, did the highly creative ads actually help achieve campaign objectives? That is, to get people to drink more milk? Well, milk consumption continues to decline and the ads have been criticised for not addressing a key concern for teenagers – that they consider milk to be fattening.

And that’s the point I tried to make, that creativity all is well and good – but it has to help communicators achieve their campaign goals – and be measurable.

My full presentation can be downloaded here:
Presentation: Effective Marketing & Communications through Evaluation (pdf – 1 MB)

Glenn

Acknowledgement: the example of the Got Milk campaign comes from the book “The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR”, A & L Ries.

Entry filed under: Campaign evaluation, Communication evaluation, PR evaluation, Trainings, Seminars & Conferences.