Blogging for food

Alastair Duncan

I've signed off the agency's accounts recently, which are filed under compliance duty to US GAAP (generally accepted accounting practice) legislation. Is there such a thing as Generally Accepted Advertising Practice? By this I mean measuring what we do using common principles across all media. I know this argument rages up and down the lifts of the land, but where are we at with it? In the early days of digital agencies, we used to rail at TV being somehow less measurable that online. I'm reminded of the Simpsons character Crusty the Clown setting fire to the curtain exclaiming in outrage - "It says it's inflammable, what kind a of a word is inflammable, it's not supposed to go on fire." The impact of our TV campaign is immeasurable, one account director after another would claim over the years, and we would go, "oh ok then" and comment wistfully that click throughs did a different job and actually linked to selling stuff.

Now, the flaw of GAAP (the accounting one) is that it discounts, for accounting purposes, around $300 billion of shareholder opportunity cost. Does this apply to my new generally accepted advertising practice? If a brand isn't on air for a time, do people forget it? I remember an excellent question put by a former client (of a famous sports brand) about having to choose between a microsite campaign and some pitch-side panels with his brand logo at a football stadium, as they cost about the same and he couldn't do both. At the time, I argued that side panels probably reminded people of a brand they were wearing already, if they noticed them at all, and the online campaign (if it got noticed at all) was promoting a new trainer and linked to a site where it could be bought. We worked out match attendances versus the (rather more) impressions served, and talked about each doing the same 'branding' job, only more quickly impacting the bottom line with a sale. An argument that lives on today. The only difference is that technology has moved on considerably. We're already talknig about tagging TV ads, and when we do, we'll be able to add the feed to our black box (our very own, very clever and very secret one) that knows the answer to everything. And then we'll be investigating GAAP again.