Shifting digital branding out of first gear
Dominic Finney, founder and director at FaR Partners, on the role of brand metrics and measurement standards in driving absolute spend growth in digital…
In some ways it all seems so frustrating, the client is in the forecourt of the luxury car show room with their sleek and turbo charged Ferraris and Aston Martins resting in all their regal glory, and next to them stands the new kid on the block, with a revolutionary design, engineering and all the latest gadgets.
The experts say this car will revolutionise motoring for the consumer, yet only a few clients take the plunge, fully commit to the test drive, are seduced and so realign their loyalties to this new contender.
In some ways, this is how digital brand advertising feels at the moment, it has the audience scale and quality, the premier media owner brands, unique ad formats and ways of engaging consumers.
From a branding point of view, these are all big ticks against a client’s core requirements. And yet the cry we hear from numerous media owners across the industry is that there are far too few clients who view digital as a core brand communication platform that they are fully committed to.
So we set about trying to the find the answer by simply asking the market what they require from media owners to fully commit to digital. The answer is both quite prosaic, and yet fundamental, to all good communication platforms.
The market stated that they needed to trust the medium, understand the value of the medium and be able to demonstrate the value the medium to the business. So, as its stands, we are still in some ways guilty of being that online magician who can do every trick in the book but will never reveal his secret sauce.
More specifically, what the FaR market panel*1 shows is that over 80% of the panel rank engagement metrics as the most important requirement, alongside clear benchmarks that demonstrate how the brand has performed against the market and its peers.
In conjunction with this requirement is the need to deliver clear and independent measurement of the audience reach and online profile. However, the market recognised that UKOM is a clear and strong first step in the delivery of a recognised and effective online planning currency.
It makes sense that these two requested standards of metrics and measurement would be the key market demands, as they would deliver the required levels of trust, enable clients to clearly demonstrate the value of the audiences that digital delivers and the effectiveness of the digital brand’s communication.
Therefore, it would seem the role of the industry and more specifically, industry bodies should be to drive forward measurement and establish an agreed set of market wide brand metrics that both demonstrate the full value of what digital branding can deliver and that enable agencies and clients to plan against these metrics across the whole market.
And on that bombshell we would hope to see digital branding move into Top Gear.
*1 FaR Panel based on agency personnel responding to FaR client media owner benchmarks January 2011