Multichannel sells 80 Effectiveness rate by number of media channels 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 One channel Two channels Three channels Four channels Five channels Source: Les Binet and Peter Field, Marketing in the Era of Accountability, Warc, 2007. Unless all channels are aligned, adding more to the mix weakens the campaign. The latest and, we like to think, the best channel integration tool is Ogilvy Fusion, the cross-discipline planning system. Like the DO Brief, Fusion begins with a question about the client’s business issue, followed by a question about the desired change in consumer behavior. There the two tools diverge. The DO Brief goes on to ask what content will bring about the desired change, while Fusion asks what channels. Channel selection in Fusion is based on changing consumer behavior — not on whether a channel is fashionable or unfashionable, not on whether the brand has always used it or never used it, and not on media commission rates. Fusion is blind to channel prejudice. Because the desired change in consumer behavior is directly linked to the client’s business issue, each channel in the mix is there to sell and for no other purpose. The result is deep integration across multiple channels. 9. Be interesting The two biggest global effectiveness award winners today show how modern campaigns 10 work with social media and PR to generate more exposure than the client paid for. The campaign narrative is less about the product, more about an event. For Hovis bread, the event was a remarkable TV commercial. It was remarkably long — 122 seconds, one second for every year Hovis had been on the market. That’s longer than a standard commercial break, so Coronation Street, Britain’s most popular soap, was cut by two seconds to accommodate it — a first. And the commercial was remarkable for its scope, featuring major events in the story of Britain during the last century. 10. Hovis by MCBD won the Grand Prix in the 2010 IPA Effectiveness Awards, and Walkers Crisps by AMV BBDO won the Grand Prix in the 2011 Cannes Creative Effectiveness Lions. 14