Latest / Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast / SBP 222: SBP Interview - Feels vs. Deals: The Real Battle for Q4. With Andrew Tindall and Vanessa Chin.

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SBP 222: SBP Interview - Feels vs. Deals: The Real Battle for Q4. With Andrew Tindall and Vanessa Chin. · Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Barber Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_03: If there's anything new for us, that would be bizarre.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like when you're getting up on a stage in front of, I think it's like 5,000 people can sit in that damn theatre.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, no, you gotta play the hit.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_03: So that's gonna be 50 minutes off.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Sleeping Barber Podcast, a place for business leaders to get the best and most credible information on marketing, strategy, and innovation.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Your hosts, Mark Binkley and Vasily Storos, share their experiences as they gather insights on the world's leading experts.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, on with the show.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_05: Welcome back to a special edition of That's What I Call Marketing and the Sleeping Barber and System One.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_05: We've got we have two guests, uh, three hosts from four different countries, eight different time zones.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_05: Vanessa Chin and Andrew Tindall, both from System One, an amazing company that does a ton of great work on creative testing, looking at ads and their real human emotional response and correlating that to business impact and business outcomes.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_05: We've all just come back from CAN, the Lions Festival of Creativity, and we had a really good overview of what great looked like over the last year.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_05: But looking forward now, we've got the back half of the year coming up, and this is really where we get a chance to put a lot of those ideas to life.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_05: So, Vanessa and Andrew, welcome to the show.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_05: Connor and V and I, your co-hosts, are super excited to have you here.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Happy to be here.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody in the pool.
• 1:39
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Connor, why don't you kick us off?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I will.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: So talking about pool, you guys did a great interview, pool side in Cannes.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: That was that was very impressive.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: I was quite nervous about Andrew's beer at the side of the of the pool.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, health and safety we'll we'll get to later.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: One of the big things, and the I think the talking points at Cannes was definitely the Mark Ritson, Byron Sharp coming together on stage.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: They've done it before, but this year was slightly different, I think.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Andrew, you were you were in the room, front, front row, I believe, taking notes.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: You wrote an article for the drum.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: What was your take?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like what actually happened in that room for people that that weren't there?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Uh well, yeah, Mark Ritson and Byron Shah have, you know, I in some ways famously agreed and disagreed with each other over the past decade, I'd I'd say.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_03: And they uh both got on stage and they agreed on five things that they'd both uh see the same.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_03: So one was penetration, the other was distinctiveness and consistency, and these kind of famous hallmarks and everything they've talked about.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: But what I thought was more interesting was how these two guys still secretly disagree on those things, but they were just being very nice.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I'll I'll give you an example.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: So one would be you know the use of differentiation.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_03: I think Baron Sharp always talks about the need of mass distinctive reach to recruit new people and recruit new light buyers.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas Ritzer really sees a need in creating these relatively differentiated uh brands.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: I think that is possibly the next stage in where I think marketing is going.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: I think I don't personally believe that you can just grow by being more distinctive.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: Challenger brand, a Challenger Cola brand isn't gonna get growth by being more distinctive than Coca-Cola.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_03: That doesn't make any sense.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think distinctiveness is about holding market share, more like a hygiene factor for marketers.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think Ritson uh definitely uh sees it that way.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_03: But Sharp cannot see it that way.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he relies on this academic research where you know they've proven in quotation marks that differentiation doesn't exist and customers never see brands as different, which I think is uh largely horseshit because um in all that academic research, they ask people, do is this brand different?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_03: And they kind of go, No.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: But that's not how a brand is perceived as different.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you need to measure the different memory structures and and stuff like this, not asking someone if their brand is unique or different.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: So they kind of disagreed on that, and they can but what another thing they both definitely agreed on is they think uh brand purpose is is outdated and it's it's where the marketing industry got completely lost.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's horseshit as well, sadly.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_03: So um they see brand purpose as you know mayonnaise having a uh you know, oh, you know, ma a mayonnaise is gonna save the world and stuff like this.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas Britson always talks about how if you ask consumers um to open their fridge and look within the fridge and explain why you chose any of those brands, no one can no one cites the fact that you know Hellman's is saving the the sea otters or whatever crap that is.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_03: And then Byron has released a lot of research recently talking about actually people can't recall brands' purposes, and they even went and got five big big purpose brands like Dove and stuff, and showed they ain't grown much in terms of uh market share, which is also crap research because you can't just pick five random brands that you that you reckon are purpose brands and should have not grown market share, ignoring the hundred billion dollars profit that Dove has made in that purpose is useless.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: So I also think purpose is the role, but it does have to be four brands.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I do think there's actually it was a really nice niche conversation about yeah, we all agreed a few top line things, distinctiveness is important, consistency is important, mass speech is important, but underneath there are still those interesting questions that marketers really need to crack to grow, and that is why I kind of like working at System One, because I believe the answer to creating difference and um growth is emotional creativity, so uh that's why I'm still interested in it.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: Did they say do they get into creativity at all in their conversation?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Do they did they talk about that?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, I'm pretty sure Sharp just sees creativity as logos and distinctive brand assets.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_03: You know, whereas we see it as you know being right-brained, entertaining, culturally relevant, fame-driving, emotional, um, consistent, ETC.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: So they didn't really that that's just that's the issue when you're getting these 20, 30-minute conversations on stage.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: There's not enough room to talk about the how or deliver the how.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's just we know that this matters.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: How do you go and do that?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: I think is a much harder question to ask.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_05: Vanessa, I want to jump in just to ask about the consistency part that Andrew brought up, because there's both agree that we're really bad at it, generally speaking.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_05: And the the distinctiveness, I think, is kind of leans into that.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_05: Why do you think it is the case that we're, generally speaking, as an industry, bad at consistency?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think it gets to the planning process.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, planning process and brief process.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've we've been trained for quite some time that new news creates persuasion for movement.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that with every new brief, there's almost too much of a focus on what the new news is and not really taking stock in what makes your brand distinct and the things that you have to hang on to.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we've got to at least balance the scales on uh on those kind of two strategic approaches.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_06: Was there, and maybe I'm just gonna stay with you, Vanessa, here.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_06: Was there anything that surprised you a moment where maybe one of them genuinely shifted?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: Byron versus Byron.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_06: Byron versus, yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I would just uh, you know, double up on what Andrew's saying.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we, you know, there's an element of you know, high-level conversation between the two of them.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it, you know, maybe this is the Midwestern nice of me, but it's not necessarily helpful in, you know, such a complex arena of us actually applying marketing theory to um your day-to-day and how are you going to execute these thousands of assets day in and day out.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so it, you know, I thought it was nice to see them kind of agree on certain things, but they were clear that, you know, they get in their position, they get to speak at that level.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they're not there on the day-to-day.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that it's really, really important to understand.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of the things that we also talked a lot about at Cannes was um other channels and creator channels.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are so many channels, and we need the training and the guidance to figure out how do you maintain creative effectiveness when you're approaching this new network, this new approach to marketing, uh, and how do you make smart choices?
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of meaty conversation there that we need to kind of head into.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: It is such an interesting one because there's such big names, big draw, like there was cues, lines to get in and see them speak.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then when I saw it was a 30-minute conversation to kind of both your points, how do you get in underneath?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, maybe they should have focused on one thing and really, you know, battled it out so that marketers can probably walk away with taking something out.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like I bumped into you, Andrew, afterwards, and you're a bit like, you know, I I don't know if I heard anything net new when when you know in in the conversation, and I think that's you know, that's Connor, Connor, Connor.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_03: That's because we're marketing nerds, mate.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, no the the the the other people in the crowd don't run a marketing podcast.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, if there's anything new for us, that would be bizarre.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like when you're getting up on a stage in front of, I think it's like 5,000 people could fit in that damn theatre.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_03: It's like, no, you gotta play the hits.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: So that they make their job more.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Like Justin Bieber at the World Cup halftime show.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they're good.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_06: Don't pick on our Canadian friend.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_06: Come on now.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_06: Okay, I want to close off this first section here.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_06: And uh, Andrew, what in your opinion, what was like the one thing from the session where you maybe you wished more marketers in the room either taken home or maybe maybe they misunderstood what they were actually saying.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_03: Good question.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good question, guys.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: Really good question.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I think what uh I wish marketers would take on board more is that the I wish the framing of that question was people understood it a little better.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: As we've talked about, it was a very top-line principles of the theory around growth.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: And then the marketers' job then is to go and apply that in their category, in their brands, in their markets, day to day.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: And how do you actually achieve that?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I I sometimes hate the the the language around a law of growth because it applies if you just stick around, the laws will grow you.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's that's really you know, in some ways, a law of marketing growth is really unhelpful in that way.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's actually not not necessarily the case, it's not like a law in the sense of gravity where if you step out of the plane, you're eventually gonna hit the ground.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: Like, that's not the case.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's these things are more useful.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_03: Some when you look at all the brands out there, they're more likely to end up with you growing, but you can do so much more around that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I really think now marketers I wish marketers would really understand that now it's their job to go and understand how to grow.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: Taking in note these kind of themes that they've picked up on.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess the risk being that they just take the headline and don't go deeper.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and understand it, yeah, yeah.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_05: This is my start with why comment, like, because everything you need to know about that book is in the title.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_05: Like, that's why it's so popular, I think.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_05: If you just take the headline and just walk away with it.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I guess I had a question.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's the opposite.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_05: But I think that's the challenge with a lot of these things.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_05: You you see the headline, and then you that's to your point, that's all that the surface, the surface level is as far as a lot of people will get.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yep.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_05: Vanessa, I wanted to ask you about, I think we you and I and and V were chatting a couple times on on the side of the street at different places.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Sweating.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_05: Sweating.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_05: So sweaty.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_05: But talking about creative, but well, Andrew, and you you we had chatted about this a little bit too, but just the idea of AI not being as prominent as what we had expected.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_05: But there's this constant, I would call it like pushback whenever AI and creative come up, where those people will instantly, it's almost a knee-jerk reaction to say, well, it can't do it.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_05: It's not good.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_05: And it's a sort of a place of defensiveness, but I think a lot of people think about AI and creative together in the same sentence.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_05: And I know you guys have tested AI-generated creative before.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I just wondered, like, you know, it's inevitable, I think, that that will become part of our workflows and part of our operation.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_05: And I just wonder what your take on that is and where we're at today from a testing point of view and thinking maybe towards the future, how this could be better, or is it going to end up being worse?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly, there's obviously the talk track about AI um getting you to average, right?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: But if you kind of go creative piece by creative piece, one thing I think that we need to recognize is that clients and agencies and production companies who are currently creating AI ads, there are humans all over it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're spending an intense amount of time creating these AI ads because at this point, AI is not autonomous.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have like one person in a room creating the ads that we see in$100 million of media, right?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like these, anything that's being produced to have that scale, there are tons of humans behind it spending a lot of time.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just want to say that first.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you haven't taken humans out of the process.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when you go like brand by brand, certain brands are making different decisions.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, we all know the Coke example where they took every component that they knew was loved about holidays are coming and recreated it with AI.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: And when you tested it, people loved it.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there are other brands.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so high Dye recently launched an ad with Jeep called Atire Story.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now they have a long-standing history with that brand, and they tell and they're also an agency known to tell phenomenally emotionally driven stories.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that ad was very successful in our testing because you've got some of the best storytellers behind it.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you really do need to think about, you know, brand by brand, and you can't really categorize all AI ads together.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they're taking, you know, a small portion of the ad, um, and sometimes they're completely made with AI.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you've got to take it case by case and really focusing on what do you what are you trying to solve um with using AI?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Is it um press?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Are you trying to get press and buzz, or are you trying to have legitimate cost savings and the creative approaches could be different from there?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Think about it, like I think about a brand like again off the back of the World Cup, Lays, which is walkers in the UK, the same creative, the same ad, but they needed to use kind of the sport of AI tools to make sure that the the Lays became walkers in the UK.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't reshoot that ad.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's a it's a really good use case of of where AI lives and exists and enhances.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I got to speak to to Johnny Cah, who's the international CMO for PepsiCo and their snacking division, and he talked about that to me, you know, saying that that's where we see the benefits of it.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: He got to see some other stuff, obviously, at that level.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: He's been brought behind the curtain and seeing what's coming next.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: So it it it's exciting, but I agree with you.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Every conversation I seem to be having, people are always like, last year it felt like it was no AI is taking over the world, you know, can may not be here next year, but then I was like, actually, no, it's the people, the people, the people.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that that's I think re reassuring, but it's not kind of I didn't think it was a blinkered view this year.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you guys felt that.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I keep expecting uh AI to be um a bigger conversation because we're like primed to be ready for it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I was even just chatting with my team before I hopped on the call and I was like, was were there any like big AI-driven like World Cup ads?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know what, like we're and it was it was difficult for the team to even come up with examples because it wasn't like it was something that was used across the board.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think that swapping the lanes for walkers is a is an interesting point because you know, seven years ago when I used to work on Johnny Walker, we would swap out the bottles for different bottles using tech, but AI has probably made it a bit quicker and cheaper.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_03: So like that is just a great example that of how AI is being used.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, what I like to see is that we finally got past AI as a production tool and having it.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_03: It literally had one director's treatment before, you know, like the you could see something was made with AI because it just had one like kind of creative style.
• 17:13
  unknown: Yeah.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's got much, much better now, and you can't actually, you know, I bet those World Cup ads, I bet AI touched the majority of them, of them, but you now don't know.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: And it's just gonna get better and better.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_03: It it's a production goal.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: I'm glad we've had a realization about this.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: And um I I feel like it's just gonna it's just now becoming more and more of the normal marketing process.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um the fact that your AI here today is is amazing, Andrew.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's it's your AI.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: AI, Andrew.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's so good.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_05: There's even ambulances in the background.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think he's currently in the pub, but yeah.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_06: We Mark and I talked to uh Aaron Starkman, the global chief creative officer at Rethink, and uh he told us, you know, humans won, right?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_06: And it does feel like at Cannes there was like this revolt against AI in some capacity.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_06: And my question to you, Andrew, is do you felt like that was just more of like strategists and creatives just kind of being a little bit snobbish against it?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_06: Or is there real effectiveness evidence behind that?
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_06: System one helps marketers create with confidence.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_06: Harness the power of emotion with system ones, test your ad and test your innovation platforms.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_06: Predict the commercial potential of ads and ideas.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_06: Visit systemgroup.com to unlock consumer insights today.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, good question.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: There is no effectiveness evidence behind it.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's far too new.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_03: I think what we're actually seeing is that it was really hot and interesting last year, and then marketers get really bored really quickly and move on too quick, as we see all work.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: And I just don't think another AI summit at Cannes would have been very interesting.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: So we're actually leaning into the next new thing that's really interesting and shiny, which is creators.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: And no one will talk about them next year either.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't think I mean CAN helped with AI adoption last year, right?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's probably helped get people more comfortable with it, and it's now just using it.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: Can this year has helped people with um creator adoption massively?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: Loads of research that was released around it was there about creators.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_03: Next year it'll be another thing.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's not gonna come back to AI.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: No one will buy a ticket to come to the AI conference.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's fair.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_05: I wonder with the creators that you you brought up to, Andrew, and Vanessa and Andrew, either one or feel free to both jump in on this one.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_05: But like a distinctive brand asset could be an AI-generated avatar, crew, you know, in digital influencer, whatever we wanted to call that thing now.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_05: Like I know we do have like the Geico Gecko, which actually is weirdly probably mostly AI now.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_05: Like, is that going to become more the thing where there's AI avatars that are your they're a part of your distinctive brand asset, but it's it could be a AI creator person that's just an influencer?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_05: Like I it's a weird, fuzzy world where it like it's adopting, it's evolving so quickly.
• 20:09
  unknown: Yeah.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like we're starting.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, go ahead.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, please.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: I I think what we're we're seeing the pendulum swing in terms of brand characters in general.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And because, you know, you one would hope that they're reading all the creative effectiveness, uh, you know, thought leadership and realizing what an incredible strong asset it can be.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think the trick's gonna be is do they hang on to them?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Because it does take time for you to build equity in a brand character.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And do you have the endurance to actually keep it for as long as you need to for it to be effective?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I'm worried that, you know, essentially there's a lot of brand characters being introduced and they won't hang on to them.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: So then they'll be coined as that they don't work.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I'm I'm I'm hopeful that um all of these new entries uh will sustain.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really interesting point.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: Brand characters work because it forces you to be consistent.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_03: And you've invested so much time and energy into creating them, you know, you'd be silly to move on.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um they also work because they're normally right-brained and interesting, and uh a lot of them are animated and humans like animated things.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: If AI lowers a barrier to entry to do that, as when I said, does that mean people are gonna stop using them consistently and we'll have i brands will have multiple brand characters and they'll or change how they're animated each year, which will be a terrible thing for brand characters, which are possibly the most effective thing in marketing from what I can see.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's such an interesting point about you know the risk of making it so easy that it then makes it easy for people to nine months in and go, This hasn't worked.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: As someone who's bringing and brought a character into the world, I've no intention of of letting go.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: But but it is that you have you have to stay the course.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, everyone's like, is it working?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's like it's been eight weeks.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, but it i it but saying the course is hard hard, I think that's the bit for marketers where I guess the evidence and that you guys have and share, you know, that it does work, but it is that consistently over time and yeah, it's an interesting one.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, they remind me of that that campaign uh duration stat that work published.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_05: It was something like the average campaign is about 35 days now from what they had checked.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: So that was Rich to mention that on stage.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: I've looked into that.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_03: That is uh that's so that is a that is social from what I can work out from the data.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_03: So that is yeah.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_05: But it's interesting when you think in terms of like what you were just said, Connor, that you know, did it work?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's only been eight weeks, but if that's the normal campaign, like I think there's a conversation around campaigns and what actually a campaign means.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_05: Is it doesn't mean just this eight-week flight of media buying that we did.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh no, I totally agree.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_03: You now get like holiday campaigns, Father's Day campaigns, which by definition could only be a couple days.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's like we've lost the meaning of what a campaign used to mean, which means which you know, a creative platform or a strategy around changing a certain type of behaviour.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Now, as you say, it's like it's like a media buy.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_03: But I do think, you know, one of the core issues behind what challenges effective advertising at the moment is people asking if something worked and um it being expected that you can tell them within a few days of a camp of of your campaign um in quotation marks going live, and you know, then it drives us to you know crap metrics, engagement rates, and and stuff like this.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_03: And marketing needs to try to get away from if you can't measure it with this week, we're not gonna invest in it.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_03: Because then you start moving away from things like radio and even TV or brand all brand characters, and then what you'll actually be doing then is you'll just be A B testing and fine-tuning stuff that is probably sending you in the wrong direction anyway.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: So it is a chronic issue in marketing in general, I think.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: And probably not testing properly.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, not like AB testing, I mean, oh, we'll put this out and this out and see.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like where's the rigor in that?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was yeah, book bearing mine.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Rant over.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'm talking to a testing company about testing.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_02: I should be okay.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, please test.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_06: And that's a wrap.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: We landed it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: We landed the plane.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_06: Landed the plane.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_06: Want it we want to kind of start shifting now into kind of the part two, if you will, of a lot of our discussion here, where we want to start giving marketers a lot more tangible things in terms of how to operationalize this, how to start thinking about Q4 and beyond that.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_06: And we'll probably kick off here with you, Andrew, first.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_06: But you know, you you presented some great research over at the you know, the HERD 2025 um summit, uh, if you will, called the Double Double.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_06: Can you do you mind just taking some time just kind of walking us through that very quickly?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_06: And you know, what what was it that we actually found or did you actually find as a part of that research?
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: Of course.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's actually uh very relevant because um then I launched some new research with FE data in Cannes year that Mark Ritson uh shared on one of the stages at the little book beach, which is a continuation of uh how to double the double.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: So uh taking cast your mind back a few years ago.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_06: Let's do it.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_03: There's a brilliant guy called Rob Britton looked at some ACA data in Australia to look at what was the optimum amount of audio in your media mix.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_03: And they found that if you had about 11% audio in your media mix of the spend, you actually doubled the amount of large business effects uh reported by the campaign.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_03: Again, it doesn't prove that it drove that, but it was interesting that the campaigns of more than that were seeing double the amount of large business effects.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_03: So then I uh came a year l a year later to Australia and shared some more of System One research um called Listen Up, which is it's research I've been doing with um Radio Centre, and we showed how do you double that double?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: You know, audio in general can double your amount of business results, including them.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: But how do you use creativity to double that impact further and make the most of it?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: And we shared this playbook around what being right brained in audio sound sounds like.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: How do you be distinctive in audio?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: All this good stuff, how do you build trust and fame?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: ETC.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: And this year, all the kind of the global audio communities got together, and uh I went back into the Effie the global EFI data set that I work with and looked at again in all markets, not just Australia this time, in UK and Ireland, in Europe and the US.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_03: Do we see a consistent pattern that if you include audio in your campaigns, you get more impact?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: And it's true again.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: So we see it in general, these kind these campaigns that include radio or podcasting or some kind of audio are reporting more penetration, they're reporting more profit, they're reporting a double likelihood chance of reducing price sensitivity, so it will allow you to charge more.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_03: So there's something magical that is happening with audio.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I reckon, you know, it's part of my job is to work out what will be the theme at CAN next year, and I reckon it'll be audio.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_03: I think will be a very strong, a very strong bet.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because again, in all the research I do, whether it's with TikTok on on short form, we see that actually audio distinctive brand assets are um the best at getting distinctiveness without causing skipping.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: We see that in all this research, if you include audio as a media channel, it you know, it's it's normally incredibly incredibly effective.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: And when you get into the psychology of it as well, there's great research from the I T V in the UK that shows that you're 20% more uh likely to recall the audio of a TV ad over the visuals.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_03: So I think audio actually builds memories in in different ways, and technically I think it's like closer to your limbic system where you process your audio so you actually root it in memory better and it's more emotional.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: So I do think that we're we're gonna see an awakening to audio, especially for carrying on chasing efficiency.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if people really want to get cheaper reads, don't go for paid display on junk websites, go for radio, it's six times cheaper than TV at the same kind of reach, often, depending on your market.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I think audio presents a new interesting opportunity, and also I you know, maybe I'm gonna upset people here, but AI can make some quite good audio ads.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: It's much better than that than visual stuff.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_06: Well, you heard it here first.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_06: Audio will be the ticket for can next year.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_06: Let's do that.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm placing all night chips.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_05: I used to sell radio way back when that's how I got into advertising.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_05: But it was there's always case studies about like there's a CMUS study, Canadian Media Usage Trends survey or something like that.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_05: But it always showed like when you add radio, it would have well maybe it wasn't a doubling impact, but it would have as an a significant impact on outcomes.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_05: But that was a long time ago.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's just been that way for the long longest time.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_03: But somehow radios had a peach at while I was saying money.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and uh and it doubles impact, yes.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, yeah.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_05: But radio's just had a bad rap.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's it's for uh like from when I was selling it, and it's still the same.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_05: Like I think it's a hard thing to sell.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_05: Like people will say it's just you know, just add a jingle, but I don't know, maybe Venice will throw this to you.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_05: Do you have is there such a thing as like a proper structure of an of a radio ad or an audio ad, like from what you guys have looked at?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, I could can't answer that directly, but what I can say is that there are a slew of different approaches.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um certainly if you have a beloved jingle, please, for the love of God, use it.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_04: Uh-huh.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't, that's okay.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're uh, you know, any kind of sonic device.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it could be a sound, like Taco Bell uses the actual bell.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and they use it kind of in the the front portion of the ad.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you could have certain, you know, talent who has a certain voice.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can, you know, have uh, you know, mnemonics, uh, you know, towards the end.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's a variety of different ways of, you know, license tracks and you know, custom music they use consistently.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: The thing is that you just have to build equity in what that is, and it keeps going back to the same, I know, sometimes boring answer, but you've got to use like if you have something that has merit and had creates a strong emotional response, please use it often and for quite some time to build that memory structure.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: Come back to that point about audio getting bad rap.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: Like, why do you think that that is, or why has that been the case?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: I I I can't quite get my head around it because I'm a huge fan of it.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen the impact of it.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's tough when you see a medium X model and your digital and social ROIs are four times that.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's it it creates a shift away from audio.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: From my from my experience on that brand side.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's harder to justify in terms of uh you know, m the measurability, you know.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: Digital became very measurable and very just easy to justify.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: Also, it's not it's literally an older channel where people don't like old, they're like new and sexy.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_03: And often the creative get b gets banged to the junior in the team, so it's not like a cool thing to be working on.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: But the main thing I think that why people don't find audio as sexy uh and uh spending more on it at the moment is because you can't screenshot a radio ad and put it in your can application.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: Or you can with your TV and you're out of home.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_03: That's what this is all about, guys.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_05: It's all about just thinking about Q4, like I was having these flashbacks to these ads that ran there there's one camp or audio advertiser that ran a different ad on different stations, or sorry, a different phone number on different stations.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_05: And that was the way they were tracking the ROI of that.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_05: And then you hear those ads where they're like the same number, you gotta repeat it five times within the 30-second window.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_05: Is is there one move that people should not make if they're thinking about radio in the Q4?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_05: Like thinking about some of those ones, maybe those are the examples, or on the flip side, is it yeah?
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, don't get pulled into the trap that radio is a local performance medium.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_03: So there's this interesting quirk in the data that showed that the uplift for US campaigns that included audio wasn't as big as UK and Ireland.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_03: Oh.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_03: It was still significant, but it wasn't as big.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: Why is that?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: UK and Ireland is normally national radio buys, whereas in the US it's a uh national radio is a rounding error in the in the in the US media plans.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of it is done at a local station level.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_03: The power of audio, and especially radio in general, comes from its mass public, firm driving, trust driving reach, which is inherently a lasting impact that builds and changes behaviour over time.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of people get stuck in the track of repeating the same number five times that people can definitely call us if they're so desperate to buy today.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: Convincing launching a sale on radio is a very popular thing to do.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: Don't relegate audio to just a performance medium because you know we've seen it in uh RFE research, the creative dividend.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's a super touch point, it does both.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: Lesbonette and Peter Field have seen it in the IPA research, they call it a a dual media channel, it's very good at doing both the long and the short.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, I'd I'd really lean away from performance.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_03: And when I mean performance, I don't just mean um the media targeting or the media buy or even the objectives, it's the creativity as well.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: Don't lean into kind of left-brained shouting, demanding call to actions, sales, lean into things like character, humour, storytelling, clear, audible sense of places is such a good hack.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: If you can build like an audio world in the ad, you actually hold much more attention.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: One of my favourite audio ads is the Harrybow, Harry Bow one where the police are kids.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: So it's like some police cats, policemen sat in a in a police car, but they've got the kids' voices.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: They took that ad and adapted it for radio, and it didn't work until they'd like added like a police siren on, keys jangling, this kind of stuff to build the audio world.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: So you're leading to those more right brain, right brain creative features as well.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_03: Don't just assume.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: I saw I saw that play out in real life um when I was on the brand side.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was most of our national media was optimized to a degree to drive e-commerce sales.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then we used radio um, you know, to announce grand openings.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_05: The big radio remote.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_05: Come on down.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_05: Today only.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_05: We're here from one till five.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: Grand opening.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: We got balloons.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_05: And pancakes.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: They are great though.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_06: I know they are.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: I love an OB.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: I do.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's such a powerful channel.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like I I used it in a previous, previous, previous life and career in non-profit world as a driver of like a whole weekend of telling stories from children's hospitals, raising money.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: And it's just that's where you can see the power of it.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I really it was the first time for me I really started to see the power of audio, radio, and others just like since then I've just been that's such a huge, huge fan of it.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think you're right, Andrew.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's that's such a great example, Harry Bo.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: I was gonna ask you, Vanessa, from the US, any examples that stand out for you, kind of great radio ads?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think McDonald's reigned supreme here in the US in terms of using radio.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: They've been a consistent um advertiser on the channel, and they've got all the right audio cues, and they're driving an intense amount of love and demand for the brand.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: You still use Brian Cox for the voice?
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, particularly for a very long time they used repeatedly Brian Cox from Succession, you know, as the voice.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: My actual favorite audio ad though isn't the uh isn't the Harry Borad, it's my second favorite.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_03: My first favorite is Penguin.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_03: I don't you get the Americans won't understand this one, but Penguin is like a chocolate band in the UK that's like, I don't know, a hundred years old.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: And they had this jingle called Pick Up a Penguin, and it's just 30 seconds of pick up a penguin, pick up a penguin.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's the only five-star audio that I've actually managed to find.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, love.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_05: I wanted to ask a little bit more about the creators, just come back to that too.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_05: From from your perspective, just thinking about Q4, we talked about AI, uh, and we talked about the creators being a super touch point.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_05: And I just wonder, like, can thinking of tying it into what we're just talking about with radio, can creators play a role?
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_05: Like, should they be playing a role across all mediums, including radio?
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_05: No, you sure?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: I love I love the definitiveness.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: Next question.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_03: No, of course, no, no.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_03: Should I be putting my boyfriend in my TV ads?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: There's a there's a guy in Ireland, so Ireland's a different market, right?
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_02: Ireland's small.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's a guy here, Darren Conway, who's a kind of creator influencer, really well known, and quite a distinctive voice, and he's in a lot of radio ads, but I think it's possibly market sizing more than anything else because he's that well known.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: Or Garen Noon is another guy quite well known.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think given the scale and size of this market, it works, but maybe not maybe not in other places.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: So maybe maybe, maybe, Andrew.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'll I'll go into why I don't know.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_03: So look, why why now?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so we've done this new great research of WPP Media and and uh TikTok where we've completed a lot of brand list studies for brand made versus creator-made ads and built a creative effectiveness playbook which looks at what strategy and executional choices matter at driving brand memories from your creator campaigns.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_03: And what we found was it largely comes down to their ability to be a creative partner.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_03: So, and we talk about that through the level of we actually found that the creative fame, follow account, and creative recognition doesn't matter that much.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_03: It gives you a bit of an advantage in terms of brand lift outcomes, but a fit with your brand is way more important.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: And we found that being, you know, are they able to be entertaining and brand in the first few seconds and make fit and content that's fit for platform is actually why you should work with these creators versus turning them into brand assets.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_03: The reason you want to continue working on a creator campaign with a creator on social for a long time is that they could make damn good, platform fit, entertaining, well-branded content, and only about five or ten percent of all the creator campaigns we saw were actually very good at doing all of that, and those that 10%, that top 10%, drives about four times the brand memory of the bottom 90% of measure your brand awareness growth and this kind of stuff.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_03: So why would you want to work with a creator?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's because you're well, a creator is not a marketer, and you know, creators don't understand distinctive brand assets, they haven't done them in the MBA and they've not read how brands grow.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_03: But in reality, most marketers haven't either, so I'm I'm giving marketers too much credit there.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, so they need all the help they can get to with our assets and you know, proper breeze.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: But marketers aren't creators, we don't understand platforms, we don't understand the audiences on that platform, we don't get the trends right now that people are really interested in watching more, and marketers are really boring, right?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I've tried making creator content with on video.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm rather boring, it turns out.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: Creators are the complete opposite.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_03: So we need to work with creators to get the bat best of both worlds.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_03: So, no, that it in no way does it go well where you've you've created an amazing creator campaign.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: You go, well, well, Jack, congratulations.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: How good at you are making radio ads.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when you hear the sports person doing the radio ads.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's part.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_05: But that's the thing, like we see these little nuances, and then we go all in on it, or like like the crater is the newest thing, and then we just go all in and we apply it to everything.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_05: And and I think that's part where as an industry, maybe I'm I'm broad stroking here, obviously, but we I I don't know if we appreciate the nuances of all the different things and why we need to do them differently on different channels, and when especially there's pressure to prove it in the next 40 days, like that's where there's a bit of a pressure there.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_06: Maybe we close out this section question here for you, Vanessa.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_06: So, you know, we there's been a lot of conversations.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_06: I know we've had conversations with both of you just on fluent devices, but for brands that haven't found a fluent device yet, do you believe that Q4 is the right moment to really start building one?
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_06: Or is that the wrong one to do, the wrong time of year?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, that's a tricky question.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'd like to say there is there's no bad time.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think the question is is um how important is seasonality with your Q4?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that at least in the US, everyone is battling with how am I going to handle my brand alongside and everything that I've done this year alongside Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: Should I do something different?
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: Should I do something, you know, should I do something brand new?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they're they're heading into a fight, right?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that can be a tricky time.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't necessarily advise it, uh, but I would say that you should be thinking about your brand and the assets that you do have and how you want to approach your, you know, seasonal advertising and not, you know, essentially put those things to the side.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and how can you uh marry the two and not do a one-off Christmas campaign that will never see the line of day again?
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great answer.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_05: There's a thing around memory that I wanted to ask you is about Andrew, we talked about this as a measurement when we were dangling our feet in the pool.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_05: But there's some work with with Meta that that there's three pillars for memory.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_05: I just wondered maybe if you could talk about just memory and in terms of the importance of measuring memory.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_05: Like ultimately a lot of there's a lot of these things that we're talking about when we first opened the conversation.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: Around impact and and there's the digital metrics that we're trying to use as proxy, Vanessa.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_05: You brought up the media mixed modeling idea.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_05: There's also this thing that I think is a gap, which is the stuff that's happening between people's ears and that we don't measure as much because it's not as accessible as of a measurement.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_05: So maybe if you could if you could just talk a little bit about the some of the meta work that and or just your take on memory and measuring memory and some of the things that we need to think about when we're talking about Q4.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I think there's some really new interesting research from uh meta called Unforgettable Brands, where they're really trying to get to what grows lasting brands over a long period.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: And one of the key steps what I found interesting in that research is this move towards measuring and thinking about brand building in terms of memory structures.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's how I've always approached marketing, and it's how system one approaches marketing as well.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I've seen it in my research uh recently where we looked at uh the creator research, the creator effectively playbook, where we made one of the key points moving from the idea of impressions to memory.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: So the industry moved from impressions to attention over the past few years, where we understand that not all media impressions are equal.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: Some get 20 seconds of active paid visual attention, some get 0.5 seconds, and that will have a natural impact on brand lift outcomes, ROI.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_03: There's lots of research that shows that now.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_03: We saw it again in our research.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_03: But what the industry now needs to do is move from attention seconds to memory because not all seconds of attention are equal.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that is honestly one of the key flips over the next decade that senior marketers need to make because it gives you such a good unlock, it it brings so much insight that you need to then understand what makes memories and useful memories, you know, emotional, distinctive, right-brained advertising.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: We showed it in and this new TikTok research.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: If you split out all the uh brand all the campaigns and look at how much uh brand memory we expect them to make by seconds of attention, the more distinctive and more emotional campaigns, and you see get a 2x lift on the amount of brand memories created at any level of attention.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: So it brings you to the kind of conclusion of actually I you know if I've got a 20-second TV ad that's genuinely emotional and it's really distinctive.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_03: I'd rather run that versus 10 seconds of crap and pay more for that media, for example.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_03: Or it allows you to make in-flight choices with your social campaigns and stuff like this, and it allows you to then understand what proper advertising needs to look like, it needs to be strategically aligned to what you've been doing over the past few years because memory building takes time and it takes you refreshing memories.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: Essentially, a brand manager's job is measuring measuring and protecting and growing memory structures in the minds of current and future customers.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: That's what the job is.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: So you need to be refreshing memories, that implies that you need to be doing long-term stuff, you need to be measuring those memories, you need to be doing research and understanding them.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you need to be strategic.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_03: You realistically, you're not gonna earn 50 different ideas in the minds of consumers, they don't care.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_03: It's about picking one or two things, and then when it comes to advertising, you need to think about how I am going to attract more broad attention from people, how do I build more memories with the advertising?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_03: It needs to be heavily emotional and really distinct, so it's actually for your brand.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_03: So it really is, I think, an aligning principle that industries working it more into.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: Once you start viewing advertising and marketing through that lens, it makes you make smarter choices.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_05: Connor, feel free to jump in here.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, like so and I haven't had a chance to to even look at the the top line of this meta research.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: So and Andrew, like completely agree with all those things you're saying.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I and sorry, like because I'm a qu I guess can we do this through meta, right?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, can we do all that stuff through through meta?
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is that is that possible?
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: I know it's like what's the entire mix, but Vanessa, like I don't know if you have a view on it in terms of what this research is is showing us, what it's telling us.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm just curious.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think you would I don't think you've seen it yet, Vanessa, were you?
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because I don't think you know it's a preview.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: So I think I mean it is hot off the press.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: So what they're look yeah, what they're looking at there is uh then it it come into product decisions and meta, like you can you actually re-target and build long attention exposures versus you know buying two seconds or six seconds or buying it from an impressions point of view, but buying it at an attention point of view.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think there's good evidence now that you can build brands.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_03: Actually, no, of course there's good evidence that you can build brands on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_03: You can.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's especially true when you know what you're doing.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like if you are just slapping random left-brained, non-distinctive stuff into skippable short form, it's not gonna build brands, obviously.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_03: But if you are putting thoughtful, culturally relevant, right-brained, emotional, early branded stuff into these platforms, the kind of creativity that is consistent across your media next, so it's building on those memory structures, but it's actually genuinely entertaining because these platforms are loaded up with the most entertaining specific content ever.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: So the bar is high, so you need to really be as as entertaining and as emotional as possible.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_03: Then, yeah, we've seen in our research you can build, you know, memories which lead to awareness growth, ad recall growth, and this kind of stuff, which should compound into brand growth over time, but it's not a silver bullet.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_03: It it requires you to, you know, uh of understand the fundamentals of marketing, i.e., this stuff needs to work alongside my other higher attention media, and you need to understand the quirks around brand size and stuff.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think it's as likely to happen if you're a smaller brand with low equity.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's more likely to happen to use low attention lower attention channels like out of home display and short form to refresh and grow large brands that people already recognise and are very distinctive.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I think you know, if you're gonna do it, I'd I'd make the effort to uh read the research they put out and uh and stuff like we've put out, like the long short form of it with TikTok, and increase the chances of growth.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: I do think it's lazy though now to say that you can't grow lasting brands on uh digital channels, because clearly some brands are doing and um there's lots of research that shows you can't.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh I'm glad you said branding early.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_03: You have to brand early.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's a debate that happens.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_02: That is a debate that happens.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, people are like, well, it's social.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we shouldn't.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_03: Well I know.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_03: Or it's organic.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, if we brand early, then people won't uh watch the ten seconds.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but they'll have seen the two seconds of your brand.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_03: Or if you don't brand early on on organic as well, then you're truly wasting your time.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_03: Crazy.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_03: But I will say caveat, go and read the long short form at the research we launched at Cannes last year.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_03: The worst thing you can do is edit your logo in into short form, like in post-production.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_03: It causes too much skipping and it reduces awareness growth.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_03: You really need to build the kind of capabilities and work with the right agencies, partners, and andor creators to integrate your brand assets actually into the creative idea versus just slapping uh editing a logo into an asset.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I do agree when people are like, I'm not doing that, but um, there's way better ways of branding early.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: You have to brand early.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I think it's like 95% of people won't watch on average past the first few seconds in these channels.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_03: So who's why why would you be interested in building a memories for a different brand or not your brand?
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_03: I don't understand.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_06: All right.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_06: Wanted to rotate here into the final body of the questions that we that we have for both of you.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_06: And what we've called this section is the Q4 playbook, what to do now.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_06: And Vanessa, probably going to kick off with you here as as we think about it.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_06: System one has done such a great job in evaluating a lot of the ads.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_06: So for us in North America, Q4 really means Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_06: For those across the pond, it's really Christmas.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_06: Is there something that advertisers should be really thinking about as they're entering this last quarter of the year to ensure that they're checking the right boxes to make sure that the creative can be as effective as possible to put them in a position to win?
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is probably going to be the easiest uh question of the entire podcast episode.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's to ensure that you're making someone feel something.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I think just to wrap up where we were at the beginning of this conversation to the end, I think that they're uh, you know, I'm fearful of marketers deciding to label creativity and put it in boxes.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, like put it in the box of brand purpose or put it in the box of product marketing or put it in the box of seasonal or what have you.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's assuming that you need a distinctly different creative approach and you're gonna throw out everything that you know as you go to that next assignment and really across all of your creativity, you do need to be, as Andrew said, leaning into those right brain components and you can bring those things to life in any brief that you are given.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: So ensure that you are, you know, telling the right stories, getting that brand recognition, being entertaining, make someone feel something.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_06: All the feels, all the feels.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: All the feels, all the time.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_06: Do they need to cry though?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_06: Do they need to cry?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, that is one of a whole spectrum of human emotions.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: But you can if you like.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_05: But I would like in from what I've seen in the UK commercials that happen at Christmas time, they're more about the feels.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_05: But it I it feels to me, because of maybe the context of Black Friday being so dominant in North America, it's almost always about the deals.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_05: It's not about the fields.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: Fields versus the deals.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna steal that one for a column.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: The next talk.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um I I I will uh let me just chime in quickly here.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_03: Would be I've actually got specific research on this around if you it's on TikTok, because I used all of TikTok's data to prove it, but if you're if you look at the most heavily left-brained content, the salesmanship content on TikTok, and you know, this is you know, loads and loads of millions of pounds worth of campaigns that we've looked at here, it drives more conversion than the not salesmanship stuff.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: So, what does that mean?
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, salesmanship is you know, deals, you know, actual communication, telling people to do something, comparisons like we're better than this.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_03: It's the kind of stuff you'll see on Black Friday.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_03: It is true that is the most likely to convert a sale, i.e., I've seen that and I've got and done something about it.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas the most right-brained showmanship content on TikTok is the most likely to drive brand growth.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: So awareness growth, intent growth, ad recall growth.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: So more closer to memories that will compound into a long-lasting effect.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_03: However, the most salesmanship kind of content, that left brain stuff, has an incredible damaging impact on the brand growth side.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, you could be looking at your sales and convincing yourself that this left-brained deals, not feels kind of advertising is doing great because it's upticking our ROI, our visitor footfall, our basket size, and you might optimize for that kind of stuff.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_03: But what you do then is you're optimizing away from the lasting impact of great showmanship advertising, and you're making your job harder in the future, and you'll have to do more deals in the future to compensate for this lack of brand growth.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas the showmanship advertising, if you look at it, it does also do selling for you because it attracts attention, it attracts engagement, it builds more memories, it creates feeling, that does move people.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_03: So, this is my worry with when you start to look at the shorter term kind of metrics, even ROI, which is an efficiency metric because it has to be measured over a certain time period, so it's inherently shorter term focused and efficient.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_03: It gets you to do more of the deal stuff, and I think that's kind of the death spyle that a lot of Black Friday stuff is in.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas if you have to look at Amazon, Amazon's Black Friday stuff was like some guys playing by uh a frozen a frozen lake and having a great time.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_03: Like it wasn't about selling something very specific, it was still quite right-brained.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_03: You know, you need to look at who's who's doing the best stuff and who's got the most data to prove it, it's probably Amazon.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_03: So copying them is never a bad thing.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I I do worry that people lean into it a bit too much.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: And anytime I've looked at System One's emotional data, whether it's in the Effie data bank, the IPA data bank, whether it's in TikTok brand lift, whether it's I'm doing some niche research at the moment where we're looking at uh we can you can the UK government has to report what car brands that appear on on the streets.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_03: You can correlate that with emotion in advertising as well.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_03: If you're more emotional and you get people to feel something, good things happen.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: Uh so it becomes incredibly frustrating when you get in these DO periods where people move away from it because God it's it just makes anyone's life harder.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: And annoyingly, it shrinks economies.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_03: The only reason that you know Coca-Cola can charge, and this is me going on a on a on a very uh capitalist rant now.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_03: The only reason Coca-Cola can charge£2 for Coke and not 20p for Roller Cola is a brand equity that emotion has built them over the past centuries.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: And when we move away from that, economies shrink and everyone's lives gets worse.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_03: So I it me it it does make me worry, but yeah, I'll stop ranting now.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: Feels not deals.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: Feels not deals.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_03: Just cut out my rant and leave it at feels not deals.
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: Just leave it there.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's a good like I think the Amazon's a good point because like they know what they're doing.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: Let's remember they don't advertise according to certain professor.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, those are but when they do, like they're certainly looking at like the measurable impact of that.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like they must I can only imagine they measure everything, right?
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so to see them and where they play and how they they advertise, particularly around you know, moments like that is is interesting.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: And none of us, well, I certainly don't have Amazon budgets, but it's a good one, it's a good point.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_01: Look at what they're doing and what even with Amazon budgets, they have the uh the courage to re-air.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_04: So that's true.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_01: Crypto Joyride two years in a row, right?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: That was something that's made re-airing Christmas campaigns is a classic approach that has worked.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they're they're bringing that back.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_03: Great point.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think it's now we're seeing I I honestly reckon the UK you'll see about half of last year's Christmas ads we had this year.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's just proven if you've got an emotional ad, it just does the business.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_03: So I helped that the Amazon team with their um with that campaign.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_03: And they did yeah, they re-ran the I I don't know what it's called.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_03: I I call it as Joyride.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_03: I call it as fledging grandiose, which some people don't like, but that's what it that's what the ad is.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, it did good things and they didn't have to spend another couple million producing an ad or whatever, it put it into reach.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_03: So I think uh yeah, I think that's a key lesson as well.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_03: When you've got pi customers don't get consumers don't get bored of good advertising.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: When when as Vanessa was saying, when it's reliant on new messaging, persuasion, rational stuff, I they can get bottled that.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_03: There's only so many times you can tell people the TV is a hundred quid off.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_03: But when it's emotional and entertaining, they there's very little evidence that it wears out.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_05: Connor, you want to take us home?
• 1:01:25
  SPEAKER_05: No, leave it to you, Mark.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_05: Just says no.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was literally looking on, this is Mark.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'll do it.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: Well, look, thanks so much for joining joining us.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the and you know, thanks for coming to the Andrew and Vanessa show.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we normally do this off the mic, but uh no, this has been really great.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_05: Like it's such an interesting conversation and thinking about I mean it's great to see the the work that you guys are doing is first of all is amazing.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_05: The the the idea about creating with confidence and what you the the spirit and I know it's a tagline, but the spirit of what you're trying to do is awesome.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's so helpful for a lot of brands.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, but just thinking through all the stuff that we're seeing in can and then actually trying to apply it, it is really the hard part of our job.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_05: And I think having the chance to talk to you guys about this and really map out what we would do and how we would do it, and like not creators on radio.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_05: Check, check.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Practical advice.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_05: All of that, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_05: The practical components of this is so helpful.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_05: So I would say thanks to to both of you for joining us today.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_05: This has been great.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having us.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_03: Amazing.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for having us.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_02: No worries.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but that's I've just noticed that you're on brand.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_02: It is on brand.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: So people, if you're not watching, that was not a that was uh not random.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I knew that Andrew was gonna be on brand.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: So like Andrew wears a black he wears black Guinness shirts, and I knew that he would wear that.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: So as a contrast, I bring up someone pink.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_03: I would have any mental capacity to do anything but form a black image chat.