Creating a Global Culture of Marketing Effectiveness

The best way to distribute this knowledge is through a mixture of written materials, surveys and reports, dedicated events and industry collaboration &  pressure (where needed).

We kicked off with a survey and a series of Forum Connect events (see the WFA Forum Connect Amsterdam in November 2022 and the Forum Connect Singapore in July 2023). The WFA Forum Connect is a client-only mini-conference designed to provide a space for marketers from a cross-section of disciplines to connect and exchange on effectiveness. Beginning with Amsterdam in September 2022, we then rolled into Singapore this July. On November 16 this year we will repeat the format in New York (for which you can register here).

Key insights from the survey and Forum Connect

So far, these key insights have emerged from the survey and the events:

• Sharpen the Process: marketing is too focused on the delivery and needs to improve its understanding of objectives and measurement and results. Key to this is the creation of an effectiveness roadmap as well as ensuring that there is organisational awareness and understanding of what this document is and what it will deliver.
• Cascade a comprehensive measurement framework: there’s a clear shortfall in the numbers of clients who have a well-defined, globally cascaded measurement framework that assesses both short-term and long-term impacts of marketing activities.
• Strengthen collaboration: in spite of the obvious appetite for greater collaboration in the Forum Connect events, it’s clear to us that internal collaboration on effectiveness is not always so present. Collaboration needs to improve with a number of teams. This includes Marketing with Finance, Insights with Insights, which don’t always collaborate well across their various global, regional and local teams.
• Demand and implement better tools: as an industry we need to invest in predictive measurement tools offering precision and granularity for essential marketing effectiveness use-cases. The need for this has motivated WFA to lead on a cross-media measurement programme (Halo). Having created a new concept for cross-media measurement, the Halo team is now producing open-source software code for local deployment.

New report on Marketing Effectiveness

Based on a survey of over 300 marketers (and with inputs from 20 national advertiser associations), our new report Creating a Global Culture of Marketing Effectiveness is the best place to digest what we’ve been covering and where we need to go next, as a global community. 

WFA member? Download the study here.
Not a member? Download it here.

WFA delegates on challenges in instilling marketing effectiveness

We asked a few WFA delegates what key challenges they were facing in instilling a company-wide culture of marketing effectiveness and this is what they answered:

Please contact Matt Green for more information on the report or on WFA’s marketing effectiveness programme.

The best way to join the momentum we’re building is to take part in the upcoming Forum Connect in New York on November 16. See you there.