By Joy Talbot

A traves-tea, an industry ask, and some inspiration

I had the pleasure of going to the IPA effectiveness awards in October, and left with a few thoughts. Not least about the case I’d helped put together…

Yorkshire Tea

I’m not one to cause a ruckus, nor am I aiming to ruffle any feathers, but an opinion piece needs an opinion. So here it is… it’s an absolute travesty that Yorkshire Tea didn’t win the Grand Prix at the IPA effectiveness awards!

Ok, it’s not a travesty… and, fair enough, I am a little bit biased in having helped put the YT award case together – you’ve got me there – but I do genuinely think the brilliant “Where everything’s done proper” campaign should have won it.

I’ll tell you why:

For one, the ads are the perfect encapsulation of the brand as a whole.

In one of our first conversations with the wonderful people at Yorkshire Tea, when asked why they think their ads are successful, the finance team told us “because it’s true: we are proper”.

And it is a true representation of the brand. The idea of Yorkshire Tea being “Where everything’s done proper” wasn’t new to the business when the ads were conceived back in 2016, the philosophy is literally written on the factory wall.

And so, the people who work at Yorkshire Tea love it. Many of them are actually in the ads.

Secondly, it’s really hard to do funny in advertising. Or do funny well, at least.

Only 33% of ads are light-hearted or actually funny according to The Martin Agency’s report on humour in advertising from last summer, with a much lower % of humour-themed ads winning awards at Cannes Lions.

But Yorkshire Tea is now on its 7^th funny ad in the “Where Everything’s Done Proper” campaign. The newest ad in the campaign, with the fabulous Sarah Lancashire solving the case of Pat’s missing biccies, always gets a smile out of me.

At the awards evening, several creatives were telling us that they wish they were the ones who could put their names besides the Yorkshire Tea ads. So, hats off to Lucky Generals for these brilliant ads!

Finally, many of you might think that “finance” and “signing off big marketing budgets” are words that don’t often go in the same sentence – but I think the reasons for Yorkshire Tea to be able to say those words together is relatively simple:

Yorkshire Tea believed in the quality of their tea compared to their competitors, and knew that many consumers already bought Yorkshire Tea despite their price premium
So, they had the confidence to aim at the ambitious goal of taking the tea top spot by encouraging switching
They understood that the campaign needed proper marketing investment to support the campaign, reach the right audience and stir the market up as planned
AND they built a measurement framework to make sure they knew if the campaign was working in the short and longer-term.

That final part of the above – actually sticking to the measurement framework – is perhaps the hardest part.

What made it possible, though, was committing to it by investing in measurement. It doesn’t half help when third-party econometric evaluation shows how well the campaign is working.

But even before our third-party measurement, Yorkshire Tea had an analytical approach, undertaking robust brand tracking with loads of data points, and modelling sales and pricing internally.

On that third party evaluation, our measurement showed just how strong a brew the brand boiled up through consistency with their good idea.

The brand could see that consumers’ perception of the brand’s quality was rising, but did that really ring true in the sales data? Yes! The ad campaign added over a billion tea bags in sales over the last 4 years. And the campaign way outperformed FMCG averages.

With that short and longer-term measurement framework throughout the campaign, everyone in the team could see the brand’s strong performance, and stuck to their guns, with finance being confident that the ad budget was well-spent.

It saw Yorkshire Tea go from the 5th largest tea brand in the UK to 1st. No small achievement in a category of particular tastes and loyalties (or loyal-teas).

It shows the power of consistent storytelling, holistic measurement and financial commitment to a good idea.

I can advocate for the Grand Prix on their behalf, but they’d never complain about Gold. That wouldn’t be doing things proper!

More than just FMCGs

The other overwhelmingly noticeable thing from the IPA effectiveness award was how many unhealthy FMCGs ended up on stage. Where was everybody else?

At magic numbers we work with loads of fantastic brands outside of the FMCG category who are making brilliant ad campaigns, and seeing really great results. E-commerce businesses seeing another wave of growth post-pandemic. Finance brands unlocking MMM for the first time. TV platforms battling a challenging, ever-changing landscape and winning.

It would be amazing to see more of them entering and winning effectiveness awards to showcase that work. FMCGs are lovely, and TV campaigns are obviously a gold standard in ad-land, but there’s a lot more creative work out there we as an industry should be holding up and showing off.

I’m going to be chatting with some of my favourite non-FMCG clients and encouraging them to enter in 2026. I’d love you to do the same.

An award-worthy speech

Finally, I wanted to touch on what was one of the most memorable parts of the whole night for me, which was the keynote speech from Catherine Kehoe.

I absolutely loved this line from it:

“And in part, that’s why tonight is so important, because together we will be celebrating real effectiveness, proven in real ways, driven by real testing, research and data science.”

It makes you so proud, doesn’t it?

But it is true! The measurement is a part of the whole. It’s very hard to do great ads without proof of that greatness. Build belief, gather your numbers and take it to finance to get that gold-standard consistency signed off.

You don’t need to tell any of the award winners about the power of effectiveness measurement, they wouldn’t be there without it.