At Medialab, ‘Data driven success’ is our proud tagline. It’s on the window as Medialabbers and clients walk into our office each day, reminding us of what we’re there to deliver.

Delivering effective campaigns is truly in our DNA, and this is recognised by our IPA Effectiveness accreditation.

The below five pillars are just some of the ways we put effectiveness at the heart of everything we do at Medialab.

1. Measure macro and micro

When considering either successes or failures, such as big shifts in channel-level response rates in either direction, it’s important to consider all elements that could have impacted performance. This includes macro influences that live outside of channel silos – e.g., are we benefiting from wider channel mix investment change or positive PR, what’s happening in the world, or competitor activity?

Alongside this, we then scrutinise everything micro. Audience, position in break, day-of-week/time-of-day, context/relevance, creative etc. We obsess over fine-tuning activity to achieve the best possible outcomes for our clients.

2. Hierarchy of evidence

We are strong believers that different measurement techniques all have different roles to play. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses, rely on different data points, can work at different speeds, and ultimately will answer different questions. No technique in isolation is the ‘silver bullet’, although some are admittedly more powerful than others. Things get interesting when layered and results are compared. When we interrogate via a different lens we get a multifaceted view of individual marketing channel incrementality and performance to make decisions upon.

3. Mission: Test, and test again

Amazon is well known as a retail behemoth. It has countless successes, but they have openly embraced that those successes come with test and learn. Does anyone remember Dash buttons? Did anyone own a Firephone? Thought not. But those examples went on to help create Alexa; who needs a button when you can just shout and ask to add to that shopping list?

At Medialab, we encourage our clients to embrace the same test mindset but in the most structured and evidence-led approach. We’ve advanced our capabilities around regional micro testing two-fold this year, across both brand and direct response activity, meaning we can learn about the recipe for success at smaller spend levels, before rolling out nationally.

4. Information exchange

Using Apollo – our marketing intelligence platform which delivers a true data and insight driven foundation to all our decision making – we track real time metrics and responses to monitor campaign success and use AI to automate the process. Our clients see what we see, daily, with complete transparency. That means more client interaction time is invested discussing which campaign optimisations to make, whether that’s moving spend to the most effective TV station houses, ad-lines, creatives or optimising across channels. Agility is often the difference between hitting a target and missing it, and the information which Apollo provides us is crucial to that.

5. Effectiveness as a culture

Effectiveness isn’t a once-and-done exercise. We ensure that effectiveness and marketing evaluation are done at every level. Apollo is used across all teams. We constantly monitor and challenge performance metrics or trends through different measurement lenses to make informed decisions, supporting the belief every marketing decision should be informed by data, not gut feel.

If you feel your marketing could be made more effective, come speak to us at Medialab, you will quickly see how our whole agency planning and buying approach embodies these five pillars, and why we have been IPA effectiveness accredited since 2021.