THE LONG OF IT

TO BREAK THE RULES,

YOU MUST FIRST MASTER THEM

What can science teach us about the planning of annual communication plans?

We don't like theories. We prefer impressive case studies of standout marketing campaigns that led to double-digit growth. If possible, we also like it when there's a summary at the end with a few standout points, outlining how we can replicate their success.

But we can't. There are very few things we can learn about marketing principles from observing outlier, out-of-the-box cases. Most of our work is 'inside the box', not outside of it

In recent years, a new approach has emerged - let's take data from hundreds of brands, dozens of categories, from different countries. Let's examine which of these brands succeeded in generating growth and which did not, and instead of focusing on the outliers, let's try to understand the rule - what characterizes brands that grow compared to those that do not.

Two research papers by Binet and Field are among the most prominent and important in this approach. Although they are somewhat dated, these studies have changed the way we look at annual media planning for brands and have become “a framework” - foundational knowledge and set of assumptions according to which more and more brands plan their advertising.

The full deck explaining the research can be found here: