Accountability is the name of the game
Published on 02/01/1993 under Accountability
As I travel around the country this year in my role as chairman of the Business/Professional Advertising Association, I see lots of anxious faces: people who have lost their jobs; some who are in the midst of yet another company reorganization; many more who have a seemingly protected situation, but for some reason don't feel very confident about the future.
In a profession that's not exactly known for job security, we're even more insecure than ever.
It would be easy to blame this on the recession and our nation's many economic woes, but I don't think that comes anywhere close to telling the whole story. There are too many other factors at work.
For example, the trend toward flatter corporate organizations (see Bob Donath's column, Dec. 7 issue of MARKETING NEWS). More than ever before, top management is finding it necessary to change things around -- not in subtle, fine-tuning ways, but in complete, top-to-bottom reorganizations that start with blank sheets of paper.
This coupled with the rapidly advancing popularity of Total Quality Management programs and their emphasis on understanding processes (vis-a-vis managing projects) has forced marcom people to cast off their tactical hats and don strategic ones. The new Conventional Wisdom is to quit worrying so much about HOW you intend to get something done and concentrate more on WHAT needs to be done, and WHY?
Yes, it's a whole, new world out there, and that can cause plenty of apprehension for those of us who thought the status quo was just fine. But we still haven't gotten to the Mother of all Apprehension Builders.
More and more, business-to-business marketing communications people are being asked to justify their very existence. In other words, BE ACCOUNTABLE for results that show an adequate return on money invested in marcom activities.
Holy bean counter! No wonder we have such dazed looks on our faces. What ever happened to "trust me?" Or management by gut feel? Does this mean we're going to have to actually measure things, like some kind of advertising scientist?
As a matter of fact, yes. Because accountability is the name of the game today. One of the reasons non-advertising people have such a hard time with the function is they don't understand it. They haven't taken time to study it the way marcom practitionershave, so when it comes to investing large sums of money, they'd rather budget for things they know will produce a tangible result.
Like hiring several additional sales people. Or opening a new distribution facility. Or buying some extra equipment for the manufacturing area. Non-advertising people understand what they're buying when they invest in these things. They can see and touch it. And they can calculate a return on their investment.
As far as I am concerned, this is the biggest problem facing marketing communicators today. When pressed for an answer, we simply can't quantify the results of our efforts. And that leads to massive insecurity.
Not that it's impossible to measure results. We know how to do it. And if it wasn't for two things (TIME and MONEY), we'd probably measure and document results with the best of them.
We know how to demonstrate changes in attitudes and increases in awareness. We can track inquiries to determine potential sales value. We can even trace sales all the way back to initial interest (even for products with long buying cycles).
We've got studies that show relationships between advertising expenditures and market share gains. We can tell our clients about the importance of advertising in a recession (i.e., perform better during the recession, recover faster afterwards).
We've got all these things, but for some reason, they're not nearly enough. The advertising non-believers still don't believe. And that makes us very anxious.
Maybe we should have a law against LAZY advertising. Every time you see a "fuzzy" ad or brochure or direct mail piece, you report it to the authorities and the owner receives a stern cease-and-desist decree.
Perhaps we should be required to submit proof of clear marketing thinking with every magazine insertion order. If you can't substantiate a valid business reason for running the ad, the publication has to reject it.
That would shake up a lot of space reps, not to mention publishers. But the fact of the matter is we're our own worst enemies. When we have adequate budgets, we get sidetracked by innovative creative techniques and things that have nothing to do with our essential messages.
At the other end of the money scale, when budgets are squeezed (as they have been lately), we make production compromises that greatly reduce the impact of our messages. And research budgets are generally the first to be cut.
It's hard to justify a $5,000 benchmark survey when you only have $30,000 to deliver the desired message. But if the non-believers are ever to be converted to believers, we've got to figure some way to show them what happens as a result of our efforts.
It's time we used our creativity to measure results every time we set out to communicate something. Even if the marketing or sales manager says he doesn't want to spend money on measurement.
We've got to demonstrate the results of our work the same way a salesperson does when he or she submits customer contact reports every week. We've got to show value-added results, even when clients tell us to concentrate on other activities.
It's for their own good, you know. And ours, too. Because in today's market, accountability is the name of the game.