The Greatest Hits of Binet and Field

I compiled the most important and useful charts in the work of advertising’s ‘Godfathers of Effectiveness’, Les Binet & Peter Field, in this piece, first published by the IPA in 2018.

Please download them, use them, share them.

No two individuals in the history of advertising have done as much to uncover its overall commercial impact as Les Binet & Peter Field.

For people who care about advertising effectiveness, doing our jobs without their work is inconceivable. They have provided so much evidence of so many fundamentals: the strong relationship between share of voice and share of market, the causal link between levels of creativity and advertising’s effectiveness, the need to balance long-term brand-building with short-term sales activation, the exceptional commercial impact of emotional and fame-driving communications, to name just a few.

But if I had one wish, it would be that their work was even more famous, could make even more of a difference to even more marketers and their brands, especially to people who are specialists in performance marketing and social channels, who may not have been brought up on their work.

Which is why I wanted to select my own ‘Greatest hits’ from their huge back catalogue. These are the charts that have proved most popular with strategists, and most enduring and useful in persuading CMOs, CEOs and wider stakeholders of the commercial value of brand-building communications. Here they are: