The research from The Fournaise Marketing Group involved interviews with 1,200 chief executives and management and marketing decision-makers across Europe, North America, Asia and Australia
It found that 71% of marketers focused more of their campaigns on new media in 2013, particularly mobile, online and social, believing it to be the best means of achieving results.
However, the report found those same marketers did not spend enough time on research, development and testing "relevant product customer value propositions (PCVPs) and/or communication customer value propositions (CCVPs)".
Jerome Fontaine, Fournaise's global chief executive and chief tracker, said: "The key 2013 marketing performance lesson is simple – campaigns and activities without crafted, researched and optimised CVP architectures will under-perform, regardless of the media channels they are deployed in.
"Unfortunately, we tracked that most CVPs were not audience-attractive and not audience-relevant enough last year.
"One of the diseases in the marketing industry is that marketers too often forget that new media, marketing automation, omni-channel, big data and the likes, are only tools used to best deliver, analyse and/or optimise the messages.
"Those marketers who made the tools the core of their strategies got it wrong in 2013. In the tyre industry, they say that power is nothing without control. In the marketing industry, form is nothing without the right content."
