The proposition that reaching more consumers might matter more than crafting better advertisements sounds, at first hearing, like something an account executive might say to explain away a disappointing creative presentation. But two marketing strategists, speaking at Brandweek, have constructed what they describe as a mathematical case for that very argument.
Angela Voss, the chief executive of Marketing Architects, a television advertising agency, and Dale Harrison, chief strategy and innovation officer at the Insight Collective, a consultancy, offered a framework they call "the surface area of effectiveness." The formulation suggests that even modest improvements in creative work are amplified more dramatically by expanded audience reach than by continued refinement of the message itself.
"Why hyper-targeting is agreeing to pay more to ignore your future customers," was how the conversation characterized the risks of precision audience buying, a phrase that will not appear in many agency new-business pitches but which captures a certain skepticism about the targeting capabilities that have been sold to marketers for the better part of a decade.
Mr. Harrison, whose background includes experimental physics research at Los Alamos and M.I.T. (a résumé that is not typical on Madison Avenue, though perhaps it should be), argued that no single measurement model can fully demonstrate television's effectiveness. The solution, he suggested, lies in combining marketing mix modeling, attribution analysis, and geographic holdout tests — a belt-and-suspenders-and-additional-belt approach to proving that commercials actually work.
Ms. Voss, for her part, cited the work of Byron Sharp and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, the Australian academics whose evidence-based marketing principles have become required reading for a certain strain of brand marketer who prefers peer-reviewed journals to award-show reels.
The conversation also touched on the role of artificial intelligence in reducing media buying costs across linear and connected television, though the details of such efficiencies were left somewhat abstract.
Whether reach truly beats creative remains, of course, a matter of some debate. But the math, at least, was confidently presented.
Original story published in Adweek: "Why Reach Beats Creative: Angela Voss and Dale Harrison on the Marketing Math That Matters"