The Evidence Based Marketing Alliance

Marketing
led by evidence.

A practitioner-led alliance codifying what's empirically proven to drive growth — so every marketing decision can be defended with evidence, and marketing earns its place as a growth driver, not a cost.

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Our Purpose

Why this movement exists.

Marketing has never had more data. It has rarely had less evidence. Our purpose is to invert that ratio — and to do it in the open.

Marketing is drowning in data and starved of evidence. Briefs, dashboards, and decks overflow with numbers — but much of what they contain is correlation dressed up as causation, impact on stated intentions dressed up as behavior change, and confident opinion laundered through influence.

The Evidence Based Marketing Alliance exists to invert that. We bring together senior practitioners committed to a higher evidentiary standard: findings that replicate, methods that hold up under scrutiny, and a willingness to follow what the data actually says — even when it contradicts the room.

What drives an individual consumer's decision does not reliably scale to explain aggregate market behavior. Marketing designed for the individual rarely optimizes for the market. This is the central problem the evidence corrects.

Where we sit on the map. Other organizations are doing important work — academic institutes publishing original research, professional societies managing standards, vendors and agencies building tools. EBMA sits in the gap between them: practitioner-led, open-source, and focused on translating the existing body of evidence into the decisions marketers and insights leaders actually make every week. Not original research. Not certification. Codification.

A working community where findings are shared, challenged, and pressure-tested — and where the evidentiary standard is held high, together.

What we're building toward. A future where every marketing investment has a measurable return, every marketing decision can be defended with evidence, and marketing is recognized as a credible growth driver — not defended as a cost.

Founders

The people behind the Alliance.

EBMA is convened by senior client-side practitioners with operating accountability — not consultants observing the work, but leaders running the function at scale. Initially established as an LLC, EBM Alliance is in the process of securing non-profit status.

Pam Forbus

SVP, Global Chief of Insights & Analytics
Mondelēz International

Pam is one of the marketing industry's most recognized voices on effectiveness and evidence-based decision-making. As SVP, Global Chief of Insights & Analytics at Mondelēz International, she leads a 200+ person global function that translates consumer evidence into growth decisions across marketing, finance, and strategy. Her career spans senior insights and marketing leadership at PepsiCo (where she led a 500+ person global I&A organization), The Walt Disney Studios, and Pernod Ricard USA, where she served as CMO. Recognized on the Forbes World's Most Influential CMOs list, she is a long-standing trustee of the Marketing Accountability Foundation, a former Marketing Science Institute board member, and a vocal advocate for raising the evidentiary standard in marketing decision-making.

Currently · Mondelēz InternationalPreviously · Pernod Ricard USA · Walt Disney Studios · PepsiCo / Frito-LayRecognition· Forbes World's Most Influential CMOs · MAF Trustee · Former MSI Board

LinkedIn ↗

Stephen Springfield

CEO, Subtext
Author, Brand Humanity

Stephen is an executive, entrepreneur, and marketing science practitioner with more than 30 years of experience building world-class research and consulting practices — both as an executive within major organizations including PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company, and as founder of several successful businesses in the cognitive and behavioral research space.

He is currently CEO of Subtext, a global consulting firm; Founding Principal of The Aspen Center for Consumer Science; and a faculty member at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

He is the author of Brand Humanity, a behavioral science-based approach to brand development that has been adopted by many of the world's leading marketers and used to help transform brand-building practices across multiple Fortune 500 companies.

Currently · CEO, Subtext · Aspen Center for Consumer Science · UChicago BoothPreviously · PepsiCo · The Coca-Cola CompanyAuthor · Brand Humanity

LinkedIn ↗

What Changes

What the evidence challenges.

Adopting these principles means confronting habits baked into brief templates, research questionnaires, and performance dashboards across most marketing organizations.

Habits the evidence challenges, alongside what the evidence supports
What the Evidence Challenges	What the Evidence Supports
Demographic or psychographic targeting	Broad reach across all category buyers
Optimizing for what consumers think about the ad, or how it influences their purchase intentions	Behavioral outcome measurement: volume, share, penetration
Rational benefit & RTB messaging	Association-building through emotional and contextual cues
Treating the evaluation of creative as subjective	Designing and evaluating creative for memory encoding
Maximizing reach & frequency	Maximizing reach across the full category
Treating advertising and distribution as separate levers	Aligning media, creative, and physical availability

Founding White Paper

From
Opinions
to Outcomes.

Learn what the evidence really shows works.

Our founding white paper presents five empirically validated principles of advertising effectiveness — drawn from 75+ years of peer-reviewed research and filtered against a strict evidentiary standard.

It is freely available to any practitioner or academic. Complete the form and you can download it instantly.

Five Evidence-Based Principles

75+ Years of Published Research

25 Peer-Reviewed Scientific Journals

55 Discrete Hypotheses Tested

Pam Forbus & Stephen Springfield, 2026

Request Your Copy

The Alliance

Built by practitioners, for practitioners.

EBMA is not an academic body, a consultancy, or a vendor initiative. It is an open-source industry movement organized around five pillars — with a single mission: codify the principles of marketing empirically proven to drive growth, and equip marketing and insights leaders to shape C-Suite decisions.

Closing the Proof Gap

Synthesizing the strongest available research into practical, actionable principles — rigorously filtered and continuously updated.

Knowledge Exchange

An open, transparent, crowdsourced body of evidence: contributed to, challenged, and refined by practitioners across organizations and markets.

Capability Building

Frameworks, tools, training, and guidance for applying evidence-based principles in real marketing decisions — from briefing to measurement.

Advancing the Function

Elevating the strategic credibility of marketing and insights within the business — to the evidentiary standard expected of finance and R&D.

Community & Peer Support

A global network committed to evidence over opinion: sharing what works, flagging what doesn't, and holding each other to a higher standard.

Why Join

Two reasons to participate.

Membership at EBMA is built around two reciprocal propositions — what you take away, and what you contribute.

Gain insight into what the evidence really shows works.

Direct access to the codified body of empirically validated principles, ongoing peer review of new findings, and candid working sessions where members pressure-test methodology and conclusions in confidence.

Put your expertise to work improving the impact of our industry.

Contribute the data, research, and lived experience you've built — and help shape the standards, frameworks, and practices that other practitioners will rely on to make their decisions.

Membership

Three kinds of member. One standard.

Membership is open across three groups — but the expectation is the same for all: come with evidence, be prepared to defend it, and be willing to have it pulled apart.

We review every application individually. What we look for is a genuine commitment to the evidence standard — and something meaningful to contribute.

Three kinds of member — who

Client-side practitioners of marketing, brand, or insights, working in-house with real accountability for outcomes and a commitment to grounding decisions in evidence.
Contributing Partners. Leaders at research, consulting, and measurement organizations actively building the evidence base — willing to share findings as peers, not as vendors.
Academia. Professors, academic researchers, and students whose work advances the evidence base of marketing — bringing methodological rigor and fresh inquiry to the practitioner conversation.

One shared standard — what

All members participate under the same expectation: findings are open to debate, methodology is open to challenge, and no one is here to sell. Evidence is the only currency.
You have data, research, or lived experience you are prepared to contribute and subject to scrutiny from a peer group.
You can engage candidly and in confidence — and you understand the difference between defending a position and being attached to it.

Membership Application

Apply to join.

If the principles resonate and you'd like to do this work alongside peers, we'd like to hear from you. Membership is by application and subject to review. We assess every application individually against our membership criteria.

If accepted, you will receive full access to the member network, peer sessions, and the shared intelligence library.

Applications are reviewed within 10 working days. You will receive a personal response regardless of outcome.