Binet and Field’s research may not be perfect but that doesn’t make it wrong
Les Binet and Peter Field’s research has gained fame by showing the need to balance long- and short-term marketing, and while criticisms of their methods are fair, their conclusions still appear to be valid.
By Mark Ritson
When Bill Murray meets people who tell him they want to be rich and famous the actor always dispenses the same advice. “I tell them to try being rich first,” he told The Guardian in 2003, “and see if that doesn’t cover most of it.”
Murray’s point, of which he is more aware than most, is that fame brings its own challenges. And it’s a realisation that must also have struck home for the ‘godfathers of effectiveness’, Les Binet and Peter Field.
It would be unfair to portray these two ad men as anonymous in the 1990s and 2000s. If you were involved in advertising and marketing back then, both were well-respected experts. But over the last two years their work, which has been chugging along in one form or another for more than two decades, is suddenly garnering global attention and – even more impressively – being actively cited and used by hundreds of marketers.
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I should declare an early interest. I was one of those people that read their work back in the ‘old days’ and am now one of their staunchest fans. It’s rare I get through a client meeting or a class without at least one quick side journey into their treasure trove of charts and models.
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