Advertising effectiveness comparisons: Not a gold standard, but a real step forward

TLDR: News on the cross-genre advertising initiative of companies, media and agencies. In the current interview with W&V, the vice president of the advertising industry sets the expectations for the implementation of the .companion concept straight. A good move before the pilot operation starts in the fall.

No castle, no villa, but a foundation.

No, it will not be a "gold standard," as W&V itself wrote in April ( Der neue Gold-Standard der Werbewirkung kommt ), but "not a castle (...) and also not a villa. But it has a foundation on which to build."

This and other assessments of the upcoming project results can be found in the current W&V interview with OWM Vice President Uwe Storch.

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This makes it clear: when the first advertising impact studies are conducted in the fall according to the new standard developed by .companion, no one should expect "Rocket Science".

It's more about the lowest common denominators, about nothing more, but also nothing less than the first neutral and comparable statements about advertising impact in different media genres. A giant leap forward, in other words.

How to get there? Only by taking small steps. Such a pragmatic approach is consistent with our way of solving multi-faceted problems in marketing and business. Elsewhere we have called this consulting approach of patience, listening and pragmatic solutions "Output Intelligence". At the core of this approach is the involvement of stakeholders with their different interests.

The smallest common denominators bring more than the largest claims.

Storch seems to see it the same way we do: You can only drill through thick boards, in this case political ones, with patience. Pragmatism and small, but determined steps will get you farther than claims that are formulated in grandiose terms but cannot be realized.

"In Germany, it is too often said: Yes, but. I prefer to say: Yes, how?"

We can only agree with this.