National averages can be totally accurate and still lead to the wrong decisions for your brand’s media plan.
A campaign may look well-calibrated overall, but if you look closer, you’ll almost certainly find that some markets are growing while others are sinking or have stalled out. Blended data can make audience differences easy to miss and make it tempting to spread investment evenly, even when opportunity isn’t.
Joshua Lowcock, Chief Innovation and Data Officer at Quad, takes on this urgent topic in a new Ad Age x Rise fireside chat titled “Growth, Debunked: National Averages Are Killing Your Strategy.” In it, he explains why national audience generalizations can obscure the local conditions that shape growth.
You can watch the recording of the full fireside chat here. Meanwhile, four questions to ask about your brand’s media plan:
1. What underpins the big picture re: brand and campaign performance?
Are a few markets driving most of the growth? Are others pulling the average down? Differences in local circumstances, including the competitive landscape and variable consumer spending patterns, can skew the impact of a media plan from market to market. Across all of the consumer data/intel you’re evaluating, keep in mind that that spread can reveal more than the midpoint.
2. Are we measuring opportunity or just current performance?
A market with strong prior results may already be well-served (or even overserved). Another may show promise but lack the investment needed to reveal its potential. Performance needs context.
3. What are we giving up by treating markets the same?
Evenly distributing dollars can mean continuing to fund familiar markets while leaving other opportunities unexplored. Consider what the current allocation makes possible and what it leaves untested.
4. What would make us shift budget?
Spell out the trigger(s) that would lead you to invest more, pull back or test a different approach in specific markets. If no trigger would meaningfully change the plan, your measurement framework may be reporting on the strategy rather than informing it.
One useful exercise: Find a key market far from your national performance average, then ask what decisions that differential should prompt. It might just reveal a reason to investigate, a hypothesis to test or a budget choice to reconsider.
Want to dive deeper? Watch “Growth, Debunked: National Averages Are Killing Your Strategy.”