Who is talking about Noughtilus?

CONTRIBUTION TO MEDIA WEEK
"Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half!" This old truism of advertising has endured because it contains two fundamental truths:
1) advertising is hugely wasteful, and 2) advertising is effective enough to justify its use

The holy grail, therefore, is advertising – or, in today's world, channel communications – that are both effective and efficient.
Whereas business performance used to be defined purely in financial terms (or proxies thereof, such as sales, new customers and "goodwill") today it also encompasses environmental and social responsibility. While some parts of many organizations – typically those in R&D, manufacturing, distribution and construction – have been reporting and improving aspects of their SEE performance for some time, brand teams and their agencies have not.

Perhaps this is because their environmental footprint is low relative to these other functions; typically, marketing operations might be responsible for just 10% of an FMCG company's environmental impacts, compared with 50% of its operational budget.
The problem is that it is also becoming less effective; whereas previously brands could expect a handsome return on investment, their advertising dollars are having to work a lot harder in the new, fragmented, media landscape, in which consumers have far more control over their interactions with brands and each other. Traditional channels, such as network television, radio and national press have weakened as control has passed to consumers via blogs, community sites, junk e-mail filters, gaming devices, digital radio, cable, satellite and internet-based TV, podcasts and subscription-based publications and services.

Traditional advertising was imposed on a passive consumer, whose lack of response gave no direct information about the level of effectiveness; proxy indicators, such as sales figures and consumer surveys, had to do. Today, brand tracking and advertising assessment techniques have become more sophisticated. And there is a wealth of publicly available, detailed and personal information on the web that can be combined with data in proprietary CRM and email systems.

Contribution to Media week submitted by Noughtilus.

All of this produces better communications, some of which are extremely sophisticated in the way they build relationships with (and between) individual consumers. Consumers leave electronic trails that can be linked directly to significant actions, such as visiting a web page, opening an email, or purchasing something online, that can be directly recorded and analysed for cost-efficiency. In summary, we have more sophisticated ways to plan, deliver and assess channel communications, but the communications channels themselves have weakened. This has made it more important to provide accurate, reliable information for channel planning.

Leading brands measure their success not only by short-term financial performance, but also on their SEE impacts. To improve these impacts, brands need to measure and analyse them systematically, consistently and accurately.

Many use software solutions such as Citrix to manage work-flow and assets in their marketing operations, but these ignore environmental and social impacts, and often channel effectiveness. This new Noughtilus system covers these things.

The environmental impacts of channel communications
Channel communications, like all parts of business, have significant environmental impacts that can be managed. Depending on the choice of channel, communications produce an array of pollutants and toxins that contribute to climate change, damage the natural environment and threaten the health of humans and animals. (In the last 30 years, it is estimated that we have lost 30% of all species on this planet as a result of human activity, and some scientists fear that a further, sudden and catastrophic collapse of wildlife populations may be imminent).

Following are just some of the impacts that need to be considered, for just one channel, DM: The types of timber used to produce the stock:

• The post-user recycled content of stock
• The types of bleach used in the whitening process
• The types and levels of toxins, and the level of biodegradability of the ink
• The energy required to produce raw materials
• The energy required to print, pack and transport the materials to their destinations
• The energy required in the design process and on the shoot
• The waste produced in the design and printing process (e.g. offcuts, spent cartridges, etc.)
• The waste materials sent to landfill, incinerated or recycled at the end of their short lives

Television advertising, on the other hand, produces little physical waste in terms of materials, but is often more impactful in the production process, especially if film crews are flown to exotic locations for shoots.

Websites and emails have very light environmental footprints, but still require energy to power the computers and screens that represent their channel.