"Share of Voice is antiquated” – Long live Share of Experience
In the last couple of months, I have spoken to many CMOs and Insight Directors who are struggling to use traditional metrics, like Share of Voice (SOV). SOV used to be a great metric in justifying advertising spend through the concept of Excess Share of Voice, but how useful is it in today’s modern marketing world? Is it now antiquated?
In the last 15 years, marketing has transformed with a plethora of ways that brands can connect with people, and many of these are not captured in Share of Voice. Whilst marketing is evolving our marketing metrics are not. They are stuck in the last decade.
MESH Experience has uncovered 5 key reasons that now is the time to build more sustainable marketing metrics. As marketers are hard-pressed to justify spend, and frameworks around advertising metrics leave gaps wider than the Grand Canyon, we need to be measuring not just the 30% of which we push out, but the entire picture of what a person actually picks up in the real world. Their Share of Experience, that is.
In 2014 Harvard Business Review published an article by Marc de Swaan Arons, Frank van den Driest and Keith Weed (ex CMO Unilever) where they suggested: “In fact, we believe that the most important marketing metric will soon change from “share of wallet” or “share of voice” to “share of experience.”
We also believe that Share of Experience will be the most important marketing metric. A metric that picks up all brand encounters, paid, owned and earned, is needed for measurement. The channels might change but experiences will endure. Experiences capture context too. To find out more about the Share of Experience metric that we have developed and validated over the last 16 years, check out our white paper.
We would love to connect with other marketing activists that are seeking new measures so that we can work together to empower CMOs and CEOs to create experiences that grow brands, people and society.
Download our Executive Summary on Marketing Metric Erosion now!
Author: Fiona Blades -- President and Chief Experience Officer