Mon 31 Aug 2009
It’s the perpetual marketing question: “How do we know what we’re doing makes a difference?” And it’s a question that’s only answered by the most ambigious phrase known to man …
“It depends.”
The inability to quantitatively answer the question and all it’s related derivations (e.g. “How do we know it will work? What is going to work best? etc.) is the underlying cause for the continuous contraction and expansion of in-house marketing departments. It’s also the driving force behind job changes for marketing people (average tenure is less than two years), the tendency for clients to look for new agencies every three years and the high dissatisfaction level with “Chief Marketing Officers” at major brands.
We live and work in an industry that is, by its very nature, creative and changing with the times. As a result, it’s extremely hard to quantify.
And things that are hard to quantify are hard to measure.





