Top Voices - Part I

To catch a glimpse of what's going on in the industry, The D/OOH Report will be running a mini series of short interviews with industry professionals.

Given the orientation of this newsletter it will be leaning towards D/OOH but the thoughts and reflections these people share will most likely be of value to a broader audience.

We kick things off with Mats R?nne , Swedish media & marketing expert and driving force behind 'The Effectiveness System'.

Mats has a long career spanning across client/agency/consultancy, working in a variety of senior roles and positions both within B2B and B2C.

He has taken a special interest in understanding how marketing and communications deliver value for both companies and their customers. He is involved in and manages many of the industry initiatives in Sweden pertaining to demonstrating and enhancing the effects that marketing can deliver.

TD/OOHR: You have been operating in the media industry for a long time and are one of the leading experts in Sweden when it comes to advertising effectiveness…or is it efficiency? People seem to get the two mixed up. Here's a twofold question: Is it fair to say efficiency is about minimizing the cost of achieving a goal, while effectiveness is about achieving the goal itself? Moreover, could you elaborate further on the difference?

Mats: Yes, and you can also say that effects/effectiveness is about doing the right things, and in marketing terms that means metrics that reflect how the business develops both today and for the future. In other words, effectiveness is looking at business metrics such as leads, sales, market share and pricing power to measure current developments as well as looking at brand metrics such as awareness and preference that represent future business opportunities. Efficiency is instead about doing things right, how well you use the available resources to deliver effects. This also means that most media metrics, such as how many people you reach with the given budget and the cost per contact, are efficiency metrics. It is only when that reach also delivers measurable effects in terms of, for example, brand lift or store visits that we have effects. A key challenge for us in the industry is that efficiency tends to be easier to measure, but effects are more important for the business. Hence, we generally need to devote more time to measuring - and increasing - the effects before focusing too much on efficiency.

TD/OOHR: Under the banner of Sveriges Annons?rer you are one of the initiators of the Effectiveness System. Would you care to explain what that is?

Mats: The Effectiveness System, is an "industry standard" containing 36 KPIs in six categories developed by advertisers, agencies, media and research companies. The objective is to both help marketers prioritize what they measure and to establish common definitions and principles for what these KPIs represent and how they should be collected. Around 2 500 people have taken part in the training since the system was launched in 2021, which has helped establish a common language between clients, agencies and media. This summer we will be doing a small update to the system, and also introduce a version of the system for public sector organisations that don't have commercial sales targets but still need to evaluate their communication activities.

TD/OOHR: Les Binet, you and other industry profiles talk about Share of Search (SoS) as a marketing metric to work with in order to keep track of effectiveness. What is that and why is it interesting?

Mats: Share of Search (SoS) is a fairly simple but very useful metric that looks at the number of searches for your brand in comparison with searches for all brands in your category. There is a difference between this and search marketing (SEM/SEO), where SEM/SEO focuses on the generic terms and aim to position your brand high on the list of suggested links. SoS instead focuses on measuring search levels for your brand directly, which is a measure of interest in the brand rather than in the category. And what is really interesting is that there tends to be a close correlation between SoS and developments in sales/market share, albeit with a certain time lag that depends on the purchase process.? This means that SoS is both a relatively simple way of doing brand tracking, but based on actual interest rather than claimed interest, and at the same time acts an indicator for which way the business is heading.

TD/OOHR: Lastly, Out Of Home has made a strong comeback and is expected to be one of few channels to grow in 2023. Your thoughts on reasons behind this please?

Mats: OOH is first and foremost a mass reach medium. But reaching a larger audience is increasingly difficult for advertisers given media fragmentation, advertising fatigue, ad blockers and so on. OOH is omnipresent around us in a (mostly) non-intrusive way, and also seen as less irritating than most other channels, which means it offers great opportunities for creating reach quickly. In addition, it is also often positioned close to the point of purchase for consumers, which means it can be used for both brand and sales development.

Part II of Top Voices will follow shortly.

Until next time.