The 2009 Jay Chiat Awards for Strategic Excellence Winners

Campaign for a New Brand—Silver:
M&C Saatchi, London
"Forward Accountability"

The Stockdale Report criticized planning for only interrogating effectiveness after the event.

Equating "evaluation" with "effectiveness," planners invest disproportionate effort in worthwhile but essentially retrospective effectiveness awards.

We usually assume advertising is a given. We've always advertised. No one's foolish enough to cut it entirely. Bar some squabbling about precisely how much, advertising will happen, leaving us to focus on "landing the message."

But imagine you'd never advertised. With no line in the P&L and no understanding of how (or if) it works, funding wouldn't just materialize out of thin air. Your board would want to be confident it would see a better return than elsewhere.

That's precisely the situation Ladbrokes faced, when the law changed, allowing it to advertise.

We engaged in Forward Accountability. "Effectiveness" became all about "anticipation," not "evaluation." Starting with payback and moving forward, we hypothesized what effects advertising might reasonably achieve, predicted how to create them, and justified our spend before spending it.

Without Forward Accountability there would have been no advertising, award winning or otherwise.

In fact, by planning ahead, we created commercial value for Ladbrokes by encouraging people to back their opinions.

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