Rich McCloskey

I had the honour of judging the IPA Effectiveness Awards last week, 3 surprising things I learnt: 1. Distinctively Dull Some of the best cases proved that dull but distinctive creative can be highly effective. Previous analysis of IPA winning papers has shown campaigns that get talked about, so called fame campaigns, do significantly better. But this isn't the only way. Being distinctively dull can clearly work. Byron Sharp and Ehrenberg-Bass Institute should be proud, distinctive assets really do matter. It's hard not to be swayed by more interesting creative work but as Simon Broadbent who founded the awards once wrote "these are effectiveness awards not creative awards". 2. Hidden Performance You could read a lot of the papers and think performance marketing didn't exist. In a few papers it seemed to be omitted from the paper to make the story about the brand investment appear stronger. In reality, this meant that the judges were left wondering what was missing, which undermined the impact of the papers. To misquote Simon Broadbent these are effectiveness awards not brand awards. Some papers, however, were based purely on performance marketing and a few of them were brilliant in proving its potential effectiveness. 3. Learning Learning Most MMM analysis was not backed up with experimentation. Regional hold-outs and incrementality testing were rare. A surprise given this is a cross section of the most effective work. Often the measurement in the papers appeared to be used for validating impact rather than illuminating learning. Simon Broadbent said papers should use evaluation to help dictate future actions. The rare papers that did so really stood out. It was an absolute honour to read about some seriously effective work, thanks to my fellow judges for some great debate, Charlie Ebdy and Jo Arden for the invite and Alexandra Green for hosting! Also, big shout out to Sarah Newman from the APG for recently posting the 1982 guide by Simon Broadbent on how to win an IPA Effectiveness award, it's amazing how relevant and helpful it was for judging today. My favourite tip from Simon: "Successful advertising is not easy to make and the papers should not make it seem as such". Bravo!

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