For years, public pressure has built up in response to perceived encroachments on data privacy. The complaint processes under EU's GDPR have been long-winded and inconsistent, but beginning to have regulatory implications. It is clear that service providers will be forced to adapt their practices. Specifically how and to what extent remains an open question, as advertisers, and consumers themselves, are loath to give up services that have thoroughly integrated into their existence.

This month, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) has given two decisions with potentially massive impact on ad targeting and provision of digital services. At the beginning of the year, the Irish DPC imposed 330 million euros in penalties on Meta for lacking a lawful basis for using data to target ads on Instagram and Facebook. On January 19th, the regulator ruled on a 5.5 million euro GDPR fine for Meta for WhatsApp breaching "its obligations in relation to transparency". In the WhatsApp decision, the Irish DPC considered WhatsApp's Terms and Conditions (T&C), as opposed to investigating data flows and behavioral targeting data. These emerged as a prominent consumer concern in 2016, when Meta (at that time Facebook) went back on it's promise not to merge data from Facebook and WhatsApp.

Inconsistencies in enforcement are also apparent within the union. The Irish DPC has been active in regulatory work, but six out of seven of their recent decisions have seen intervention from the joint European Data Protection Board (EDPB). As none of the other 30 EEA member states in the EDPB voted to back the Irish regulator's decisions in the recent Meta cases, it is not given that the Irish stance will prevail. In all, Meta's fines over the last 16 months total more than 1.3 billion euros.

Social media run on advertising revenue

As dominant social media services like Facebook and TikTok are financed with ad revenue, a systemic shock to ability to sell and deliver ad content would directly impact the availability of these services to consumers. Twitter is preparing to launch an ad-free subscription tier. However, social media services that consumers pay for will never deliver on the original mass premise, neither for users or advertisers, as the audience just isn't there.

Should consumers be allowed to consent, and effectively sell their data, as they do now? The use of social media currently happens on a contractual basis. The current regulatory discussion effectively questions the right of companies to use personal data as a requirement for using their services. These include demographic data such as your age and location, personally identifying information like email address or phone number, as well and explicit and inferred data on interests or purchase intent garnered as the service is used.

These data are used to target advertising to you in various ways. The rise of the social media technology giants has been so spectacular because this targeting works well: ads in their services are often a better investmern for brands and advertisers, funneling billions in revenue to the platforms and providing an effective method for reaching consumers.

While many consumer groups and individuals concerned with targeting over-reach have welcomed regulatory action, it is unclear whether aggregate public opinion would stand for the potential gutting of services and social media that millions have integrated into their daily lives.

Will current-form services cease to exist?

In the now-decided complaints against Meta, the Irish DPC found that Meta violated transparency requirements by not being clear enough about the legal basis  for processing personal data, and invalidating Meta's legal framework of a contract between consumers and the company as a basis for ad targeting.

Regulators effectively banning current-form social media in the EU is a possible outcome – just not a likely one. Foremost, consumers are too heavily invested on a psychological level: social media is crack and the masses are hooked. Even as people express negative attitudes over data collection and use, that does not translate into stopping use of the services. As long as a considerable proportion of the population want these services, banning them remains politically charged.

Regulatory nudges towards a more transparent system will nevertheless continue. The Meta vs. Irish DPC cases will in likelihood proceed to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), so that a binding Union-wide resolution can be established. The major legal question for both consumers and businesses will be what kind of contracts individuals are able to enter into as a requirement for digital services.

Are consumers free to sell their data to social media companies? Are companies required to provide their service optionally without targeted advertising?
These immediately lead to a legally critical follow-up question: Can GDPR and DMA constrain national contract law i.e. the free ability of individuals to enter into contracts of their choosing?

Apple's ATT action showed that when given an opt-in choice, consumers are unlikely to give permission to share their data with advertisers. Around 25% of iPhone users did so, providing a benchmark for what might happen with Meta services. This change in itself was seen to strike up to 10 billion dollars from Meta's projected  revenue.

The EU (via the Irish DPC) requires Meta to respond with a WhatsApp data use opt-in prompt in their services by June 2023. However, the legal wrangling in the EU court system – with the EDPB attempting to overrule the Irish decision, and the eventual outcome likely being settled in CJEU, leaves a solid opening for Meta's well-resourced legal team on both cases.

The interpretation of GDPR's article 6.1(b) in particular is under question. A restrictive stance would see use of data limited to what's "necessary for the provision of a service" instead of "necessary for the performance of a contract" – clearly different things. Even if targeted ads are included in the basic contract, users would still have the opportunity opt out of data use via the right to object (GDPR 21.1). An objection might still render the service unusable, but not comprise the default (opt-in) model for data use as with the more restrictive interpretation.

Ad money will find a way

If the decision stands, or something similar traverses the system, it might not yet be the end of social media as we know it. There is simply too much money on the table – over 90 billion euros in 2022. One can imagine that besides reinvigorated investmensts into contextual advertising, behavioral targeting will find a new opening from blurring the lines between organic content and ad content. The process in already underway. The delivery of advertising on social media is increasingly through content feeds using AI-driven algorithmic recommenders, instead of the previous generation on interest and intent based audience segments. Ads are shown to users who respond to them, the same way other content is fed to the user.

Removing behavioral targeting would concievably strip off at least the algorithmically targeted ads from the feed. What might still remain, depending on legal and technical interpretation, would be commercial content that the user has opted in to recieve, e.g. posts from accounts that they follow, whether influencers promoting brands or brands directly followed by the user. It is difficult to see how these types of communications could be blocked by virtue of data use for behavioral targeting, since they are the user-requested content components of the service. A blanket requirement on commercial content in social media would go wildly beyond EU pricavy legislation restrictions on data use.

If direct commercial messages without probabilistic targeting remain fair game, established brands and influencers would benefit with increasing gatekeeper power over their audiences, whereas new entrants would have a much harder time reaching consumer audiences. As with much of digital regulation, the outcomes for competition and market function can be unpredictable and entirely welcome.

Please get in touch (antti@anttiabel.com) with any corrections, additional insights or fresh speculation.

This post tracks Finnish brands' and companies' LGBT+ themed marketing during Pride month, out of interest for the phenomenon and to inspire concrete action. Who's speaking louder than words in 2021?

The most common way brands participate in Pride is by briefly swapping their social media logo for a rainbow-colored version. Unfortunately, that is all too often all we see.

Sponsoring a Pride event is a very concrete action: The table below includes all sponsors of this year's Pride Week in Helsinki, from main partners to other levels of support. The levels of support are lifted directly from the Helsinki Pride partner page.

More organizations will be added as the campaign season gets going.

The links below company names point to statements etc. about this year's Pride participation. With a month to go until the main events, many Helsinki Pride sponsors are yet to announce in their own channels.

More than virtue signalling

Companies are finding ways to connect on diversity and inclusion themes both internally and across organizations. Known internal LGBT+ networks get mentioned below; links are provided to open networks which the organizations are members of.

When local senior LGBT+ leaders in  organizations are making issues visible through their person, available public information on that is also linked. No minority representative should ever be compelled to step up – but when someone does, it is usually telling.

Finally, public evidence of specific and concrete examples of LGBT+ inclusion actions are linked as inspiration for actual change. "We are doing multiple things," "constantly developing our processes," or "not discriminating anyone" is not quite there.

The last column sums up the situation from a communications perspective, from 🤨 to 🤩.

Here's hoping for as many real actions as we see rainbow flags and press releases!

Iloista Pridea / Happy Pride 🌈

Spot any brands or actions to add? Please shoot an email to pride@anttiabel.com or use the contact page. Please include links to press material, social media posts etc. with relevant information.

I will update the list on a rolling basis through June. NGOs, associations, political organizations, very small businesses, etc. will mostly be excluded from the listing.

Huomaatko lisättävää tai päivitettävää? Lähetä sateenkaarivinkkisi pride@anttiabel.com ja pane linkit mukaan lähteeksi.

Words and deeds

x	Rainbow mode activated?	Pride sponsor (Helsinki 2021)	Networks	Out leaders involved in messaging	Actions beyond promotion	s
Aalto henkilöstöpalvelut		-				🤨
Aalto University Executive Education		-		Article, Video		😊
Accenture Suomi		Silver	Yes		Workplace equality site	😁
Advance B2B		-				🤨
Alko		Gold				🙂
Alma Media		-				🤨
Asianajajaliitto		Platinum				😊
AskKauko		Silver				🙂
Bayer		-	BLEND			😊
Borenius		Main			Legal help	😊
Box by Posti		Silver				🙂
Burger King		Silver				🙂
CGI Pride radio		Gold	Pride@CGI		Examples	😁
Clarion		Gold				😊
Deloitte Finland		-	GLOBE			😊
Dentsu		-	&Proud			🙂
DHL Express Finland		-	PrOut@Work Foundation			🙂
Dirty Agency		Silver				🙂
DNA		Silver				🙂
Dottir Attorneys		-				🤨
Efecte		-				🤨
Elisa		Silver		Yes		😊
Espoon tapahtuma- ja kulttuuri- palvelut Press release		Gold				🙂
EY		Gold	EY Unity		Guide (pdf)	😁
FCF Wrestling		-				🤨
Finnish Design Shop		Silver				🙂
Finnkino Press release		Platinum				😊
Fonecta		-				🤨
Forum		Platinum				😊
Helsingin kaupunki Press release		Main	Queer Stadi	Yes	Examples	🤩
Helsingin jäähalli		Gold				🙂
Helsingin Sanomat		Main				😊
Hopkins		Silver				🙂
Houston Analytics		-				🤨
Huutokauppa Helander		-				🤨
IKEA		Silver	Workplace Pride, Stonewall		Examples	😁
Iittala		Silver				🙂
Iltalehti		-				🤨
iRobot Finland		-				🤨
ISS Instagram post		Platinum				😊
Isännöintiliitto		-			Examples	🙂
Karhu		Platinum				😊
Kela Press release		Silver	Kelan sateenkaari- verkosto			😊
Kiinteistömaailma Facebook post		Silver				🙂
Kone Twitter post		Silver	Workplace Pride			😊
Lumene		Silver				🙂
Management Events		-				🤨
Marimekko		Platinum				😊
Matkahuolto		Silver				🙂
Menevä-taksi		-			Sponsoring flags	😊
Mehiläinen		-				🤨
Moomin		Silver		Yes		😊
MPS		-				🤨
Musti ja Mirri Facebook post		Silver				🙂
Nitor		-				🤨
Nitro Facebook post		Platinum				😊
Nokia CEO interview		-				🙂
Nordea Press release		Gold				🙂
Oikotie		Silver				🙂
Paulig Press release		Silver				🙂
Pfizer Suomi		-	Out Pfizer Employee Network		Examples
Pinpops		Silver				🙂
Radio Helsinki		Silver				🙂
Rajupaja		Platinum				😊
Reaktor		Gold				🙂
Rovio		-				🤨
Rundit		-				🤨
SAK		Silver				🙂
Skanska		-				🤨
S-ryhmä		Silver			Examples	😊
TBWA\Helsinki		Platinum				😊
Taksi Helsinki		-				🤨
TEK Press release(?)		Silver				🙂
Tekir LinkedIn post		Silver				🙂
Telia		Silver				🙂
Terveystalo Facebook post Blog post		Silver				🙂
TietoEVRY		Silver				🙂
Universal Music Finland		-				🤨
Varma Press release		Silver	Pride gang		Examples	😁
Videolle		Silver				🙂
Visma		-	(unspecified)			🙂
VR		-				🤨
Wolt		-				🤨
WSOY		Gold				🙂
Ylva		Platinum				😊
Zalando		Main	Diversity Guild		Pride FAQ	😁

Updates:

June 30: added Advance B2B, Iltalehti, MPS, VR, Skanska, Isännöintiliitto; updated Terveystalo, WSOY logos; added Borenius example, Terveystalo blog post

June 22: added Rundit, Nitor; updated Zalando logo; added Tekir press release

June 17: added Dentsu, Aalto henkilöstöpalvelut

June 16: added Taksi Helsinki, Management Events, Efecte, iRobot; updated scoring emojis

June 15: added Mehiläinen, DHL, Aalto EE

June 14: added more latecomer Pride sponsors: Accenture, Asianajajaliitto, Box, Helsingin Sanomat, Iittala, Moomin, Oikotie, Radio Helsinki, Rajupaja, Reaktor, Tekir, WSOY; added spotted rainbows Houston, Helander, FCF Wrestling; updated logos Alko, Forum, Matkahuolto, TEK
+ added v1 of scores

June 11: added Deloitte Finland, Pfizer Suomi, Universal Music FI, Paulig, Lumene, Burger King, Matkahuolto, Dirty Agency, Pinpops, Dottir, Rovio, Bayer; updated Varma, SAK, Musti ja Mirri, ISS logos

June 10: added Alma Media, Visma logos

June 9: added Menevä, Fonecta; updated TietoEVRY logo

June 8: added Wolt logo

June 7: published v1.0

Marketing practice has emphatically embraced balancing the short-run and long-run aims of brand communication. The “60:40” mantra and its kin have had a palpable impact, but not without casualties. In this series, I’ll be looking at what marketing practitioners in businesses and in agencies are talking about with regards to effective brand building, and seeing how that stacks up against the academic discourse.

Best-selling advice for marketers

The few years in the marketing business have seen people get particularly enthusiastic about understanding the short term and long term effects of marketing and advertising. This has gotten a lot of new organizations on board with more quantitative and data-driven ideas for managing marketing performance, and can be seen as an antithesis for the illusorily high measurability of digital advertising. Companies like Adidas have publicly changed course as problems with one-sided, short-run measurement have begun to surface.

Many brand building consultants and advertising gurus have certainly intended it as such – a long-welcome evidence-based justification for what they’ve been telling and selling all along. Despite some methodological wrinkles in the source material, this is most definitely a good thing.

Input to complement the academic mainstream

The better part of the development has been driven by the mainstream traction on the agency and practitioner side from two main sources: work by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute in Adelaide, particularly Byron Sharp’s 2010 book “How Brands Grow”, and reports from UK’s IPA by Peter Fields and Les Binet, most recently “Effectiveness in Context” (2018). They have managed to reach a broad managerial audience with particularly well-communicated arguments based on practical evidence, even if they haven’t been exposed to the rigors peer review.

There is curiously little direct connection between these streams of research and the “proper” academic marketing performance discourse, that is to say, publications and authors in the top-ranked journals. The IPA work doesn’t seem to have aimed at scientific validity, but the Ehrenberg-Bass work explicitly does so. However, the formal publications they have are from the academic periphery. That is not necessarily a judgement on their validity, given the cliquey nature of the marketing discourse, but nevertheless highlights the insularity of the Australian material.

The messages that sunk in

Based on conversations with marketing executives and agency directors, the main takeaways from this stream of thought for the wider audience are these:

1. Customer loyalty is better explained by brand penetration than consumer attachment to a brand. The key practical implication for many is that reach media (e.g. linear TV) are superior to more targeted channels. More than a few marketing directors have taken to heart that this automatically provides them with a superior media strategy, irrespective of brand or category.
2. There should be a 60:40 balance between long-term brand communication and short-term sales activation messages. Binet and Field’s analysis seems credible and does go both into more detail about context and industry, as well as specific caveats about the nature of the brand that should be taken into account - they rarely are.
3. Emotional appeals matter most for long-term brand building. Brand campaigns that use rational product appeals for messaging act as activation that drives short-run sales performance rather than brand power.

These have been a valuable contribution to marketing practice, if for no other reason than to ground discussion on case evidence from successful brand building and promotion – or just bringing some appreciation of quantitative evidence into the discussion long dominated by hunches. Aiming for a specific proportion of brand messages vs direct sales arguments instead of freewheeling it is, for many marketers, a dramatic improvement. A quantitative, brand-specific study of return on marketing would give the best basis for decision-making, but due to various reasons, including resource and data constraints, this is not always feasible.

Media strategy based on breakfast seminar

The problem that has coincided with the flow of ”quantitative evidence based” seminar material into the marketing practice mainstream is this: some managers consumer it at headline level and rush to implement broad media strategies in line with their fresh prejudice.

“A warning on the dangers of management by hype.”

Not long ago, a major international company I worked with wanted to shift nearly their entire budget to branding messages on liner television – despite the fact that they were operating in an industry where both distribution and message content are heavily regulated. No quantitative research (such as media mix modeling) or testing with parts of the brand portfolio had been carried out to support the proposition - the only justification was ”penetration”. I saw this as a warning on the dangers of management by hype.

So what is brand equity again?

Let's take a step back to the underlying idea behind these thoughts. Marketing has immediate effects – like sales – and others that build over time. The brand equity concept was introduced in the 80s to characterize these more persistent effects. In essence, it is the mental storage vat for goodwill and attraction.

Conscious and subconscious impressions intertwine in consumers’ minds to support or hold back marketing actions like advertising and sales. We can assume it’s there, and observe it in action whenever memories or feelings are evoked: someone recognizes the brand, talks about it, or chooses it over alternatives.

It measures the immaterial strength that a brand has. Brand equity is the amount of the extra push that a specific set of mental associations gives to business performance, through increased consumer demand, the ability to sell more and charge better prices, easier recruitment of new employees, and higher stock price, among others.

“The ways that brand equity can support and influence decisions are notoriously complex and mangled.”

If I were to choose one concept to be more broadly understood, brand equity would be it. That said, the absolute value is rather difficult to pin down, as the ways that brand equity can support and influence decisions are notoriously complex and mangled.

How you view the effect mechanics of marketing activities and consumer responses, and what phenomena you can distinguish has a direct impact on your reasoning. A concept like brand equity is useful as a managerial tool when it improves the quality of decisions. This happens when you’re able to identify it, measure it and manage it in a predictable and controllable manner.

The long and the short is not necessarily a trade-off

The more equity you build with activities that , the more potential you’ll have for good performance in the future. Conversely, the more you focus on making sales happen right away, the less future potential you’ll accrue – so the general story of the “long and the short” goes. As a basic dynamic, this distinction is important; the practical evidence of a general relationship between the two is what the IPA research sets out to prove.

However, the reality on the level of an individual brand and campaign will be much more nuanced. There is no trade-off mandated by a natural law, where short-run sales results automatically detract from building immaterial value for your brand.

“You can have effect both now and in the future, just as it’s possible to fail in both regards.”

It is not uncommon for sales attribution models to show branding activities that equal or even surpass “activation” campaigns in terms of immediate sales results. It’s a question of finding the appropriate combination of creative, audience, and opportunities to buy. You can have effect both now and in the future, just as it’s possible to fail in both regards.

Issues with the universal message ratio

Key criticisms of the 60:40 approach have been twofold.

Firstly, it’s been pointed out that the data set of campaigns submitted to IPA competitions, on which Binet and Field carry out their analysis, is heavily biased towards publicly successful marketing campaigns, as these are the ones that would have been submitted for awards consideration. Secondly, as a result of this, the core tenet of recommended message balance is communicated as a blanket rule, ostensibly applicable for any business out there.

In a response to this critique, Les Binet acknowledges the methodological problems with the data set, and describes how the most recent iteration of the work has aimed at “ruling out spurious correlations”.

It is commendable that the discussion has pushed the relationship between short and long term effects to center stage. As the title implies “Effectiveness in Context” sets out to describe how contextual factors such as category, market position, and pricing influence the location of the branding vs. activation “sweet spot”.

“Too often, it’s the “scientific” justification for a for a heart-string-tugging branding campaign.”

The problem lies not so much with the research itself, but in the way that people have embraced it. Too often, it’s the “scientific” justification for a for a heart-string-tugging branding campaign. Using research appropriately matters as with any work. The IPA material is a valuable contribution that has had a direct impact on how people approach advertising performance.

The bigger picture, of course, takes much more unpacking than aiming messaging ratio. As a general approach, it is challenging to surpass the average if averages are what you’re reaching for. Marketing performance is deeply contextual. That is, the best possible solutions for your organization will be unlike those for another brand. You need to form an analytical picture of what works for you, not what works for someone else, or for companies on average.

Going beyond the 60:40

The academic material is less accessible by far and more demanding for the reader, who might even have glossed over critical detail in the IPA handbooks. That’s why I think a look into some research from the past years could flesh out how brand equity works beyond just advertising, on the level of the entire marketing mix and marketing measurement infrastructure.

In the next part of this series, I’ll be looking at what the quantitative approaches to brand equity are and what types of data you’d need to make use of them in the real world.

Simple things can work best. Organizations need KPIs to know where business going and how they’re doing. Whatever actions are taken, they should impact KPIs and derived metrics in an effective and understandable manner.

To ensure this happens in marketing, we need explicit goals – they are requisite for aligned messages and media units. The ideal is that every single activity and action is planned and defined in terms of a common measurement framework, which stretches end-to-end, from business goals to details of execution.

An effective marketing process with predictable results requires consistency. Messages and activities should be planned, executed, and evaluated according to well-defined criteria. The challenge is rarely with technical integration of data sources, like connecting your ad buying metrics to your dashboards. The actual measurement problem is qualitative: Are the goals being set truly reflective of what you’re trying to achieve? Does everything you communicate line up with the goals you purport to pursue?

The solution is obvious on paper, but can be a struggle to pull off in practice.

A consistent measurement framework has direct implications on your ability to understand business performance and communicate priorities and decisions to partners and people within your organization.

There are three key reasons to get your basics in order:

Clear marketing goals

Financial top-level KPIs, like profitability and growth, are usually easy to set and track. Breaking them into components that guide marketing processes and decision-making is the challenge. What precisely is it about your brand or your sales that is the priority? What is the bare minimum you can strip it down to?

Coordination and alignment

When all creative work, planning, and media use are explicitly linked to specific business goals and marketing objectives, overall performance grows. All parties can more sharply focus on reaching specific targets in their work, due to lower uncertainty and the elimination of mid-process changes to objectives.

Data-driven capability

With the basics in order and well-structured data flowing in, a whole range of new options become available for using advanced analytics to understand the causal mechanisms that drive your business.

Steps to get started

It’s rare for any organization to start from scratch, which means that a measurement framework needs to learn from and improve on the existing marketing process. The roadmap to effective end-to-end measurement should look something like this.

Make sure you have support

Any attempt to get an organization to dance to a common tune needs to involve the highest decision-makers. Without a mandate for both creating the framework and an express understanding about the top-level goals and KPIs, the effort is bound to fail.

Audit what you have

Round up all current reporting. Dashboards, templates, presentations and minutes from periodic review sessions are particularly valuable. Contrasts between internal reporting focus and content in partner presentations are solid evidence for completing the picture.

In addition to what’s being talked about, document the data flows that supply whatever metrics are currently tracked, and the specifics of any operations on the data. That is, who’s adding up what. A thorough review of the data situation and reporting practices will expose development areas to focus on.

Review goals and objectives

To begin building a measurement framework, you’ll need to figure out how to match the marketing activities with the business goals without leaving anything hanging, and how you’ll communicate this link to planners and partners.

An annual plan for impacting defined marketing goals, like brand awareness and sales volume, is a usual starting point.

Translating these into campaign-level goals is where the chain usually breaks. Briefs are too often framed independent of explicit links to the overall goals, and even the campaign-level metrics are often shoddily defined, and not fixed to benchmarks and predefined data sources. This often leads to campaign goals developing an unhealthy life of their own.

Form the end-to-end framework

Every campaign plan and activity in it, right down to an individual media unit, needs to flow down from top level objectives. Individual plans and activities should not exist if they don’t link to marketing goals and strategy.

The variety of message formats and media contexts needs to be addressed head-on.

Every activity and unit has three key dimensions to measure, and you should be explicit about how success should be evaluated in each. Data availability will be different depending on the channel as well as your data collection resources.

1. How many opportunities are you creating for good campaign performance? This measures the media execution, for example amount of consumers reached.

2. What kind of an impact are you having on those that the message reached? In digital, 1:1 addressable channels, engagement metrics like clicks and shares can be valid indicators depending on the unit. Ad awareness and attributable sales also capture impact.

3. How cost-effective is the activity in reaching the overall KPIs? Direct sales ROI and cost per engagement are immediate indicators of effectiveness. When benchmarks and previous analysis is available, cost per KPI unit (like % brand awareness) and media ROI should be tracked, depending on channel and message.

Communicate and deploy

Aligning the entire planning process with explicit, preconceived metrics can be a harrowing exercise unless everyone involved understands the idea behind the metrics and how they relate to each other. To communicate this, it will be beneficial to lay out examples of how a pilot campaign or similar was measured. Referencing actual messages and media units, providing real benchmarks and results, will make it much easier for people to replicate the measurement idea.

As you plan you the measurement framework, you also review data availability. This provides the starting point for bringing the measurement framework to life. The aim is to identify all gaps in current the information setup and measurement process, and ensure that everything you are thinking of measuring can, in fact, be measured.

All information about measurement and reporting practices should be compiled into a standing document. This will serve as the reference for briefing, planning, and measuring campaigns and other activities, with documentation and best practice recommendations for all typical planning cases.

Once a framework is in place, creating a matching end-to-end reporting system, such as a dashboard, becomes an exercise in information design and visual communication. Dashboard views need to adapt to manager and specialist use, but all need to share the same measurement and data foundation.

When solid measurement recommendations are implemented, it becomes increasingly possible to track and report the effect of marketing – and to plan analytics work into understanding the causal dynamic between different messages, activities, channels, and long run vs. short run performance.

A case of measurement allergy

All the steps and helping frameworks predicate that there are is a level of strategic consistency and clarity about the role of marketing. That is by no means a given.
I once had the learning opportunity to work with a car company who were particularly repulsed by both.

KPIs and metrics were desperately needed. Information that was critical for media planning was not being shared, and planning metrics, if given, were completely arbitrary convenience measures, typically only referenced after the fact. There was no attempt to justify media activities through links to marketing goals.

For annual campaigning, the client ingested bullet-point level guidance from their international parent. They were, however, unable to define roles for their local agency partners or establish any guidance beyond top-level KPIs of sales figures. No clear brand KPI or marketing goal was available. To a large extent, the reason for this seemed to be that the leadership were not equipped for the moderate level of abstract thinking that the development task would require, and not sufficiently self-aware to accept help. A measurement framework could not be framed as the shiny object to sustain attention.

Simplifying the set-up was the only option to get support for the team. To arrive at at least some internal guidance for the agencies involved, the reluctant client was involved as little as possible, with information instead pieced together from whatever sources and documentation we could get our hands on.

“We were eventually let go and replaced with an agency willing to focus on the preordained bookings instead of their quantitative performance role.”

The solution we proposed was to focus on connecting planning and activities to KPIs and using that as the vehicle to cut out activities that could not be attributed to defined sales and brand goals. These represented a double-digits share of the annual media budget. This was not acceptable to the client, as they were, inexplicably, major annual media activities that they were not willing to relinquish. We were eventually let go and replaced with an agency willing to focus on the preordained bookings instead of their quantitative performance role.

Instead of a success case, we were left with a warning example. The measurement framework project was by all accounts buried, and attempts at the causal analysis along with it.

Consistency is the process goal

A formal measurement framework ensures planning rigor and sensible use of metrics. And by extension, your resources. There should be very little guess work or reinventing the wheel: all activities and media should be evaluated against a shared, consistent, and well-understood set of criteria.

Sometimes it seems as if getting the basics in order is the most challenging thing to get in place. Judging by the evidence in the field, a lot of work still remains for most before the basics are covered.

What are the monsters holding you back? Finding effective ways to tackle the personal and political hindrances to change goes back thousands of years – far longer time than marketing management.

There are good excuses and bad excuses for holding back on data-driven transformation steps. Priorities are subject to change and resources vary: sometimes it just isn't the right solution for the right problem. However, an analytical project or organizational development initiative can often run into walls that have little to do with its content or merits.

As an analysis project or transformation process gets underway, your greatest ally is a curious organization, receptive to new ideas, with top-level support for systematic change. However, in any business operating beyond nuclear scale, many number of obstacles may come your way that have little to do with the technical aspects of data, analytics, or algorithms. There will be people to convince and get onboard, whether you’re aiming to pitch transformation work from the outside, or precipitate change from within.

Familiar obstacles to progress

The degree to which you’re able to spell out and communicate the business value of your proposal matters most. Modern collaborative development practices (like agile methods) are a great help for building shared ownership of projects and change in general.

However in practice, your audience’s widely heterogeneous interests, capabilities, and motivations still mean that the results of your efforts depend heavily on maneuvering a nuanced set of obstacles – at times a minefield of distorted motives, misplaced priorities, gaping information silos, and uninformed buffoons.

“A minefield of distorted motives, misplaced priorities, gaping information silos, and uninformed buffoons.”

As I perused my notes from over the years on different obstacles I'd come across, I couldn’t help but notice a parallel to how Buddhist tradition sees “managing growth”.

A person striving towards enlightenment faces five hindrances: sensual desire, ill will, dullness, worry, and doubt.

To counteract these obstacles, the person ought to cultivate specific antidotes. Concentration is the antidote for sensual desire, well-being for ill will, attention for dullness, happiness for worry, and knowledge for doubt.

As it happens, very similar themes can be identified among hindrances to data-driven marketing transformation. Let’s look at what some of the obstacles you might encounter are, and what strategies can be useful antidotes for overcoming them in the wild.

Pay attention to effective data collection

The foundational issue for any type of analysis is data collection. If the essential data do not exist, no amount of willingness to transform will make them appear. This is in the realm of “good excuses” for not carrying out performance analysis.

While some gaps in data and knowledge can be solved by throwing money at them, internal first-party data can be impossible to regenerate after the fact. If you can't dig out how much you sold, or recall what you poured into advertising, it's nigh on impossible to start.

As more tolerable excuses come, sometimes there just aren’t enough past activities or variability for analysis. If a company follows a nearly identical formula week after week, or jumps form one-off experiment to another, there will be scant help from statistics as there is nothing to compare against.

Naturally, a marketer operating on a smaller budget and scale of activities will be at a disadvantage when it comes to leveraging statistical tools. That does not preclude planning for future growth, as some extremely common, yet easily alleviated issues revolve around poor record-keeping.

“Ensure that the basics are in order”

The first starting point for data-driven marketing is leveraging the data that you do have. Without the necessary inputs to an analytical process, those tools will get you nowhere. To ensure that more tools and increasingly powerful approaches will be available for you in the future, you’ll need to ensure that the basics are in order. Sustained, forward-looking attention is needed to counteract the problem.

Marketers often follow an annual communications plan and media laydown. These are often central pieces of evidence to look back on for explaining marketing performance – when they exist. Lack of detail, incomplete information on other possible activities, or how the different marketing actions materialized in the end will frustrate analysis.

It is not uncommon, or even avoidable, that some investments and their results are not recorded reliably. However, a data ownership review of what’s being recorded and how that information is structured for later use will not only enable a new level of analysis, but also act as insurance against changes in personnel and partners.

Anticipate data needs to spare yourself pain

“…but do not fall for the “big data black hole” of collecting anything you can get your hands on”

The first step to direct attention to is implementing quick fixes to data collection. Ensure that nothing relevant that is easily collected no longer slips through the cracks, but do not fall for the “big data black hole” of collecting anything you can get your hands on. A data audit of input requirements will usually suffice as guidance for finding an appropriate balance. Use this to plan for the next iterations of specific analytics on your development roadmap.

Many types of performance analytics, especially modelling approaches require back data from a longer time period to ensure that consistent and reliable explanations are being produced. For example, ROI modelling will typically require at least two to three years of historical information (on a weekly level of analysis). Many digital analytics sources only store two years of old data, so you might have to consider storing those in your own systems for record-keeping.

Other data collection considerations include reviewing media investment recording practices. Are all channels and campaigns easily identified and slid into an appropriate hierarchy? Are investments splittable on a weekly or daily level, and tagged with ad units, audience targeting, and message content? If not, can a procedure be agreed on with your media agency and trading desk/buyers as soon as possible? Correcting historical data (though painful) can sometimes be feasible and economically justified, especially if the planners in question haven't left the organization.

Do you understand, trust, or neither?

Sometimes, an obstinate manager will scuttle even the most earnest effort. Not everyone is comfortable with change is the first place, and not everyone possesses skills to confidently and successfully manage data and analytics projects. Increasing demands for numerical literacy and analytical understanding are perhaps the foremost driver for turnover in marketing leadership positions.

“I don’t really understand this completely, so it can’t be true”

Low confidence in these areas is usually due to lack of exposure and education.  It can often lead to mistrust for analysts and partners – “I don’t really understand this completely, so it can’t be true” – and a focusing on areas of the job that are less demanding or just more interesting for the manager in question. Alternatively, a person in charge can become the most lucrative client the consultants ever saw, for lack of judgement and love of “AI”.

“Our business is so special that your solutions are moot”

Unjustified over-confidence in one’s capabilities can be equally problematic, whether due to excessive luck in the past or even overt disdain for analysis – “I don’t need science people to come and tell me how to do my job, look at how much money we’re making”. Another manifestation of this is exceptionalism – “our business is so special that your solutions are moot.” This is rarely the case.

Mistrust is present when a person lacks confidence in either your motives or reliability. A healthy dose of due diligence and contractual agreement is always recommended when dealing with external partners or development teams, but there are times when good business sense gives way to “trade secret” paranoia and predilection to build everything in-house.

Marketing is a unique, contextual phenomenon for every brand and its customers, meaning that individual elements and activities will often perform completely differently for a competitor, not to mention unrelated business. Understanding the complete configuration of sales and brand drivers matters more.

Build confidence and provide transparency

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. Trust and confidence issues can be some of the most wearisome for a project champion. Playing the long game of trust-building and education is an option, if there is time and willingness to learn. Sometimes the only option is just to move on, or move up a level or two in the decision-making hierarchy for better resonance.

Trust in agency networks, in particular, has degraded in the past years. Around the world, an ongoing commodification of media services has coincided with widespread evidence of shady practices and a general lack of transparency in pricing and data. Operating models and margins of agencies have eroded as contracts with major advertiser become increasingly tight. Agencies have extended their service portfolios into analytics and blended in creative, production, and other areas.

While many of these are essential components to pull closer to media from an overall performance perspective, desperation has backfired in accusations of bias in recommendations. This concern is justified. The only real remedy is daylight, even if it means giving up a part of the potential efficiencies of marketing integration in the short term.

Hidden motives are real

Not everyone is really after what’s best for the business. Poorly designed reward systems and compensation schemes famously divert peoples’ motives from what was intended and internal jockeying for influence and prestige can easily deflect form the greater purpose.

Of all the functions of a company, marketing has always been closest to show business. This tends to attract lovers of glamour and cool. Managed well, this can certainly be an asset for a brand, understanding that the skill sets and interests required can be parallel opposites to data-driven capability. Some people can also be fixated on the fun – “The highlight of her year is the fashion show they sponsor – you’re free to suggest any media strategy that includes it.”

“Will it make look like an idiot when analysis reveals how much money I wasted last year?”

The self-aggrandizing tendencies of marketing directors can many times be used to advantage. Better performance means better internal standing. However, the same psychological drivers can, when combined with lack of confidence produce a very real fear of results or exposure of incompetence – “Will it make look like an idiot when analysis reveals how much money I wasted last year?”

It is not all that uncommon, either, that managers just seek comfort and ease. If something appears to work decently well, why rip it open? Especially if it might cost the nice holiday hamper from an old media partner.

Hidden motives can be structural, petty, or entirely superficial. Once you have an idea about what’s holding a project back, you will surreptitiously need to deliver something of considerably greater value.

Use the position you're given

As with trust and level of competence, there is no universal answer to getting over the problem. The motivators and personal backgrounds for people’s being in marketing can be diverse and in flux. It is a fundamental phenomenon and inescapable reality in any industry undergoing digital transformation that there will be churn. Not all people are equipped with the learning mindset or capability to succeed in a changed environment. Some adapt, others will move on, and some will remain, perhaps to the detriment of their organizations or business.

This set of motivational issues is foremost characterized by their opaqueness. Whereas organizational wrangling can sometimes be obvious and even be brought up explicitly by whomever you’re speaking with, these hidden agendas will be obscured with secondary issues. Deducing them will allow you to develop a tactic to breach opposition – the go-to classic is building a hero narrative for the manager, lined with verifiable performance gains, personal credit, and tempting financial upsides.

The above is equally true for organizational structures, even if the troubles are less easily pin-pointed or resolved. Bringing down silos with shared, objective and comprehensive performance evaluation, and incorporating contextually suitable long-term metrics is the go-to solution. Establishing these can be particularly insidious if the organization at-large is struggling with survival, and the business-generating role of marketing is yet to manifest itself in top-level strategizing. This outlines the next set of issues: acknowledging the bigger picture.

When the big picture goes missing

Marketing as a function is often limited in the scope of decision-making power by budgets as well as perspectives. Much has been written both in academia and managerial literature about the stature of marketing in organizations. Besides it generally being lower than people would wish to see, the agreement is that without verifiable financial accountability, marketing has little business in the board room. The premium marketers know and practice this; some companies and industries still have longer to go.

As much as there is a case for adopting a market orientation on a wider scale, the room for movement is typically restricted in the short and medium term. Issues stemming from lack of customer-oriented strategic thinking and weak leadership also manifest on a function-level scale, where much of the practical work for accountability lies.

Due to external and internal financial expectations, management practices, and accustomed ways of doing things, natural outcomes of short-termism are a focus on immediate sales results quick brand wins over systematically growing long-term potential.

“What’s easiest to measure too often becomes the most important.”

The all-too-easy availability of data and metrics on digital channels is a trap that encourages myopia. More data does not necessarily mean that you are better informed or better equipped to make bigger decisions. Throwing your entire analytical power at digital easily leads down a rabbit hole, if it's at the expense of a solid overall understanding of sales drivers. What’s easiest to measure too often becomes the most important.

Develop overall understanding and investment perspective

If you’re in charge of a marketing budget that is more than a handful of figures, you can’t really get around the need to model your ROI drivers to establish what the revenue contributions of various activities are. This is en essential and necessary step for justifying your existence. Without it, you should not be taken seriously.

“The majority of marketing directors are not able to put a finger on where they are.”

The revenue contribution of paid media, for example, commonly ranges all the way from 5 % to 80 % of turnover in different industries – before accounting for actual ROI differences between marketing activities. The majority of marketing directors are not able to put a finger on where they are, and as a result the discussion about the level of baseline sales is usually the most interesting, insightful, and important outcome of an ROI modelling exercise.

Possessing the hard facts about the contributions of different sales and branding activities radically changes the nature of resource allocation conversations. Before you get there, there will be practical hurdles to cross. Justifying the initial investment for a modelling project, whether in analyst time or outsourcing costs, can be a challenge, even if convincing evidence exists for financial upsides already in the same accounting period.

Often, research budgets and media budgets are fixed and allocated, and organizations struggle to resolving who might pay it. This sometimes means waiting a year, getting creative with second/third party project financing, or the need to escalate the issue. Generally, a well-formulated investment calculation resonates with top management, for both a stronger mandate for analysis, and resource slack to carry it out.

Marketing accountability is always a financial case. If the function can justify its decisions and role based on quantitative evidence, it will see increasing overall influence – and a rightful say in how long-term business goals can be met with a marketing approach.

Hopefully you’ll never encounter the whole army of monsters – at least all at once. But should you do so, relish the contribution to your soft skills, your stockpile of anecdotes, and your patience.

Marketing is about reaching and influencing people with a message. Marketing management is how you organize other people to get that done. Analysis, data, and math matter, but without humans there is nothing.

I'm a business Ph.D. and engineer with a technical background. That's exactly why I want to talk not just about strategic marketing, but the role of human experience in data-driven marketing and digital transformation.

I am aiming for neither an opinion column or a technical manual, but a look into the practical realities of finding, implementing, and managing effective practices in modern marketing organizations. Engineered solutions, but ones that don't make us victims of technology nor engineers.

Luckily, this sets little actual constraints on choice of topic beyond my personal interest. The intent, however, is to share content that would resonate with anyone responsible for or interested in understanding and shaping the behavior of people.

A bit of bio

I've been in marketing since the late 90s of first banner ads and dot-com hype, with roles from tech development and design to marketing education and research methods, from insights, media strategy, and advanced analytics to agency leadership.

By education I’m an industrial engineer and a Doctor of Economics in strategic marketing, both from Aalto University in Finland. My academic research focused on novel methods for explaining context-specific marketing performance outcomes when facing constrained information and complex interactions.

My job is to help businesses use their limited resources to do better at marketing and sales. This includes, for example, using analytics and media effectively and cost-efficiently and prioritizing what technologies to buy or develop. In the end, it's about knowing where you are, why it is so, and communicating the implications to others.

For me, marketing covers all of the relationship-based ways for creating value for an organization, from internal communication and stakeholders to branding and sales. Marketing performance is in no way limited to digital "performance marketing", any less than it is to for-profit businesses.

The idea for this blog is to piece together what I can of these. If there’s something you’d like to hear about, please let me know! You can also sign up below for email notifications about new content, if you wish.

Currently, I’m based in Stockholm, Sweden. Please see here for contact information and what I can do for you.