No Small Change

CHAPTER 18Yes, But Can You Prove It's Working?

A man hears the sound of an air rifle being fired. He follows the sound. He finds a small boy with a hopelessly dilapidated weapon, barrel bent, sight broken. There are some hand-drawn targets on a wall, and all the boy's shots are right in the middle of the bull's-eyes. ‘That's amazing’, says the man. ‘How do you shoot so well, with such a useless gun?’ ‘Easy’, says the boy. ‘Doesn't look easy’, says the man. ‘It is’, says the boy. ‘I draw the targets after I've taken the shots’.

Hopefully the financial services marketing moral is obvious: hitting your targets isn't difficult if you don't decide what they are until afterwards.

But who would do such a thing, we hear you cry. Wouldn't that be a tad unprofessional? Well, yes … but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

In researching this chapter about marketing measurement, your authors have access to a unique and invaluable source of material: 16 years'-worth of entries to the Financial Services Forum Marketing Effectiveness Awards. Each year since 2002, firms have been selecting their best and most effective marketing activities and writing them up as entries for the awards, following the instructions in the entry pack which guide them on how the scoring system works. Altogether, over 300 firms have submitted a total of over 1500 entries. And though there have been hundreds of winners, many of them genuinely outstanding, it also has to be said that overall, if these are the marketing ...