Last week, I traveled to Chicago for the Forrester Consumer Forum. While the content is always interesting and engaging, I felt like something was missing.

Then I realized what it was: metrics.

As a researcher, I thrive on numbers and metrics. Yes, it’s valuable for me to hear how Pizza Hut is evolving its brand, how Best Buy is better serving its customers, and how Hilton is providing a consistent experience across its brands. But it’s more valuable for me to know that through its OnQ project, Hilton was able to garner a 360 degree view of its customers, which in turn increased its cross-sell revenue 50% from 2006 to 2007.

I am not alone in my love of metrics. What marketers want now more than ever is proof that their invested dollars are achieving business goals. They need proof that social-networking efforts are not just creating thousands of fans on Facebook, but that these fans are actually advocating the brand or purchasing product.

Analytics are essential in the planning and development of all marketing initiatives, but marketers must think through how these metrics apply to the overarching business objectives. According to one Forrester analyst, companies too often measure the success of an initiative only within the platform selected for the initiative. For example, if the company runs a campaign driving people to become Facebook fans, success is measured by the number of fans instead of a positive lift in brand awareness or an increase in sales. Marketers continue to evaluate emerging media. They should always attempt to map these programs back to tangible and measureable business goals. The ultimate goal is a holistic metric that reflects the intricacies of today’s digital world.

How is your organization measuring the success of your marketing initiatives?

Given the climate we’re in, you might expect attendance at a discretionary event like the Forrester’s Marketing Forum to be off this year. So it was pretty smart of Forrester to theme this year’s forum “Using the Down Economy to Catalyze Marketing Change.” I don’t have attendance figures, but many of the discussions I attended were standing-room only. Three topics that generated interest were risk assessment, ROI metrics and (surprise, surprise) Twitter.

I found Forrester’s Shar VanBoskirk’s presentation on perceived versus actual risk pretty insightful. She pointed out that GM used an aggressive marketing approach during the Great Depression to establish market leadership. Obviously, that’s something that GM can’t repeat now, but her point was well taken: when others perceive risk to be high, it can be a good time for you to get aggressive.

The ROI section was packed, reflecting the ever-growing demands from marketers for results that are infinitely measurable. Unfortunately, my key takeaway was that no one has invented the magic bullet of metrics. For now, determining the means to measure ROI must still be done on a case-by-case basis.

And then there was the section devoted to Twitter, the social networking tool everyone is fascinated by but few understand. Reps from JetBlue told the packed house how they use it to reach their 500,000 followers with fare sales, promotions and customer service engagements. But here again, I found that no one seems to have created a replicable strategy for using the tool successfully. Maybe next year?

One of our crack analysts ran into an IBM Global Business Services report recently, “Beyond Advertising: Choosing a strategic path to the digital consumer.” I won’t bore you with a complete recap of the 20-pager, but it does have some great insights about consumer-centric marketing that are worth noodling over.

The report’s basic premise: as consumers gain more control over their media experience and advertisers shift to more measurable digital formats, we must move beyond traditional advertising by improving both the granularity of targeting and cross-platform integration. What’s that mean? It means we’ve got a long way to go.

If it were easy, we’d already be there. It’s not. What’s in the way? The report argues that one hurdle is the slow migration from traditional platforms that align with either transaction or brand objectives to “brands-actional” advertising that simultaneously addresses both objectives using new digital formats (social media, online video, mobile, gaming, branded entertainment, advanced TV, etc.).

The ultimate consumer-centric advertising is targeted, measurable, interactive, integrated and contextual. To get there, says the report, will require these essential capabilities:

• Creative must move from a media-centric development model to cross-platform innovation.
• Analytics must move from anonymous household-level measurements by media platform to more insightful individual and contextual targeting supported by integrated dashboards and action-based measurements.
• Continue to develop new forms of collaboration and partnering throughout the industry value chain.
• Develop new efficiencies, including end-to-end digital workflow automation and standards in processes, formats and metrics.

At T3, we’ve been addressing these issues for years by breaking down internal silos, leveraging our data to produce meaningful insights, embracing new technology to automate workflow and driving integrated campaigns that simultaneously lift ROI and brands. The road can be bumpy, but it’s clearly the way forward to advertising that is more targeted and measurable than ever.

In the meantime, there are key questions to ponder:
• How do we convince marketers to embrace experimentation in the current economic environment?
• How do we best diversify revenues and secure strategic relationships with clients?
• How should organizations be restructured to deliver more integrated, consumer-centric, cross-platform campaigns?
• How do we develop an infrastructure that can deliver scalable integration and insights to the industry?