It’s fair to say that Tom Goodwin’s comments about media mix modelling having limited use has not gone down well with Mutinex APAC CEO Mat Baxter. Following a widely-followed LinkedIn debate, B&T asked the former IPG leader why Goodwin’s comments have fired him up.
If marketing wants to remain relevant to the c-suite, it needs to be held to account and not ‘live off a vibe’.
Last week, adland consultant and provocateur Tom Goodwin, who has previously worked in the upper echelons of advertising holding companies, told B&T that the industry was too obsessed with data, dashboards and that the idea you can use tools like media mix modelling (MMM) to create media plans is “complete nonsense”.
Goodwin said that without understanding the creative, the use of MMM’s and other forms of econometrics are of limited value. He also reckons brands should focus less on the personalisation of ads, and that the separation of creative and media is “old hat”.
Mat Baxter, who led IPG’s Initiative and Huge globally, and is now the APAC CEO of MMM platform Mutinex, agrees with Goodwin on one point, but describes his views on marketing analytics and MMM as “reckless” and not in the best interests of championing good creative.
He said that no modelling can predict “advertising that you’ve not created yet” ahead of time, but that entirely misses the point. MMM, Baxter argues, can determine, with a “90 per cent accuracy”, how effective advertising is once it’s in market, and this is vital information to shape media plans and prove campaign effectiveness to the C-suite.
“It’s reckless to say we’re just gonna throw shit out there because we’re really creative. And that because it’s all about the art of creativity, it’s just not fair to measure it,” Baxter said.
“It’s also irresponsible to go out there and say, ‘MMM – fuck that’. It’s just complete nonsense. Anyone who cares about our industry should all rally around making our industry more measurable and accountable.”
Baxter said that there has not been a proven causational relationship between the world’s most celebrated marketers and their results through creative.
“Just because you win a Cannes Lion, it does not mean your business is suddenly topping the charts in its growth and performance. Burger King, the world’s most celebrated advertiser, is lauded as the creative standard. But have they sold more Whoppers? No. Actually, they’re one of the poorer performing QSRs (quick service restaurants).
“This notion that creative is this sort of sacrosanct thing that we never hold to account in a commercial sense is old world thinking. It’s this thinking that has been eroding, and ultimately destroying, our industry.”
Baxter said the inability to prove the value of advertising and marketing has, over time, led to agencies being paid less today than they were ten years ago, and the average CMO tenure shrinking.
“All the root causal issues in marketing come down to marketing not being measurable and accountable. It’s just not true that marketing and advertising is this ingenious, magical thing that a business should not measure and hold accountable,” Baxter added.
‘Old world thinking’
Baxter and Goodwin may diverge in their views on the value of MMM, but they do agree on one point: the separation of creative and media is redundant.
“In 2024 media, the distribution method is as much part of the message as the message itself, and vice versa,” he said. “The notion that this is like we do an ad at our creative agency, and then the media agency buys some space on television to show my ad. That’s a very old world notion.
“Social is a great example. Is your social strategy – the ecosystem that you buy, how you buy, the format, the people that might be your influencers, or the people that deliver your message – a media decision or a creative decision?,” said Baxter, who was a co-founder of the iconic Naked agency in Australia alongside industry luminaries Adam Ferrier and Mike Wilson.
“The simple truth is the best creative agencies in the world have, for a very long time, understood that communications planning, or media, is essential to the success of their ideas.
“What great creative agency in the world would not want their idea to be distributed in the most creative, engaging and broad way as possible? What media agency wouldn’t want their media plan to be as creative as possible to connect with its audiences?”
On the hyper-personalisation of advertising – another bugbear of Goodwin – Baxter said more personal ads are simply more effective, but that doesn’t mean that personalisation alone works with poor creative execution.
Targeting aside, Baxter’s main point is that once you push your creative out there, it should be as accountable and measurable as media in how it performs.
“In fact, the most abstract and kind of cerebral efforts of a company are actually the ones that, ironically, need to be the most measurable at the end, because people do see marketing as the colouring in brigade,” he said.
“So, you know, the way we change that, we prove that our colouring in is is measured and ultimately drives the value for the brand. That’s how we prevent that mindset from damaging what agencies get paid, how long CMOs serve in their organisations, and the level of influence and power that marketers have in companies.
He concluded: “The lifeblood that sustains creativity in our industry is proving that it actually fucking works. The biggest advocates of creativity should also be the biggest advocates of producing evidence that creativity grows those brands. And if you run away from that, you aren’t a creative champion; in fact you are quite the opposite.”
