Today I had lunch with Ian McKee, CEO of Vocanic, a Singapore-based marketing company that specialises in word of mouth marketing. Ian was my tipping point into the world of marketing. Sometime in early-2006 he introduced me to the book Buzzmarketing by Mark Hughes. If you're into marketing, you'll definitely want to read it.

So to meet the man again was quite a delight and our conversation was no less exciting. Both of us are in the business of influence and it was fascinating to have the exchange of ideas one from a WOM expert and another from PR, but the part of our conversation that has stuck with me till now (evening) was this: Do we strive to be effective?

Sometimes we get so caught up in the processes and fulfillment of deadlines we forget to ask ourselves how effective our work is. Just because the KPI was reached and the money paid does it really mean it was an effective campaign? Does it impact our client's sales or change the public's perception of our client?

Here's a personal example. When Melvin and I were promoting our startup Scoopasia last year, we got ourselves on NewsRadio 938, Marketing Magazine, and PC Magazine, a few blogs, and others. We thought we did a decent job in terms of PR, but in actual fact the only media that did anything to boost traffic was the humble Marketing Magazine e-newsletter. How odd is that? All the time and effort being interviewed on radio didn't help very much at all. Yet daily we champion such media as "tier 1" to our clients.

It sounds like commonsense in hindsight, but how many of us truly consider effectiveness over KPIs? We should. I know I would.