A campaign that cannot be judged will be judged anyway, usually by whoever speaks last in the review. Agreeing the numbers in advance is the cheapest argument prevention there is.
We fix four before anything is produced, and we write them where the client can see them.
One: the decision this informs
Not a metric — a decision. "Whether we fund a second run." "Whether the product name works." If no decision hangs on the result, the campaign is decoration and should be budgeted as such.
Two: the number that moves
One primary metric, chosen because it is close to the decision. Reach is almost never it. Signups, qualified enquiries, sell-through — something with a person on the other end of it.
If the primary metric is reach, the decision is usually "do we feel good about this", and that decision does not need a campaign.
Three: the floor
The result below which we would call it a failure, stated before launch. This is the uncomfortable one and the one that matters. A floor set afterwards is a rationalisation.
For Circa Sport the floor was 4,000 signups across the weekend. It came in at eleven thousand, but the floor is what made the paid spend decision straightforward on day one, when the number was still ambiguous.
Four: the window
When we stop counting. Campaigns have long tails and the tail is where attribution goes to die. A fixed window makes the comparison honest and the next campaign comparable to this one.
What this changes
The obvious effect is a cleaner review. The real effect is on the creative: when everyone knows the campaign is judged on qualified enquiries in seventy two hours, the work gets more direct and less decorative, because the brief is finally specific about what winning looks like.
