Winners of creative awards are effective too

Sometimes people (me too) talk about how adland inhabitants have big egos and wish to win awards rather than focus on business objectives and long term results.

This turns out to be wrong.

According to The Gunn Report there is a very strong link between creativity and effectiveness. When comparing campaigns that have won creative awards with winners of the IPA Effectiveness Awards, the report comes to these conclusions:

-         Creatively-awarded IPA campaigns are more effective than non-awarded ones despite lower levels of Excess Share of Voice or ESOV (share of voice minus share of market).

-         There is a very strong link between creativity and effectiveness when ESOV levels are taken into account.

-         Creatively-awarded campaigns are 11 times more efficient than non-awarded ones in terms of the level of market share growth they drive per point of ESOV.

-         If the creatively-awarded campaigns in the IPA Databank had enjoyed the same level of ESOV as the non-awarded campaigns, they would have resulted in two times more market share growth than the non-awarded campaigns achieved. The difference in terms of return on investment is likely to be much greater than this.

-         Creatively-awarded campaigns appear to achieve their greater effectiveness levels with much greater certainty than the non-awarded campaigns: they are more reliable investments.

-         For equivalent levels of investment, creatively-awarded campaigns achieve broader levels of success across greater numbers of business metrics beyond share growth.

-         The greater the level of creativity (i.e. the more major creative awards a campaign wins) the greater the level of effectiveness

-         The link between creativity and effectiveness appears to be driven to a significant degree by two important factors:

o   The preponderance of emotional communications models amongst creatively awarded campaigns (emotional campaigns have been shown elsewhere to be strongly linked to effectiveness).

o   The much greater ‘buzz’ effects of creatively-awarded campaigns (buzz has also been shown elsewhere to be strongly linked with effectiveness). It is an innate quality of highly creative advertising and cannot be bought through media expenditure.

So good work is simply good work. Like J