Measure the Effect: Design Business
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- popovich
Anyone interested in sharing some thoughts on the subject?
If it is more or less clear (though, not necessarily easy) how to measure the effect of an advertising campaign with analysing the sales data, revenues and profits. However it seems much more complicated to measure an effect of corporate communications (excluding advertising). Say, how would you measure any (monetary?) effects of a new brand identity (basically, the shareholders are interested in that much more, then in the Pantone choice) or how do you measure effectiveness of a website, which doesn't have any merchant functions in it?
Yes, ideally the client should set the goals and those are not necessarily some monetary goals. Unfortunately, this is not a basic knowledge for every client, or designer.
How to measure the intangibles?
- comicsans0
Measurements are usually meaningless unless you can compare like with like. The 'sales data' is usually transient and bogus, e.g. you might be selling more ice cream because its warmer or because the logo changed, you might have sold more if you kept the old logo.
Most of this stuff doesn't matter, and very little has any real impact, your job is stop the client from realising this. Interpret the data in whatever way is most convenient for the argument you are trying to make.
- uncle_helv0
A bit to heavy for people on here that, but if you want to know about the Fuckin' LOL Cube then this thread is likely to go through the roof!!
- i didn't get it.popovich
- Sorry, ignore me it's monday morning!!!uncle_helv
- Horp0
The one aim of advertising remains as it always was... to lodge the brand/product in the mind of a consumer through constant unrelenting repetition of a single value/assurance message.
Its the consumer's familiarity with a brand that makes it successful, the rest is just paper doilies.
- Soreen fruity malt loaf is absolutely delicious toasted with lashings of butter by the way.Horp
- BaskerviIle0
surely you can measure, a change in share value, although that can't ever be put down to one source
- stem0
"If you can measure it, you can manage it..."
A quote by a former Chief Exec.It made me lol... It sums up the world of work unfortunately. It's a world of Performance and monitoring, data and systems. All of which are meant to smooth out naturally occurring peaks and troughs in income/sales. Accountants don't like wavy charts! - Stability and predictability is the name of the game.
The trouble for the creative industry is how we manage to fit what are essentially triggers for human emotion into data and charts in order to please accountants.
I would seriously recommend reading some stuff by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
- SteveNo0
The problem arises from accountcunts and companybods who are completely bereft of any design nouce. These people just dont get the importance and never will. You will never make an ill conceived idea work, even with the best design in the world. Although successful companies generally keep things fresh and update graphics regularly. A pattern forms...
- popovich0
Another quote from my boss: "I don't care about the process. I need results". this can make you lol or whatever, but this *is* the logic behind majority of businiess owners/responsibles.
Here is an exercise: sell me your logo design. Before you start, mind that as a client I will ask "why should I invest in something like nice lloking logo or W3C compliant website, if my prices are competitive enough to go with any label you want".
If one could measure the effect of his or her offer, as a communications designer, it would make much more sense for the people, who don't know sh*t about it.
- shitehawke0
In Ireland there are is an award called the 'design effectiveness award' its basically there to award designs that have had a good impact for the business. They are weighted with like 70% of the marks going to how effective the designs were for the company and only 30% or something going on the actual designs themselves. It is relatively easy to quantify if you are selling something but how can you measure how effective an annual report is or something similar. Anyway, the winners of these awards are sometimes quite nice, well designed pieces, but more often than not, they aren't.
- ran out of steam here, but if anyone gets my drift can you summarise?shitehawke
- popovich0
I guess, I know what you are talking about. This is an IPA Effectiveness Award, isn't it?
http://www.ipa.co.uk/Content/IPA…
I've reading some white papers from them and this is the point I was missing — measuring advertising effect is much easier then measuring effect of a brand communication (like, logo redesign or website overhall). Fair point is an increasing shares price. Any other measurable effects? Especially, for owner/family-led businesses?
- stem0
Oh dear, league tables...
http://www.dba.org.uk/awards/lea…
http://www.dba.org.uk/membership…Joining fees...
http://www.dba.org.uk/membership…This is pretty much like any other award...
Someone develops a set of criteria (boxes to tick), based on some invented notions of success. You pay your fee and get the list to fill in. As long as you can prove you ticked the right boxes for the right reasons (evidence based I guess). The more ticks, the higher up the list.
- SteveNo0
Monitoring against standards which are created to measure performance. The standards are created by someone with nothing else to measure to, so in turn, Creates a set of standards.
Thus measuring fictional results against made up standards.
- popovich0
So what's the solution?
- stem0
From ISO 9001...
"Without satisfied customers, an organization is in peril! To keep customers satisfied, the organization needs to meet their requirements. The ISO 9001:2008 standard provides a tried and tested framework for taking a systematic approach to managing the organization's processes so that they consistently turn out product that satisfies customers' expectations"
...or you could just ask them instead.
- comicsans0
^There is none. The 'value' of a design exercise like an identity is entirely subjective, no two people will even judge it against the same criteria. To say one design is 'better' than another is only saying you like one more than the other, I might feel differently.
- popovich0
I am not talking about subjective side of the design. I am asking about measuring the effectiveness of such designs. Of course, someone will like the new Xerox logo, someone will not, but the effectiveness might be high regardless of the subjective views of the audience.
- stem0
Like I said earlier, design/advertising deals in human emotions and even if you define you target market well, your design/campaign is speculative (a guess).
No matter how you try to dress this up and create reams of presentation to justify the idea. If it doesn't connect with people, it's lost.
The only solution (if you could call it one) is a close working relationship between client and creative. One factor which shouldn't be overlooked is the feedback from the client. I guess what tends to happen is that when the result doesn't go well, the creative team are sacked because it was their fault.
Maybe this is why creative agencies exist, as opposed to in house creatives? Yeah, companies have marketing teams, but if the project fails (financially) they can just blame that useless bunch of arseholes down at the agency. They get to keep their job!