Campaigns should be driven by insight

I realise it’s easy to say, and of course campaigns have to adhere to the restrictions of the budget, but insight should play an equal, if not greater, role at the planning stage. 

The CIM and Bloomberg Marketing Confidence Monitor, which is released every quarter from a survey of 1,000 UK marketing professionals, shows that almost half (45 per cent), of marketing plans are driven primarily by budgets, whereas insight and analysis is the driving force for 37 per cent of marketers. 

Further to this, the report shows that 27 per cent of marketers say they evaluate their campaigns only when time and capacity allows.

I’m hoping this is solely because of an issue with time and capacity rather than a disregard of the importance of evaluating campaigns and I’ll assume the market research industry would hold the same view of its importance.  

You can’t use market research to steer entire campaigns on all occasions, otherwise that creative spark and element of risk would disappear, but it should be higher up on the agenda in both the planning and evaluation stages so that brands can have an idea of what might work and whether it did work.  

However, a positive from the CIM report is that marketers’ confidence in their business performance is at its highest level since the report was first published in October 2012.   

Confidence that is also mirrored in the Market Research Society’s annual league table, released this week, which shows that like-for-like growth of 0.12 per cent was achieved over the 12-month period.  

The UK is the world’s second largest research and insight market, with the top 20 in the league consisting of 12 UK firms, six US firms, one French firm and one German firm.  

In 2014, with growth at a steady rate, more marketers should see the value of market research, and something that is useful pre and post campaign.