What you’ll end up with
- The result against the target that was set before launch.
- A short account of what caused it, separated from what you observed.
- A named decision: repeat, adapt, or stop.
- Anything worth keeping written into the standard it belongs to, not just noted here.
Before you start
The process
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1. State the result against the original target
Primary KPI, actual against target, and the counter-metric alongside it. Spend against budget, from budget reporting.No interpretation yet. Just the numbers and what was promised.
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2. Read the change log before explaining anything
Budget shifts, creative swaps, audience changes, tracking fixes. Most of what looks like a performance story has a recorded cause, and attributing a mid-flight budget move to creative quality is the classic retrospective error.
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3. Separate what you observed from what you think caused it
Write them as different sentences, so someone can accept your numbers and dispute your explanation.E.g. “Cost per trial finished at $52 against a $45 target. Two of the three creative concepts stopped delivering after week two, and spend concentrated into the third, which had the highest cost per trial of the set.”
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4. Name what you would do differently, specifically
“Better creative” is not a finding. “Three concepts was too few for a six-week flight at this budget” is, because the next brief can act on it.Be equally specific about what worked. Retrospectives skew toward problems, and a team that only records failures slowly forgets what it is good at.
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5. Decide: repeat, adapt, or stop
One of the three, named explicitly, with the condition attached.
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6. Write findings into the standards they belong to
This is the step that makes the difference, and the one most often skipped.A copy insight goes into the copy brief or copy best practices. A structural lesson goes into campaign structure best practices. A budget assumption that proved wrong goes into budget planning. A finding that stays in a retrospective is a finding nobody applies.
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7. Link it back and file it
Attach the retrospective to the campaign brief in the campaigns library, so the brief carries its own outcome. That’s what makes the library worth searching before the next campaign.
Keep it short
A retrospective long enough to feel thorough is usually too long to be read. One page is enough for the result, the cause, the decision, and what changed as a result. The detail is already in the reports.Exceptions
A campaign stopped early still gets a retrospective, and it is usually the more useful one. Record why it was stopped and at what point that became clear, since recognising a failing campaign sooner is itself the lesson. Always-on activity gets a retrospective on a set cadence rather than at an end date, most naturally alongside the quarterly report.Related resources
- Marketing campaign brief Where the original target was set.
- Campaign library Where the retrospective is filed.
- Make a campaign The full path this closes out.
- Report on results Where the numbers come from.
- Experiment learning library Where any test results are recorded.