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The West now expects to wage war without anyone getting killed,

such is its faith in the precision of modern weapons. It is wrong of

course, as accidentally flattened embassies have shown. Advertising is

becoming precision-obsessed, too. Which is equally wrong.

The other day a client marketer confided to me that the most difficult

thing he ever had to do was justify his ad budgets. The CEO would say

things like, ’What additional benefit would your pounds 5m proposal have

as against a pounds 4m spend?’ You can almost sense the outstretched

arm, poised to snaffle that vulnerable and exposed million for the

bottom line.

Marketers have developed ever more sophisticated defence systems to

counter this line of attack, but could it be the cleverer they get, the

less likely they are to succeed?

A typical defence will start with ’indisputable facts’: coverage of the

target market will suffer by x%; frequency will decline by y%; periods

in advertising will have to be axed; the brand will lose share of voice

versus its key competitor; and most draconian of all, we’ll have to use

an inferior production company.

Astute chief executives and even keener-nosed finance directors aren’t

so easily bought off. They understand that it isn’t the number of

advertising contacts with customers that drives their business forward,

but whether those contacts convert into action, preferably sales. This

is the point at which marketers may start to shuffle uncomfortably

because, dammit, they can’t actually prove that pounds 5m will be more

effective than pounds 4m. Wheel on the direct marketing results! This is

more like it. Data showing that 2.3% of those mailed have responded and

paid up, the campaign costs significantly defrayed ... but defrayed

isn’t paid for five times over, says Mr Sharp Suit. And what about the

97.7% who neither responded nor paid up?

Cue the econometrician! With accurately tracked data, a credible model

can demonstrate that provided the current price points are maintained,

so many dollops of advertising will generate so many sales. Hey

presto.

The CEO hears the ’facts’ but still won’t release the extra budget. He

isn’t convinced. He reflects that he hasn’t met any multi-millionaire

econometricians.

This is the trouble with accountability. It keeps getting in the way of

doing the things for which you are perfectly happy to be

accountable.

The marketer and I wondered whether he should try a simpler pitch:

pounds 5m will do a very good job, pounds 4m risks doing a less good job

or one that takes a bit longer, pounds 3m starts to look distinctly

wobbly, while pounds 2m ... well, better to spend it on something

else.

Perhaps this sort of fuzzy-edged rationale chimes better with the real

world of consumers, to whom advertising is an entertaining, helpful, but

ultimately peripheral intrusion into their lives. Brand advertising is

one of the blunter instruments at the marketer’s disposal, though no

less effective for being so.

None of which is to say we shouldn’t calibrate, account for, learn from

and revisit every aspect of every campaign that comes to the light of

day. It would be irresponsible to do anything else. But, as with modern

warfare, let’s not be fooled into thinking we can predict its outcome

with pinpoint accuracy.