The Marketing Book 5th Edition

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Promotion 449


The commission element has survived being
declared an anti-competitive business practice
by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in the USA in
1955 and the Restrictive Trade Practices Act in
Britain in 1976. Its robust state of health is
attributable to considerable practical appeal,
for it:


 has a long historical pedigree;
 is generally familiar in the business;
 is easily put into practice;
 requires very little computation;
 involves almost no negotiation;
 suits two of the three parties involved very
well.


Measuring campaign effectiveness


In an ideal world, measuring the effectiveness
of a promotional initiative would be a simple
matter of using a measuring instrument to
compare actual performancewith explicit criteria
derived from predetermined objectives. An
automotive engineer, for instance, might wish
to bench-test an engine for acceptably silent
running. That general objective could be trans-
lated into a criterion specifying decibel level at
a given distance from an engine operating at a
given number of revolutions per minute under
given laboratory conditions. That criterion
would in turn determine the measuring instru-
ment: an audiometer. The readings taken on the
instrument would establish that the engine
could or could not meet the criterion and that
its design therefore was or was not effectivein
that respect. Unfortunately, this straightfor-
ward procedure typically fails at the very first
stage in the context of assessing promotional
effectiveness. The fact is that practitioners
typically experience substantial difficulty in
articulating objectives that are either achievable
or measurable.
For instance, the objective to ‘position [the
brand] as the ultimate’, taken from a published


promotional plan for a boxed chocolate selec-
tion clearly demonstrates two common tenden-
cies: to mistake aspirations, often grandiose, for
realistically achievable objectives; and to charge
promotion with the attainment of objectives it
could hardly achieve in isolation from other
elements of the marketing mix. Another plan,
published in the same series of case histories,
set this promotional objective for an ice-cream
gateau: ‘to very quickly establish awareness of
a product known to be very interesting to the
customer and thereby maximize consumer
trial’. Here, we clearly see another common
failing: lack of precision and quantification.
Awareness of whatabout the product? Among
whichtarget audience? How muchawareness,
and by when?Whatconstitutes maximized trial
and by whenis it to be achieved? Precisely who
are customers?
If criteria are thus unspecified, the tend-
ency is for ready-made tests to substitute for
purpose-designed measures. It certainly hap-
pens when, as is disturbingly common, objec-
tives have not been formally articulated at all.
In a case history intended to demonstrate
‘effective’ advertising, a world-famous adver-
tising agency states explicitly that ‘the adver-
tising had to achieve three things: be quite
clear about what [the product] really is; con-
firm very modern user imagery; confirm the
[brand] heritage’. Logically, measurement of
effectiveness would certainly be expected to
relate to communication, to imagery and to
attitudes. In fact, the claimed proof of effect-
iveness again moved the goalposts: ‘within
days, sales started to move up... within a
month, ex-factory shipments were more than
60 per cent above previous levels... house-
wives do understand more clearly what [the
product] is... and they use it for the whole
family, not just slimmers’. The first two ach-
ievements are so short term as to be mean-
ingless in the context of a launch and could
obviously be attributable to many variables
other than advertising. The third does demon-
strate achievement of one implied criterion,
but is significantly qualified. The last one
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