Marketing Today suggest that the twelfth most frequent mistake made when evaluating direct marketing creativity is: Creating and reviewing creative work by committee. We all know the old saying "Do you know what a moose is? It's a cow designed by a committee." And when it comes to evaluating, judging and commenting on creative treatments, direct marketing seems to create more than its fair share of moose. (Yes, that is the right plural).

That is why direct marketing tends to be approved by committees made up of people, all of which will have a slightly different perspective on what's good, bad, successful, unsuccessful, right or wrong. Add to this our natural tendency to make comments based on personal preferences and this can lead to some counter-intuitive decisions.

For example, it is not unusual for business-to-business letter copy to be cut because; there is a generally held belief that "business people don't have the time to read long letters." Whether you agree with that belief or not isn't the real issue here. This article is not about the merits of long or short letters but how the decision was made in the first place.

On one hand, the copywriter or at least his agency, were commissioned because of their expertise in creating successful work, which let's face it, is based on many years of trial-and-error experience for other clients.

On the other hand is the client who takes ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of the campaign who is also in place because of their expertise, which is also based on many years of trial-and-error experience.

Everyone involved has trial-and-error experience that has enabled them to achieve their position; which is why both groups will be absolutely convinced that they are right - because they have direct experience of it. Ultimately this leaves the proposed creative work in the situation where the individual with the most determination, experience or power has most influence on its final form. This state of affairs only gives us three potential outcomes:

1. The agency convinces the client to trust their experience.
2. The client asks the agency to trust their experience.
3. Neither is sufficiently convinced and by committee creates a moose.

Does this sound familiar? If you are a marketing professional you have probably witnessed one or all of these scenarios. And if so you may have asked yourself why, with so much experience around the table that understanding exactly what works and why is so difficult? And so subjective. And almost impossible to articulate in an objective, analytical way.

Marketing Week suggest that one of the ways forward is to 'judge direct mail not by what you like or by aesthetics, but by factors that can be measured accurately and scientifically.' A good strategy, however this is easier said than done. Obviously results are one of these 'scientific' factors, the difficulty is that looking back on the results is rarely the best way to predict future performance - if it was every (or at least most) tests would outperform the control - and we know that just simply doesn't happen. It's true that 'nobody can argue with results' however using results and experience to develop new creative is still just trial-and-error.

Benchmark Marketing

To solve these problems systems to predict the success and effectiveness on direct marketing creativity have recently been developed. Systems that are just not based on 'gut-feel', instinct or 'golden rules' yet rather on the 'voice of the customer' and more specifically their behaviours. These systems provide advertising professionals with easy-to-use analysis, research and metrics based on existing audience behaviour which support decisions on how to communicate with that audience.

These largely software based systems take audience data via 'conversation and linguistic analysis' technology - software that captures audience language and deconstructs it to reveal the underlying patterns and structures - and enables the benchmarking of communications against known audience profiles for attraction, retention, cancellation or rejection. Increasingly benchmark marketing systems provide detailed robust metrics for targeting a specific audience or market sector, ensuring that communications reflect their motivations, needs, style and tone.

These systems provide charts and reports that show the degree of match or mismatch between the proposed creative work and its intended audience. These provide an objective foundation that enables all involved in the creation of marketing communications to direct their experience based on statistically valid observations rather than relying on 'instinct'.

These conversation analysis driven benchmark marketing systems can even target a difficult audience segment to ensure that the communications address their objections in a way that matches their beliefs, style and tone. With benchmark marketing systems increasingly being used to provide, an objective, inclusive and insightful way to benchmark marketing communications, perhaps the days of the moose are finally numbered.

Benchmarketing is the leading advertising and marketing communications benchmarking system.

Specifically, it benchmarks copy and visual content of marketing communications for key themes, motivations, buying strategies, structures, personality and communication preferences.

This data can then be used to provide a detailed gap-analysis of communication and provide a profile of its contents. This profile can contribute to better understanding of how and why the communication performs in the way that it does, and can form part of the briefing process for future work.

Communications can be compared in a way that highlights the similarities and differences between them. This enables marketing decisions and judgements to be made based on a solid foundation of empirical evidence.

To find out more about benchmarketing. contact the author of this article Jim Brackin.