category that yeah definitely listen to the singles it's much easier it's free so moving on to as we said like this is that's a high consideration like you know big purchase category and to move into something that is kind of low loyalty high substitution fast moving and we're going to talk about american eagle now we talked about in the episode they were like they were in the toilet they had a real problem they weren't people weren't even thinking about them but from kind of the brand health point of view how have we seen the impact of the sydney sweeney campaign because they really haven't done anything else since so we can what's nice about this is we can say you did sydney sweeney campaign what has that done to brand health

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, so back in August, episode nine, I believe it was, when we first covered the American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney campaign, we've been keeping a close eye on their brand health data in the US just to track how it's moved over the past few months.

Now, interestingly, American Eagle have recently reported a surprise 10% EPS gain with revenue up 6% to 1.36 billion and comparable sales growth accelerated to 4%, which was beating expectations by all account.

And their CEO, I think, commented that American Eagle's strong momentum, which was fueled in part by a Sydney Sweeney ad campaign, continued into the holiday quarter.

And of course, the campaign being referred to here is the Sydney Sweeney has great genes, which was a campaign that drew widespread criticism, controversy, but just there was a lot of attention around it.

And I think if we zoom out to the category context for a moment, and as you've mentioned, kind of clothing is a low loyalty, highly interchangeable category, which sits at 93% penetration.

So how have things gone for road?

And then you find yourself on a call that you're listening to nine different options of which team you need to go to before you're directed to the next step.

I also think what's just interesting is looking at this from a sort of broader societal aspect around this very topic of financial conversations, I think historically or traditionally, It had always been viewed as quite a taboo subject and not necessarily something that was widely spoken about.

And you wonder how much go outside of, say, the family home.

And therefore, you wonder how much of that's fed into perhaps a lot of the more heritage brands within that space, obviously leaning more into that.

or holding a court within the older demographic.

I think whereas when you're looking at some of these neobanks that have entered the category, so your Starling Banks of the world, your Revolutes of the world, your Monsters of the world, I think the way that they've tried to then almost tackle that very topic and that very subject, and I think particularly by looking at a younger demographic to do that, i.e. starting the conversation early, we've obviously touched on the product aspect, but completely simplifying, I suppose, the customer journey, the user experience of navigating their way through.

And almost providing that somewhat of a support infrastructure around it.

It's in so many markets and does incredible work and just connects with people in a really great way.

It's almost feels like it's, And maybe this is what they were trying to get a grip on now, saying our brand is OpenAI.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, I think I was reading a good article in The Drum with Mark Rotson where he calls out OpenAI has finally gone full field in Burnett.

And I think it's a huge moment really for OpenAI to be launching their first international brand campaign for the ChatGPT brand.

And obviously that's across the US, the UK and Ireland.

And I think when you look at the campaign itself, it leads with human stories that show what OpenAI calls the everyday magic of using ChatGPT.

And I think it's a big full funnel moment for the brand and one that's clearly positioning the ChatGPT brand as more emotional, more of a human brand.

Yeah, kind of an interesting one for him to jump into.

But sometimes these conversations ignore that product innovation is also what's required as things change and both are obviously very high top of funnel brands and so if we're trying to think about bottom of funnel conversion there is a huge product component of like what do buyers need right now when it comes to recruitment um and so how does product also play into that whole future view of efficiency as well yeah

Yeah, I think and also just taking then, I suppose, then another view back to the Diageo side of things.

I think one thing that really stood out to me was Diageo's interim CEO explicitly saying that their cost measures were taken without damaging long term brand health.

Now, historical evidence shows the risk of cutting too deep.

This was first demonstrated in a study by Roland Valley, who tracked 200 companies.

This was during the 1923 recession.

And those who maintained advertising were 20% ahead of pre-recession levels, while those who cut fell 7% behind.

Like the darling of craft beer, it just seems to be on a bit of a, it's not going right for them at the moment, is it? It just seems to be, you know, is it culture? Is it trends? Is it people not liking the product? Or is it something else? But what's your data telling us about BrewDog?

so good like it's they're playing themselves really kind of see and there's one kind of nearly outtake that's in one of the ads and like watch your back or something like that and it oh yeah because he bends over something goes oh watch your back and the two of them just break their hearts laughing and it's just i love it i love it so good So it's so enjoyable, right? It is.

It's absolutely brilliant.

And it's exactly that.

It features Steve Carell, John Krasinski, and introduces Luigi the robot.

And effectively, what the campaign looked to do for context listeners is to create an emotional connection by highlighting that pleasure is a uniquely human experience.

And essentially what it looked to do is reinforce the VATS's identity as more than just functional by positioning them as joyful, warm, full of personality, and really looking to kind of lean into celebrating the experience of enjoying a cup of coffee.

And as Grace, who's part of the singles team said, why is it always robot content that gets me in my feels? And emotional storytelling, as you've just highlighted, Connor, you know, it's something that's been a recurring theme in this series, right? And ultimately, the data does support it.

Yeah.

And actually, when you looked at that campaign, case study it was meant it was built around that but obviously they say they they fudge the results so it's a real shame and obviously can have reacted to that with you know new guidelines like byron sharp has given out about you know the judges should do a better job like what are they supposed to do right they have to take things at the value they're in so it's a real a real shame to see that and i just kind of help wondering if they just went with the right campaign would they still have won yeah do you know the right results instead of trying to And so, yeah, definitely a real shame

to see that.

Yeah, yeah, no, completely.

And I think, you know, it's yeah, it is a real shame.

And I think it's it's it's one of those where kind of post the post the event, you do ask yourself sort of those what if questions.

And I think what's been quite interesting is obviously to see how can themselves have reacted to this, which is the new framework.

So as of next year.

someone's so you know i i it's it's really interesting but uh yeah so then we were kind of saying there actually is these kind of ai driven influencer strategies that are evolving and again then maybe ties a bit into the dove work as well right

exited side left or a stage left and look I think there's going to be lots of I think maybe the natural inclination is for people to go well what went wrong right like what you know why like but he's there till the end of the year where they find you know a successor he's had a long illustrious career and you know maybe a different spin on it is like there's lots of things he kind of got right in his tenure at WPP would you would you agree yeah

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, to your point, since the news broke, it has been, I think, on the minds and lips and fingertips of most of us within the marketing and advertising world.

And, you know, I've read a lot of different articles and perspectives and opinion pieces on this.

And Mo seemed to highlight that his tenure essentially marked a period of significant structural strategic change and ultimately delivered stability for WPP since his appointment.

And what that seemed to bucket sort of within was through his efforts to streamline the agency network and push for a more simplified operating model, but then also focus on digital transformation and AI.

And I was reading a quote of his yesterday where he highlighted that his biggest focus of the past two years was preparing WPP to succeed in this AI age, which of course ties into the launch of WPP Open, which is their AI driven operating system for marketing transformation.

this business right you know like yeah that happens and I think you know the pressures as you say on the the big holding companies you know it's it's it's not getting easy for them which means it's not getting easy for anybody right it's it's definitely a lot a lot harder right there for for all agencies

But like you guys have seen some really interesting stuff from the US in terms of the streaming services.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's interesting because streaming, as you said, is such a saturated market, but everyone feels like they're going into this maturity stage now.

So...

An example of that is Netflix in their latest earnings report moved away from reporting on subscriber counts to now focusing on revenue and profitability.

And it feels like they're now starting that journey of, hey, we trust ourselves as the market leader that we don't have to talk to grow at all cost metrics and we can start to focus on the financial metrics that everyone cares about on Wall Street.

I didn't read that article.

You know what I mean?

I think trust is probably a big one in this one, right?

Yeah.

I mean, the category that we're seeing, particularly in the US, is increasing really quite rapidly.

So penetration over the last year or so has increased by seven percentage points.

So that's increased from 52% up to 59% from May of last year through to April of this year.

And that growth is being driven across the majority demographics.

But where La Rochelle-Posay, as you mentioned in particular, now they are starting to build some really strong momentum and that's across their funnel.

And they're obviously, that's what they seem to me to be trying to do, right? Yeah,

It's interesting as well when we think,

even though Vervo's owned by Expedia, when we think of more traditional challenger brands, how you're leveraging the scale and size of that competitor.

One that jumped to mind, do you remember the Dashwater campaign with Coca-Cola last year? And they've just doubled down on it again, I think this month, where they first ran the finally a drink to feel good about out of home campaign on top of a will look to be a Coca-Cola campaign spot.

And then the most recent one is an interactive campaign where it's essentially a billboard that says sugar-free and that it's all about transparency.

And there's these huge, it's somewhere in London, I think it's, somewhere central London where there's a huge set of glasses on the other side of the road where you can, they're filter layered so that you can see through and it's around, see the bitter truth about artificial sweeteners and their link to cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

And so that is like a direct shot at a category captain from a a challenger brand that's doing such a phenomenal job.

And in this instance, what's really interesting is they keep hammering home the transparency piece, being a healthier alternative for someone like Dash, where I think there was a report to say that 70% of their consumers pick Dash because they're a healthier option.

retracted a bit i think everyone's like oh that's the death of liquid death i don't think that's necessarily the case but what's the data what's the data telling you guys on on liquid death

But it's a fair thing to kind of look at, I think, the Elon effect.

Yeah, completely.

And I mean, I was reading an interesting article in the New York Times that highlighted how Tesla sales in the US fell almost 9% in the first three months of the year, even as the overall electric vehicles category had grown.

And I think that's what's quite important to note here is that sales of all electric vehicles in the US rose by 11% during the first quarter to about 300,000 cars and light trucks.

And this was according to Cox Automotive, who had quoted that electric vehicle sales continue to grow at a healthy pace in the US market.

And then I sort of followed that on from, again, having a look through the BBC and having a look at their take as to what's happening.

And again, they had highlighted that Tesla sales have plummeted to the lowest level in three years.

That is an incredibly competitive marketplace to be in, right? And I don't know, have Puma lost their way a little bit? Are they coming back? What are you guys seeing?

You went out and spoke to 6,000 Brits and asked them, well, what did you ask them? And then what came back?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the brand map of Britain report essentially captures the power of preference.

And it dives into how local emotional connections shape long-term brand preference almost.

And the report itself acts as a blueprint essentially of British regional preferences.

So to your point, we went out and surveyed over 6,000 UK consumers.

And what we looked to capture that across was across five key categories.

Jasper, tell us a bit about how things are going for them.

Yeah.

No, it's fascinating, actually.

I mean, I was listening to one of your prior episodes with Gary McLaughlin around the spirit side of things and about the advertising with that space.

And it was it it bore interesting thought for me thinking about how that has somewhat shifted in the marketing severe now for brands to be focusing on the non-alcoholic side of things and the alcohol-free side of things and i mean guinness in particular is a brand that i mean as we know steeped in heritage essentially have always stayed true to the four p's and their advertising has been synonymous with how they've shown up in the marketplace And I mean, I think from the zero zero perspective, I mean, what we're seeing within our data is that their funnel metrics are on the rise and that's alongside a growing category in of itself.

Again, I think it's around 20% currently in the UK of adults don't drink at all.

Fox era kind of had that nostalgia for me but I'm old so I think he was saying that they're definitely looking at kind of Pepsi Max being the leading product so they were very much understanding that that's like where consumers heads are at and now you've got you know this space where you know it's seen as healthier snacks healthier beverages and you know pepsi are obviously going right this is this is something we can we can actually help accelerate do you think it'll do because poppy had some brilliant associations with innovation do you think it's going to do anything to help pepsi on their kind of perception as being an innovative brand and a a brand that's i think maybe thinking about consumer health It's interesting.

I mean, I certainly wondering if it's more indicative of their sort of strategic approach as a business to head more in that innovative direction.

And certainly by obviously, yeah, as we've picked up acquiring a brand, you know, that had a 58% association with innovation versus 28% on Coca-Cola certainly might indicate to that move.