Not because anyone has failed. But because the structures around marketing were not designed to make the answer easy to establish.
Measurement methods that are standard practice across the industry have been tested in peer-reviewed research and found to routinely overstate what advertising actually contributes. Agency remuneration models have shifted over the past decade toward revenue streams that are less visible to the client. The split between long-term brand building and short-term activation matters enormously — research across nearly a thousand case studies makes that clear. Most companies have never assessed their allocation against it. And marketing itself covers product, pricing, distribution and communications, but in most companies the focus is biased towards communications.
None of this requires bad intent. It is simply how the industry has developed. But the cumulative effect is that most boards are making significant spending decisions without a clear picture of what that spend is producing.
That is the question we answer.
What we assess
We assess four things. Where the money is going and whether the allocation makes sense against the evidence. Whether the overall marketing mix, not just marketing communications, is optimised. Whether the agency relationship is structured to create commercial value. And whether the measurement is reliable enough to connect spend to outcomes. Including, where the data supports it, an independent analysis to estimate what the spend actually produced.
The output is a detailed report. It answers these questions, sets out what should change, and the evidence behind it.
But the real value is not the report. It is what happens after it.
The engagement happens once. What it establishes — where the money is working, where it is not, and what needs to change — informs every marketing decision from that point forward.
That shift is permanent. Every marketing decision made after it is better informed than every one that came before it.
The cost of the engagement is small relative to the budget it examines. The cost of not doing it is whatever that budget could be producing but currently isn't.
Background
We have worked client-side, in creative agencies, and inside one of the big five media agency networks — across brands including Vodafone, Unilever, Diageo, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Centre Parcs and Holland & Barrett. We have built and run agencies and managed the P&L.
The problems in this system sit in the gaps between the different parts — the client, the agency, the platforms and the measurement. In most organisations, nobody's role is to join those things together and give the board a clear answer. That is what we do.
