Al DiGuido, CEO of Zeta Interactive, writing in Ad Age about what agencies might look like in five years, predicts:
Data will dominate all agency activity — real-time messaging, real-time results and analysis. The day will come in which planners won’t plan without understanding the metrics of success. Creative teams won’t create without understanding the relationship between execution, engagement and return. In the agency of the future, analysis will drive strategy, not vice versa.
Put another way, the propeller heads are coming and they mean business.
Karl Gustafson and Rich Schreuer, also writing about the rise of measurement for Ad Age, say organizations that consistently “measure and manage see a positive impact on their top (and bottom) lines and are more likely to be market leaders.”
Mickey Lonchar, is one Ad Age reader who doesn’t care much for the metrics obsession. Let’s look at his response to Schreuer and Gustafson:
David Ogilvy once famously stated, “Ad agencies use research the way a drunk uses a lamp post–for support rather than for illumination.”
These days, the same can be said for “measurement.” It amazes me that two equally qualified marketing people can look over the same set of data and draw totally different conclusions from it. Hopefully in time, we will get over this fetish to measure everything we possibly can and focus on what’s really important: Are our efforts making our audiences want to engage with us?
Somewhere a creatively-led agency is going to hook up to this amorphous metrics machine and milk it for all its worth. “Go ahead, measure this,” they’ll say. And when their creative efforts are shown to have moved the line, everyone will be rejoice.
