A friend sent me a YouTube link via Facebook – a comedy sketch by Bill Hicks, where the comedian asks anyone in the audience that’s in advertising or marketing to “kill yourself".

I was reminded of my profession’s tenuous grip on social acceptance when this week leading researchers Roy Morgan released their latest annual survey of how Australians rate the professions: ad people are still near the bottom, just above car salesman.

There is still hope for Admen and marketers – it’s about having conversations at the board level that explain in understandable terms how we can add value. This week McKinsey Quarterly published a checklist of 5 things that will help business managers get the best ROI from their marketing.

So for those who rate the wisdom of McKinsey's consultants, here in my words are the 5 tips that will make any CEO take you seriously.

1. What exactly influences our consumers today?

Mass media marketing to the masses is oh so yesterday. Thanks to the Internet, shoppers now consider options at more times in more ways, from reading online reviews to comparing prices when in-store using their mobiles. Once someone has bought something, they potentially become a reviewer themselves.

So how do you get into the new consumer's head? You can use anything from traditional research to online polls or social media tracking to get a better understanding of what consumers are now thinking about a category. The key is to be open minded about what you learn and have a management team willing to let go of accepted wisdoms.

2. How well informed (really) is our marketing judgment?

It was only a decade ago when traditional advertising was all that mattered. Marketers who new their stuff could make decisions safe in the knowledge what always worked in the past probably would tomorrow. And planned accordingly. Today you have to be able to recognise signals of change, and act on them. This means managers have to move out of their comfort zones and hypothesise, test new ways, then measure, analyse and adapt. Again and again. In McKinsey’s words there has always been a a need to define a “clear relationship between marketing spending and business results”. Today it has shifted from “should we be spending on marketing at all?” to “what’s the optimum marketing spending needed to hit our targets?”

3. How are we managing financial risk in our marketing plans?

Successful marketing communication takes hitting the right audience with the right message at the right time. The difference today is the targets are increasingly individuals and they are moving faster than ever. Traditional mass media allows advertisers to minimise risk by using metrics based on years of surveys that measure frequency and impact of a particular medium. Not so now. With today’s new media “influence can shift rapidly, and there is little accumulated experience about which messages work, when marketers should apply them, how they can be scaled, or even whom they influence”.

Measurement and risk reduction today comes from a closer relationship between sales and marketing and the channel. One of our clients has found scan data has new meaning now it can be overlaid with pre and post campaign brand tracking and the incredible analytics available using Shopperpedia.

4. How are we coping with added complexity in the marketing
organisation?

If you think it’s hard to keep up now, it’s only going to get harder faster. McKinsey's unsurprisingly suggest “you’ll require a number of specialists. You can’t get the skills and knowledge you need in just one person, and you’re not likely to get everything you need internally”. 

5. What metrics should we track given our (imperfect) options?

At this point McKinsey goes into a whole grab bag of consultant speak. At UNO we think it best to get back to business basics – success should be measured by profit, not volume of sales or market rank. A business is successful when it can compete on more things than just price. And it knows it’s a real challenger brand when staff and partners are aligned and customers are referrers.

Now if you’re in advertising or marketing and you can’t get your head around the idea you have to change to survive, take a couple of minutes to laugh out loud as Bill Hicks encourages you to kill yourself