CMOpinion: Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water
The 60:40 rule of Binet and Field was recently dismissed by Professor Byron Sharp. But before you shelve it, Diana Di Cecco – in her regular Mumbrella column – invites you to take a look at what the media effectiveness duo actually said.
We’re all guilty of it; we often just read the headline. So when I recently came across one that skewered the renowned 60:40 rule, I was intrigued by what seemed like a brutal perspective.
The work on media effectiveness by Les Binet and Peter Field has reached international fame. Both leading researchers with extensive careers in the advertising industry, not to mention award accolades, Binet and Field are known as the “Godfathers of Effectiveness.”
I have read and respected their work for many years—and no, the ratio is not always appropriate—but to have it all but “dismissed” by another academic, the respectable Professor Byron Sharp, left me curious. In a nutshell, Sharp suggested the 60:40 rule was “terrible and very misleading,” further alluding that its data set (awards submissions), was flawed. So, before we throw the baby out with the bath water, let’s go back and remind ourselves what Binet and Field’s findings were. While the famous take out is the 60:40 rule, there was more to the story.
60/40 feels about right, but 60% of nothing isn’t going to buy you much of anything. And here is a healthy marketing budget – said no one in the start up world (or at least the ones I’ve worked at anyway ;))