The ROI of Being Interesting

The ad industry has a significant blind spot when it comes to ROI: The Creative.

The quest for improved ROI comes down to the question of efficiency. For two decades, marketers built their communications structures around the media approach to efficiency - getting in front of people in the least expensive way when and where it matters most, not necessarily how it matters most.

Advertising Week just wrapped in NYC. The program and the speakers were more of the same. Most of the tracks were sponsored by Adtech platforms and data companies that provide information to help advertisers 'optimize' advertising for their platforms and ad investment across channels.

But there are two parts to the efficiency formula: reducing the cost and increasing the impact. What there wasn't much of at Advertising Week, was creative people talking about the kind of work that makes a big impact on audiences. In other words, making creative resources more productive.

You might think that maximizing efficiency would be a goal shared by everyone involved in the marketing process, but there are institutional and cultural boundaries separating the people charged with maximizing effectiveness from those charged with minimizing costs. Each is inclined to view the other as the enemy, so they tend to talk at cross-purposes and demonize one another as either ‘philistine bean-counters’ on the one hand or ‘artsy spendthrifts’ on the other, while efficiency–effectiveness over cost–with no built-in cheering section, becomes the unintended result of a struggle, rather than an accomplishment achieved together.

Many advertisers would like to believe that the benefits of their product speak for themselves and just need an awareness boost so that the benefits of the product can convince. But that doesn’t appear to be how it works most of the time.

The creative is the least analyzed and least understood element of how advertising can drive customer acquisition and boost sales. And maybe that's because we are just more comfortable discussing objective measures than the squishiness of subjective measures of taste. After all, they don't teach taste in advertising in business school. They teach quantification.

But when it comes to hard-headed focus on long-term ROI, nothing can beat a truly interesting brand or message, one that people naturally want to think about and discuss. Interestingness generates and maintains the audience's interest in your product or brand over time. It simultaneously boosts effectiveness and reduces cost in a way that should please both creative directors and procurement officers:

“...I have long been a believer in creative advertising, not just because it helps add those things which build brands, but for the more straightforward reason that advertising which helps your brand or message capture the imagination of consumers saves you money - put simply - you can spend less to achieve the desired result.”  - Sir Michael Angus