Effectiveness & Ennui
Here we go again
Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
Now accepting keynotes for 23Q3-24Q1
Every year, I create three main presentations. For 2023, they are:
Delusions of determinism: Why planning for success leads to failure
Regression toward the meme: Why modern leadership continues to fall into old traps
Under pressure: Retail in a new financial era
If you want to book me for your event, workshop, or guest speaking slot, just send me an email. To make sure I am available, however, please do so at your earliest convenience; my schedule is filling up fast. More information can be found here.
A couple of updates before we go-go
Although my IP has yet to come off the list of potential suspects, recently unearthed evidence has begun to shift the needle of blame towards Asus. After extensive troubleshooting, some of which included official support on the line, my router has surfaced as the most likely culprit; despite factory resets, firmware updates, and the ceremonial sacrifice of a black goat, it remained unable to connect to the internet. Another router, however, was. The supplier, of course, believed neither myself nor the actual manufacturer of the fucking thing, and is therefore currently busy trying to fix the problem themselves. The thriller that is IT continues.
A couple of you have reached out via email to argue that the new book should follow the standard format (i.e., a ten page idea stretched into 300), because audiences like a firm stance. While I appreciate the advice and welcome all feedback, we are unlikely to follow it for the reasons explained last week. I also want to emphasize that the book most definitely takes a firm stance; we are as clear on what we think as we are on what we think about what others have thought. You will see.
Now onto today’s topic.
Another post on effectiveness
Because I have to, not because I want to
When I began writing this newsletter a couple of years ago, I made a conscious decision to attempt to vary the topics about which I wrote (albeit keeping within the scope of strategy and/or management). If I deemed it potentially relevant to you, my dear readers, I would do my best to break it down in such a way that it provided some sort of immediate value.
I still do, of course, or try to the best of my abilities anyway. But there are certain issues that I equally consciously avoid, so long as I in good conscious can. I have not written much about purpose, for example, even though it gave me more than the typically allocated fifteen minutes of fame earlier in my career. I just got fed up. Every time one critically analyses purpose research, of which there is precious little that one is able to take seriously (remember the Peter Field trainwreck?), a veritable hill of feces is thrown one’s way by the gullible and hard of thinking. Shit research begets shit conclusions and crap flung at anyone who dares to point out that there is a terrible smell in the room.
(Should you still be interested in the matter, Nick Asbury – whose excellent newsletter Thoughts on Writing I thoroughly recommend – has done a much better job writing about it than I ever did or could have.)
The same is true, at least from my experience, when it comes to so-called marketing effectiveness. In reality, it is not. Not really. It is advertising effectiveness. But even those who otherwise are quick to point out that there is more to marketing than communications ignore that bit.
I digress.
Much like with purpose, I have written extensively on the topic. And, again, it has served my career well. But, again again, I have since moved on.
The effectiveness debate, however, clearly has not. Participating parties are still shouting at each other, repeating the same arguments, over and over; their positions shifting only ever so slightly, back and forth, between the dichotomic extremes. At this point, it is so entirely predictable that you are more likely to set your watch than your media budget to it.
A recent paper, which claimed to be the final say on the matter, serves to illustrate my point (if, perhaps, undeservedly). Launched with a bold claim to provide “THE” (their capitalization) definition of what effectiveness entails, I browsed through it – and soon felt a familiar sense of dread as I realized, in despondence, that I was going to have to write a riposte. Sure enough, within minutes, I had received seven requests to do so.
And so, with a big sigh, here I go.
Nobody (still) knows what effectiveness is
I apologize for the spoiling the suspense, but alas, this paper did not come anywhere close to establishing what “THE” (their capitalization) definition of effectiveness is or ought to be.
Going with the adjective creative in lieu of the more common-parlance nouns used above, the authors declared that effectiveness was henceforth to be translated to “how well you achieve a desired result”. This is actually a rather common, if not universal, definition. The problem is that it is also roughly as useful in practice as a chocolate teapot, inflatable dartboard, or any other of your favorite analogies that suit the present context.
If effectiveness is defined as how well one achieves a desired result, and a desired result can be any result that one desires, then effectiveness can be anything and is therefore nothing. To illustrate, the instant one desires to maximize efficiency in a campaign (today quite a common want), any difference between efficiency and effectiveness would be lost.
Talking heads on Twitter – apologies, Elon, I meant to write X – love to moan about the unimportance of language. But if we are to perform comparative analysis that at least surpasses the spectacularly low quality threshold set by purpose research, we have to ensure consistency of units measured. In the effectiveness discourse, that is desperately lacking. So how, pray tell, is anyone supposed to take it any more seriously?
And the issue goes far beyond the word effectiveness itself. To paraphrase what I wrote together with Andrew Willshire in Strategy in Polemy, definitions of core terminology – including keystone terms such as “brand” and “direct” media – may vary between companies, brands, and agencies, to the degree that the distinction is made at all. Any individual tasked with providing effectiveness data, whether to their client, for their white paper, or to the IPA databank, will each work to their own definitions and standards, topped off with an obvious desire to achieve a particular outcome. The same is true for any econometrics models used; each will have been built by different analysts with different levels of experience, for different companies, with different practices and approaches, and to different ends. Just as how a small discrepancy in what one result one “desires to achieve” will have a massive effect on the effectiveness (impact on the impact?), a small deviation in a model can result in a significantly higher or lower ROI for a particular media type – and both are as likely to be gamed.
Now, yes, of course. I know. These discrepancies are perhaps unavoidable. But they are still very important to note, particularly when claims that “THE” (their capitalization) definition of effectiveness has been established, or that something along the lines of “the performance of brand TV has been measured”, given that it disguises the fact that both the interpretation of the definition and the application of the measurement may have significant variances across datasets.
I am genuinely sorry to anyone who might take offense, but it is no wonder that the effectiveness debate remains in the same place it ever was; most of those partaking keep walking in circles around one another. In so doing, they not only get nowhere, but doom the rest of us to suffer a Promethean fate – an eternal torment from having to put up with endless nonsense.
To be entirely clear, I am not saying that the rest of the report fell into that category. I would not know; I never got beyond the first hurdle. To me, it was unsurmountable.
But I am saying that, in general, there are so many basic issues with the discourse that repackaging old ideas in glossy new words, colors, and shapes, rarely adds anything of value. More likely, it is just adding layers of paint on a house built on an uneven ground; it will still eventually collapse under its own weight.
So, PLEASE (my capitalization), consider adding something more foundational and concrete.
Until next week, have the loveliest of weekends.
Onwards and upwards,
JP
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