How not to plan: what matters most in 2025 - Les Binet and Sarah Carter

Summary

Podcast Summary: Uncensored CMO – "How Not to Plan: What Matters Most in 2025" featuring Les Binet and Sarah Carter

Release Date: January 8, 2025

In this enlightening episode of the Uncensored CMO, host Jon Evans engages with renowned marketing experts Les Binet and Sarah Carter, authors of the insightful book How Not to Plan. The discussion delves deep into pivotal marketing strategies and insights that are shaping the landscape in 2025. From the significance of long-term brand consistency to the evolving role of purpose in marketing, Binet and Carter provide a comprehensive analysis backed by data and real-world examples.

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1. Celebrating Marketing Excellence and Long-Term Consistency (00:50 - 02:20)

The episode commences with Les Binet and Sarah Carter receiving accolades for their work, notably the McCain campaign, which uniquely won both the Grand Prix and the Charles Channon Award at the IPA. Carter highlights key lessons from the McCain paper:

Sarah Carter [01:45]: "There's the value of long-term consistency... and the effect on price sensitivity and pricing power, which ultimately boosts margins and profit."

Binet adds that the longevity of marketing personnel, such as the McCain campaign’s marketing director who remained for a decade, underscores the importance of steadfast agency-client relationships:

Les Binet [02:20]: "Family-owned companies think in generations... They build cultures that people want to be part of long-term."

2. Understanding the Customer Beyond the Agency’s Demographics (05:35 - 10:02)

A critical insight presented is the notion that marketers often fail to consider the actual demographics of their target customers. Carter cites a poignant example:

Sarah Carter [08:43]: "The average new car buyer is about 60 years old, but advertising teams, often in their 20s, think about themselves instead."

This disconnect leads to ineffective marketing strategies that do not resonate with the intended audience. Binet and Carter emphasize the necessity for marketers to exit their personal bubbles and genuinely understand their customers' lifestyles and needs.

3. The Power of Pricing in Marketing Strategies (19:54 - 25:07)

Binet introduces pricing as the "unsung hero of the four Ps," arguing that it significantly impacts a brand's profitability and boardroom perception:

Les Binet [21:55]: "If you can sustain a premium, your impact on profit is enormous, and everyone can afford to spend on brand building."

Carter concurs, explaining how consistent emotional branding enhances pricing power:

Sarah Carter [21:11]: "We've known that advertising can affect pricing power for a long time, but it's gaining renewed attention."

The duo underscores that effective pricing strategies not only support profitability but also validate marketing's importance in the eyes of corporate leaders.

4. Embracing Emotional Diversity in Advertising (51:30 - 54:45)

Discussing the role of emotion in advertising, Carter clarifies that emotions are multifaceted and not merely about eliciting tears or joy:

Sarah Carter [53:28]: "Emotions and feelings are slightly different things... It's about creating associations and making the brand come to mind in relevant buying situations."

Binet adds that the intensity of emotions plays a crucial role in marketing effectiveness:

Les Binet [54:06]: "There's a close connection between the strength of the feeling and the short-term effects of a campaign."

5. Media Consumption and the Enduring Relevance of TV and Out-of-Home Advertising (42:04 - 68:09)

Contrary to the notion that TV is obsolete, Binet presents data showing TV's continued supremacy in reaching audiences:

Les Binet [43:28]: "TV remains number one in terms of share of attention, even among the under 35s, and it's the second cheapest media per million impressions."

Carter emphasizes the importance of sheer exposure, arguing that the volume of reach often outweighs media choice or creative execution:

Sarah Carter [48:07]: "The biggest factor that determines whether a campaign succeeds is how much you spend and how many people you reach."

The conversation transitions to Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising, highlighting its rising effectiveness and broad reach:

Les Binet [63:23]: "Outdoor advertising now overtakes TV as the medium with the broadest reach and highest number of exposures."

Both experts advocate for a balanced media strategy that prioritizes high-reach channels to maximize campaign impact.

6. Reevaluating the Role of Purpose in Marketing (54:45 - 58:40)

The discussion turns to the debated concept of purpose-driven marketing. Carter argues that while genuine purpose remains vital, its application as a strategy for profit can appear inauthentic:

Sarah Carter [56:02]: "Purpose is not a strategy for selling stuff. Genuine purpose is setting goals beyond profit, otherwise, it's purpose washing."

Binet adds that economic shifts, such as rising interest rates, have prompted companies to refocus on profitability over social initiatives:

Les Binet [57:35]: "Billions are flowing out of ESG market funds because people realize they're not more profitable."

This shift reflects a broader industry trend towards realistic and sustainable business practices.

7. Balancing Creativity with Consistency (25:07 - 33:29)

Binet and Carter explore the balance between creativity and consistency, debunking the myth that consistent branding equates to boring marketing efforts. They argue that creativity thrives within consistent frameworks, allowing brands to keep their core identity while refreshing their campaigns:

Les Binet [26:31]: "Consistency doesn't mean lacking creativity. It's about making the familiar fresh."

Carter illustrates with examples like Marmite and Spec Savers, demonstrating how maintaining certain brand elements while introducing subtle innovations can enhance memorability and effectiveness.

8. The Enduring Impact of Out-of-Home Advertising (63:46 - 68:09)

Wrapping up, Binet highlights the underestimated power of Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising through clever campaigns by brands like Spec Savers:

Les Binet [63:23]: "Spec Savers' 'Should Have Gone to Spec Savers' in Sydney airports was a brilliant example of simplicity and cleverness in OOH."

Carter reiterates the necessity of integrating OOH into marketing strategies due to its unparalleled reach, despite measurement challenges:

Sarah Carter [65:16]: "Outdoor is the only way you can reach everyone, and it should be scrutinized closely for its effectiveness."

The experts advocate for renewed focus and innovation in OOH to harness its full potential in contemporary marketing.

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Conclusion

In this episode, Les Binet and Sarah Carter provide invaluable perspectives on the essence of effective marketing in 2025. Emphasizing long-term brand consistency, the strategic importance of pricing, the nuanced application of emotions, and the enduring power of traditional media like TV and Out-of-Home advertising, they offer a roadmap for marketers aiming to navigate the complexities of today's dynamic landscape. Moreover, their candid analysis of purpose-driven marketing urges brands to pursue authenticity over transient trends, reinforcing the foundation of sustainable business success.

For marketers seeking to refine their strategies and align with proven effectiveness principles, this episode serves as a compelling guide to what truly matters in the realm of marketing.

Transcript

[Sarah Carter]

Foreign.

[Les Burnett]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored cmo. Now, it's become a bit of a tradition that once a year I ask the absolutely fabulous Sarah Carter and Les Burnett, authors of how not to Plan to come on the show and tell us what we should be paying more attention to. What's the surprising data that they can bring and what do they know about marketing effectiveness that every marketer should be paying attention to? I love these two. They're always great value, great sense of humor and they're all over the data. So this will not disappoint. So pay attention, buckle up and let's get into it. So welcome back to Uncensored cmo, Les and Sarah.

[Sarah Carter]

Hello, Sarah. Andrew. Hello.

[Andrew]

And you got the names right.

[Les Burnett]

You notice I didn't stumble and say Peter this time?

[Andrew]

I noticed that. So I've learned this last time I got.

[Les Burnett]

Well, this is going out in January, we're recording this in December, so. But looking back to last year, pretty good year for the agency as well. I think I'm right in saying at the IPA you won well with McCain at Grand Prix and as an agency of the year in terms of effectiveness agency. So congratulations.

[Sarah Carter]

Thank you.

[Andrew]

And the Charles Channon Award, which is the kind of best new learning, which is the one that we're probably most proud of because that's a sort of gift to the industry award, really, if you like the sort of new learning that hopefully everybody can take away and run with usefully. So, yeah, we're very happy with that.

[Sarah Carter]

The McCain paper is the only paper in history to win both the Grand Prix and the Charles Channer, which makes it, I think in points terms, the most highly awarded IPA award in the history of the competition.

[Les Burnett]

Well, there you go. That's pretty amazing. So if you could sort of, you know, for anyone listening and watching that hasn't read the paper, what was it about the McCain work that, you know, struck a chord?

[Sarah Carter]

Well, I think there's a couple of big lessons in there. One is about the value of long term consistency, which is something that System one has also been talking about recently. So, I mean, that was a consistent campaign over 10 years. And the other thing which I think is linked to it is the effect on price sensitivity and pricing power and, you know, ultimately margins and profit. And it's quite interesting that those two things go together, that long term consistency means long term improvements in pricing power, which is something we've seen before.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And the other interesting consistency bit, which I hadn't realized until I heard the marketing director Talk was that he had been there the whole time of that campaign. So that's a kind of 10 year consistency marketing story as well which again we've been hearing this year with. I think you talked to Yorkshire Tea, didn't you? Again, another company with incredible longevity with the marketing personnel Lath weights actually won effectiveness same. And there's another interesting theme about family run companies here as well. Question is there a. So is there a reason why they are more dedicated to the long term and have people, people who stay longer. But it's interesting all those companies, Spec Saversavers is another one did very well at the effect of another family owned company. So yeah, interesting theme.

[Les Burnett]

Very stark isn't it? In my experience family owned companies is they. They think in generations.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Les Burnett]

They're not thinking in terms of quarterly results. I think that's got. And. And very much want to build a culture that everyone feels like they want to stay out and be part of the success.

[Andrew]

I mean that was very much the. One of the kind of central planks of that McCain paper, wasn't there? Which I'm going to forget the name. The Lodel. No. What was it called?

[Sarah Carter]

Lodish and Mellor.

[Andrew]

They sound like some dodgy Eurovision sort of duo, don't they? Lodish and Mellow, which was a paper about, you know, brands are built on the long term. Why do we kind of plan them in quarters? And that was the kind of theme of the paper really.

[Sarah Carter]

And that's a good overall it's a famous. Well, moderately famous. Famous for nerds.

[Andrew]

Like famous for you. Yeah.

[Sarah Carter]

Academic paper from the early 90s called if Brands are built over years why are they managed in quarters? And it talks about the importance of long term metrics to help steer brands and avoid them being short term in their marketing.

[Les Burnett]

That sounds like something every marketer should raise then, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. I mean like. Cause I think with the whole CMO tenure as well and the churn, I mean marketing has the biggest churn link of any department. CMO is the shortest lived role on the C suite and all this kind of thing that we know and yet marketing really has the biggest impact on long term health of the business.

[Andrew]

I think that's been one of the big themes of the year generally. I mean we'll probably talk about all these things. Long term campaigns, kind of consistent agency, client partnerships, clients in jobs a long time. Brands being built over 10 years. McCain's didn't really start kicking up on the payback till after three years. I think wasn't it? Yeah. This whole idea of sort of owning things that you need is not something that you. You don't have something that you own. You owning is a verb. I think you roll your sleeves up and own things and that takes 10 years probably as well. So there's a. Yeah, there's an overall theme on longevity with all these things.

[Les Burnett]

And the other sometimes lost point about that is as well is that also there's a long history and heritage with a lot of brands that we don't often honor and respect. So often like tapping into what's gone before. And yes, it was a latent awareness and associations with brand is something that lots of marketers tend to junk very quickly in pursuit of creating a new thing. Back to the kind of consistency point of view.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

So what we're going to attempt to do today is come up with 10 things that people should think about as they head into 2025. Because it's been going out hopefully in the first week in January. I thought I'd start as I do most presentations, Sarah, by the way. So I think you are my officially my most quoted person, which is you are not the customer.

[Andrew]

The yellow post it.

[Les Burnett]

The yellow post. Famous yellow post it notes. So the thing that. Well, two. Two things for me last year jumped out on this point. The first one was when campaign made Coke's AI version of Holidays Are Coming their turkey of the week. Contrast that with the system. One response. And it was actually an incredible success. The interesting insight for me was people did not care that it was made by AI. The only people that cared were marketers and we got our absolute knickers in a twist over it. Meanwhile, if you're looking at what consumers think, they didn't care. What they saw was basically the product of a 25 year campaign that evokes a memory, evokes emotion, lots of memories and associations with the Koch brand and that they did a successful job. I mean, I must confess, actually when I first saw the ad I was like, what have they done? Like why would you mess? You know, like literally you've got this 25 year classic. It's like a Christmas classic, isn't it? That you watch Only Fools and Horses and then you think you wouldn't re edit Only Fools and Horses, would you?

[Andrew]

That is the bigger issue, I think. Why? You know, the whole. I don't sure you'll probably start with that ad today. But its value is its repetition, isn't it? And the fact it doesn't change. It's like getting the kind of dodgy Christmas baubles down from the. The attic that you've had on your tree for 20. You probably wouldn't buy them now, but the fact they have stayed the same is a massive part of the appeal. So. Yeah, why would you. Why would you change it? Yeah.

[Sarah Carter]

Anyway, I'm curious. Do ordinary members of the public know it's AI?

[Les Burnett]

Do you know what? Interestingly, when we. When we did the analysis, there was zero mention of it being AI.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

So people. People responded to what they saw. And they saw coat trucks. They heard the music, the aesthetic. I mean, my sort of. This is the problem, Right. Once you're in marketing, you no longer look at the world as a normal person, and it's a real problem. This is why I keep coming back to your advice. And so what I noticed is they're responding to the things they know and love about Coke at Christmas. Right. They're not going, it looks artificially generated. But you wouldn't look at a Disney movie and go, oh, why is that not real?

[Andrew]

They're used to ads having things in that aren't real. That's kind of polar bear's.

[Les Burnett]

Okay.

[Sarah Carter]

I mean, if you look at the original ad, it's got, you know, a bit of animation on the back of the truck, hasn't it? Yeah. I mean, that's not. That's not real. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Is an ad is. You're in a kind of different mindset watching something.

[Sarah Carter]

People don't have a problem with CGI or cartoons or whatever. Exactly.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah. And that's the thing. I think we forget that, don't we? Is. I mean, Disney actually is a good example because they consistently do very, very, very effective work. And it's all animated. You know, that's. That's their whole. You know, that's the whole.

[Andrew]

I don't think anyone looks at our Disney Christmas ad and says, oh, that's terrible, because he's got an octopus on his head. You wouldn't. Normally. I just. It just. You don't. You don't assess things like that.

[Les Burnett]

I love about that is if you'd pitch that as an idea, I'd be like, really?

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

But Disney get away with it. This is partly the magic of Disney and the animation and what they do, isn't it? That they can do things that conceptually, you just go, that's a build.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

But somehow work. I'd love to know from you guys what's a great example of this insight that you are not the customer.

[Sarah Carter]

Well, the one we talk about a lot is car Advertising. So planner that we used to work with who was a planner on Volkswagen used to have a post it note stuck to his monitor computer monitor saying remember, new car buyers are old because I think the average new car buyer is. The average age of a new car buyer is about 60. Because young people don't buy new cars, they tend to buy second hand cars because they can't afford them.

[Andrew]

You know, drive very much now.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah, exactly. So if you're selling cars, new cars, you, you need to be think in thinking in a 60 year old's mindset. But of course people in advertising agencies, you know, what's the average age, 20 something are thinking about themselves. Have they, they want to create advertising that, that, you know, wasn't there some.

[Les Burnett]

Data from WPP showing the percentage of their employees over it was either 40 or 50 was 3 or 4%. It was very, very small. So you're right if you're working on a car brand.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

You're probably 20 years.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

@ least away from the demographic you're thinking about more like 30 or 30 years.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah. Or half a lifetime.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, there you go.

[Andrew]

I mean my example would, I mean we'll probably come on to talk about purpose as well, but that whole collective losing of our marbles over purpose, period, I think, I mean I thought it would be quite good to have a, like a Covid inquiry, a purpose inquiry. So why exactly did we do that? Because we should learn from it. But to me it is just a function of lack of market orientation, isn't it? We've, we've just got to get comfortable with our insignificance in people's lives and that, you know, we influence the least important, important decisions by and large that people make. And the best thing we can often hope for is that they just chuck our brand in their basket without thinking about anything. And that's fine, that's good. But instead we, you know, we, we want other people to think what we think about life and we want them to feel what we think might be important is important. And I mean it's terrifying really when you think of what, you know, that whole purpose period sort of did in terms of waste of money and waste of profit, the implications of that sort of thing. I've got a market orientation question for you. Les and I do little quizzes for the planners quite often and we're just looking at stats at the moment. So what percentage of the uk, this isn't. Trick question. What percentage of the UK population use Twitter or X do you think?

[Les Burnett]

Oh, if I had to guess, I'd probably go somewhere between 8 and 10%. Probably not over 10%, I don't think because I think it's disproportionately used in the news. And Yeah, I go 10%.

[Sarah Carter]

I don't know the answer to this. So can I guess? Oh, go on, you guess. Well, first of all, it would depend on exactly how you define usage, like ever used or have. Well, if it's used in the last year, I think I would guess somewhere between 10 and 15%. So I'm going to say 13%.

[Andrew]

Okay. And what percentage of the UK population buy birdseed in a year do you think?

[Les Burnett]

Oh, hang on, now you've got me. This is out of my realm of knowledge. This feels like a trick question. My gut says like 5%, but you might tell me that everyone that goes to school has a bird seed class and then it's 20%.

[Andrew]

This is adults. Well, I mean you don't need to answer it, but actually the answer to both is the same is Exactly. And it's 22%.

[Les Burnett]

22. Okay.

[Andrew]

So I think most people are interested would. And you were good on this, but would massively overestimate the Twitter X usage and massively underestimate the birdseed figure. And we just think that birdseed figure is so interesting because there's just so much flows from that really. If you're buying birdseed, you're sitting at home with quite a lot of time on your hands. You're there in the daylight because you're looking out the window, you know, and we probably don't know anyone who buys birds, any of us. But it's just a funny little fact. But I think it's just quite.

[Les Burnett]

And a nice thing is the logo of Twitter as well.

[Sarah Carter]

Different kinds of.

[Les Burnett]

The analogy just ran out. Yeah.

[Andrew]

What percentage Use X? But that just sounds like a weird. A different sort of question.

[Les Burnett]

It's a different platform, that one. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Anyway, so, yeah, but just as an example, I think it's quite good to. Yeah, a market orientation test, a sort of MOT every year wouldn't be a bad thing.

[Sarah Carter]

I think there's a couple of things going back to the purpose and, you know, losing the plot. I think one is just straightforward ignorance in that many people who work in advertising simply don't know what the world is like outside their bubble. Age wise, London centric wise being, you know, graduates and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's ignorance of what the world is outside and little statistics like that one can make people's eyes pop can't they? Because, you know, you, you tell people what you know stuff about, basic stuff about people's working habits and media habits and the demographics of the population and they go, you know, the world can't be like that because that's not how I live. And then there's another thing which is more reprehensible really, which is a kind of elitism, which is even if people do live like that, we don't want to talk to those people because, you know, we want to advertise to Gen Z because why would you want to talk to 60, 60 pluses or 55 pluses? Because it's a bit grubby really.

[Les Burnett]

You mean the percentage of the population that own about 60% of the nation's wealth that spend a lot of money?

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah, exactly. We'd rather talk to the funky with no. With no money. Yesterday when the other day when we were talking about this podcast, Kerry made a comment about Greggs and she was kind of apologetic about raising Greggs, almost like, you know, this is not the kind of brand we want to be talking about, you know, and I thought, you know, it's, it's the world. The, the real world includes an incredible range of diversity of opinions and lifestyles. We talk about diversity a lot, but actually we're not, we're only, not that.

[Andrew]

Diverse, are we, when it comes to type of diversity?

[Sarah Carter]

We're only interested in certain types of diversity, you know, with nothing grubby.

[Andrew]

The Specsavers IPA paper, I don't know if people have read it or not, but I would advise that. But there was just a, that's a brilliant example of talking to particular. So they're, you know, I, I didn't go to Specsavers because they come to me to advertising their home visit service for eye tests and actually ear tests as well. That was just a fascinating paper because in focusing on that they actually grew the brand as a whole because it said something about the brand and its customer orientation. And you know, if they do that, then they do other stuff as well. So I thought that was a really interesting example of how you can use that sort of customer orientation to people who are not normally targeted and actually to the benefit of the whole brand. So they're, you know, they're, they're a good brand to learn from so many ways.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, not everyone can get out. There's a lot, I mean, disability going back to representation. Disability is another absolutely very big overlooked.

[Sarah Carter]

Group and that's one that I get.

[Les Burnett]

Population struggle with a disability of some kind.

[Sarah Carter]

I have got quite cross about that at times because it's hard to get a precise measure of it. There is a measure of disability which suggests that about 15% of the population is disabled in some way. And in fact, we as an agency have been involved with a campaign called we are the 15. And yet it's not a kind of diversity measure that is insufficiently fabulous, if you like.

[Les Burnett]

Yes, well, genuinely, I don't think I've ever been as humbled in my life, actually, as where we produce this series called Feeling seen at System 1, where we look at the impact of representing different groups of people. And we did a version of that on disability. And I remember turning up to host the panel about it. And, you know when you're like, you're not mentally prepared for what's about to happen and you don't sort of think about it. So I was recovering from a bike accident where I smashed six ribs and a collarbone. I was on morphine for eight weeks. It was pretty brutal, right? But I was just back on my feet. And the first sort of. My first day out in London was to host this thing on disability. And I walked in, I wasn't prepared to see a panel of very disabled people in wheelchairs. I knew I was going to talk about disability. The reality of it hit me, and I remember the guy ITV who had sort of set the thing up, he came up to the gate, gave me a big hug, and I was, good to see you back on your feet. Good to see you recovered. I was so sorry to see what happened to you. And I just. I was just hit with this sudden. Do you know what? I've recovered. I'm stood here.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

I'm stood in front of five very disabled people that would have climbed mountains just to be in this room. And you're talking to me and, you know, celebrating me. I'm like, dude, come on, please. I just said, look, don't. Enough. Don't. You know, I'm. I'm. I've recovered, but I'm now gonna have to have a conversation with five people for whom just planning a day in London is like, you know, climbing Everest or thing. I just really struck me that in terms of. I mean, part of the problem is we sort of rank diversity, don't we? We shouldn't do, you know, but if ever you were to pick an audience for whom it's a real challenge just to live life, then. But also inspiring as well. I mean, just also talking to. About their attitudes and, you know, what they've overcome and so on is just, you know, just fantastic. So.

[Andrew]

And a real opportunity to say something about the brand. I mean, the new AirPods hearing product. Yeah, I don't know if you've seen that. They said they've actually. It's a Christmas ad about that of a guy who has impaired hearing and can't hear his daughter playing her guitar properly. And it's a product demo basically, which could go at any time of year, but chosen to talk about it at Christmas time. So you get the kind of emotional heft addition to that. But again, says something about the brand as a whole, doesn't it? That it's rolling its sleeves up and doing something practical to help people rather than just putting people in wheelchairs in ads, which is not what it's about.

[Les Burnett]

That's very tokenistic. The thing, the highest scoring super bowl campaign of all time and the ad that has brought me closest or two tiers in my entire life is Microsoft. I don't know if you remember this from about five years ago, Microsoft did an ad about their new game controller and you've got a very, very disabled son and the mum and dad are sat on the sofa talking about the fact that when the son's playing with the new game controller, he's no longer disabled and he can be in the world on a par with everybody else. And you see this quite a tough guy, you know, sort of tattooed, you know, skinhead type guy. And he's just. You can see him breaking up as he talks about his son so proudly. That and just the statement he says he's not disabled when he's playing. Particularly as a parent. Parents, you know, once you become a parent, you sort of like all these things really hit you extra double, don't they, Bar?

[Andrew]

Wow.

[Les Burnett]

You know, that's. That's powerful stuff. All right, so on that bombshell, we'll.

[Sarah Carter]

Move on to listening to the rest is history.

[Les Burnett]

Indeed. Yes, on that bombshell. Second thing I thought we should talk about is the unsung hero of the four Ps, which is pricing and how as marketers, back to the. You know, we don't like to talk about it as much as we should do, but it's incredibly important, isn't it? We forget price at our peril.

[Sarah Carter]

I mean, first we'll. The four P's, we sort of forget that marketing is about the four P's not just the one P. We talked about that, didn't we? One P marketing.

[Andrew]

Yep.

[Sarah Carter]

Pricing is. Should be part of the marketer's job to think about pricing And I think we have long known, but we have often forgotten that advertising and marketing communications can affect pricing power. So I think there's almost a feeling that this is a new discovery. It's not a new discovery. We've known about this for a long time. But it is more in people's minds, I think over the last couple of years. And the McCain paper that we talked about earlier, I think one of the reasons that that won the Charles Chatham was it was a good demonstration of the effect of long term emotional consistency on pricing power.

[Andrew]

And I think that's what the chairman of the judges said. This is the one paper that we've been waiting for that all marketing people will want to take to their CFO and the board because, you know, who wouldn't want to see this effect of advertising? So it's really put the spotlight, as you say, on something that was, it was just a little couple of bars in your sort of longer and broader thing, wasn't it? Of all the, the effects of brand building campaigns. But you literally put the spotlight on that and blew the whole paper up around it.

[Les Burnett]

That's the thing I, what I saw is that chart, that price sensitivity going down as the campaign went up.

[Sarah Carter]

You know, we have proved this before. It's just people have forgotten. So Felix, IPA papers looked at it, the lower pack IPA paper looked at it. But it's good to remind people something.

[Andrew]

About it being about chips and potato though. I think that makes it even more powerful, don't you? I mean you couldn't get a more kind of neutral canvas to paint that picture on than a bit of potato. I mean you can't get much more generic than that. Yeah, a commodity, humble, simple commodity. But if you can do that with communication to build a brand and a price premium around a bit of potato then kind of. It's just the most brilliant example, isn't it, of the power of.

[Les Burnett]

And presumably the other things are fairly consistent as well. So you've got brand that's been around a long time. Distribution presumably is fairly consistent. I mean McCain's in every supermarket. Right. So they haven't changed that innovation probably, you know, a bit how much innovation there's going to be on chips. You know, it's going to be peripheral. So the thing that change was the creative input and the thing that then came as a result.

[Andrew]

There's purity about it which has just made a brilliant case. And I just love the fact that, I mean I don't think if we were here this time last year we to think you know, we wouldn't have been talking about McCain's at all then, would we? It's just a sort of hidden in plain sight. And I love the fact that while LinkedIn is going mad around Jaguar or liquid death or whatever, there are campaigns like McCain or Spec Savers or Yorkshire Tea or whatever that are just quietly knocking it out of the park, chugging along. Yes, but they are this year. And suddenly they're the kind of fighting guy.

[Les Burnett]

I love that that's the case actually, because I think that marketing's challenge is, it's, it hasn't got a strong reputation in the boardroom. In fact, I had Chris Burgrave, who was the, he was the CMO at Heineken for 10 years. He's now a non exec. He's written a paper on basically marketing's reputation in the boardroom. And if you ask CEOs and board, which skill set do you admire most? And you would rank it number one, financial acumen. Last is marketing.

[Sarah Carter]

Right.

[Les Burnett]

And consumer representation, which is insane because back to the. You and the customer could be consumer, consumer first. It's crazy that in the most powerful room in most kind of companies, they're not valuing marketing most. And this is why I think the pricing thing is so important, because you're suddenly talking the language of the boardroom. And the other thing with pricing power as well is it drops the bottom line. So your impact on profit, if you can sustain a premium, is enormous. And guess what, everybody, you can then afford to spend money on what building, you know, and executing it in store. So, you know, it's just, it's beautiful.

[Sarah Carter]

I mean, Peter and I said this in 2007. I think if you look in marketing in the era of accountability, one of the things we said there was that increasing volume is, is good. Increasing pricing power is generally more profitable. But actually it's both. And the sweet spot is to do both. And if you can do both, the payback is enormous. It's like a quantum leap above. And you can do both with. It's like. And again, I keep coming back to Felix Cat food, which is, you know, I know it makes me sound very old, but we wrote papers on that years ago and we took that brand from being a cheap brand on the edge of being delisted to being market leader at premium prices. And the key driver of that was long term consistent cartoon cats.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

Bit like the Yorkshire tea story as well, isn't it? As you say, gone from the auction tea brand leader in the most commoditized sort of unchanging market. I mean I used to work on PG Tips and the graphs just were flat for decades. Nothing ever changed in that market. So to do that in TEA is phenomenal.

[Les Burnett]

It really is. I think people forget. You're absolutely right. It's a category in very gradual decline, 2 or 3% a year, gradual decline. It's not a category that retailers care that much about. So you know, again it's also low margin. So there, there isn't much profitability in it. So to go from I think it was something like 15 or 16% to 40%.

[Andrew]

I mean it's phenomenal.

[Les Burnett]

I mean that is a trend you don't see very often, particularly in legacy categories which you commoditize and a bit similar to, you know, there were, obviously there's innovation and availability but the ability to tie back to the long term brand building impact. And they're still running some of the campaigns they came up with eight or nine years ago. You know, it hasn't changed. The consistency is there. Which brings me on actually to point 3. Beautifully, as if by magic we're going to be circling a few themes here. But the third point I wanted to talk to you about was consistency, but not to get confused with a lack of creativity. And I think this is a really important point, isn't it? I think we sort of think this is either or ah, either I'm being creative and doing something new or I'm being consistent and boring. But actually that's not the case with consistency, is it?

[Andrew]

No, not at all. I mean if you take our Marmite Love hate campaign which has been going for, I don't know, 30 years, 40, I don't know how anyway, many decades. I mean all creators would kill and do kill to work on that. We win at cam with that. You know, we win effectiveness awards. So it's certainly not the case that creativity dies with that. Nor is it the case you need to keep showing, showing exactly the same ad every year either. To me it is almost the most powerful role for creativity to make the familiar fresh as we call it. Or I've heard this phrase the other day, the familiar stranger is what we're trying to. I think in the music industry they talk about disguise, repetition, that the secret of a good music track is just repeating enough to please our brains because we like that. But then a little bit of a difference because our brains also like a bit of novelty. And you know, what greater role for creativity is there than to do that? To take core elements and twist them each time. And so I think it's a wonderful.

[Les Burnett]

Opportunity, skipping from advertising to innovation. But to make the parallel point at System One, we were looking at something, I think it was like 40 or 50,000 innovations and looking at the emotion that people felt when they saw the innovation. And then we looked at the market results to see which ones had succeeded or not. And there's almost this magical mix of you. I mean, John Kearney came up with it, describes this 80% familiar, 20% new. But what he meant by that was you look at the emotional response and 20% of the emotion was surprise, but 80% was kind of familiarity, happiness, you know, all the sort of. Ah, yes, I'm reassured by this. But what was interesting is when you saw brands going over the 20%, so 30 or 40% surprise, those are the ones that were just too much for people to get their heads around. The ones that were 90% familiar. Well, there's nothing to see.

[Andrew]

I think it's a good point.

[Les Burnett]

And that was a weird sort of average that came through.

[Andrew]

We're not getting into Jaguar now, are we? But, you know, they're certainly not going with a kind of a. Exactly. So. But yeah, it's a, it's a great skill to get that balance right, but there's magic in that and that, you know, that's what, that's what we need to do.

[Sarah Carter]

Byron talks about the Byron Sharp that is, talks about consistency and freshness, that the challenge is to do something that builds on what you've done before at the same time keeping it fresh enough that people are interested. Yeah, and I think you talked about innovation, people who design packaging, I think kind of know this, that, you know, if you look at the evolution of the Cornflakes packet over, you know, have many. How long has it been going? You know, you know, 100 years or whatever it is, you know, you sort of see there's little tweaks all the time, but there's a continuity. If you go too far, you mess things up.

[Les Burnett]

This is a really good point, actually. I think the majority of rebrands actually see sales decline in the short term before they go up, because what they've done is they've interrupted the autopilot that people have. I know what it is, I know where it is and I'll just buy it. And suddenly, oh, that feels like it's not the same. So you're absolutely right. The ability to iterate design without changing what people perceive of you is.

[Andrew]

This is an interesting thing, is that you use the word interruption. And disruption is another word that's been seen as the kind of the good word. And consistency is the kind of battle, like, who wants to be consistent? That's really boring. But it actually. Yeah, I was thinking train stations, like disruption is not a good word. Why in our industry has that been seen as a good word? So we kind of need to flip the status around from rewarding those who do consistency well, I think, to those who just kind of rip stuff up. And I. Sorry, I was going to make one more point on that. I think people think consistency means a kind of passive not doing something, whereas there's a very, and should be very well rewarded, active skill in handling consistency. I mean, we've done a lot of work with Marmite over the years to stop that love hate thing being changed. And it takes hard work to keep people to that. We've had, you know, famous Italian client who came along and said he can understand how English people could talk about hating a food, because that's not something that happens. You like the love bit, but could we not just drop the hate bit? And we have a lot of those and we, we do lots of workshops to try and talk about the power and, and to stop that being changed. And maybe we need to reward marketers for the decisions they don't make to change as much as the. As another role. I thought the chief officer. I was going to say maybe we need to just raise the status of all this.

[Sarah Carter]

I think, I think that the word continuity rather than consistency might be more helpful. I mean, you talk about compounding as well.

[Andrew]

That's a good word.

[Sarah Carter]

The idea of building on what you've done before rather than throwing it out. So continuity or compounding has a sense of evolution and growth rather than just, you know, let's just stick with what works sort of thing. I think there's a subtle shift at that point. You mentioned about rebranding and stuff like that. So Peter and I looked at this in, I think, effectiveness and in context, and one of the things we found was that by and large, when campaigns are about relaunching or rebranding, that typically leads to a reduction in effectiveness and follows through. I think it's one of the biggest reductions of effectiveness is there is. So if you decide to go down that route of rebranding or whatever, it has to be a really big important investment. It's not something you should do lightly. You have to understand that you're probably in the short term going to lose some money and sometimes that may be the right thing to do if your brand or your product or your company has got completely out of touch with, you know, where the profit is, then maybe there's a time to change. But we in our industry, I think, have a little bit of a tendency to reach for relaunching or rebranding or disruption as, oh, that'll be a good thing, you know, let's kick it all in.

[Les Burnett]

I love the idea of pricing in the cost of a relaunch because no one ever thinks about what's the downside of doing this, or can I account for that in my planning? And when Andrew wrote the compound creativity work, one of the, I think the surprise, not surprising insights, actually, but the ones that got picked up a lot was the cost of changing creative agency or creative idea. And it's almost like you reset yourself every time. Whereas the ones that were consistent had this compounding effect and the gap got bigger the more years you evidence the continuity.

[Andrew]

That's where there's a difference again between packaging and advertising. I think maybe there's the example of Tropicana, isn't it, that everybody knows, oh, that was a disaster when they disrupted too much. But that doesn't seem to be the equivalent sort of examples of that in the comms world. And maybe they should be. But we're not saying nothing should ever change, but as you say, you just need to go into it with your eyes open and do it with more kind of, of intent and consideration, really.

[Sarah Carter]

So, you know, we were talking earlier about, you know, nuance and the fact that the marketing industry and perhaps human beings in general are just not very good at nuance. And, you know, it's there, there. There are times when you do need probably to, to start again. Another old example that we're familiar with is, is Alan Wicker vs. Rowan Atkinson on Barclaycard. So when Rome was first introduced, initially.

[Andrew]

Everything fell off a cliff.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah, everything fell off a cliff.

[Andrew]

Have you done 10 years of something and then you changed your kind of lead representative of your brand? Yeah, it looked terrible, but it all came back in a year. But yeah, you needed to be prepared for that.

[Sarah Carter]

So that idea of factoring in the price of a change and again, thinking about that as an investment, I was actually in a meeting the other day with a client where they're talking about some issues to do with their brands and their brand architecture and should they change it and, you know, yes, well, there's going to be a cost to that, but it could be in the very long run that's the right thing to do.

[Les Burnett]

We had the same actually on System One because we were called brain juicer. And then five years ago we did this big rebrand. Same thing happens, like initially everyone's like, who am I? And we actually had to start from scratch. Now we've overtaken where we were and we're now clear about what we are than, you know, I guess we were about innovation and unique research techniques, that sort of thing. And now we're more clearly a, you know, testing platform for creative ideas and innovation. But we've had to. That shift has been painful. There has been a, there has been a definite short term cost. Fortunately, it's all come good in the end and we've made it. But it wasn't without its bumps.

[Andrew]

And interestingly, when I hadn't really thought about this, when campaigns change, it is usually when the agency changes as well, isn't it? And also when the marketing. So everything changes at once. And maybe you argue you'd be better to just, just change one of those and keep two others the same or whatever.

[Sarah Carter]

So obvious historical point, but the reason we obsess with innovation and disruption is because of tech envy. Because it's, you know, looking at, is.

[Les Burnett]

It Clay Shirky, the Innovators Clades and Christensen Innovators dilemma.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah, sorry, yeah, it sounds like a.

[Les Burnett]

Mashup of Fergal Shop Christensen.

[Sarah Carter]

I know it's Christmas, but the point is, you know, that it's this theory that, you know, disruption is, you know, an incredibly powerful force in technological innovation and entering new markets. We have this, we've had, you know, what is like 25 something years of longer than that of tech envy.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, well, you're right, but even in that book, actually, because he talks about incremental innovation versus disruptive innovation and how incremental innovation short term is by far the best way of creating success. Disruptive technology takes a long time to actually see through and you need a lot of patience. You need to separate out your expertise in the organization, learn new things. It's quite hard to do and very few companies get it right.

[Sarah Carter]

We sort of half learned that, yeah, it's all about innovation and disruption. Constant revolution.

[Les Burnett]

The one that strikes out for me in my career was I remember I started as marketing director at Luke Zade Rabina Suntory, and I remember the CEO telling me, don't mess with the Ribena berries. And I was like, really? I mean, they've been around for ages. What's so special about the Ribena berries kind of thing. And I went through a learning curve and then we ended up re airing or slightly improved version of a previous campaign, and it actually smashed it on the System One score. And what I got from the debrief, which was very interesting, is that the Ribena berry was the fifth most recognizable, distinctive assets that, that the team had ever tested when in terms of people's associations as British, you know, tasty, natural, all those farming, all those things came out. And the berry itself and Ribena were two intrinsically linked assets, basically. And it was a real lesson to me, actually, is that, you know, as a marketer, you think, how are we going to get a younger consumer in? How are we going to treat all the things? And what I realized is, actually the thing was not to mess with the one thing that everyone associated with you.

[Sarah Carter]

Said something there about you did a slightly improved version or of the berries.

[Les Burnett]

So I was working on Ribena and the creative idea that I inherited was, you can't get more Ribena Re. And it was a vasey, a dramatic kind of. It was almost a magical fairy tale. Land of big, big Ribena berries, having fun, sunshines, rainbows, you know, back to our Disney point, actually. It felt like if Disney did British farming fruit and Ribena, this is kind of what you'd end up with sort of thing. And had a very, you know, fun Zooby Doo Zooby Dah was the soundtrack. So it's kind of very memorable and fun and engaging sort of thing. And I think the team maybe had run it for three or four years, so there was that kind of internal creative fatigue where it's like, we need to go for a fresh direction. And we'd spent months looking at different routes. And I remember, I just remember saying to the team, can we just check that the route we're going down is better than the route we've come from? And, like, I don't mind signing off the new route, but can you just go and chuck it in System One and just do the due diligence on it sort of thing. And then I got this message going, oh, good news, bad news. Good news is it's the highest testing soft drink ad ever in the System One database. I'm like, what's the bad news? And it was like, oh, we don't get to make the new ad. And so what we did is we just, like evolved the creative and, I mean, we didn't make that many changes but the year.

[Sarah Carter]

Oh, I see. Sorry, you were saying that the. The previous ad was the highest.

[Les Burnett]

Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I was. I was doing what a lot of new marketing directors do, which is make the assumption that change was required to achieve growth. Actually, the opposite was true, is that consistency and continuity was actually my friend. So when, rather than spend all the money and effort on doing something new, we kind of evolved incrementally back to our Clayton Christians thing as an incremental improvement.

[Sarah Carter]

What was the evolution?

[Les Burnett]

Oh, very small. No, it was, it was mostly in editing and things like that. So it was, it was. I mean, we simplified it. So what. In fact, our learning was quite interesting. So it was a bit sort of noisy and a lot going on and actually what we did was simplified it a bit so people got it more quickly. The outdoor, particularly on the out of home, which was sort of, you imagine like a, you know, sunshine, rainbow, you know, exaggerated berries. Right. Bottle of Ribena in grass, that sort of thing. So it beautifully encapsulated, you know, kind of what Ribena is. But the interesting thing from a, you know, if you were the, you know, me and the, you know, the, the kind of brand team, we thought that was a bit basic. We were like, you know, this is.

[Sarah Carter]

A bit, you know, childish.

[Les Burnett]

It's a bit basic. You know, we're not going to win any awards doing this.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

But actually the going back to your consumer is, you know, the most important thing. Everyone loved it. It just reminded. But, well, Berenberg, Bass wise, it just refreshed their memories about what they love about it. And so that was a lesson for me actually in terms of the other.

[Andrew]

Thing from Spec Server. Don't keep talking about specs over. I do think we can learn an awful lot from that. But when you, when you kept consistent to something like should have gone to spec savers creatively, the, the great bonus then is you can break that and mess with it and, and, and do stuff like the home visits, like. Well, I didn't go spec. You can do. So it is actually quite creatively liberating because the more powerful you've got these things embedded, you can mess around.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah. So that's continuity rather than simple consistency. You've got a thing and you use it a jumping off point for something else. Yeah, yeah. Consistent but fresh. I'm thinking about Schmako. So we did a, an IPA paper a couple of years ago on Australian pet food brand Schmacko's and that was an example of. I think it was animated ads that had run for a long time and they were well loved but the campaign was getting tired and I think they had run the same executions for a long time and then they had a period off air and everything kind of went south. And then they took the decision they wanted to go back on air. But rather than starting completely from scratch, they started with a new version of the old campaign, but it used CGI animation rather than the old, which I think was kind of like flat traditional animation. So it was continuity but fresh and it worked really well.

[Les Burnett]

Great example, phase 20.

[Andrew]

And with the great slogan dogs go wacko for Smacko, there's nothing like a.

[Les Burnett]

Bit of alliteration or a rhyme or a jingle. I have to say that's a whole different podcast past that, I think in terms of campaign to get the jingle back, you know, jingle bells back. Number four, never forget.

[Andrew]

Are we only on number four?

[Les Burnett]

I know we're on number four. I think we've covered about 20 different subjects in one there, but there you go. But it's all good. The fourth one I wrote down was Never forget the eyeballs. And this is one where I think nuance can be lost. Right. For, you know, there's every headline about TV is dead. Everyone's, you know, Gen Z only online and this kind of thing. Peter actually was presenting at the thinkbox conference. Really interesting bit of data. He attention weighted media consumption. So he just adjusted it for the amount of minutes of actual attention achieved. Now we can have a debate about impressions for, you know, how much attention do you actually need to get an impression? All that kind of stuff. What's fascinating is he had this incredible chart that TV remains number one in terms of share of attention, even in the under 35s. What he also found is that actually TV was the second cheapest media on a cost per million once adjusted for attention, which I thought was very interesting. The cheapest media was podcast, by the way, just for freebie for anyone out there that's thinking about sponsoring a podcast. But that's fascinating, wasn't it? Now again, you've got to balance that with things like YouTube where this blew my mind because I had Sophie Neary on the podcast recently and almost 50% of YouTube is watched on TV. So we've. So again, going back to this nuance of the debate, we've got this idea that TV's dead, but just how we can see TV might have changed. But anyway. But I think how we reach people is as important as what we reach them with, isn't it?

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah, I have so many things to say about that, so I don't want to rant. I mean, the first thing is I slightly disagree with your emphasis there because you're Going down the route of efficiency and, you know, the efficiency of different channels in terms of cost of attention, whatever, if you like. The effectiveness of a campaign is the amount of exposure times, the efficiency of that exposure. And efficiency can vary by a factor of 10 or 20, depending, you know, what choice of media, choice of creative. The amount of exposure can vary by a factor of a million. And we forget that probably the single biggest factor that determines whether or not campaign succeeds or not is sheer bulk, sheer weight of exposure, sheer numbers of people seeing the ads. It's not actually media choice or creative execution. It's how much you spend and how many people you reach. And I think we've got ourselves into a state where we've almost felt that spending money to reach a lot of people is cheating, you know, and that it's somehow not the right thing to do, that we should be focusing on efficiency, not effectiveness. Wasn't this. That when we wrote our Admap mythbuster column, wasn't the very first one we wrote about waste is good? Yeah, about the fact that waste is what makes advertising work. I mean, we don't even like to call it advertising anymore. We talk about creating content and, you know, so when I say that eyeballs are important, I mean literally the number of people you reach and the scale of reach. I mean, I had a little epiphany earlier on in last year when I was in a meeting where 35 different creative routes were presented, and not one of them used paid media, and not one of them would reach more than a tiny number of people. And that nobody seemed to think that was important or what mattered. John Lewis. We bang on a lot about John Lewis over the years, and I think there's. In the marketing community, there's almost a feeling that was a viral campaign. You know, I've actually heard people say, oh, of course, that was made predominantly, you know, sharing online. John Lewis was a massive paid media campaign. And typically in six weeks, we would reach somewhere between half a billion and a billion exposures. And you cannot get that kind of level of exposure using one medium, using unpaid media, using viral sharing or any of those things. Rant over.

[Les Burnett]

No, no, no. It also reminds me actually of. I think Ritson made this point when he looked at fes, looking at what contributes most to effectiveness. The size of your brand was number one, creativity, fortunately, number second. So we all had a few.

[Sarah Carter]

Can I just correct for that? Yeah, I think that's the size of brand. It's. Well, it does relate to effectiveness, but actually, I think the the research he's quoting is that the efficiency is driven by the size of the brand, not the effectiveness.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, but that's the point that actually we forget that scale matters, doesn't it? Like the numbers of people you reach. Budget, you know, back to market penetration matters. The, you know, your mental availability matters, you know, that's the scale matters a lot. Particularly if you've ever been a small brand, you know, that's your detriment.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah, I keep coming back to this. Budget matters. Yeah. Probably the biggest thing that determines the effectiveness of a campaign is how much you spend and therefore how many people you reach and so forth. And we've kind of, I mean, media agencies still think about it, but I think there's a big chunk of our industry that kind of has either forgotten it or doesn't really want to talk about it or kind of feels it's cheating.

[Andrew]

It's that kind of wishful marketing. Yeah, you don't just get a free.

[Sarah Carter]

Lunch, do more with less, you know, etc. Etc.

[Andrew]

Social first.

[Les Burnett]

Well, that is a good point though, because there is a lot of pressure on budgets and the data is suggesting that actually budgets last year are down to a level, almost back to pandemic level. So I think that's probably coming from clients that are being asked to sort of trim their budgets back. And then of course you throw AI in and all that kind of thing. And so that there is a, there is a, A lot of marketers are feeling that pressure. So it could be where that mindset is coming from.

[Andrew]

Isn't measurement one of the issue that people, you can't compare kind of apples with apples with how many eyeballs? Different media?

[Sarah Carter]

Absolutely. That is a, that is an issue. That definitely is an issue.

[Andrew]

And some things just sound a lot in terms of YouTube views in the millions, it sounds a lot, but actually it isn't really, and it's certainly not enough.

[Sarah Carter]

Yeah, in marketing, a million is a small number. I've done some back of the envelope calculations and for a mainstream UK brand, if you're getting less than 5 million exposures for any. Anything that you do that gets less than 5 million exposures is too small to be measurable really in terms of its effect on sales. And yet we mess about with stuff where we go, oh, we got 150,000 likes or whatever, or we got, you know, 20,000 views or we got 18 uploads or whatever, you know, just kind of go. All of that stuff can be ignored. Anything that gets less than about 5 million, you should probably just not be doing that.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, yeah. Laws of gravity, isn't it? You can't, you can't cheat gravity in that sense. Now also you're telling me earlier, weren't you about, about the 60:40 split and, and some different data sources as well that, that have kind of all correlated in this in the same direction as well.

[Sarah Carter]

It's a slightly different issue. But Peter and I talked about how again we got in, we sort of get some stick. What we've not saying is that all budgets should be split 60, 40 between brand and activation, long term and short term, but that on average across all categories for any brand in any situation there will be an optimum split. And if you were to estimate the average optimum split across all brands and all categories, it would be around 60 40. And there's another ratio which is that there's increasing evidence that if you look at the balance of short and long term effects across many brands and many categories that that also is around 60 40. But all of that is kind of a different issue.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, yeah, I was just, yeah.

[Sarah Carter]

Linking to the issue that, I mean you can probably tell that I'm sort of angry about this is that we have just forgotten about how big campaigns need to be to work, how much you have to spend to do that and that you cannot do that without paid media spend. And I think to me this, we, we've become ashamed to, to talk about advertising that you know, we, we don't, don't want to call ourselves advertising agencies because somehow the idea that you pay for people's attention that just feels like old fashioned and inefficient. Sorry. It's the only way to do.

[Les Burnett]

No, no definite reality. Well, let's pivot to our number five then, which is emotion doesn't mean making Les cry. I remember like this time last year, I think you're a sort of half blubbering rep with all the Christmas ads out. But this is something as well, I mean I know this quite a lot from System 1 is that people kind of assume that's what you're trying to do. And actually emotions encapsulate lots of different feelings, don't they? All of which contribute and I mean I liked actually episode I did with Greg Hahn where he said the biggest risk you face is to be ignored, you know, and actually the primary job of advertising is not to be ignored. But emotion is a powerful vehicle to catch people's attention.

[Andrew]

Well that was probably one of the few downsides of the John Lewis avatar, wasn't it? That just became this thing that you have to cry to buy. And everyone was trying to compete with each other to make the Christmas ad that made people cry the most. And I think that has gone, hasn't it? It feels like we talked about be more banjo last year, didn't we? But it just feels like there's a much more upbeat feel around. I mean there are some that, that might make you cry, but not that many anymore, I think. So that feels like that's kind of worked its way through the system a bit and people realize that there are different emotions that are suitable for different sorts of jobs. I mean, we'll get on to perhaps pre testing and happiness and things later. But yeah, there are lots of different emotions, luckily that the human being has that we can play on in our, in our communication. I don't actually lots of them.

[Sarah Carter]

I kind of go slightly wider than that actually. I mean, you called yourself System 1. When Peter and I first started talking about this, we went through a phase of trying to distinguish between System one and System two routes of influence. And the reason we chose that language was that System one ways of influencing people are not all about emotions. It's about emotions and feelings and associations. So emotions and feelings are slightly different things. Psychologists distinguish between those two. But also there's the associative route where you're, you're, you're creating a kind of Pavlovian conditioning. Brand X is associated with Y. It's not communicating a message, it's creating these System one links in the brain. And the problem is that, you know, as you can tell, it takes quite a while to explain that. And people default to talking about emotions or they talk, you know, Adam and Eve, we talk about feeling first. So there's that issue. And then Sarah says even if you're talking about emotions or feelings, there's quite a wide palette.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, that's a really, really good point. So some of the criticism we sometimes get is that people think the goal is emotion.

[Sarah Carter]

Yes.

[Les Burnett]

And it's not. And what we see in our testing, we look at the role of emotion to help the brand be remembered. So of course your first job is to remember who you are. Yeah, you're absolutely right about the key association. So what we find is that depending on which emotion you gener alter the association, people have your brand. So, you know, testing a number of campaigns for one brand and the takeout, the associations could be completely, wildly different based on which emotion you're drawing as well. So that's also important. So, you know, emotion is the vehicle by which you get people to notice you. Remember, you associate with you with different buying occasions.

[Sarah Carter]

You're trying to do several things. You want to make sure that your brand comes to mind in relevant buying situations. Relevant situations. So that's, you know, what Aaron Bo Bass would call mental availability. And part of that is making sure that you've created associations between your brand and particular situations, contexts, mental states, whatever the things, you know that the moments where your brand would be relevant. And then the other thing is to create feelings about the brand. So when the brand does come to mind, you feel positive about it. So it's emotions, feelings and associations.

[Les Burnett]

The other thing we found as well is in our testing that also is important is intensity of those emotions. So in fact it's something that I think is probably. We haven't drawn out enough at System one, but we measure how strong that feeling is and there's a very, very, very close connection between kind of short term effects and how strong the feeling is as well. So, you know, because you can make people feel a little bit or you can make them feel really passionate about whatever it is as well that makes people difference. Right, so let's go number six. Controversial perhaps, or perhaps not. Is the era of purpose over? What do you think? There you go. He drops that one in there like a little.

[Andrew]

I think we've kind of talked about that a bit, haven't we? I mean it. There is certainly a lot less talk about it now. Yeah, I mean some companies, I think everyone was banned it as a word now even so it's, it's the word, they're not speak its name. So I think it's. We've got a better sense of proportion about it.

[Sarah Carter]

What.

[Andrew]

I suppose if I was giving you a kind of grown up reaction to that, I think it's gone back into the box which it probably should always have been in before we lost our collective marbles. That it is a strategy for certain brands, probably not many of them, but it's certainly not the strategy for all brands, which is where it was coming. So yeah, more sense of proportion around I think and we've all kind of come to our senses would be my summary of that.

[Sarah Carter]

That. Yeah, I mean again, we nuance it. You know, purpose is the thing. Purpose is dead, you know, it's. I don't think it's over. I think as you say, it's one of the things that goes on. But the other thing is, I think we talked about this last year probably, but purpose is not a strategy. If it's A strategy for selling stuff. It's no longer purpose. So true purpose is actually, you know, setting a goal that is not profit. Anything else is just fake purpose. It's purpose washing. And I think where we got into a bit of a muddle was thinking that purpose and business were just naturally aligned, you know, that the way to make more money is to do social good or whatever and that there's no conflict between those two things. And I think that was just wishful thinking.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, right. I mean, I think it's rich and quite isn't. The purpose of purpose is purpose. But also purpose comes at a cost. Purpose should be costly.

[Andrew]

I mean, and we know from Peter Field's analysis that it does, it does come out as a cost because it's not an effective strategy by and large.

[Les Burnett]

Unless your business is in the business of purpose. If you're a Patagonia or you're Tony's chocolone, your business is founded on. But even that, I mean we had Tony's on just before Christmas and they have to justify quite a significant price premium in order to pay the living wage for cocoa farmers where they source their cocoa from. So there is a big cost and therefore they make less profit or they have to charge higher prices to consumer.

[Andrew]

And I think if we did do the purpose inquiry, like the COVID inquiry, I think, you know, a couple of other things would emerge. One is just, you know, the misleading way that dodgy research can lead you astray. You know, we will know if you ask people, if I knew that this shampoo made a difference to girls lives in developing countries, would you buy it more? Of course you're going to say yes, but that's not the same as that's going to influence you when you're faced with, with 20 different shampoos at the shop shelf. But the other thing is companies sort of distorting data to show what they feel purpose does when you know, when using some sort of dodgy correlations that the brands that use purpose are growing more than others. When is the causation going the other way? Yeah, there's just all sorts of dodgy research.

[Les Burnett]

That's probably what people are reacting to, isn't it? The overreach of purpose confirmation bias in research.

[Andrew]

You know, just there's a whole other podcast on, on dodgy research use. I think in this world as well. And I think we're and lack of market orientation. It does come back to that, that we're wanting other people to behave in the way that we feel is important rather than Looking at it from the other end of the telegram, a lot.

[Sarah Carter]

Of it is kind of wishful thinking, isn't it? I mean, there's been a lot of dodgy research in that area and it didn't matter so much in the sort of, I don't know, decade from 2000 to 2019. Because interest rates were basically, money was free, so real interest rates were zero. That means money's free. That means businesses don't have to make a profit to survive and so you can pursue other goals. And everything changed basically once we got past Covid and we moved back into a world where interest rates are positive again in real terms. I mean, I think anyone who's young will not realize just how exceptional that decade of free money was. I mean, it is unprecedented in the last 200 years. And we now move back to normality, which means that companies do actually have to make money now. And there are some quite interesting little data points on that. So for instance, the Economist magazine, or newspaper as they like to call themselves, have tracked the use of terms like ESG, purpose, DEI, etc. In earnings calls of CEOs talking to, you know, investors. And it's fallen off a cliff. CEOs are no longer talking about that stuff. And ESG market funds, you know, you can put, you can choose to invest in purpose driven companies for the first time. Billions of dollars are flowing out of those funds because people are realizing they're not more profitable, not giving the return, you know, so to me, those are the things, you know, that that message will filter down from CEOs and boards down to us little, you know, hobbits at the bottom of the chain. In a couple of years time, we'll begin to realize that actually nobody will want that stuff anymore.

[Les Burnett]

Well, maybe, maybe this links us nicely to the point number seven, which is about don't just be in culture, but stay in culture as a goal. Because I mean, I mean, how many briefs you must get to. Yeah, we want to be in culture, be in the conversation. Yeah, the best brands, the ones that probably stay in culture.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I mean, I was struck by something the McCain's marketer was saying a month ago where he was saying he thinks actually fame is overrated because it tends to lead to what he was called fireworks sort of activity, kind of brief flashes in the sky and then, and then it kind of dies away. And he said he was more interested in lighting bonfires, which I thought was a rather lovely new way of looking at things really. And we talk very much, we get loads of Breeze about we want to get into culture and that kind of stuff. But yeah, we don't talk so much about staying in culture slash people's minds, which is what we were talking about earlier with brands being built for the long term and memories need to be long term and that kind of stuff, stuff. So I thought that was an interesting reframing of what we should be doing. And then, then this is another conversation. But we've talked before about slogans, jingles, stuff that stay in people's brains for a very long time and how that tends to have been derided as well. But some of the great campaigns that are winning effectiveness awards show that that's probably a rather misguided point of view as well.

[Sarah Carter]

I mean, fame is incredibly powerful. I mean, but, but enduring fame is kind of what you want. And this, this is really hard. I mean, saying do something that's going to make you famous, that's like saying have a number one hit record, which is, you know, there's no formula for doing that. And secondly, what you really want is enduring fame. So, you know, what you want is to have a number one hit record, you know, again and again and again, which is hard. But I mean, two, two examples, I keep coming back to John Lewis. I mean, we did manage to do that for a decade, didn't we? We. It was, we did the equivalent of having an, the Christmas number one every year for a decade. But the other one is Marmite, actually. So what we did there was we inserted ourselves into culture and in a way that has been quite enduring in that people, I bet even if we stopped talking about love hate, people would still say, oh, I'm a bit like Marmite, you know, people either love me or hate me, you know.

[Andrew]

Well, it was one of the things we did a bit of research when one of the conversations came up about should we change love hate and, and drop the hate bit. And we did some research that looked at the awareness of love hate against other lines actually from other brands. I won't say who they are, but who spend a huge amount more money on that. And it was off the scales. I always was a. You can't actually erase that from people's minds even if you watch this. So you may as well push on the open door and go with it and, and do something kind of fresh with that familiarity. So.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah, well, you've already referenced this one as well. But my favorite in this space is should have gone spec saversavers.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Les Burnett]

Even they. After how many years, probably 17, 18 years, they did consider changing about three or four years ago. I can't believe it. You know, just look at how that's in the vernacular and how this is a bit like we were saying earlier, nothing like the freedom of a tight brief because they're so clear on what they're about. That actually, that liberates you, doesn't it? It's creatively to express it and break the rules a little bit.

[Andrew]

Go with, I didn't go Spec Savers, rather than junking the line completely.

[Les Burnett]

Still leveraging.

[Andrew]

Play with it. But yeah, exactly.

[Les Burnett]

Which seamlessly brings me to number eight, actually, which is don't forget the power of out of Home. Because I think my favorite out of Home campaign of last year, I don't know if you guys saw this, was. Did you see in Sydney airports, they did a massive Spec Savers ad saying, welcome to Melbourne. That's so simple. So simple. And that. Like, everyone was talking about it, but I just thought, how clever. And I was at cinema the other day and they had the ad upside down. You know, should have gone. First you're going, what's going on here?

[Sarah Carter]

The one I like.

[Les Burnett]

Oh, the cameraman's got it wrong. But then you realize, of course, the jokes.

[Sarah Carter]

The one I like was there was somebody drove through the middle of a roundabout somewhere in the south of England and smashed all the flowers up and stuff like that. And within a day or so, Spec Savers put a poster up on the roundabout saying, should have gone to Spec Savers. Yeah, so clever. So outdoor. I was kind of going to mention this earlier on, actually, in, in. In today's world, outdoor has now overtaken TV as the medium that has the broadest reach and the highest number of exposures. So I think everybody should be compulsory, that everybody in our industry in the UK at least, should scrutinize the IPA Touchpoint Survey when it comes out every year. Because what that shows very clearly is now outdoor is the only way you can reach everyone.

[Andrew]

1.

[Sarah Carter]

And you mentioned the attention research. Did they look at outdoor?

[Les Burnett]

Oh, I don't think so. I better, better check. Sorry, before I say, but I think it's the audio visual on different platforms. Attention. So.

[Sarah Carter]

So that'd be interesting, you said. Yeah, TV's still the medium.

[Les Burnett]

Yeah.

[Sarah Carter]

You know, but so they're missing a very big and important medium there. And of course, nowadays some outdoor is maybe not audio, but it's visual. I often think, you know, they should stop calling it digital out of home or something. Call it, you know, like out of home video or something like that. So I think it's kind of a forgotten medium to some extent. We don't talk about it nearly enough. We don't do it. Having said that, there are some challenges about measuring the effectiveness of outdoor and you can see why, for example, it might not be in that attention research because it's not something you can so easily show someone on a screen in a controlled environment.

[Les Burnett]

We've got a partnership actually with JC Deco. We're doing some work at the moment looking at the link between emotion, well, star rating effectively, but emotion and success of out of home campaigns. So very early days, we won't publish for another couple of months. But direction looking very.

[Andrew]

And it's creatively an interesting space as well. I mean we're recording this in uncommon studios and shout out to them for their, their Monzo ads and their British Airways ads. And I think it's just, it's a really good test of a strong idea. If you can. Well, spec savers do great posters as well. If you. In our world, that's getting ever more complicated. If you can, if you've got an idea that you can do a good poster from, you know you've got a good idea. And so I think creatively it's a very interesting space as well for us to think more of all of you. Because you're right, it just tends to get overlooked and it's the one medium.

[Sarah Carter]

That reaches both young and old people.

[Les Burnett]

It doesn't.

[Andrew]

It does.

[Les Burnett]

It does, doesn't it? And probably a lot of wastage. He says in quotes. Yes, but that's where everyone sees not just, not just the target audience that you might be paying excess money for.

[Sarah Carter]

We know that the primary driver of media effectiveness is reach and outdoor is the one with the highest reach. But there are challenges. So for instance, you talked about the fact you're going to be doing or are doing some research, but that's about creative efficiency. And what I'm worried about is measuring exposure, getting back to counting the eyeballs and that is hard to do. And, and that matters because if you want to do econometric modeling, market mix modeling, you've got to have that data to put in. And if you haven't got good exposure data, then you won't get a proper measure of effectiveness of roi, payback, whatever. And therefore outdoor is always lowballed in terms of effectiveness in those sorts of quantitative studies.

[Les Burnett]

But listen, thank you both, as always, it's an absolute pleasure. Thanks for coming on.

[Andrew]

Thank you.

[Les Burnett]

Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored CMO I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show, so please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on XenSoredCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.