5 WAYS TO
Set Out Without Fear in 2025
We know from our clients and partners that 2024 was no picnic. And, with many unknowns still facing us in 2025, this may feel like an unlikely time to be brave.
But having just attended the IPA’s Annual Effectiveness Conference, we’ve compiled some useful lessons and resources to help to strengthen resolve, lessen collective fear and allow brands to set out more confidently into the year ahead.
NAVIGATE EVERY POSSIBILITY
This free tool from the econometric experts at Magic Numbers enables brands to forecast the impact of spend over three years by modelling different scenarios to predict media’s effect on share, sales, and profit. You can also adjust the model by factoring in economic trends, sector outlooks, energy prices, inflation, employment, wages, and whether the purchase in your category is a necessity.
The result is a more informed conversation with your FD, Board, and other stakeholders.
https://recoverybudgetplanner.magicnumbers.co.uk/
TEST UNCHARTED TERRITORY
We’re very excited to see the IPA promoting the value of combining Media Mix Modeling with controlled experiments to identify the real truth of what will work for your brand, rather than just reviewing the impact of what you’ve already done. This free document is long, but worth the read: it offers models and action plans to help you build a culture of effectiveness and boost your confidence moving forward.
https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/making-effectiveness-work/
VALIDATE WITH REAL AUDIENCES AT SPEED
There’s nothing like presenting a plan that’s been road-tested with your target audience. Thanks to machine learning in research platforms, we can now access and analyse feedback quickly, removing barriers to testing. While you’ll need a small budget for recruitment incentives, avoiding a potential fail is priceless. We love using www.useloops.com for concept tests, copy tests and more, because the targeting is finely calibrated - and we get feedback within a day or two, in a format which is easy for brands, creatives and strategists to work from.
An alternative is to use PPC to release your concept in the wild, testing for example, key messaging elements to a custom audience segment, based on their immediate search needs. It will only tell you how to convert current interest - but that’s one Known Known under your belt, at least!
KNOW YOUR WORTH
Amid the challenges in today's marketing landscape, several studies have emerged proving the long-term value of brand building activity, or as one CFO at the conference phrased it, "building a stock of positive perceptions for the future." She recommends using discounted cash flow analysis to demonstrate the longer term payback (as modelled in the budget planner tool above) and other speakers pointed to the value created by improving the efficacy of performance media, recruitment activity and critically, price elasticity.
These free studies (our favourite price) are a great way to show the long-term value of brand investment.
The first is a discussion with analysts on the value of brands and marketing:
https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/marketing-is-an-investment/
The second was commissioned by Thinkbox, the marketing body for commercial TV in the UK, but the findings do encompass all channels:
If TV ad budgets are out of reach, this doc from Mailchimp offers expert advice tailored for smaller brands with tighter budgets: https://mailchimp.com/resources/how-to-grow-your-brand/success/
PUT DIVERSE CREATIVE MINDS TO WORK WITH YOU
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating - diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams.
McKinsey have helpfully repeated their work in this area to show that whilst the economic context may have changed, the facts have not:
If you’re struggling to access diverse agency talent, we can help! Our team of creative, strategy, and media experts at Uncharted span different regions, ages, ethnicities, genders, backgrounds and more. We love to build bespoke teams of talent around our clients’ briefs in order to maximise the creativity, innovation and effectiveness of the outputs.
If you're a brand looking ahead and starting to plan for 2025, we’d love to help you launch into the new year with confidence. Get in touch, and let’s set out without fear!
Uncharted is a creative studio built for the future. We guide brands into culture with confidence. As a brand agency founded by three award-winning advertising industry leaders and innovators, we’ve put AI at the heart of the agency, using the best technology (from data and insight, research, creative testing and iteration) to give our creative ideas real cultural power and to give our clients more certainty of highly effective advertising. As female agency leaders, we have gathered a diverse team of makers and thinkers because we believe that diverse talent delivers more creative and impactful work. Our aim is that this will make us one of the best ad agencies in London and an independent agency who is making a difference to our sector and the wider world.
