2024's Marketing Wins and Fails

Summary

The Marketing Architects: Episode Summary - "2024's Marketing Wins and Fails"

Release Date: December 23, 2024

Hosts: Alaina Jasper, Mark, V, and Connor Byrne

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1. Introduction

In the "2024's Marketing Wins and Fails" episode, the Marketing Architects team—comprising Alaina Jasper, Mark, V, and Connor Byrne—delve into a comprehensive year-in-review discussion. They explore standout marketing campaigns, assess current trends with a bullish or bearish outlook, highlight surprising industry shifts, and make predictions for the upcoming year. The conversation is enriched with insights from marketing, psychology, and economics research, ensuring a research-first perspective.

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2. Campaigns of the Year

a. Budweiser’s Clydesdales Comeback

Alaina Jasper opens the discussion by highlighting Budweiser as her campaign of the year. Budweiser made a strategic move by reintroducing the Clydesdales, iconic horses that have been part of the brand since 1933. This decision came after Budweiser's absence in the 2023 Super Bowl, which sparked significant backlash and a noticeable dip in sales, especially during the Bud Light boycott.

• Notable Quote:
  "They did see a little bit of a bounce back this year, and I'm going to go ahead and attribute that to bringing back the Budweiser Clydesdales."
  (04:53 – Alaina Jasper)

The reintroduction not only revived sales but also reinforced Budweiser's brand identity, demonstrating the value of maintaining distinctive brand assets.

b. Elf Beauty’s Strategic Growth

Connor Byrne praises Elf Beauty for their phenomenal marketing approach and growth trajectory. Elf Beauty's internal structure, where every employee holds a stake in the company, fosters a unified effort towards growth. Their campaign featuring Billie Jean King was lauded for its purposeful agenda, resonating deeply with their target audience.

• Notable Quote:
  "The way you can show up in front of your audience, your consumers, with people who they actually care about maybe more than you, is an incredible opportunity."
  (11:38 – Connor Byrne)

c. Cerave’s Michael Cera Super Bowl Ad

V selects Cerave’s Super Bowl advertisement featuring Michael Cera as the standout campaign. The ad effectively blended humor with product focus, making it memorable and relatable. By leveraging a single, well-focused celebrity endorsement, Cerave ensured clear brand association, contrasting with other ads where multiple endorsements diluted the message.

• Notable Quote:
  "It's amazing humor. So really lean into the humor side."
  (06:24 – V)

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3. Bullish or Bearish: Current Marketing Trends

a. Influencer Marketing: Bullish

Connor Byrne expresses a bullish stance on influencer marketing, emphasizing the shift towards micro and nuanced influencers. He notes that brands like Spotify, which collaborate with thousands of influencers, demonstrate the sector's scalability and effectiveness when executed thoughtfully.

• Notable Quote:
  "There’s such an opportunity in the space. I think TV is dead. Influencers are in."
  (12:30 – Connor Byrne)

Alaina and V concur, highlighting the importance of leveraging influencers based on social proof and genuine connection rather than sheer reach.

b. Brand vs. Performance Marketing: Leaning Towards Brand

Mark and Alaina discuss the merits of brand marketing over performance marketing. They argue that brand marketing, with its emphasis on broad reach and long-term equity, often outperforms narrowly focused performance strategies, which can suffer from issues like fraud and misattribution.

• Notable Quote:
  "Brand is more about reach than it is about the precision or perceived precision of."
  (17:29 – Mark)

V adds that effective brand strategies can differentiate a company more sustainably than performance tactics, which may offer immediate but less reliable gains.

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4. Marketing Surprises of 2024

a. Surge in TV Ad Spend During U.S. Elections

Alaina reveals a surprising trend: over 70% of advertising spend was allocated to television during the U.S. elections. This heavy investment in TV was driven by its ability to tell compelling, emotional stories and saturate local markets effectively.

• Notable Quote:
  "You can tell a story, it's emotional. You can show the person you're voting for."
  (24:43 – Alaina Jasper)

b. Debates on Ad Frequency

A significant debate emerged around ad frequency, with Alaina advocating that the first frequency is the most effective for driving sales. This contrasts with many digital platforms' recommendations for multiple exposures. The discussion highlighted the inefficiency of repeated ad views without corresponding sales uplift.

• Notable Quote:
  "Your first frequency is your most efficient."
  (15:08 – Alaina Jasper)

Mark echoed these sentiments, sharing personal frustrations with repetitive ad exposures during streaming sessions.

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5. Predictions for 2025

a. Dominance of Video Content

V predicts that video content will continue to dominate the marketing landscape, driven by its versatility and high engagement rates. Advertisers are expected to increasingly leverage video across multiple platforms, including immersive experiences like AR and VR, to effectively convey their messages.

• Notable Quote:
  "Video is going to become even more, more a part of what marketers do."
  (38:34 – V)

b. AI in Creative Processes

Alaina foresees AI-generated content becoming indistinguishable from human-created material. With advancements in AI tools, marketers can effortlessly enhance creative concepts, making AI an integral part of the creative process.

• Notable Quote:
  "AI creative is going to become indecipherable from human creative."
  (38:34 – Alaina Jasper)

Connor adds that AI will democratize video production, making high-quality content accessible to a broader range of marketers.

c. Media Mix Modeling and ROI Proving Tools

Mark anticipates significant advancements in media mix modeling, driven by enhanced tools that offer better ROI insights. As marketers seek alternatives to platform-specific analytics, integrated modeling tools will become essential for demonstrating campaign effectiveness.

• Notable Quote:
  "Media mix modeling...the tools themselves are just getting better."
  (40:34 – Mark)

d. Disruptive Research Challenging Established Marketing Theories

Connor highlights the upcoming influence of Professor Felipe Thomas's research, which challenges Byron Sharp's widely accepted theories on brand growth and reach. This research, undergoing a rigorous peer review, suggests that traditional reach strategies may lead to mediocre outcomes and calls for more nuanced approaches.

• Notable Quote:
  "It's definitely something everyone's going to have to pay attention to and we'll be hearing a lot more from him next year."
  (42:47 – Connor Byrne)

Alaina underscores the importance of aligning marketing strategies with business results, emphasizing that irrespective of academic theories, tangible revenue growth remains paramount.

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6. Conclusion

The episode wraps up with a festive note, as the hosts exchange holiday greetings. The rich discussions throughout the episode underscore the dynamic nature of the marketing landscape in 2024, highlighting both successful strategies and cautionary tales. As the team looks ahead, their insights provide valuable guidance for marketers aiming to navigate the complexities of the upcoming year.

• Notable Quote:
  "Now go forth and build great marketing."
  (50:11 – Alaina Jasper)

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Key Takeaways:

• Brand Assets Matter: Budweiser's resurgence with the Clydesdales illustrates the enduring value of distinctive brand symbols.

• Influencer Marketing Evolution: Success lies in leveraging micro and nuanced influencers rather than relying solely on high-profile endorsements.

• Shift Towards Video and AI: The future is set for increased video content usage, bolstered by AI's role in creative processes.

• Emerging Research Challenges: New academic studies may reshape foundational marketing theories, urging marketers to stay adaptable.

For a deeper dive into these discussions and more, listen to the full episode of "The Marketing Architects."

Transcript

[Alaina Jasper]

Hi, everyone, it's Alaina. You're about to hear the second annual Year in Review episode I recorded with Mark and V from the Sleeping Barber Podcast and Connor from that's what I Call Marketing. We'll be back with our regularly scheduled programming next week. Happy holidays and enjoy. Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

[Mark]

We've got Connor and Laina joining us along with V to do a urine review. Connor and Lena, welcome. Do you guys want to do a quick intro of yourselves?

[Alaina Jasper]

I'm Elena Jasper. I work at a TV agency called Marketing Architects, and I am also the host of a podcast called the Marketing.

[Mark]

Architects Podcast, which is awesome.

[V]

It's a great podcast.

[Mark]

I love the nerd alerts, by the way.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, thank you.

[Connor Byrne]

I'm Connor Byrne and I'm based in Ireland and I host that's what I Call Marketing. I'm wearing my that's what I call Marketing Christmas jumper. That's what I call the Christmas jumper. So there's only one available in the world, but I'm gonna start doing them next year.

[Mark]

Raffle it off, charity auction afterwards.

[Connor Byrne]

Next year they're gonna be. It's gonna be March. Hey, guys, you do an introduction for us for people who are listening to our podcasts?

[Mark]

Yeah, V, go ahead.

[V]

Sure. I'm. I'm v. I am 45 years. No, I'm just kidding. I am. I and digital marketing division at one of Canada's largest telcos, but also co host the Sleeping Barber podcast and I'm genuinely really excited to be here. Mark, over to you, buddy.

[Mark]

I'm with him, the other co host, the Sleeping Barber Podcast. Yeah. Really excited about the year in review to do it again with you guys.

[V]

I got a joke. I got a joke.

[Mark]

Oh, okay.

[V]

An American, a Canadian Irishman walk into a bar. The bartender asks, what will it be? The American says, I'll have a whiskey neat and let's optimize that pour for maximize roi. Okay. The Canadian asks, make mine a Caesar, eh? But only if it comes with a meaningful connection and measurable results. The Irishman grins and says, I'll have a Guinness, but first let's split test that pour for head retention. Can't make a decision without the data. The bartender size. This round is going to cost my whole marketing budget.

[Alaina Jasper]

Oh, man. Not.

[V]

Not very good, eh?

[Mark]

Oh, wait, where's the sound effects? These are new. So for the format today, we're going to cover off campaigns of the year. It's a very exciting year. Lots of great campaigns out there and lots of different perspectives from all of us. We've got a bullish or bearish section.

[V]

Again, backed by popular demand, backed by huge demand.

[Mark]

So much demand for this section again, biggest marketing surprises of the year. And then we're going to do our best to make predictions for next year. And I'm going to try and not repeat myself like I almost did in preparation for this. So let's start with campaigns of the year. Lena, why don't we start with you?

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, sure. I can kick us off. I will say this was not easy to do, so I leaned into my subjective opinion here.

[V]

The best kind.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yes. And I chose Budweiser. Bringing back the Clydesdales. So I was one of those people who immediately noticed when they weren't in the Super bowl in 2023, which is a crime because they are one of the best distinctive assets out there.

[Mark]

Totally.

[Alaina Jasper]

Did. You know, I did a little research here. In order to become an official Budweiser Clydesdale, you as a horse have to be at least four years old, 18 hands tall, which is very, very big, weigh between 1800 and 2300 pounds, be bay in color, have four white stockings, and have a white blaze on your face. That's probably only one out of ten Clydesdale. So what?

[V]

Right?

[Mark]

I never knew that this is like the elite of Clydesdales.

[Connor Byrne]

Yeah. It feels unfair to the other Clydesdales. I'm sure somebody's gonna have.

[Mark]

What about the EDI of Clydesdales?

[Alaina Jasper]

I like to think of it as brand standards.

[Connor Byrne]

Okay. That's the most.

[Alaina Jasper]

But they've been a part of this brand since 1933. Another fun fact. They were first introduced to celebrate the repeal of prohibition in the United States.

[Mark]

Oh, yeah.

[Alaina Jasper]

And They've been in 45 Super Bowls before. They moved away from them last year. And I remember after their ad aired and the horses were not in the spot, I was not the only one who was not happy. And it wasn't just marketers. A lot of people on X were talking about, where are the Clydesdales? And So this year, 2024, they came back. They also toured them nationally. They partnered with Folds of Honor, which is a nonprofit for veterans. And I just think it was brutal for AB and Bev to take them away in the same year as a Bud Light boycott. And their sales had suffered since. But they did see a little bit of a bounce back this year, and I'm going to go ahead and attribute that to bringing back the Buddhist Clyde Steels.

[V]

There's a direct correlation Right there.

[Mark]

It's so interesting about the standards that they have. I had no idea. But it makes sense.

[Connor Byrne]

It's going to make it harder for the AI prompt, but, you know.

[Mark]

Yeah, that was a really interesting one. Like, reminded me of like the Eminem characters too, that they got brought back at one point. It's funny how people do that. They just throw away like these amazing assets and then all the time. Yeah, yeah. So crazy. Conor.

[Connor Byrne]

Yes. So for me, Elf Beauty is like, maybe it's just my brand of the year. I'm a bit obsessed with Elf Beauty. I just think their approach to marketing, their growth is phenomenal. They're absolute rocket ship. Do you know how they work internally? So very small team. But every employee of Elf Beauty has a stake in the company and that's a way that they get across all these silos. So they all, literally all invested in the growth of that company. So it's huge. They campaigned with Billie Jean King and it was just amazing. So it was entertaining. It was. I don't really like the word purposeful, but it had like an agenda to it. They really want to change something. It speaks to their entire audience. Like, so that was a phenomenal campaign and they're an amazing brand. I'm such a huge fan of them and their products.

[Mark]

Yeah, V, what do you got?

[V]

I. So this was very difficult, actually. But I think I'm going to follow Elena's lead and I'm going to pick one from super bowl this year. And Mark, you would have recalled that we did talk about this already, but for me, I went back and I watched it again. I'm like, it gets me every time. And that's the Michael Sarah V Super bowl ad.

[Mark]

Oh, yeah.

[V]

It was featuring the actor Michael Cera humorously highlighted the benefits of Cerave's moisturizing cream by playing on the actor's name and blending humor with the product focus and that, you know, it's like his cream that became really memorable. Very relatable. I actually use a cream personally, effectively engaging a wide audience during one of the year's most watched events. But, like, what, for me, what sticks out is when celebrity endorsement goes right, like, this was an example where it was incredible humor. You know, I think we talk about it time and time again how humor is important way to kind of create those mental structures. So really lean into the humor side. The. How they brought the product into focus, which also really was really creative. And even the timing, the buildup, the actual add in during the Super Bowl, I just thought it was Orchestrated really, really well. Yeah, it was great.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah. I think so often with celebrities in the super bowl, they're often in multiple, even like brand ads. So it's so great that they also just focus him solely on this. He's known for this. And there's no way you miss who he was endorsing. Which I think when I think about other celebrities like Kevin Hart, I couldn't tell you who he endorsed in the Super Bowl. I know he did multiple brands, but that was a big win for them.

[Mark]

I loved that I had the McCain's ad and it's the campaign. It's not just this year. I just learned about it this year because this is the one that won the grand prix of all grand prix of creative effectiveness for a nine year campaign. So to me this was a fascinating campaign in particular not only because of like the execution, it was like there's a great backstory to it. I think around the 2008 period, McCain's chips, it was a UK based campaign. French fries, frozen french fries were declining in sales. Private label store or private label from companies like Tesco and all those kinds of brands were like replacing and taking up store shelf space. And so they had to do something. They created this campaign rather than focusing on some of the things. Connor, you had a guest on talking about challenger brands. It's almost like they became a challenger brand where like all these other brands are like happy families eating french fries. They did like Real World, which are moments around like, I think they call it the tea time, which to me means dinner. And so they built these ads out around like real families and that kind of stuff did it for nine years. Sales started picking up all kinds of things. But the big one for me was that the pricing, the price sensitivity almost cut in half, which meant that they could increase their price without losing volume, which was an amazing kind of measurement to look at. We all talk about pricing as a component of marketing campaigns, but never like the primary outcome. So profitability goes up like tremendously when you can do stuff like that. So for me it was one of those ones where I'm like, oh, that's really cool. How the outcome is something so much more than like how many impressions. We get a whole bunch of business effects over a long sustained period of time, which to me was a really cool outcome.

[Connor Byrne]

And the fact that they stuck with it long enough for it to have those effects because they're not going to happen in the first six months.

[Mark]

Yeah. And that went through like the, you know, the COVID pandemic and a whole bunch of other like issues with economic pressures and all those things. Like it wasn't just a single like short eight week window and their chips.

[Connor Byrne]

Are like more expensive like than the own brand. They're at least twice the price, at least. And so it's brand power.

[Mark]

So that for me was a really cool result. And it was like, as I said, it wasn't just a single year thing. But so let's move on to bullish or bearish. Let's talk like we talked about this last year in a couple of categories like resurgence of marketing, mixed modeling, AI and marketing. No surprise there. I think we were all in agreement. That was a, we were bullish about AI marketing. Elena, you guys have done some really cool things with smart targeting, with leveraging AI, which I think was really interesting because who knew that would be a thing two years ago and now all of a sudden it's a totally practical thing to do. And so this year we have a couple of new topics. Newish. Connor, we're going to start with you with the value of influencer marketing. Bullish or bearish?

[Connor Byrne]

I'm bullish on it. And.

[Mark]

Sorry, that was in your inside voice.

[V]

Sorry, that was not my inside voice. Go Connor. Sorry.

[Connor Byrne]

You said pick a side. V. Look, I got to go to an influencer event in London during the year and like I've had views on influencer and I've done stuff before and I've kind of been probably a little bit skeptical in places, maybe a bit like uv And I saw this event and I was, it was phenomenal what the brands there were talking about and some of the ways they're approaching influencer marketing. And so what I think the problem probably is with influencer marketing is people think there's just kind of a one size fits all or just it's a silver bullet and it's just not. And it's the brands that are being successful with it are brands that are using a lot of, I hate all these words, but micro influencers, more nuanced influencers. So that idea, we'll just get this big person to do this thing and that's great. It just doesn't really work. Like Spotify have something like 18,000 influencers.

[V]

Right.

[Connor Byrne]

But they were right. So they're working with all these people. And so that to me is the incredible opportunity for brands in the influencer marketing space. There's or there's companies and platforms that are helping you measure it more, there's more investment in it. I think the influencers themselves Are. Are smarter. I think the word influencers is problematic because, you know, in your mind it can't use the image of the person who goes to the local coffee shop and says, I'm an influencer. I want this for free. And you're just like, no, you're not, or that kind of stuff. There's such an opportunity in the space. I think it needs to grow up a bit in terms of the metrics and measurement of it. I think how people incorporate it into their overall marketing mix. But actually the way you can show up in front of your audience, your consumers, with people who they actually care about maybe more than you, is. Is an incredible opportunity. So TV is dead. Influences are in. I'm joking.

[Mark]

Oh, wow.

[Connor Byrne]

I was looking at Elena there. What did he just say?

[V]

I just feel like Elena has to come in now.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, we can have both. I think they probably compliment each other.

[Connor Byrne]

No, we have to decide it's one or the other.

[Mark]

You're either with us or you're against us.

[Alaina Jasper]

Well, I would take TV every day then. But I agree with you on. I actually, I agree with you on influencers. And I think if they could be evaluated maybe even more on Cialdini principles like social proof and liking, they're probably doing more for your brand than just those immediate sales they're driving. And I know that micro influencers are becoming more popular, but there is some value of reach there too, because even with the micro influencer, you're hitting people that aren't exactly in your core target. Not everyone who follows them is going to fit an exact demographic profile. So I like a lot about influencer marketing.

[Mark]

There's a lot to like, especially on the content production side. Like you can, if you have solid brand standards, especially and give people some guidance around what you're looking for. Like the Clydesdales. Not that you give them cameras, but they couldn't hold them, that would be a problem. But to have that idea around what you want from the brand and give an expectation around that and then have an army of people producing content like, that's kind of interesting.

[Connor Byrne]

Yeah.

[Mark]

Yeah. Lena, let's stick with you. Let's go to targeting. First party, third party, zero party, every party, contextual targeting. Like, what's your take on targeting? Bullish or bearish?

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah. So I, I wasn't entirely sure how to answer this because I am bullish on certain types of targeting. I know you hate when we do this, but I'm bullish on.

[Mark]

I love this.

[Connor Byrne]

It's me that hates it.

[Alaina Jasper]

They're so different. It's hard to say, but I'm bullish on certain kinds, like first party data, contextual bearish on more third party data. But I love the debate in general. I think it's so fun. And our agency, we have a view on targeting that apparently is kind of contrarian, but I think it's. I don't really see it as contrarian. So first of all, we test all kinds of targeting so we don't just blanket exclude any type of targeting with tv, it does depend on the brand. However, I've just seen time and time again that first party data and contextual outperform third party every single time for TV advertising. And we do see time and time again that most brands target too much and they'd be better off, you know, maybe expanding their targeting, especially when they go onto a medium like television. And I kind of hate this example, but it's the best one I can think of at the moment. So if you go to a gun store here in the United States and you need to purchase a gun for protection of your home, just bear with me.

[V]

Land that plane, Elena. Land that plane.

[Alaina Jasper]

So if you go in there, they're likely to recommend you a shotgun. And the reason for that is because the average American isn't that great at firing a gun. And a shotgun has what they call a good spread. So it's going to increase your odds of hitting an intruder. And it's morbid. But I think most of us marketers, we might think we're expert marksmen. Like I think of that. I think he was Turkish, the guy in the Olympics that was firing a gun like one handed in like a white T shirt and with his jeans on. But that's not really who we are. We're not always able to hit that perfect target. And also you might want to hit not only your target, but their influencers, their friends, their family, who's in market, who's out of market. And when you target broader, you can hit all those people for the same price as precisely hitting one person who might not even be the person you think they are. So.

[Mark]

Right.

[Alaina Jasper]

I don't know if it's because we like the certainty of I'm only hitting like this exact person, but it's usually not even accurate. And I would love for this to become less, less controversial.

[Mark]

So Buy More shotguns is the takeaway.

[Alaina Jasper]

Operate. Yeah, I don't know if anyone has a better metaphor, let me know. But this is the best one I have at the moment.

[Mark]

It's true though. I'll just jump in if you don't mind. Because just to build off that, my topic was brand versus performance marketing. I'm big on brand, less so on, quote unquote performance marketing. There's so much fraud and like misbelief and misattribution and all those kinds of things. Like there's this path we've been led down which leads us to believe that we can do one to one targeting for everybody across the world on every device and those kinds of things. And we like time and time again we just can't. We've proven to ourselves we can't. So I'm bullish on brand mostly because of the idea of being able to reach larger groups of people. B2B is super important because there's buying groups that are so big you can't accurately find the single person who's a decision maker because there isn't a single person, there's 15 people. And the same thing is true in B2C I think as well where you've got, sure, an individual that buys a pair of shoes, but maybe my kids are influencing me, maybe my wife is influencing me, so on. And so like there's so many different things that are factors in that single decision. To me it's the idea of brand is more about reach than it is about the precision or perceived precision of.

[Connor Byrne]

101 and perceived to be cheaper as well. People like, oh, it's cheaper, it's more cost effective. And like again, there's so much waste and. And there's so much fraud.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Connor Byrne]

That you can't actually say that. But there's the wrong click attribution.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Connor Byrne]

People are like, oh well therefore it cost us this. And we drove that down like so that's. It's the narrative.

[Mark]

Yeah. And I think a lot about that. I think you mentioned in one of your podcasts, Connor, with the Diageo 2x2, which is on one axis is effectiveness, on the other axis is efficiency. And so we look at a lot of the channels, especially on the digital side, where it shows a cost per thousand or it shows a cost per click and all those are efficiency metrics. But we kind of get blinded. Are we doing the thing we're supposed to do which is acquire more customers, reach more people, those kinds of things and we kind of lose sight of that a lot of times. I'm not saying that performance doesn't work, it's not important. But I'm just not as. I'm bearish on performance as the silver bullet to all of Our answers because if it was 15 years ago we would have figured out which half our advertising is wasted.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah. I always think it's interesting to see how many of the performance advertising platforms end up advertising on TV.

[Mark]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Alaina Jasper]

YouTube like they recognize the value of both and a balance. So it's definitely. The emphasis is probably too far on performance.

[Mark]

I agree.

[V]

I completely agree. And actually when we think about the types of targeting. So originally your position there Elena. I would, at the surface level, I would say bearish on it. However, the way that you articulated, you know if we're using contextual and first party data, I think and you're saying these are going to be my sources of truth. I think that makes sense. It's. I think where it muddies the water is all these peripheral targeting abilities that some of these platforms often like to sell or kind of get us as marketers on them because I think it does a few things so it will distract from the core message. You can actually have a user. User experience impact as well because again if you've missed and I actually kind of like your analogy if I'm being honest but if you, you put it all on one thing and you're trying to create that one to one connection but like you miss wide then you're going to be reaching an audience that this material or the service or whatever you're advertising may not resonate at all with. So you're not going to see the conversions or the whatever KPI that you're measuring. I think it also adds a layer of complexity and confusion to a lot of it because again this over promise on targeting actually takes away what we're actually trying to do. Which for me then it's why I'm also bullish on the brand side even though my day to day operations in the digital marketing space but do oversee all of media is bullish on the brand side because it's going back to creating those long term equity, those customer relationships. The you can actually differentiate from your competitors a lot easier in that space than you're trying to do it on the performance side. So I'm with you both you and Mark on this that we need to be bullish. I think on brand. The only reason again I said that I'm bearish a little bit on the targeting is because when we're thinking about targeting overall where it can be somewhat, a little bit overbearing. But I completely agreed with your statement, Elena.

[Mark]

All right, let's v. Let's get into a really spicy conversation.

[V]

Okay. So I'm going to be very, very direct here, and I'm going to do this purposefully because what I want to be portrayed here is like, what it applies to the most advertisers out there. I'm not saying about the ones that actually do something like this really well. I'm bearish on this. I'm bearish on the woke cancel culture or trying to integrate it, because we've seen time and time again examples where this doesn't work well. So Bud Light is a great example. In 2022, they were generating over $5.2 billion. They run the ad with Dylan at the time, actually, their key competitor, Modelo, was doing about 4.8. They run the ad, their revenue dropped in that same year to 3.8. Modelo went up to 5.4. In 2024, they're at 3.6. So they still haven't recovered or come close to that. And Modelo sitting here at 6.1, revenue that they had, haven't even generated yet. So when I think about that, the perceived insincerity, the risk of backlash, the cultural sensitivity, the polarization some of these things create, and probably most recent one, I would even argue even Jaguar probably falls into this as well. I feel you. You have to be very, very careful on how you choose to bring this to life, because the risks of it going sideways are larger or outweigh the benefits when you do it well. And again, there's some examples of this doing well. I think Dove is the one that comes, always comes to mind, but they've made it a part of the ethos, and they've been doing it for the last, I want to say 15 years, if I'm not mistaken, but probably goes even back further. So it's different when it's woven into the very fabric of your organization versus when it's something that I'm trying to check a box because I saw a study somewhere. So that's why I'm bearish on this. That's not to say that it can't be done right, but for the most of the advertisers, if you will, out there, I'd be bearish on it. That's just my take.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, I like Mark Ritz, and he says that if you're going to invest in purpose, you should be prepared to lose sales. Like, you shouldn't be doing it as some type of marketing strategy. It should connect with who your brand is and be a part of what you're already talking about. I definitely agree with you, and I think with Dove, what they did well was they brought more people in to their brand through their purpose campaigns. People of all different body sizes, all ages.

[Mark]

Agreed.

[Alaina Jasper]

And a lot of these other brands, they're. I think they're narrowing too much. They're speaking to a small percentage of their target and alienating a lot of the rest of it. So maybe if we could do more purpose around, like including more. Yeah, that might, that might do better.

[Mark]

It's different when it's like greenwashing, like just slapping on a label, which I would say is maybe the risk for a lot of brands when they get this idea to, to do something related to purpose and doing EDI or diversity, just because it's a thing that's happening in the world and trying to retrofit it onto a brand as opposed to making it part of the brand.

[Connor Byrne]

Is it like someone said to me about kind of all those initiatives, like, it has to be more than words on the lanyard, like, you know, all these companies, lanyards, it's like these are our beliefs and blah, blah, and they don't live it and they don't really believe it's on a wall somewhere. And that's the starting point for it going wrong. Because then if that shows up in communications, it's. You're on like a hiding and deservedly so. Like, you got brands who are founded on, like we talked about on those great principles. I don't think it means a brand can't go there, but to your point, feed like, there has to be a real reason for. It has to be meaningful. It has to just be associated with their brand. And, you know, and they're doing it, as you say, Lane, like they're willing to lose to win.

[Mark]

Let's talk about marketing surprises for the year. Maybe, Lane, we can start with you. What was one of the. Or a couple of the biggest surprises that you've seen this year?

[Alaina Jasper]

So I've got one that was like a, I think a surprise everyone would experience. And then one that was a personal surprise for me. The more general one is we had a big election this year in the United States and something like over 70% of ad spend was on TV and people sort of freaked out about it when that stat got out there. And why are people spending so much money on television? And I think it again, as someone who's a big fan of tv, it was obvious to me why someone would use television to try to win more voters. Because you can tell a story, it's emotional. You can show the person you're voting for you can saturate local markets with tv. But I think that one was something that I was a bit surprised by. And then a personal one is I've shared perspectives a few times on frequency and that turned into more of like a debate than I ever thought it would like. It seems like a pretty boring topic and maybe it is. But we found again and again that your first frequency is the best frequency for driving a sale. And that is not a popular opinion among a lot of digital marketing platforms because they want you to spend a lot of money on their platforms and they usually push. You need six, seven frequencies to make a sale. And again, again we see your first frequency is your most efficient. That doesn't mean you can't make sales later on. That doesn't mean you should have one frequency. That doesn't make any sense. It's not even possible. But it does mean that if you want to drive sales instead of tightly targeting bringing that back up, you'd be better off reaching as many people as possible because that first frequency to a new customer is going to be your most effective. I hope I answered these questions right, but those were, those are two different ones.

[Mark]

Yeah, totally. I mean the ad frequency thing is super interesting. Even the TV spend the election campaign was really interesting too. But the ad frequency one I like, for whatever reason I've been watching there's stuff like, like ad spots, like in a two or three minute ad set I see the same ad oftentimes in the same and I'm like why would you do that? I mean extend that out a little bit like it's me, I saw it twice now. You're, it's almost like wasting the spot. This one of the two spots because I've already seen it once in the same ad set. And so yeah, like by splitting that out even within like an ad set into two or three different ad sets, but two or three to the commercials into two or three different ad sets. You're just going to reach more people. It just makes sense when you think about it like from a very granular perspective.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, I think everyone who watches streaming can probably relate to that and it's ineffective and they're not meaning to do it. But there's a lot of issues with cross platform measurement and all. They all speak to each other but there are ways to prevent it and reduce it. But yeah, it's a huge, it's a huge issue. And no, it's not effective to see the same ad 10 times within the span of 20 minutes.

[Mark]

It's not Helpful or in retargeting, seeing the same ad 30 times in a week, like, I've bought it, I've bought the I, you know, like Gunner, what have you got for surprises?

[Connor Byrne]

So the pre testing debate that went on earlier in the year, unsurprisingly Mr. Ritzon was involved with it, but Peter Field weighed in as well and kind of the point of view was that like you're an idiot if you don't pretest. Right. And Ritzon, who says he doesn't have any investment in System one, kind of came in and says they're the best at it and I'm probably misquoting him. But like it was really defending them. But for me, the problem with it was if you're a big brand and you can afford pre testing, brilliant. But if you're not and you can't, that's a problem. And so in the article, and he showed an animatic that Carlsberg did for an ad and they pre tested it and it helped them decide how to make the finished ad. The animatic itself was almost good enough to go on tv. Like it was phenomenal. It was so good. And so again you're talking that level of Carlsberg global brand, big budgets, of course they have those budgets. So like that was my, I don't disagree with pre testing and, and there are more platforms coming out now that are making it more accessible. Like over here we've got Red Sea Research that have the Red Star Direct platform. It's like a couple of grand. So it's, it is getting there, but I just felt it was kind of, it was too black and white for me to say yes, that is, you know, the only thing to do and there's no alternative. And that was my kind of thing. I wasn't surprised that there was a debate about it, but I just felt it was too one sided.

[Alaina Jasper]

So I can speak to like pre testing a bit because we pretest all of our commercials and LLMs have just totally changed what you can do with pre testing. I mean we used to, and we still do occasionally, but we used to run huge surveys, panels of real people. And when comparing that to results from an LLM like Cloud or ChatGPT, it is more accurate, unfortunately for people that run those big survey companies. But and we're able to pre test now, we have a pretesting tool that actually doesn't require animatics. You can pretest now from the script for a TV spot. And there's very few brands and agencies doing that right. Now But I think LLMs are going to completely democratize also. We just ran a brand study for our agency and we still ran it through a traditional platform panel of people. Then we also ran it in an LLM. It was like 95% the exact same scary, like frankly just terrifying. So there's lots of fun stuff to think about there and I think that's.

[Connor Byrne]

Like John and Pete talked about those evidence of their synthetic research that there was 95% or 90% and they were focused on the percentage. They're like well actually you'll make the same decisions. So I think that's the where it's going I think and then maybe other likes of system ones who do charge more. How are they going to adapt? I'm sure they well able to because they're a smart company. But anyway it's just, it's an interesting space and I just felt it was a bit too, too one sided and there's only one answer. But yeah, it's going to be different this time next year.

[V]

I like that you brought up evidence because the one thing that I heard collectively when on yours and when he came on and talked to Mark was just around the speed. Like sometimes they'll get pinged on the Friday from an organization and they'll have the research inside of the inbox on Monday morning. Right. Because they're trying to prepare for a board meeting or things like that. So that for me I think is what's going to change and usher in this new era. I see a system one adapting, probably having a LLM version of that but then it's like you want to go deeper, it's going to cost you more. This is what we're going to get. But you'll be able to be validated likely through the LLM instead. But, but yeah, it's really interesting to see how this is going to continue to evolve.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah. And the challenge would be that like System one they're going to be able to build an LLM based on all their historical data. We have 20 years of historical data of TV performance. So Connor, like if a brand doesn't have that then you're going to. It's not as easy. You can still try it but without that custom data it's not going to be quite as accurate. So I can see how people might be more wary of that.

[Mark]

V, what do you got for surprises?

[V]

I have to say my biggest surprise has to be Jaguar this year. Overall, the relaunch of a brand platform, the way they went about it, you know the Controversy that it's actually generated, and it's divided the marketing community, like, through and through. But I think, again, Mark, we talked about it literally a couple weeks ago, if I'm not mistaken. I think spokesperson, the creative director, he's been defending it, Jaguar, by saying things like, jaguar has no desire to be loved by everybody. Controversy has always been surrounded, always surround British creativity when it's at its best. We're delighted to have your attention. There's. I hear these things, and I can see it internally. They may be able to turn that around and create a rally cry, the world's against us. Let's go all in. Here we go. But the way they went about this, they didn't launch the video with a car up front. Then we got some renderings of the car, and it's supposed to launch, you know, in 2025. They launched it in the art show, the Miami Art show, or I don't remember exactly what it was called. It just feels like they're really digging their heels into this and going opposite of what would be expected. But everything that we've come to learn about, you know, distinctive brand assets and things like that, they're literally just, like, throwing it out and say, we're going in a completely new direction. So I don't have an opinion in terms of saying, like, will this work? Will this not work? All I'm saying, for me, it's like the biggest surprise based on the literature, based on things that we've come to know as marketers, an approach of this caliber, a total rebrand gone all the way to the side where they've actually deleted all images on their socials of any previous vehicle or anything like that. Like, it's phenomenal to see how they're approaching this. And for me, it's by far the biggest surprise.

[Mark]

Fair enough. Mine, similar to what some of the things you guys actually have said already. I have System One in here, I have Harris Trump campaign, and I have Jaguar. But the thing that's surprising to me is we talk so much about how people don't think about our brands. These kinds of examples come up, and there's this visceral reaction of a lot of times, anger, frustration, hate, whatever. And then you're like, do people really not care about brands? Maybe they do a little bit. Like, that's the surprising part to me is more the just how. Maybe it's venom. Like, I don't know exactly what it is, but there's definitely more people than I would have thought that care about even the bud Light campaign like that you brought up earlier. B. There's a definite negative reaction in brands. Maybe not so much the. The positive.

[V]

Yeah.

[Mark]

And so that. That's a surprise to me. Maybe that's part of the. The take on this is the. Or the insight is like in Bud Light's a good example that you brought up. V. Because it's. You have to be careful with the brand. People can flip and be really angry about it, but if you're doing a great job, you may not know as much about how great of a job you're doing until you make a misstep.

[V]

Would we any of us be surprised in like six months or maybe when the car launches and the sales are so soft that all of a sudden the creative director, the marketing department, like, that's all been like, moved out of the company? Probably not. Because this seems like even though it, it. It's being portrayed like this is a company decision through and through, we'll see when it gets to the point of sales and the sales aren't coming in, who's going to actually pay for it and will likely be the marketers.

[Connor Byrne]

They created attention. Like, you look at it and like, there's so many bits they did you becoming. Why did you get rid of some of those beautiful assets that you had? But like, they managed to create a huge amount of attention, which is really hard to do because to the point, like, people don't care. Was that the most intentional thing that they did? Because none of this is in any way anything less than a massive departure from where they were before. And they've been working on it for. Is it a year, year and a half they've been working on this or did they just get all. Get so caught up in it internally and they never, you know, I, I don't know. Like, I just don't know.

[V]

My only, my only thing here is like, they created attention, but they created attention in the marketing community. Did they create attention in the car community? And I think that's where this kind of falls off a little bit. And again, I don't want to use my focus groups and things like that, but, like, there's a lot of car guys, if you will, that like to chat and I brought the whole story to them. They hadn't even heard of this. So like, that for me is like, the biggest concern is like, you're creating buzz, you're creating attention, but it's the right attention. I don't know. Yeah, maybe there's a big part of the strategy. It's like first we're going to attack the marketing community. Next we're going to go to the consumer. Like, we don't know what this rollout looks like. And that's why it's going to be interesting. Because I think, Mark, you've put it best like this is a case study unfolding right before our eyes. So we'll see.

[Alaina Jasper]

You're right. We're not going to know until it like we don't know what their plan is to reach more like V, you're saying more car buyers. But I would say right now they're not expanding their audience or appealing to a broad range of people and they're dumping their distinctive assets, which seem like two very poor marketing decisions.

[Connor Byrne]

Yeah.

[Alaina Jasper]

So that's. But that's all we can see so far. So what happens?

[Mark]

Let's talk about predictions. What do you think is going to be a case study happening in 2025?

[V]

Yeah, I can kick us off. I was. This one was harder for me and I don't know why because like, naturally my mind went to like things that will probably affect me first. So things like retail media networks are, especially here in Canada, are becoming more and more prominent. How do we start leveraging? So I would, I would argue that's probably one part of this. But if I want to take a step back, I think the bigger play here is going to be like video content domination, how it's going to continue to accelerate overall. Talking about tv, how a lot of this content is being repurposed for multiple channels. I think we're seeing advertisers really lean in on the video side more and more than ever before. Because I think there is that distrust on that performance marketing. So the traditional banner ads, lack of engagement. And when we're thinking about we want to try to convey our messages effectively. You want to try to engage across multiple platforms. So you have your short form, you have your long form. I just feel like there's going to be even more and more doubling down on the video side of our space. Not to say that it's not already there. Right. I'm just thinking about the adoption. Continue to accelerate across all advertisers. So I even know like from our side, like we, we did not run a lot of display or static images this year and we did lean more on the video side. So I don't see that slowing down. The only time you were to add any static is from a reach perspective. Try to achieve literally because it's from a cost efficiency perspective more than anything. But yeah, then you Think about like, what is it? Meta quest and all these like immersive experiences, AR VR. Like, I just feel like video is going to be just continue to grow and grow in demand. Overall.

[Alaina Jasper]

I have one. I think that AI creative is going to become indecipherable from human creative. And I say that because it's getting really, really good. And as a TV agency, most brands on TV now are using AI in some way. You just don't notice it. You hear about the Coca Cola spots when It's. If it's 100 AI, it looks freaky or like, okay, there's no, it's like still a bit off. Most brands are using it just to like, hey, say you had a shot and there's a picture in the background before you'd have to go back and say you want to remove that. You have to reshoot more money, more hours. Now using these AI tools, it's super easy. A couple clicks and that's gone. So I think that it's just going to become more and more a part of what marketers do. And V, to your point, it's going to help marketers that want to invest in more video and want to create more video. It's going to be, it's going to democratize that a bit for everybody.

[Connor Byrne]

It's going to make it so accessible. It really is. That's. It's a game changer. And like I'm fascinated by some of the comments that, that I and others get on LinkedIn. Sometimes when we talk about AI and particularly agencies are up in arms and so all these people giving aid or ranting and raving on, it's not great. It's like, well, show me the last eight ads that you made in your agency and were any of those brilliant? Because I don't think that they probably were. You may have eight that you've made in your agency, but show me the last eight that you've actually put out the door. A lot of them are low level production. My thing is this bit of a rant. I think agencies know that their production budgets are in trouble and that's where they make mark 100%.

[Alaina Jasper]

I agree. I mean right now we're using it to bring to life concepts that we wouldn't have been able to shoot. And as an agency we're a bit different because we pay for creative. So I think it's easier probably because we're always trying to figure out how to reduce cost. But yeah, so far it's been able to take like human ideas, human concepts, and make them even better. But yeah, I agree it's a very emotional subject.

[V]

Mark, how about you?

[Mark]

So coming back to the bullish or bearish idea, like I think media mix modeling kind of tying in some of the things you guys have talked about too is like is going to become a bigger and bigger thing like AI and the ability for us to do all these pre testing to all the like performance testing through media mix modeling. The tools themselves are just getting better and I think there's a desire which is creating demand for something other than looking at what Google Analytics tells us or Facebook analytics tells us because it's when you add up the sales they don't equal what's in your bank account. And I think everyone's kind of going why is that? Like there's gotta be another way. And so there's, I think the tools and the technology is kind of merging with this awareness which is also meeting this desire to prove ROI or prove the effectiveness of what we're doing. And so I think that's going to be an interesting development and accelerated kind of space for next year.

[Connor Byrne]

So my one is this time next year we're all going to be talking about Professor Felipe Thomas University and he's got research. It's actually out now but he it's kind of officially launching in the new year and the headline basically is that what Ehrenberg Bass and Byron Sharp have taught us more probably Byron Sharp how brands grow is not what we should be doing. And the evidence that he has suggests that reach is not the strategy that we need to be following. Was a brilliant headline that said it leads to really mediocre outcomes. And his barn Sharp's rules no longer hold and he has the evidence it's a two year peer review process that they've just been through. It's going to be really disruptive. It's going to force us all to not I don't know if it's rethink but definitely look at it and examine it in the paper. He act because I asked him. He's unplug. I'm coming up as a guest in the new year but I did ask him like what do I do now? Like I know I like can I bring this to media? They're all buying for reach. What do they do? He actually has code in there that could be helped for planning. So like it's just, it's deep, it's well thought through. He didn't. His starting point wasn't to disprove Byron Sharp at all. It was a Completely different starting point. This has been the outcome in the peer review. He also told me that he wasn't asked to discuss or mention Byron Sharp at all in the work. In, in itself speaks maybe volumes. So it's really interesting. Unlike everything, there's no one answer. It's not. But I think it's definitely something everyone's going to have to pay attention to and we'll be hearing a lot more from him next year. He's going to have to do something he doesn't want to do, which is kind of make be out there talking about this because he's done this work, he has to make it public. And I said to him, your biggest problem is people are going to think that you are the one that you want to be famous. And it's not. He just doesn't. He's like real academic guy. So. But look, I think it's going to be a big disruptor for us next year.

[Mark]

Yeah, that'll be interesting.

[Alaina Jasper]

So what exactly is his like point of view? Because I can see how like some of Byron Sharp's reach stuff. Ritson's talked about this before. That like sounds great if you're a big brand, you have a huge budget and a super broad audience and you're, you know, selling toilet paper. But there needs to be some sophistication for it. And one thing I've found is that a lot of times it's just too expensive for most brands like to have broad reach. So you'd be better off focusing in a bit more. But again, which is why we buy TV the way we do because it's efficient. But yeah, I'm curious like what exactly. And I haven't. I should read his, I should read his stuff. I actually haven't even heard about it before but can you like define more like his exact point of view?

[Connor Byrne]

Yeah, it's like there's, there's a lot, a lot to it. It was a thousand campaigns that he took. I think it was over a five year period. And he looked at the, I think the majority, again some of this, I may be wrong, the majority of them were the media was bought on reach and he said that the outcomes that they had based on the modeling that he was able to do, again getting real scientific on me was like something like 2% like increase on business effects when they could have potentially led to, I think it was something like 15% of business effects if they had been more category specific effectiveness strategies applied. So not just like broad reach that we want to reach everybody in the Market. So his original title for the paper was no Silver Bullet. And so it's a bit like what Karen Else and Field has been saying is like, not all reaches equal. So it's a bit of that in it as well. And what lots of people have done is taken Byron Sharpe's work and he's actually said what, Even in the scientific papers from Ehrenberg and Bass, they haven't said a lot of the stuff that Byron Sharp has gone into. Right. So they've said that it's more nuanced than this. And he's kind of gone in and again, headline for him is Buy on Reach. Right. That's the strategy. And he said, the problem is people have taken that as a gospel and applied that blindly to everything they're doing. And he goes, it's just that it's not that simple. And so this is more kind of, it needs to be more nuanced. I actually said to him, I said, when I talked to you guys, you guys would say to me, not a lot of people in North America know this work. And I was like, they're at a huge advantage right now.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Connor Byrne]

Haven't been using this. So I have the paper download. I'll send it all. Like, it's 69 pages of, like, scientific stuff.

[Mark]

You know, we had a conversation about it too. And some of the notes that I had from that chat were. The takeaways I had were all reaches and equal, which was the same as Karen Nielsen Field.

[Connor Byrne]

Yeah.

[Mark]

Which I think Byron also agrees with, though this is the part where, like, it's a sensational headline because we asked him about sophisticated mass marketing and his take on it was. Well, it's not. It's not just about reach. It's about reaching as many people as you can within your market and your category and not artificially segmenting the market. And so in some ways, I don't think they're different. But the headline is so, like, such a shot across the bow towards the Ehrenberg Bass work. Optimum Media Mix. Another one is optimal. Media mix is dependent on consumers within the category, which isn't different from Benetton Fields work. I don't think. I think it's complementary to that. Consumers are polygamously loyal. That's same as Ehrenberg Bass. And then one of his other takes I got was influencers aren't that influential. Well, this is from Philippe's work. He also says that mental and physical availability isn't accepted by any serious academic. So, yeah, like, there's. I. I don't talk to that many serious academics. Like, we've talked a few. And Elena, I know you read tons of the papers that are out there. I don't know, is. Is a funnel seriously accepted by any serious academic? Like, I don't know if that's true either, but we all use it. So I kind of. I'm with you, O'Connor. I think it's going to create a huge conversation and I'm interested to see where this conversation goes, but I also don't know that people will read past the headline. And so I think there will be a debate about a lot of things that really aren't that different.

[Connor Byrne]

And the problem will be when people just read the headline.

[V]

Exactly.

[Connor Byrne]

You know what I mean? It's like the headline in MI3 was really mediocre Outcomes, you know, and so it's like, wow, okay, so. And look, I think from talk, like, from talking to him again like this. I'm not defending him, but like, the starting point was never disprove.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Connor Byrne]

What's out there. It was a completely different starting point for one of their funders was like, well, help us figure out where we fit in the mix. That's. That was the starting point. And it was taking then the Canterbury database, I think, again, like, thousands.

[Mark]

Oh, right. It was. Kantar was. Yeah, yeah. The partner in this. Which is also a weird one because, like, there's, like, these academic institutions that just don't like each other, and I think they're.

[Connor Byrne]

Yeah.

[Mark]

They're not friendly with one another. So it feels like, I don't know.

[Connor Byrne]

It'S good, but it's going to be. It's going to be a fascinating debate.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah. I guess I would just add that what's driven, like, our agency are big proponents of Ehrenberg Bass principles, but what's driven that has been they've worked for clients and grown their businesses. If they didn't, we would not be in business because they wouldn't be working with us. So, like, whatever is. And again, there's exceptions, there's different ways of doing it. We have a unique approach that Byron Sharp wouldn't 100% agree with, but I think that ultimately, as a marketer, you've got to be tied to business results. And you can talk about EBI until you're blue in the face, but if your revenue is tanking, they probably won't want to hear it. So it's all about how can you drive business results and then what story are you going to tell?

[Mark]

Yeah, that's good. Well, thanks. For this annual, Sam. Well, second annual, I guess. Tradition.

[V]

It's a tradition.

[Mark]

Yeah. With the flashing lights in the background.

[Connor Byrne]

Christmas jumper.

[Mark]

Christmas jumper. It's great snow and in Minnesota.

[Alaina Jasper]

This is an audio first medium, but that's all.

[V]

That's great.

[Mark]

Well, thanks, guys. It was really awesome to have this conversation with you again and lots of great debate. That was productive, I think.

[Connor Byrne]

Thanks a million.

[Alaina Jasper]

Thank you.

[V]

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everybody.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, Happy holidays. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor de Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn and if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing.

[Mark]

My Internet keeps crapping out, so sorry, guys. I don't know what's going on with it. I'm just tethering up my phone now. It was because of my take on bullish or bearish of the brand versus performance. I'm gonna have to go into hiding.

[Alaina Jasper]

Yeah, the Googler is gonna come after you.

[Connor Byrne]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cut your Internet. They're listening. Turn off your Google home.

[Mark]

Google is actually just good marketing architects.