• by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, May 10, 2007

It's not often that you attend an investment banking conference and hear a great presentation about advertising and brand marketing, but that's what happened to me. I've spent the past two days at Think Equity Partners' Venture Capital Summit, "Think Tomorrow Today." While many of the keynote presentations were delivered by some very high-profile venture capitalists, this morning's breakfast keynote was presented by Jeff Hicks, the CEO of Crispin Porter + Bogusky. He did a great job showing off some of the company's recent work, but more important, he talked mostly about how the agency approaches its work with clients.

I had always thought of Crispin as a shop that was just about producing outstanding creative. I had assumed, like many, I think, that it had been fortunate to tap a pool of creative talent in Miami and just happened to be on a great streak of creative successes. I had just assumed that Crispin was only about great creative ideas, not about great client strategy. After listening to Jeff this morning, I know that was wrong. It is clear that there is nothing happenstance in the agency's approach to creating great marketing ideas. There is certainly nothing lucky about it. Crispin has been very thoughtfully creating its own luck.

While Jeff talked about several key points in the agency's approach, one of them really struck home with me: "Focus on the only metric that matters." All of us, I am sure, have found ourselves at various times chasing -- and being held accountable for by clients or managers -- a number of different metrics that seem to have no reason for existing except that they could be tracked.

All too often, accountability in online has been a curse and a crutch. All too often, we hold ourselves accountable to metrics that may have nothing to do with creating real value for our clients. Take the "click-through," for example. Everyone in online advertising, particularly in branded display advertising, knows that it is a stupid metric to base campaigns and budgets and success on. As deep tracking in online advertising has gotten more sophisticated, we have learned that click-through ratios in almost all cases have NO correlation to ultimate conversion rates or changes in brand perception or purchase intent. In fact, the more we look at users who click on display ads, the more we learn that it is a unique and unusual segment of consumers. People that click on ads like to click. People that don't, don't. Nevertheless, the click-through rate is always there. It is almost always one of the first metrics that everyone wants to talk about.

When Jeff talked about what metrics matter for Crispin -- when he talked about its successes -- he talked about the thirteen consecutive quarters of profit growth for Burger King. He talked about the extraordinary sales metrics for the Coke Zero launch. That is why Crispin is able to produce such holistic advertising. That is why its team is able to get as excited about launching a successful Web site as they are about winning at Cannes for one of their 30-second spots. They understand that their work is just a means to an end. At the end of the day, they measure themselves by how much momentum they can build for clients' brands that ultimately converts to increased purchases.

Unfortunately, too few folks in the online ad industry think this way. Too few folks focus on the critical strategic metrics that really make a difference for clients. Instead, they spend way too much time focusing on tactical metrics that may, in the grander scheme, be entirely irrelevant to their clients' successes. What do you think?