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SBP 245: The Barber's Brief - Apple Built a Kill Switch for Ad Tech · Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Barber Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to another episode of our Barber's Brief.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a new listener, Mark and I like to use this forum to discuss things that are caught our attention over the last couple weeks: the good, the bad, the ugly.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We always like to end with out of the week as well, because you know what?
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Great creative still requires celebration or deserves celebration.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what I usually say?
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even remember.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's early today.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's early.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, buddy.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mark.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it is quite early.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good morning.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: The crack of the isn't that what we say?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Crack of Christ here.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Crack of Christ.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: There it is.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's good.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: We've got lots of cool stories too.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh I noticed you've got something about Apple to block programmatic data.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of interesting.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um well here's the hook.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Want me to tell you the hook?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: The hook is Apple just built itself a kill switch for an ad for the ad industry and it's keeping the list secret.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's another story that that I found from Mark Ritson.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we've kind of talked about this before.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of reach uh and reach and frequency.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: And in this particular case, he's he's saying basically stop calling it reach if nobody saw it.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around here, did it actually make a sound?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of thing.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's fair.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there's another story about Jaguar that you've got.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Two years ago, Jaguar wiped its cars and its heritage out on out on an ad, really, essentially.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the internet just lost it.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now the car is finally here, and everybody is about to take the wrong lesson from it.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or at least that's my opinion.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait to hear that.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then I found another one on Mbappe.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I thought you might enjoy this one, B.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, Killian.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: So he's just signed a deal with Ahn on Cloud.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's huge.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: It so much reminds me of the we I just watched the movie Air with my kids.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: It reminds me so much of that same story.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like they just ripped off Nike's playbook and used it against Nike.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: On's playing a game, man.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're playing a game and they're doing well for sure.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have Out of the Week.
• 2:17
  unknown: Yeah.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Robot Tussum making a big splash.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, absolutely.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to meet Robot Tussum's menacing cough hitman?
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that later.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's normal.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, let's let's take it from the top.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I said earlier, I found this article at Ad Exchanger.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: The title reads Apple has far-reaching plans to block hundreds of programmatic data companies from iOS.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: So per Ad Exchanger, iOS 27 specifically, quietly blocked the big identity partners, the Trade Desk, LiveRamp, ID5, and others from tracking or serving ads on Safari.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's grown into a dynamic list of hundreds of ad tech and data vendors.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Apple can now just literally switch on and switch off on the fly.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: No software update required.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now companies sit in limbo in this case.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Only Apple knows the criteria, and the whole list lives in a private repo.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Google, guess what?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: They may also be exempt.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: So everyone's calling this a privacy story.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's a power story.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Apple just made itself judge, jury, and executioner over who gets to reach a billion iPhone users and won't publish the rules.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Two lessons fall out.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: First, if your marketing demands on third-party identity function, you've been building on rented land.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: You and I have talked about building on rented land.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the landlord just literally changed the locks.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, be weary now.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Second, the hedge never changed own your first party relationships.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, that has to be the one of the most important things that you're you're doing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Always think about that and how you're building that ecosystem.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then build a brand story strong enough that people come looking for you without tracking pixels showing the way.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's important, right?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So we have to go back to the marketing fundamentals, the marketing effectiveness fundamentals, the great list of eight that we've done a whole episode on.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing: don't mistake what Apple is doing for privacy or a privacy hero.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's clearing the field for its own ad business that it's building.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: The open web loses, the wall gardens win.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Half of the position being killed has here were never incremental anyway.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: It just made you look really good on dashboards.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, that's something else we've also talked about.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the takeaway isn't privacy is winning, it's stopped renting your audience.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Someone whose name isn't on your PL can turn off identity you don't even own.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So Mark, throwing it over to you.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: If third-party identity is so fragile, why is so much of our industry still built on it?
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, ding, ding, ding.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Look at you.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're sharp, man, this morning.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, yeah, my brain is on fire right now.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: No sleep, and we are on it.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, but like well, we're actually talking about this right now, just you and I.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean for the Sleeping Barber podcast, we're we're building something, right?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And don't say it.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not giving away because I don't know what it is just yet.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: But we're looking at these things.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're looking at like the podcast itself.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: It you know, we we publish on public platforms.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: We don't really know who the listeners are, um, other than when people reach out to say, hey, I listen to this.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I know that part.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't have a a a list right now.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we've been doing this for almost six years.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: So part of it was that we didn't really we just wanted to do it just for the sake of doing it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think you kind of have these these decisions you make a long time ago about where you're gonna build your house, so to speak.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then those things don't really get evaluated for a lot of companies or re-evaluated very frequently because it means changing things and breaking things and then having to start over again in a lot of cases.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a lot of work, and it's easier just to go with some existing platform.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think I I don't know.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have any other thoughts about that?
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I I think your first knee-jerk reaction to this, that it's easy, was was the right one.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: I also have a lot of questions though.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So thinking about let's think about Google in this moment, uh, vendor like Netflix.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Netflix makes its inventory available on on their platform uh through Dv360 as an example.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like this is only impacting Safari, browsing behaviors, etc.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd I'd be curious if, say, they're excluding, say, Dv360, if I'm buying inventory through Dv360 for Netflix, will that will that ad still show on Netflix?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or is that going to be also impacted?
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that do?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It forces instead of going for consolidation and trying to create frequency caps across multiple tactics, multiple vendors in one ecosystem and to okay, going back to buying directly from Netflix, directly from Reddit, directly from everybody, and then you just hope that the way you're setting up your frequency capping is one that's thinking about the whole ecosystem instead of it being you know individualized.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't know.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, more to come.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely want to stay close to this as more information comes out.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm also curious now, what is this ad business that Apple's looking to build?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many layers to this because it's it's such an interesting story.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why is it a duopoly and why isn't Apple bigger in the ad space?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like they have so much hardware in the market, and then they have direct access to customers through Apple TV and their phones, obviously.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And and Safari is the default browser on most Apple products.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of like it's interesting to me that there's not a bigger advertising platform in terms of market share through Apple.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing you can buy on Apple today is their search product.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're searching for something in App World, or not App World, geez, App Store.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: App World was the old Blackberry app.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jeez, that's a blast from the blast.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, App Store.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Advertisers can essentially try to make sure that they're showing up conquesting or whatever you would do traditionally on search, but that's usually the only product that they have.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: All right, next story.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So the radical idea that moving on to Ritson.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: On the drum.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um he's got a new article out.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a really good article.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there he quotes a new study from Lumen that's done a lot of work in this space before.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: And they track where people's eyes go when an ad is on screen in this particular case and and work with Amazon ads, and they looked at 270 different campaigns across six countries.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So the same video ad played in on a TV in someone's living room got about 16 seconds of attention per impression.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: I believe they did this impression thing.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can picture a Dan White hand sketch drawing in my head where they looked at how much you pay per tentative second.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think that was Loom that did that as well.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you put that exact ad on a video player on a news website and it got about a second and a half.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So in your media plan, both those count as one impression.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And Ritson's calling that Phantom Reach.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I know we've had Karen Nelson Field on.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's not Karen Pierce.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: She is fantastic though, but yeah, yeah, Karen Nelson Field.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so his term for what people we we count as reached who never really looked is the Phantom Reach term.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: So Lumen also worked at how much attention it takes to move anything.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So for the typical campaign, about 20 seconds to lift awareness and closer to 50 lift purchase intent.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so on the web, that's around 14 impressions per person just for awareness.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And as I mentioned, we've done a couple of sharp cuts on reach versus frequency, and the teach don't teach, and the frequency is not one thing.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: And this kind of builds on both.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so reach still matters, but it only counts if somebody actually sees the ad.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the next time our agency sends a plan, ask them to show the plan in terms of attentive seconds, not just impressions.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a new thing because we assume, I think, a lot of times that what we're buying is is real.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what we're buying isn't always apples aren't always the same thing.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Apples and oranges are different.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: So an impression is different from an attentive impression.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you're running TV and online video together, like TV matters.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a it's a quality impression that I'm I've been talking with a couple clients about more and more recently.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is how do we measure quality impressions, not just the impressions?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So you've spent a lot of time on Google V.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Running ads.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um if a client had asked you to sell them seconds instead of impressions back then?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, at any point in time.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody asks you for advice.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: What would that conversation sound like, do you think?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: So let me say 2013 V, 20, 2008 to 2017 V would be like, you're wasting my time.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Get out of here.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I can see the impression, I can measure the impression.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like this makes a lot more sense.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, V, I don't want to see or hear or talk about impressions ever.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Ever.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like I am not interested.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not interested in it as a metric.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not interested as a I'm not interested in it as a way of showcasing reach or the what's the right word?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not the answer.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like as a proxy?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like the weight in market.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because usually that's another way that they use impressions.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, hey, we delivered 250 million impressions.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like I doesn't mean anything to me.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, just trying to root it in real outcomes.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So if those 300 million impressions, what results did it drive?
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: But then of course, we're also trying to take in like the more holistic view of what does a result mean?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we didn't see web results, but maybe we saw actions on for say the call center, if I'm using my my real world today or foot traffic increased, or or or so we're looking at way more downstream effects of our investments outside of just what we would historically would have reported on, which would have been we, hey, we here's a threshold we said that we hit, we actually exceeded that threshold.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here's a site visits we said we hit, here's what we exceeded there too.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: So don't look at us if the outcomes didn't come.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: We can only lead a horse to water.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I think the moment we take that stance as marketers, the more we distance ourselves from the real commercial outcomes of the business.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a you know, coming back to the your first point, you know, why do people stay with the third party data?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's because it's easy.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing I think is happening here with impressions and reach and things like that.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: We're just using what's existing because it's easy.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what you're talking about, the post-2017 V, I don't know, I I on that spectrum, I'd be interested to know where people are at.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: How many people I think everybody would would hear what you're saying and say, yes, I I want to measure outcomes and not just the um the activity, recorded activity according to in the world according to Google.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know that that's as people are as committed to that as you might be.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: It might be might be a lot of people are.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I you almost just have to look at the way these platforms are moving too, though.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Google went and bought Meridian.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So they know that they know that they need to be part of the bigger story as well.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the same thing with Meta, like they're pushing advertisers, go down the MMM path.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because it it's just a a better proxy of effectiveness than anything that we've seen that's just platform acknowledged, because everyone started losing when you were just looking at on the platform side, because then they were comparing one to another.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, well, you're telling me I can get a cheaper click or a cheaper conversion on your platform, but I'm getting it at 20 cents less on Google.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make sense for me to do it on your platform, right?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they were competing each other for literally the lowest cost, but then they I think marketers, maybe not everybody, but most people are starting asking these other questions now.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, no, that we don't think that like that's that's the right way.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: That Meta's Andromeda report that came out, like that was another they're like ding ding ding.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the shift is happening, but I agree.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's still a lot of pockets in many organizations that people are still stuck in the old way of looking at media and assessing the value of it.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great point.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of the old way, how about Jaguar?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Jaguar.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So Jaguar's back?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can we say that?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So John Evans.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even know that I'm so glad you brought this one up because I actually didn't know the car was out yet.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, John Evans actually, he's uh he also raised for Marketing Week and he put this article together for for them.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: The title is uh Jaguar's Rebrand Makes More Sense Now.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is coupled with a product.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um John Evans got behind the scenes and actually drove the type one.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, cool.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you probably haven't seen it yet, but I I checked it out.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: They did a good job with bringing that to life.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the real story here isn't the backlash, it's actually the research.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: So Jaguar tested the new design with around 2,000 people and scored more ones and twos out of ten than any car they had ever tested, and more nines and tens than any launch in its history.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you'd be like, What?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Chase everyone's approval, as you know, if the marketing director said at the time, and you land on a vanilla six, I think he called it.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted the extremes, they were pushing for the extremes.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: The average it essentially hides everything.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the part that part really is one would call gospel.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: But here's what people will copy wrong.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Rage is the new media buy.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: For Jaguar, polarizing is exactly right.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's a six-figure car that needs wealthy people to lust after it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not everyone to mildly approve it.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Intensity for a niche, but most brands aren't Jaguar.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a mass market chasing penetration, being loathed by half of your buyers isn't a bold decision.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's I don't know, you can consider it your funeral.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Controversy is a scapel, not a strategy, and it only worked here for two reasons.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: The product had to clas had to cast a check that the marketing team wrote initially, and by the reviews, it it really did so far.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And for all the they bend the heritage noise, did they really binge it?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the E-type silhouette is still there, the leaping cat is still there, maybe not in the church.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they brought the cat back?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: The leaping cat at his back.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: A new strike through to carry forward, it's distinctive, it's just not different.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the lesson I don't think is be hated.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's be unignorable to the people that matter.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Keep a thread to what they recognize and make sure the product delivers and the ad is what product delivers against what the ad is promised.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: This goes back to what framework, you know, the promise to the customer, right?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh doll is the real danger.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's where, like, you if you look at the silhouettes of all the compact SUVs, it's hard to pick up what is what, because they all look alike.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the tension isn't effectiveness, and the sales will have to that will always have that final word.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: So, Mark, question, quick question for you.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: When is courting controversy a real strategy?
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And when is it just vanity with a press release?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just a vanity, like a vanity metric, if you will, with a press release behind it.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because like remember, Roger Martin always talks about but buzz or you know, going viral isn't what always result to real business results.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think this is this this is the I think this is where in with two years of history to be able to stitch together the story better.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is where Jaguar went wrong.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: They they used controversy as the strategy, but it fell hollow and let people have all kinds of opinions because there wasn't a real product there.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like their first rule of selling is swat, sell what's available today.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they they didn't.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: They sold something that was a future pipe dream at the time with a mock mock-up vehicle and a fake car that nobody could buy.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so then, and it wasn't real, and then things like they brought back the the Jaguar itself, but that was a huge deal around.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, why would you ever throw that away?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so there's controversy for the sake of controversy, but then there's controversy in in the in the context of being able to sell a product, and they didn't have the product to sell, so it sounded ridiculous, and I think that's where they they took so much beating from everybody because they went all in on this approach, but didn't have the thing to back it up.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: You you talked about the promise to the customer.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's exactly where where it was uh where they went wrong.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: The interesting thing, we last week during strategy week, we uh for the marketing association, I did a presentation with Steph from Daughter Creative, and and we looked at we did a mock-up of of the Guinness ad that the Christmas ad.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Connor had that from That's What I Call Marketing, had a great interview with all the people that were involved in the making of Guinness.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the one thing that we we kind of highlighted was that when they were doing that ad and they did the testing for it, they had they said it flop, like they had some extreme positives and they had some extreme negatives.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I forgot about that.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really interesting because I think this is similar to that example where you like the controversy part is having a polarization that you brought up, which is I thought really smart.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the way you phrased it, the the the you can go and look at the the extremes as as a bad thing and feel safer about something in the middle.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's interesting to have insiders and outsiders.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: And not to say you can't build off of that and and but it but having people who love something a lot versus just like meh, I think is really interesting.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: But we often focus on the negative and go, well, what's wrong with this?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: We can't do this because all the people that say this is terrible and it's an awful idea.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I applaud them for for that, of the commitment to the to the product and to launching this.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I obviously at the end of the day, if the reviews may be positive right now, but the ultimate determination or the determining factor if this will be successful is like the sales.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like were they able to penetrate that audience that they're that they're chasing?
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that will take time.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've been can't wait for this story.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Final one, let's go.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mbappe.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Kick us into how.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Michael Jordan.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: But in this article from Yahoo Sports, uh, for anyone that doesn't know, Killian Mbappe is a French soccer star who plays for Real Madrid.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he'd been with Nike since he was eight years old, which I found.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I saw that, I was like, 2006.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: How old is the guy?
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's only whatever, 28 or something like that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: So he just left, and it wasn't for Adidas or Puma.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like he signed with On, which is a Swiss running shoe company, and they've never made a soccer boot.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: But they do have brand like people like Roger Federer.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so what made the difference ultimately was I think a few things, but a big one was all around how they paid him.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So this deal is part cash and part equity.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: So he's not just getting paid to wear the shoes.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: He actually uh owns a piece of the company, which is exactly the Michael Jordan player from Nike.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So he'll work with the product team on the boots that they launched next year.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, and it's it's a lot like the MJ deal, but also Cindy Sweeney had to say.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Similar deal with the Norvig Novig that we just talked about a couple weeks ago.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they had done the same thing with Roger Federer.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And on is growing a ton.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really interesting to see that their growth and in comparison, Nike's decline.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like we've talked about Nike in the Barbers Brief a few times.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I looked at it again today.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And since I think it was 2021, they were at a their share price was at about 200 bucks.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's now like 30 bucks.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's just on a slide.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not nobody's getting off, it seems.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think if you're Mbabé, you're like used to winning.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, oh, I want to be with a team that's winning.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really interesting.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the article points out that you know, like part of the reason for Nike's decline, which is one of the things we talked about way back when, is their direct-to-consumer approach, and that's which is part of the reason why they they've had this decline.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: I know they've since corrected that, but it's still a hangover, I think.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And their lack of brand innovation.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: So V, you've spent some time on the real retail side.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: When challenger brands land name big land big names like this, does it actually change how a retailer buys from them?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's think about we actually, if we think a little bit, we had an example of this in our shared time at Czech.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Remember when Curry was signed with Under Armour?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, Under Armour became a thing.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we stocked way more of their products, we stocked way more of their shoes.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Curry ones came in at that time.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: So absolutely, like everyone expected that he'd sign for an Adidas, a Nike, and he went he went to Under Armour.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, of course.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Literally last year he left Under Armour where and now he went to Anta.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: So another Chinese-based uh sneaker company.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like I I think retailers are forced then to start stocking more of these boots.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: But now look at what's happening.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: On now is gonna share is gonna create more shelf space for them.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And during the transition, because I I was following the story personally, what was interesting is like he went to an all-white boot while he was still with Nike.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So you could barely see that it was a Nike boot, and then now he's wearing these on white boots as well that just created a very seamless transition from one brand to another.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, there you're gonna see these on the store shelves, they're gonna make them available for consumers.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Young people, who knows, maybe even uh more professionals are gonna start looking at them as a a great alternative to you know the big two, Nike and Adidas for for football specifically.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, hail all challengers.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's super interesting.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the ability for them to use Mbappe for however long the deal signed for, like that's kind of in a it's such a great play to link them together.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder the how you how do you un unlock the connection to Nike?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's something you try to do or if that's something that can be done.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, either way.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: What do you hope as on, what you hope is that his performance on the field will match what he was able to build with Nike?
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's where this will either go well or not.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: He happens to be playing for one of the most storied franchises in soccer history, Real Madrid.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: So obviously there's there's a connection, a great connection there, big market, um, a lot of influence.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but they're always find ways of winning.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: If they can, if he can continue to win, uh, win trophies, win personal accolades, etc., then it will be a success for Ron.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: If, however, that doesn't trend in the same direction, then maybe people will be like, well, was it the shoes?
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great play.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and out of the week, V.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Out of the week.
• 25:35
  unknown: Out of the week.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Robotussum just hired a hitman to take out your cough.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be the sharpest piece of brand building that I've seen in a long time.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: The campaign's Take Care of Your Cough from publicist Leo One.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: The star is Robbie Tussin.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Robbie Tussin, right?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: A deadpan cough hitman who turns up when your cough becomes just literally unacceptable.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: He reaches into his jacket for a beat of menace and pulls out not a weapon, but a bottle of Robotossum.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Robotus, Robotussum.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the right way to say it?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Robotusin, I think so, yeah.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think so.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he kind of calls it like, I'm here to take care of your cough.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: It runs across TV, streaming, social influencers with fake deadpan customer reviews extending the gag literally online.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why I chose this one is like if you say the name out loud, so Robbie Tussin, obviously the brand name becomes the character and the joke and the mnemonic all at once.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you have to argue, like you could argue that's kind of like the holy grail of distinctive assets.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can't recall the ad without recalling the brand, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Remember Tubi, Worry and the gag outshining the brand that we talked about.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's impossible to do it here because you're literally talking about the brand with the character, and the brand is literally in that gag at the same time, which makes it memor memor memorable.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's very easy to turn this into a franchise, right?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not it's not a one-off, a reoccurring character and a repeatable beat, reach, tension, reveal, build to run for years and carry the whole product range.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: In a parody character, in a parody category like cough syrup, fame is basically the only fever you've got.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: So why not manufacture it?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a couple things to pressure test this.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: The two watch-outs that I think I'd like to highlight tone has a ceiling.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, a hitman is edgy for a family health brand brought by frazzled parents in that moment.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it plays a clearly comic, but there's a line there that they'll have to police, and a one joke character wears out.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the real bet is whether Robbie has the reins to last three seasons, not just uh three week stint.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: My takeaway, while platforms are busy telling everyone to change to turn fresh creative every week, Robotusin built one character strong enough to run for a decade.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's the move.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Make the brand impossible to separate from the thing people remember, and that's your out of the week.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it it was interesting to me, that's where my head went.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: The idea of Robbie Tussin as a character to be able to tell the story.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like you've got how many different actors that have played James Bond?
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't know what the number is, but there's so many of them.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: And and so like you could have somebody that plays Robbie Tussin, and it could be a celebrity spot even.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there's so many interesting opportunities with that.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: And you're right, the the delivery I think will matter whether they stick with it or not.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's an interesting idea for sure.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a cool, yeah, it's an interesting creative platform to try on.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a platform though, and I think that's the important thing.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of us don't do platforms anymore.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's like one-off ads, run for six, eight weeks, and then go back to the drawing board next year.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is they can if they choose to, I don't know what their plan is.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: If they choose to, they can literally build on Robbie here.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: And Robbie, we trust.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Go get him, Robbie.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Mark.
• 29:03
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: What's coming up next week?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: I need some Robbie in my life.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Joanna Lapore, the executive vice president, global strategy, and foresight at Dig Insights.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: Super interesting conversation.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: I know when you and I, after we recorded, we're like, what the hell?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: We gotta figure this out.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: One of the most super important conversations.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it was really great to chat with her.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that will be coming out next week.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that I think is everything that we've got for today.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for keeping us in your ears, everyone.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Stay sharp, everybody.