In a world of instant response and an always on attitude to work, it’s difficult to take time and contemplate the long term impact of what we do in advertising.

Since the dawn of the digital revolution a decade or so ago, we’ve been brainwashed to expect and demand instant results and real-time monitoring.

The old phrase of not knowing which 50% of your marketing budget is ineffective doesn’t really cut it any more in boardrooms up and down the country.

Our digital channels are monitored and reported almost hourly and campaigns live or die instantaneously on the basis of open rates, click through percentages, purchase funnel fallout and ultimately goal completion.
TV ads have even been known to be given a nine minute window to deliver a purchase spike.

Instant judgement leads to too many creative death penalties.

The car I own today is is a more modern version of one I saw in a magazine as a boy. I didn’t see it on the street and I never went past a local dealership on my yellow Raleigh Chopper.
Yet the emotion stirred in me back then by that picture and headline sent shivers down my spine that stayed with me and created a life-long desire and an itch that one day I dreamed I could scratch.

It took over thirty years to be able to get there.
So, was that beautifully crafted ad a failure?
Today’s monitoring standards would have had it marked down as the wasted 50% and sadly seen it followed by a price reduction and a coupon (remember them?).

Instant sales spikes for Board reports have always been demanded but what we have to remember is that even in today’s fast-paced reactionary world, some decisions take a while to take hold.