MASTERING THE ART OF EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING

Understanding advertising is one thing but mastering the art THINKTV of effectiveness is another. Recognising an opportunity, sent two marketers on the Master of Advertising Effectiveness programme, one from each end of the experience spectrum, in a bid to elevate the industr y’s proficiency and collegiality as a whole.

When programme creator James Hurman first began working in advertising in 2001 there was very little knowledge around how advertising worked or how it could be improved.

“There were lots of people with experience and opinions but there wasn’t really data to provide us with real evidence around these things,” he says.

As time went on, the internet opened up a whole world of data and insight into advertising effectiveness, and research was done to provide some very “robust principles” about how it works and how to make it better James says.

The issue then became too much information in too many places, so James set about collating the Master of Advertising Effectiveness programme – a six-week online course to help marketing and advertising professionals understand the evidence-based principles and how to apply them to get better commercial results.

“My personal style is to find the most simple, clear and concise way of taking what can sometimes be quite complicated principals and making them really comprehensible and simple, easy to understand and easy to apply for marketers,” he says.

The course covers key principles around investing for growth, targeting for growth, balancing long and short term activities, building mental availability, creativity and effectiveness, creative commitment, objective setting, tracking and measurement, and how to apply all these.

At the end of the course James hopes those who take part come away with a deeper understanding and confidence.

“A lot of the time marketing can feel very subjective and maybe the loudest person in the room dominates the course of how we do things. One thing the programme does is build up people’s confidence so they feel a strong sense of knowing how things work and can apply it without feeling like they are taking a stab in the dark. The outcome I’m really trying to effect with the programme is consistency of advertising effectiveness.”

Last year Thinktv sponsored TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards Young Marketer of the Year and Communications and Campaign Specialist for BP Aspac Kathlynn Lee, to attend the programme.

“The marketing world is constantly changing and so it’s critical for marketers of all experience levels to stay curious – particularly when it comes to understanding what makes for most effective advertising,” says Jodene Murphy, General Manager of Thinktv.

“James is renowned for making the complex simple and uncovering the most useful evidence based, real world learnings that can be applied in real life. We knew the marketing community would get so much out of the course content and we wanted to share that.”

As someone relatively new to the industry, Kathlynn says that before the course, her approach to understanding effectiveness was very “topline”.

“I held campaign and media, post campaign analysis as a single source of truth and I didn’t feel like I had a license to challenge what was put in front of me. I gave fairly little consideration to the level of effectiveness the creative itself can add to the performance of the campaign. I was solely focused on driving return of investment for the business.”

She says the programme helped her gain the confidence to question insights and have her own take on how effectiveness can present for the business while translating campaign metrics into commercial wins.

The programme focuses on building