How to Measure Creativity in Numbers?
Is it possible?
As a firm believer in a data-driven marketing approach, I’ve been asking myself and my colleagues this question many times in my professional career. Is it even possible to get some numbers to evaluate a “creative” part of a marketing campaign, for example, to quantify a cool idea and creative effectiveness of a commercial?
When I was attending the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity (virtually😊) on June 22–26, 2020, I got information that can shed some light on this question.
James Hurman and Peter Field presented the results of the global study of ~5000 effectiveness award entrant and winner cases in 2011–2019 on behalf of Cannes Lions and WARC during the live stream of the Festival.
The study introduces the concept of Creative Commitment — “a composite measure of the media budget, duration and number of media channels applied to a creative campaign or initiative”.
An interesting observation is that “although media spend is one part of the creative commitment, it is not a controlling factor. Even at low budgets, campaigns with longer durations and more media channels are more effective”. I think that creativity plays a crucial role in the success of a marketing campaign, although there are many other factors that are important to evaluate in order to give a more precise conclusion on the result of the campaign.
However, a real gem of the study is the Creative Effectiveness Ladder. It consists of 6 main levels of brand effects that are set “in a hierarchy from the least to most commercially impactful”.
Level 1. “INFLUENTIAL IDEA campaigns use creativity to maximize engagement and sharing, resulting in the over-achieve of campaign metrics and media efficiency”. Nowadays, these are the campaigns you can see in digital channels such as social media and video ads. The metrics of these campaigns are usually related to campaign recall, social shares, earned impressions, earned media value. The most common creative strategies are appeal to emotion, user-generated content & participation, and storytelling.
An example of such a campaign is the very famous “Burger King: The McWhopper Proposal”, which “drove 44% awareness and $108M in earned media value while challenging McDonald’s”.
I find this campaign fascinating to watch because of its direct finger-pointing to the closest rival — McDonald’s. From a marketing perspective, it’s a bold move, which often leads to a prolonged marketing competition in releasing this type of campaigns by both sides:)
Level 2. “BEHAVIOUR BREAKTHROUGH campaigns use creativity to change the purchase behavior of customers or other forms of behavior relevant to brand success”. These campaigns require a lot of preliminary research before implementation, lots of hours of hypothesis testing, in-depth customer interviews, and pivot launches. The success of the campaigns is challenging to predict and depends on the number of multiple factors. Marketers need to analyze behavioral metrics such as penetration, frequency/weight of purchase, loyalty, trials. Regarding media channels, the top-3 common lead media are TV, online video, and social media. Other important marketing channels are Point of purchase instore, PR, events, and experiential marketing. The most common creative strategies are related to emotion, storytelling, and sustainability & responsibility.
An example of a campaign on this level is “Share a Coke” by Coca Cola. Yes, that bottle with your name on it!
Level 3. “SALES SPIKE campaigns are aimed at generating short-term temporary growth in sales, market share or profitability”. These ones are very often related to trade marketing activities, think of the famous “2+1” promotion deals in your local grocery store. The objectives for these campaigns are mostly short-term metrics such as sales value and volume, market share, and return on investment. The most common creative strategies are user-generated content & participation, emotion, and humor.
An example of such a campaign is “Microsoft Xbox: The Franchise Model” with a “350% sale spike in the month of the campaign”.
Level 4. “BRAND BUILDER campaigns utilize creativity to improve the fundamental measures of brand health”. These campaigns are not short-term oriented and focus on the overall brand image with such metrics of brand health as brand awareness, brand preference, purchase intent, brand attributes. In addition to the most common lead media — TV, online video, social media — newspaper and radio have been performing quite well in the previous years. The most common strategies are connected with emotion, storytelling, user-generated content & participation.
An example of a campaign is “P&G: Proud Sponsor of Mums”, which is aimed at building “P&G familiarity, favorability, and trust leap”. This is a perfect example of a long-lasting successful idea of a brand campaign.
Level 5. “COMMERCIAL TRIUMPH campaigns apply creativity to profitable increase in sales and market share longer than for a quarter or the total duration of the campaign. If campaigns from level 3 “Sales Spike” reach a prolonged success (from 6 to 18 months), they climb to this level”. The most common lead media are online video, television, social media. In addition, packaging & design can contribute to brand success on this level. The metrics you can analyze are mostly sales-related — sales value and volume, market share, and return on investment. The most common creative strategies include appeal to emotion, storytelling, user-generated content & participation, as well as music and celebrity.
An example is a series of Christmas campaigns by John Lewis when the company tells a new story every year. This prolonged campaign brought “growth in ROI profit from 8:1 to 11:1 over 4 years”. You can enjoy the most recent Christmas ad from 2019 below. By the way, John Lewis partnered with Waitrose in 2019 so this campaign is an example of brand collaboration in the UK.
Level 6. “ENDURING ICON campaigns focus to drive sales and brand growth for a long period of time — think of 3 and more years. The same creative strategy or creative work during this time leads to consistent commercial outcomes”. The highest and the hardest level to reach for a brand, the level focused on getting long-term brand and sales growth. The performance metrics include sales value and volume, market share, return on investment, brand health (metrics related to consideration, preference, and image attributes of the brand). The most common lead media is TV, followed by social media and packaging design. As for the most common creative strategies, they are among emotion, storytelling, and celebrity, according to the study.
An example is another series of commercials from a few years — “Snickers: you’re not you when you’re hungry”. One of the commercials is below.
I was surprised when I realized that most of the recent campaigns are from level 1 to level 4, although I expected to get many more campaigns from Level 5 and 6. Even more, these few 5- and 6-level campaigns are related to mature “many-decades-on-the-market” companies. I think one of the possible explanations is that nowadays the widely-recognized campaigns are focused mostly on getting short-term visible results but the long-term brand value is often underestimated.
In general, Cannes Lions and WARC did profound research and if you want to explore the full study, you can access it via this link.
