The Communications Council has lifted the hood on Australian advertising effectiveness. Its new report, co-authored by effectiveness authorities Rob Brittain and Peter Field, gives advertisers  a first look at the new Australian Effies Database.

Key findings report include:

• Broad targeting remains the most effective approach in delivering larger impacts on brand profit growth
• Longer duration campaigns are more effective in driving business measures
• The impact of longer duration campaigns builds cumulatively over time, therefore longer campaign evaluation periods reveal stronger campaign effects
• Emotional campaigns are more effective at impacting long-term market share growth

Introducing the report, Rob Brittain said: “This is the first of a series of paper developed with Peter using the new Australian Effies Database, deriving learnings from some of the most effective Australian marketing campaigns.”

He said that with Australia in a low economic growth climate, marketing budgets are at greater risk of being cut to meet bottom line targets.

“This environment creates more pressure for marketers to prove the effectiveness of their investment and can lead to a shift in focus towards efficiency. However the answer lies in understanding effectiveness, and through this understanding, marketing investment works at its hardest, delivering the future revenue growth that businesses need,” said Brittain.

Peter Field said the report represents “an important addition to the evidence base about how advertising works”.

“If I had to single out just one area of this research it would be the groundbreaking findings on how campaign effects evolve over time, and how this differs for short and long-term campaigns. We’ve never been able to look so precisely at this before,” said Field.

He added: “Looking forward, as an industry, we need empirical evidence of what genuinely works, more than ever. We need to be able to challenge each plausible-sounding new theory of effectiveness that comes along, and to see if they hold water before we rush in with our dollars.”

The Communications Council CEO Tony Hale welcomed the release of the new report.

“We expect over time that the Effie database will become the most valued resource in Australia when examining what is really driving marketing and advertising effectiveness,” said Hale.

“It is with great pride that we can now publish our very first edition of Australian Advertising Effectiveness Rules.”

In addition to research findings and recommendations, the new report also includes two case histories drawn from the recent winners of the 2019 Australian Effie Awards: CUB's Great Northern and NRMA Insurance's 'Help' campaign.

More details on the Australian Advertising Effectiveness Rules report  here.