So system one, you measure brand growth, but when you apply that idea to personal brand, what do you find?

Yeah.

System one obviously measures kind of the emotional response to advertising and works out how that kind of works and the principles around that.

And there's a lot of research in this space.

So what I will say, though, is building, you know, quite a large following myself and seeing the similarities with other kind of Thought leaders in marketing.

I think it's very similar to how brands go for advertising.

As I said, there's four things that, large principles that make advertising work through creativity.

Yeah.

So when your data shows things like this, Where do marketers often misread some of those signals?

That's a great question.

It's actually one of my favorite questions.

So I think I agree with you.

I think the word emotional gets thrown around too much and it's too broad.

I think part of the issue we've had in advertising and marketing over the past one or two decades now, would be, you know, there's great evidence that's showing where we're getting less effective.

And I think one of those reasons is that we've not bothered to define these things.

So, you know, where do you draw that line between, we have data we have more data than we've ever had and that data is valuable but where do you draw that line or how do you how do you think through drawing the line of uh you know if if creative is so driven by data it loses its its edge or its its emotional impact altogether

So when your data shows things like this, Where do marketers often misread some of those signals?

That's a great question.

It's actually one of my favorite questions.

So I think I agree with you.

I think the word emotional gets thrown around too much and it's too broad.

I think part of the issue we've had in advertising and marketing over the past one or two decades now, would be, you know, there's great evidence that's showing where we're getting less effective.

And I think one of those reasons is that we've not bothered to define these things.

So, you know, where do you draw that line between, we have data we have more data than we've ever had and that data is valuable but where do you draw that line or how do you how do you think through drawing the line of uh you know if if creative is so driven by data it loses its its edge or its its emotional impact altogether

[laughs]

And I get brought into rooms by, like, radio networks or TV networks or advertising bodies around the world, and we're, y- you know, they go, "Oh, we're kicking off this project.

How are we gonna get people to stop spending on, on the bottom of the funnel and the top of the funnel? We're gonna do a publication.

You know, we're gonna do another book and a, and a PowerPoint, and we're gonna show up at Cannes." And actually, it's just a great example of, um, everyone that works in this space is doing what they're accusing marketers of doing: jumping to execution, assuming the outcome, uh, assuming things like what is bottom of funnel.

We saw in, like, profitability 2.0, um, that most channels have a lasting impact.

Is, is there such thing as bottom of funnel media channels anymore? [smacks lips] So I think marketers have been very naughty, very naughty.

They need to, uh, actually take a bit of their own medicine and go looking for insights.

But how important is it?

We know how that investment vehicle works and we should just go full steam ahead at it.

I come from a slightly different angle.

So obviously, System One is an effectiveness platform.

And part of our strategy is to fan the flames of effectiveness because in markets where effectiveness has caught on, become our biggest markets, like the UK, weirdly Australia, and stuff like this.

And we're starting to see in roads with more and more people caring about creative effectiveness in the US because it's finally catching on some parts.

So we actually pay for data to actually look at this.

So the awareness of effectiveness businesses has never been higher.

And I love that.

So can you talk a little bit about how that works and the idea of creativity is an investment for tomorrow but not today, why that's wrong?

Yeah, of course.

I mean, this is a key finding of what we saw in the Multiply, in fact, the first publication, right? That, you know, it's not just about performance and, you know, all brand is doing it together and that leads to higher returns.

And then again, from a creative angle, yeah, we've talked about the benefits of creativity to grow that long-term demand.

But in my research with the massive FE data set, we found that, you know, No matter how long you run your campaign, if you're more distinctive, you're more emotional, you're using more showmanship, you'll be more entertaining.

You do get a lift and a short-term impact as well.

The thing is that the difference between the benefit that creativity affords you gets exponentially bigger the longer a campaign runs or the more you wait.

Now, some caveats there.

So can you tell us a bit about that? It's always fun to listen to.

Yeah, sure.

It was a happy accident and I'm very lucky it's all appearing to work out.

I'm from Huddersfield but I moved to London to actually study medicine at UCL.

That was actually like a 10 or 15 year slog because to get into med school you have to do all sorts of horrible things.

Like work out? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and actually understand science.

Tell me a bit about that.

I'm curious, what makes marketing research worthwhile in your opinion, and where do you draw a line on when we need to treat it like a hard science and when we don't?

First of all, oh God, I think calling any market research, marketing research hard science is questionable in the first place for many reasons.

As I said in that column you, you just kind of shared, no research is perfect.

For example, like my friend who I used to work in at Viadeo with once put me onto a load of IWSR data, which is basically like how are brands actually performing in market.

And it was like, look, and there's clearly if you grow loyalty, they're the brands that have grown over the past five years.

What's this about? Well, it turns out if you actually measure loyalty over 12 months, which some businesses do or not, versus three weeks, actually loyalty is really correlated with growth.

Actually more so than getting new customers.

Give us the gold

Andrew, can you walk us through some of the methodology, um, of this study? What content did the study examine? Which platforms, and what were you looking to prove at this point?

Of course.

So the research obviously is with System1, but with our partners at WPP Media and TikTok.

So all the data is, this is all TikTok ad- um, advertising from TikTok, and also all the brand lift and engagement stuff is TikTok data as well.

So what we've done is I've been squirreling data, you know, like, um, a squirrel with nuts over the past few years, building this kind of database on social effectiveness.

So we've been testing a, a few thousand ads with System1's Test Your Ad to really understand the emotional response to the advertising, how well branded it is, the creative features used, the memories built, etc.

And then we've connected that to what I'm now going to be calling, um, re- brand memory lift.

Andrew, based on the research, which specific factors are separating the best creator, uh, content from the underperformers?

Absolutely.

Thanks very much, Nick.

Yeah, I very much enjoyed your premise, Amsterdam, not that long ago.

So the first thing I think when trying to create that alignment is to start by focusing on actually understanding what the business goals you're trying to align with are.

IP strategy flows from and is part of that commercial strategy and it's impossible to get it right unless you've got you and your council both have a really good grasp on what the business is trying to achieve and over what time frame.

So when working on IP strategy or just onboarding your clients, I like to be sent something that gives some of that context.

For an early stage company, that might be a pitch deck.

So what does a strong early stage strategy document look like? And why does that resonate with investors? And we'll come on to one of those investors in a second.

[laughs]

So I'll, I'll give you an example.

So one would be, you know, the use of differentiation.

I think Byron Sharp always talks about the need of mass distinctive reach to recruit new people, um, and recruit new light buyers.

Whereas Ritson really sees a need in creating these relatively differentiated, uh, brands.

I think that is possibly the next stage in where I think marketing is going.

I think, I don't personally believe that you can just grow by being more distinctive.

Hmm.

So maybe if you could just talk a little bit about some of the meta work or just your take on memory and measuring memory and some of the things that we need to think about when we're talking about Q4.

So yeah, I think there's some really new interesting research from a meta called Unforgettable Brands where They're really trying to get to what grows lasting brands over a long period.

And one of the key steps that I found interesting in that research is this move towards measuring and thinking about brand building in terms of memory structures.

It's how I've always approached marketing and it's how system one approaches marketing as well.

And I've seen it in my research recently where we looked at the creative research, the creative effectiveness playbook, where we made one of the key points moving from the idea of impressions to memory.

So the industry moved from impressions to attention over the past few years, where we understand that not all media impressions are equal.

Some get 20 seconds of active paid visual attention, some get 0.5 seconds.

It's not about the deals.

Yeah.

And I think what I've found in my research with Effie and System One is, um, over the past five years, we've seen a shift to different brand effects being more linked to profit and market share growth.

Um, trust and fame are becoming really, really important.

And I think, um, when you need trust and fame leading into these unpopular traditional media channels is really useful, um, especially with mail, it's trust building.

Um, you see a massive impact on the amount of trust a campaign creates if you include mail, but alongside kind of radio and TV as well.

Ah

... from JICMail, but then I-- But they were using it kind of like, you know, flippantly, and I was like, "No, I'll put some numbers to it." So sort of.

So, um, a super touch point.

question is, how does that track globally?

Globally, exactly.

So if you were very kind, I dipped back into the data.

And we've done something very simple.

We've basically gone... campaigns that did use radio and audio, campaigns that didn't.

And good news is it tracks globally.

So if you look at all the total effects reported by campaigns, so that's brand and business effects, those that use audio and radio see a lift in all markets.

Probably not Classic FM, but you know what I'm saying now.

Yeah.

Looking at all the Effie data, and we found that if you include a creator in your top cons- customer touch points, you see, uh, more brand effects on average.

Um, you know, then the IPA launched econometric data with WPP that showed that creators have the longest, the biggest long-term ROI multiplier.

Basically, they're saying the same things.

And then we launched the long and the short form of it with TikTok and System1, um, last year, which showed that, um, actually, when creators do good, good ads, you get huge jumps in brand awareness on the platforms-

... that you think are really practical as a starting point?

Yeah, there's this, um, planning framework about step one is getting your creator strategy right, and then step two is getting the brief right, so the execution.

I- everyone needs to have something like this around a, a way of working, because it's a very different process to how, uh, any other content or ads are made.

[laughs]

This, I'd say this one pisses off about a third of the room when you talk about this.

Um, or a third of clients.

So in 2016, Meta did some great research working with Nielsen looking at, um, clicks, and they showed that, um, there's no correlation between, um, the amount of clicks and brand awareness growth, purchase intent, um, etc.

No correlation.

Meta showed us this 10 years ago.

They also showed us that 90% of sales that happened, uh, that were driven by Meta didn't actually happen on, on the internet.

All right, which brings us to number two, creators are brand builders, not salespeople.

You know what I mean? Like it takes a bit more work to get that stuff.

Agreed.

I got shouted at because I have a chart in the research which correlates spend on meta globally with these metrics.

And people go, well, you can't.

That doesn't prove anything.

But it's very hard to deny that these platforms haven't made these short-term metrics easier to grasp at, which has made them more tempting to use.

It's pretty obvious.

Now, can you briefly explain what they are and why are they declining?

But when you... set out to pull this together because there's a lot in it right what were you trying to solve for

so i think everyone needs a world view of marketing to operate within i've learned a lot of my world view of marketing through the likes of britain and stuff like this and lesbian and all that stuff that is built on foundations of text and effectiveness research And I think it was two desires from me.

One is I have a lot of clients in the U S and they won't believe me when I pull out the IPA that I go, it's UK data.

Why should I listen to you? This isn't stand up in the U S which is just frustrating.

So really want to at its bare minimum, repeat and prove some of the principles that the IPA has spent decades proving at the long and short of it, the importance of spending more on broad reach ETC at a global level.

So that's initially kind of why we partnered with EFI worldwide, because they are the global effectiveness body with thousands and thousands of cases.

The other was, and I think creativity has been largely ignored, if I'm completely honest, from a lot of effectiveness thinking.

Utterly surprised you? Good question.

a neutral country in order to have a conversation.

Yeah, I've never met the guy.

I'm terrified, to be honest.

It's even out on international waters.

I think the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, where Byron Sharp researches and where the book How Brands Grow comes from, has been so successful that the industry has sometimes, and you saw this in the Pepsi, Coke, Super Bowl debate, with simplified creativity to distinctive brand assets, which is a massive loss.

So there's so much more to creativity that actually, yes, getting notice and your brand notice is great, but how are we going to change behavior? Is it entertaining? Is it emotional? Is it consistent in our strategy? So what we actually found in the data is, But distinctiveness is a must.

If you're not distinctive, revenue outcomes doesn't scale with media support.

Am I misinterpreting

What about social impact? What about the whole campaign effect in ad testing?

I agree.

So...

I'm on the fence about this.

I think only a marketer would believe that a customer would care so much that they're stitching together one or two seconds of attention, spread across bus stops and social...

I mean, sometimes at Christmas, people try to do, like, three-part stories.

Can you imagine, like...

Keep provoking, keep daring, keep raising.

Hmm.

I've been in that system for three years, and I get it wrong every day still.

So, I mean, that's the power of the consumer.

I have been singing this at my boyfriend for a week now.

It's my favorite ad as well, I think.

It's addictively good.

And I think I was talking about, you know, I've been a bit of a creative snob, especially about previously Super Bowl years, and I'm rejecting a variety of creativity, and I've opened my eyes this year.

I didn't get that at all when I watched