Adland loves to celebrate big, creative ideas. But without effectiveness, they’re just art for art’s sake.
As budgets tighten and AI looms, effectiveness should be baked into every campaign or they risk becoming worthless.
That’s the warning message from McCann Worldgroup’s Jamie Peate, who is global head of effectiveness and retail, and Ringo Moss, chief strategy officer.
The duo sat down to chat with me during an interval at McCann’s recent Effectiveness Well Told event held at HOME in Manchester, to lay out why they believe effectiveness is the industry’s lifeline — and why the marketers who don’t embrace it “won’t be around” in the industry for long.
“Effectiveness is at the heart of what we do. Clients come to us for creativity, but creativity without a problem to solve is just art,” explains Moss.
Effectiveness vs efficiency
So, what is effectiveness and why should marketers be embracing it for those not in the know?
For Peate, effectiveness is simple: “doing what you intended to do.” It’s about diagnosing a problem before executing a campaign, then building the right strategy.
Efficiency, he stresses, is not the same thing as it is about doing more with less or doing “more with the same”. Too often, it “seduces” marketing leaders into chasing quick wins.
The duo warn against mistaking efficiency for effectiveness, as short-term cost-cutting can undermine long-term growth.
“Efficiency can just mean reducing costs or spending things that might have a very short-term effect, but they might not last into the long term. That’s why creativity is a hugely important thing.”
And that distinction between effectiveness and efficiency matters now, more than ever.
“We live in difficult times,” Peate explains. “There’s turmoil across the world, there are problems across the UK and most European markets. Budgets are tight, and money’s hard. You need to be sure you’re spending it in the most effective way you can.”
At McCann, it means working in close partnership with clients to ensure they understand why they’re spending money so they are not “being seduced by the lure of efficiency”.
Why creativity needs effectiveness
For all the advances in data and performance marketing, it’s still creativity that gives brands their biggest edge. It’s what makes people stop, notice, and remember. But more importantly, when it’s combined with effectiveness, it doesn’t just win attention, it drives growth.
“Unfortunately, the marketing business isn’t fair. Big brands are bought more often as they are better known. The second most powerful thing though, is creativity,” says Peate.
“The ability of creativity to attract and hold attention, to form memories, would ultimately nudge behavior to change, which then delivers business effects. It’s hugely important.”
But thanks to digital targeting over the past 20 years, he argues that the industry has lost its way and it has had a “negative effect on creativity”.
“It has led people down a path focused heavily on direct response, rather than taking a more holistic view of how advertising works. Direct response is important, but so is creating work that sticks in people’s memory and brings them back.”
For Moss, who oversees a team of 50 looking after the strategic output across the McCann group, it’s quite simple. Brand marketers need to embrace effectiveness “because it’s their job” and it provides the framework to justify those big, bold ideas and to prove that they actually work.
“If our work doesn’t generate tangible value, it risks becoming a commodity. And when one advert looks just like another, there’s no differentiation, no value, and no future for the industry. That’s why effectiveness matters: it proves the worth of creativity and sustains the value of our business.”
“Effectiveness provides the logic that justifies the creative,” agrees Peate. “While creativity delivers the magic, together they drive results.”
It might seem ‘bonkers’ – but it works
But has effectiveness ever stifled ‘bonkers’ ideas in the creative engine room? “No, if anything, I would say effectiveness enables creativity!” urges Peate, emphasising how effectiveness frameworks empower creativity.
“It’s often said that measuring effectiveness constrains creative ideas. Absolutely not. It’s the other way around. By using frameworks of effectiveness, which are relaxed around consistency, it actually keeps creative ideas imaginative, fresh, and exciting over time.”
“Effectiveness doesn’t limit creativity, it pushes it further,” agrees Moss. “There are two core tenets of creativity when it comes to building memory structures: differentiation and distinctiveness.”
Yet too often, the industry labels safe, predictable work as “brave creative”. And Moss isn’t impressed.
“I find that phrase incredibly distasteful. The ‘bravest’ thing you can do is what people call ‘safe creative’ – work that looks like everything else. But that removes your advantage completely.
“That’s like running into a theatre of war with the same weapons as everyone else. Wouldn’t you rather go in with some bonkers weapon of creativity?”
That, he insists, is exactly what effectiveness encourages: bold, memorable work that creates distinctiveness in the market and drives long-term growth.
“Effectiveness tells us to think differently. It prevents us from settling for bland creativity,” he explains. “And the real value of effectiveness is that it gives clients the proof they need to buy into those more ‘bonkers’, daring ideas.
“What the industry calls ‘brave creativity’ is really just safe, familiar work. Effectiveness proves that the so-called bonkers idea will deliver market results. And it shows that bland work isn’t just uninspiring, it can actually damage your brand.”
But it should also be a turning point, forcing the industry to get more precise about what it means by “creativity.”
“Do we mean pottery classes? Writing a poem? Graffiti?” asks Peate. “In the world of advertising, creativity is much more akin to writing pop songs, something catchy that sticks in your head, something you find yourself whistling when you’re on the tram. That’s what advertising should do: create work that’s noticed and remembered.”
That might mean yarnbombing post boxes for Netflix, or building a giant egg box in a shopping centre. The challenge, however, is convincing the boardroom that those “bonkers” ideas are worth backing.
“On the surface, those things look bonkers,” he explains. “But they’re doing a very, serious job.”
“That’s why effectiveness is a tool that brand marketers can take into the boardroom,” argues Moss.
“Effectiveness gives you the weaponry to walk into that boardroom and say: this will work. We know it will work, because thousands of case studies show what type of creativity consistently delivers.”
Aldi’s Kevin the carrot: the effective Christmas gift that keeps on giving
What better way to bring effectiveness to life, than McCann’s award-winning work for Aldi and the supermarket chain’s renowned mascot, Kevin the Carrot?
The idea behind the UK’s favourite carrot was to address a very specific problem: Aldi wasn’t seen as very ‘Christmassy’ at the time.
“The breakthrough thought was simple: at Christmas, the everyday becomes extraordinary. Christmas dinner is a roast dinner, but you put paper hats on and decorate your house. So what’s the most ordinary thing we could think of, with that ordinary thing becoming the hero, more than a carrot? That was our starting point,” explains Peate.
But Kevin the Carrot went on to do more than just solve that problem. Since he first appeared on our TV screens, Kevin has become Aldi’s most distinctive brand asset.
“Aldi made a very brave decision, and it was sticking with him. At the time, most retailers made a completely new Christmas ad every year. Aldi doubled down. Year two, year three, year four, and our campaign last year was our 9th year.”
That consistency, he argues, has been crucial, especially in the world of Christmas ads.
“Wear-out doesn’t really exist if the idea is strong enough.”
Why the future belongs to effectiveness
So where does effectiveness go from here as we hurtle towards 2026?
“More and more marketers are seeing effectiveness as central to their job, to ensure everything they produce has a value to it, to protect our industry and stop us from being seen as the ‘colouring in department’, which we are far from,” explains Moss.
“Right now, there is a groundswell towards effectiveness. If you’re a marketer, in communications or advertising and you don’t have an effectiveness mindset, you won’t be in the industry for very long. That’s my view. It will very much remain a driving force for us.
“For McCann, that means continuing to embed effectiveness into its culture worldwide as that’s where our success comes from.
“Clients should hold us to account for results. That’s the work we want to do, making ads that are beautiful, but also work beautifully.”
