One of the necessary hurdles that you encounter when entering the IPA Effectiveness Awards is the requirement that your client gives formal permission to publish the paper.
This permission cannot be taken for granted and some aspiring entrants have been understandably frustrated by a refusal, sometimes at a late stage when a lot of work has already been done. It is in all of our interests that clients should be encouraged to permit entry to the Awards unless there are very sound reasons to withhold it. We offer below a number of suggestions - some for good practice and some for arguments which can be deployed to ensure that your client makes an informed decision and that effort is not wasted on unpublished cases.
The main, if not the only, reason for refusal to publish is the issue of confidentiality. Some companies, particularly US owned, have very strict corporate policies about disclosing any information regarding their business. If this is so, it is unlikely you will be able to get around it, so it is worth finding out before much effort has been wasted. (Conversely, do not assume that permission will be withheld until you have asked and done your best to persuade them!) In some other cases there may be strong competitive reasons for not wanting to publish. You must be prepared to respect these but can suggest that publication might be possible at a future date. There are examples of successful papers delayed for this sort of reason. However, there is a common situation where you may be able to argue the case. This is where a client has discretion to publish and no strong immediate reason not to, but perceives that the risk of giving away information, however slight, is not outweighed by any advantage to his/her company. It is also possible for a few clients to see the Effectiveness Awards as being of benefit only to the agency, perhaps even at their own expense. In such cases the following suggestions and arguments may be of some help. Our best suggestions:
1. Maximise your chances of getting client permission to publish by identifying the individual who needs to give approval, and approaching him or her early on. If it is someone in a very senior position, an approach by a top agency person may help oil the wheels and emphasise the importance that the agency attaches to the Awards.
Approval should usually be sought from the most senior client possible and ideally the Managing Director or CEO, not just the Marketing Director, and an approach usually flushes out any issues and gives plenty of time for a rational debate. It is a fatal error to get a 'soft' authorisation at the Marketing Director level or below, and then discover in the last few days before the closing date that having seen the completed paper, he/she feels the need to go higher in the organisation for sign-off. At this very late stage and under time pressure, it is hardly surprising that a Managing Director or CEO opts to say 'no'.
2. Assure them that they will be able to vet the paper before entry and that you will submit it to them in sufficient time for them to read it and for you to make changes. (Of course, this means you cannot leave writing the paper until the last minute!) Do your best to find out about the key person's availability at this time.
3. Make use of Appendices. If indexing and other techniques fail to reassure your client, point out that you can include data in an Appendix which will be read by the Judges but not published to a wider audience. Since clients' anxieties typically relate to their data falling into the public domain, this should hopefully alleviate any remaining concerns.
4. Establish what the client's particular sensitivities are, and see if you can agree ground rules for excluding or disguising particular kinds of data (e.g. financial). Most successful papers probably give away little of real value to competitors. Marketing activity is by its nature in the public domain and even the thinking behind it is history after a year or two. The usefulness of data to others can be severely reduced by selective presentation and masking (e.g. indexing). Much basic market data (ACNielsen, etc) is likely to be available to major competitors anyway.
5. Clients should bear in mind that the information or data in cases is usually at least nine months out of date by the time it is published. Much of the content of a case entered this year will likely relate to 2008 or 2009, the closing date for entries for this competition is 23rd April 2010 at noon and the likely publication date of the book is November 2010.
6. It is also true that most qualitative research findings about customer attitudes and behaviour or reactions to communications campaigns in a given market, will be revealed to competitors in their own group discussions.
7. On the question of the risks of exposing strategic thinking (as opposed to data) to competitors, John Brady of McKinsey points out that this does not appear to be a problem in reality. For example, any competitor can know everything there is to know about a retail brand like McDonalds and yet no-one has managed to copy them.
8. Point out that the IPA Awards have benefited advertisers generally by improving standards of evaluation and by making it a higher priority for agencies. Their very existence depends on clients allowing cases to be published in detail and the high standing of the UK industry in the world has been enhanced by their preparedness to do so since 1980.
9. An IPA paper will be of invaluable use within the client's own organisation. It can be used to vindicate the key role that marketing plays in the organisation and to validate the effectiveness of the investment in advertising, media and marketing communications to the main board and to shareholders and the City.
10. The IPA Effectiveness Awards reward both the client and the agency while creating good PR for the brand.
11. Over 700 papers have so far been published in Advertising Works, and more than 1,400 are listed on the IPA dataBANK, many of them from respected Blue Chip companies. There are no known cases of a competitive disadvantage resulting from publication.
12. Showing the client a copy of Advertising Works may help to establish the credentials of the Awards and demonstrate what is involved; as well as reassure that many others have done it before and 'survived'. Doubtful clients should be reassured that even the famously secretive P&G has allowed entries.
13. Advertising agencies are not only motivated by money! A successful paper will improve the client's profile within the agency and the team's motivation to work on their business.
14. If you have a client who has published and been successful in the past, you might even try and enlist their help!
15. The evidence suggests that if a client and agency form a team to produce a paper, it has a really beneficial effect on their working relationship. Writing an effectiveness case often involves getting answers to questions the client and agency don't often ask, and it means they will probably get a lot of analysis and extra work done, which is very useful for the brand.
16. If you think it would help, we can lend our voice directly to the debate with a client who may have concerns about allowing an entry. If you would like to take us up on this offer, please contact the Events team, at the IPA on 020 7201 9690 to make an appointment for IPA Director General Hamish Pringle to meet with them.