Russ Mann has written a terrific essay on what the advertising “agency of the future” will look like. He uses the term “Marketing Solutions Company” and it’s a good start.

At the heart of his conjecture is this seemingly simple concept: Creative is going to have to quantify ROI in order to justify itself.

I’ve been working with a client, Education Systems, to quantify the ROI on a video we produced for the launch of their new product, RetentionPRO.

Anecdotal plaudits aside, it’s important for us to track who the video was shown to, how it was seen, and if after viewing the video that person was converted to a warm lead. Beyond that, what role did the video play in creating speaking points for the sales person who picks up that lead?

We’ve already heard that the use of humor in the video created a sense of empathy and understanding with the viewers. In some cases, it even created an awareness of a problem/solution scenario that they had not previously acknowledged. But if we can get hard numbers on conversions to warm leads and eventual sales, then we can quantify in dollars the impact the video has for the client.

RetentionPRO launches this spring. I’ll post the ROI on this project when we get the results.