Transcript

Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research-first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

Elena: I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines.

Angela: Hello.

Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions in data research results. Today, we're talking about creative effectiveness. What is creative effectiveness? How important is creative to overall advertising success?

Elena: And how do you produce creative that is effective for your brand? I'm excited to share our research with you today, but I wanted to take a second to define creative effectiveness. I decided to use the IPA's general definition because we're referencing their work today. And that definition is creative effectiveness is a demonstrated ability of creative communications to deliver significant measurable business results, such as sales growth, market share increases or improvements in brand health over both the short and the long term.

Elena: And I think all of us as marketers probably heard that and thought, alright, yeah, creative effectiveness is definitely worthwhile, but are our brands executing on it? The study I chose for today can offer us some answers. It's from Peter Field, and it's titled "Selling Creativity Short." He found, since 2010, the efficiency of highly creative campaigns has halved.

Elena: And he believes this is because marketers are leaning into short-termism, and they're prioritizing quick wins and immediate results over the lasting brand equity that creativity builds. Then we combine this with shrinking budgets, and we're left with what he calls a creative crisis. The silver lining is the fact that creativity's power hasn't diminished, it just isn't being used the way that it used to be.

Elena: And we're going to talk about that today. If creative effectiveness is rare, how can you make sure that you're the brand that's doing it right? And we've heard versions of this same challenge before. It's been called the creativity crisis, and in "The Extraordinary Cost of Dull," which is another famous creative study conducted by Peter Field, Adam Morgan and the IPA, they quantified this challenge in dollars lost to dull TV advertising.

Elena: And that included some striking statistics: Brands in the U.S. would need to spend an additional 189 billion dollars annually to make ads in the three dullest quartiles as effective as the top non-dull quartile ads. And extremely dull ads require an additional 109 billion dollars annually in media spend to achieve the same growth efficiency as non-dull ads. And 15.8 percent of TV spend is spent on extremely dull ads, which perform the least effectively. So it sounds like a lack of creative effectiveness costs brands enormous amounts of money.

Elena: But first let's just talk about, do we agree that creative effectiveness is important for marketers to focus on? And then do we think that the current overall lack of it is a big problem?

Rob: Yeah, I always think it's kind of a funny question - is creative effectiveness a concern? Well, of course it is. The creative's job day one is to get attention. If you don't get attention, why are you even advertising? That's like the front door to everything.

Rob: But the idea that it's in decline is interesting. Did something happen in 2010 that made everything different and made the world change? And if you look at some of the macro forces at play, I think there is probably a case to be made that the world is different. I don't think the work has necessarily changed, but the consumers have. And you look at 2010 - that's really the golden age of digital marketing, when digital marketing really started to kick in and marketers started to taste the sweet heroin that is short-termism. To be able to measure everything now. And if you can't measure it, then why do it? And you start to have all those types of conversations, which really changes the game on how you look at work.

Rob: I think the other big macro change is our attention tolerance. The more beer you drink, the more beer it takes to get drunk. And I think that's true with advertising. We have really trained humans to have a tolerance to creative and to the attention tactics that are used to garner people's attention. It's like we're just becoming desensitized to even really good creative because we're surrounded by all types of different stimuli.

Rob: And our attention tolerance has gotten down to - I mean, we don't look at anything longer than four seconds now. How do you develop work in that world? So I think there's some serious macro trends in play that cause this creative crisis that even goes beyond the creative itself.

Angela: Yeah, it's almost like - back to your point about data and maybe the over-reliance on data - the better the world got at being able to measure the short, the worse we got at building for the long. And so in a time where we were as an industry really trying to evoke emotion out of creative, it was the good old days, bad days - I don't know if it's good or bad or what side of that coin we're on. But as we were able to track that I had this message in market and I got a click or I got a conversion.

Angela: And the lack of understanding between short and long, like the combination of those two, I think pushed us into "I air this message" or "I put this specific approach out into the market and I get this response from it." Really hurts the long game, that long-term payoff of creativity. And then I think too, the other thing that you brought up for me is just the organizational and structural issues that are maybe more complex within an organization than it used to be. This marketing team that was all-encompassing - creative, data, et cetera - all working towards the same goals, but poor collaboration between marketing, creative and data teams can hinder that development of a cohesive and impactful campaign. Just in terms of even what are we trying to do? Where do we think the needle needs to be moved in terms of our audience potential and what messaging approaches might be effective, both in the short and the long?

Rob: Totally. And do you think one evergreen issue with the development of creative and effective creative is fear? Fear from the C-suite to screw up and put something out there that might get them in trouble. Do you think that is heightened in this era of being able to measure everything? Oh my gosh, if I put something out, I'm going to be able to measure whether or not it didn't work. So I want to play it safe. Do you think that has anything to do with it at all?

Angela: I do, especially in TV.

Rob: Yeah.

Angela: When you're in a digital environment, it's maybe a little easier to A/B test and look at this approach and that approach and see what performs better. But I think that takes us right back to the previous point of short versus long.

Rob: Right.

Angela: To be memorable versus what message might drive the best response for an in-market consumer today. And so really, it boils back to the lack of understanding of marketing effectiveness with whomever that decision maker is. If we don't have a greater understanding of short versus long and how those two can play together, but how messaging strategies might be different between those two.

Angela: It's easy to swing into one and go, "I message this way, I get a response." I can see that data versus the hope that that long-term effect is going to play off in building future demand and mental availability against my competition.

Rob: For sure.

Elena: Yeah, and I think that you're right about that. And that makes me think about how there's not the same kind of culture of creativity in digital advertising as traditional. It's like you said, it's more focused on the short. So maybe a lot of marketers that are brought up there, if you're entering TV as a brand, there's like an expectation. You might not meet it, but there's an expectation of the type of creative you want to have.

Elena: And in digital it's so short-term focused. You do see really creative digital ads, but they're rarer, I would say, and it's probably harder to do. Rob, I was going to add, you said that we only have 4 seconds of attention and that's funny. I know that's not like a stat that you know is true, that people have 4 seconds of attention. You kind of made that up.

Rob: I made that up. It's some ridiculously short amount of seconds though, right? That you have based on like digital media channels. I thought-

Elena: Yeah.

Angela: Depends on the channel.

Elena: Exactly, I was going to say that. This is Karen Nelson Field's work, but she found, I think it's 4 and a half seconds is what we need to form long-term memory structures, and the average attention for a Facebook ad is a second. So-

Rob: Wow. A second.

Elena: And then like you're saying, if we don't - I think TV, again, that's why it's better at attention and creativity, because there's at least a chance for the creative to be effective. If your average view is 1 second, that's a big barrier to be creative on Facebook to make someone actually stop and look at your ad for 4 and a half seconds.

Rob: Do you think in 20 years, if we were having this podcast, it would be like, they only have 0.25 seconds on Facebook? Like, is it just gonna keep getting shorter?

Elena: I don't know.

Angela: I think we're trying to stop that trend. If it's going in that way, we are actively right now trying to stop that trend.

Elena: Yeah.

Rob: My goodness.

Elena: One other thing that came to mind was we've been talking about AI and how some people think that's going to help creativity. Some people think it's going to hurt, but you were talking about the complexity of marketing teams. And one thing I've heard predicted with AI is that marketing teams are going to get a little bit more nimble.

Elena: And that could help creativity because if you don't have - like some of these marketing organizations are huge - how do you be creative on a high level when you have that many people's channels, all the decision-making that has to take place? So maybe that's one different way AI is going to help with creativity, just more kind of lean, connected teams.

Elena: And you mentioned fear, Rob. You did too. Is that a big reason why? But I also see creative work a lot that is creative and eye-catching, but it still isn't good creative. Sometimes I think it could be fear, but it's also what comes before the creative. And is that understood?

Rob: Well, I think that's a very important point, Elena. There's the capturing of attention that's table stakes. We've talked about that before in the podcast. Like, you don't have an ad if you don't have someone's attention, but it's what goes in the ad that makes it ultimately an effective piece of communication or not. And I know we'll talk about that more later, but that's definitely a very important point - yeah, the bar rooms are filled with people talking about great ads that they have no idea who the ad was for.

Elena: Yeah. I know Rob, you give the example of if I needed to get high attention right now I would go light a billboard on fire. It's like mission accomplished, but that doesn't actually lead you anywhere, but yeah, it gets you some high attention. So I want to talk a little bit about that. Like how do we set ourselves up to create successful creative work? Because I hear a lot of people talk about creative effectiveness and usually the discussions are the one that we just had, which I think is valuable, but I'm more interested in, okay, we know there's a problem.

Elena: It can be for these number of reasons. Let's talk about how we can solve it. So how do we think marketers can set themselves up before the work is actually created to have a more successful creative end result?

Rob: Yeah, I love that question, Elena, because really the success of an ad starts well before a copywriter and an art director sit down and brainstorm headlines. So I'd actually turn that question over to Angela. I know Marketing Architects does an amazing job with how to build a business process around developing great creative before it ever becomes even a creative brief.

Angela: I mean, I think we've talked about this before. If you don't start this conversation with your business objectives, we're probably not far enough up the strategy chain. Understanding of where your brand stands within your category - growth-oriented creative doesn't happen in isolation. It stems from that strategic alignment with the brand's goals and the market dynamics. So what's an example? Looking at your customer file, do you understand the composition of your current buyers? What percent are light buyers versus heavy buyers? You'd look at research from Byron Sharp that would show that growth for most brands comes from light buyers.

Angela: And if you think about your own behavior, I'll drink a Coke, also drink a Pepsi. You know, I'm not super overly loyal. And so how concentrated are you on a whale strategy of trying to find more of those heavy buyers? If a brand strategy has historically been focused on retaining or upselling heavy buyers, it's going to face challenges in achieving significant growth because it ignores the potential of broadening its appeal to that larger pool of lighter, more occasional buyers.

Angela: And that is really important to know before we get into creative. You know, once marketers identify the need to target light buyers, the next step then would be to understand the mindsets and the preferences of those audiences. Light buyers are different than heavy buyers. They often have fleeting interactions with a brand. So creative should focus maybe more on building memory structures that a brand is easily able to recognize, being recalled in buying situations, identifying category entry points, or situations or needs that drive buyers into this category.

Angela: Marketers can then create creative work that ensures their brand is strongly associated with those moments. So, if light buyers in the category seek convenience or affordability, then the creative must emphasize how the brand delivers on those attributes. So just an example, I guess, of how important it is and how we look at entering into the creative journey, making sure that it's really highly aligned and correlated to ultimately the success that we're trying to drive for the organization.

Rob: And what does it look like from an insight development side of things? Creative is fueled by great insight. What does that look like? The harvesting of an insight?

Angela: Yeah, I mean, I think that world is changing with the growth of AI, but obviously audience research, consumer research has been around for years. So there's a lot of methods that we have deployed and there's always constant evolution in that space. But speaking back to what I had just shared, if we've got - if we've been centered on a heavy buyer strategy, and we feel we know those consumers really well, and now we're going to try to really broaden the appeal of a brand into light buyers, sometimes we don't know what those category entry points might be. And so that research, be it consumer done with actual humans or in the new world, leveraging AI to uncover insights there can be really effective to inform then what that creative brief might look like.

Elena: Yeah, one other conversation I really like is distinctive assets too. And can you have an idea of those before you produce your creative work? Because in an ideal world, you have a handful of distinctive assets that are unique to your brand, memorable, and you want to keep those in mind no matter what medium you're going into. Even something like TV - like if your brand has a certain color, like an audio mnemonic, obviously that's easier to use than others, or a mascot. You want to make sure that there's consistency across those. I think it's easy, especially in a TV spot - it's not always simple to incorporate all of your distinctive assets, but it's still important.

Angela: Absolutely.

Elena: All right. Well, something I always want to know when I listen to conversations about creative effectiveness is, okay, I get why it matters. I get the downsides of not having it. I know that things like emotion and story are important, but what exactly does that look like? If I'm producing work, what should I be looking out for? Or if I'm working with an agency, what should I be watching for when they make suggestions or show me work? So I wanted to talk a little bit about what are some of the elements of effective TV creative that we as a TV agency try to incorporate into our clients' work.

Rob: There's a handful of really cornerstone attributes or elements that make for a great commercial. And I'm going to start where we left off - and that is a great brief that contains an amazing insight. I think people argue a lot about what's an insight. And I think people have different opinions about what an insight is.

Rob: I'll give you an example of one that I've always kept in my pocket. It started off early in my career. I was working for a cereal company - it was for a product called Frosted Mini Chex, and the account planner sat in a focus group watching kids eat this new form of check cereal. This was back in the late nineties when sugar was actually considered good for you and made kids grow strong and healthy.

Rob: And so they noticed how the kids loved the Frosted Mini Chex because they were smaller so they could get more frosting on the spoon. And so the account planner said, "Well, it's the ultimate delivery system for frosting." And I thought, as a creative, that just warmed my heart. I'm like, I can take that insight and go into so many different places with it. And so I think a great insight just inspires everyone.

Rob: Then the second thing that we've talked about on this podcast many times is audio and just the importance of audio. Especially when you're dealing with television, a channel where the majority of eyeballs retreat to their secondary devices during a commercial break. If you're not trying to pull their ears back to the screen, ultimately their eyeballs will go back to the screen. You're missing a key element. And so the importance of that voiceover and not just as a music track with a bunch of supers - that's not doing your ad justice.

Rob: I think to double down on audio is how do you look at audio mnemonics and that opportunity to create an earworm. And I know earworm is like one of the grossest marketing terms ever, but just like, is that ad burrowing into your client's ear through the use of some kind of audio mnemonic? It's such an underutilized asset.

Rob: Memorable characters are always great because they're also transferable into your other channels. And so you have the opportunity to personify your brand in some kind of character or asset. And then one that a lot of people will dismiss, and I'll disagree with them, is the use of a really great CTA. Like, how are you offering your clients something in the commercial, a reason to care, a reason to act, and a clear way for them to do that? Are you talking about having them go to their website or sending a text message? CTAs are powerful.

Rob: And I think lastly, and I stole this line, I did not come up with it, but I've said it a thousand times in my career - I'm an expert in my opinion. And I think that's the invitation to bring in pre-testing. Like I know what I think will work, and I know everyone on this podcast has opinions on what will work, but ultimately your consumer is in charge and they will tell you whether or not your creative will work. So why not pre-test? And pre-testing has taken on many flavors throughout the years.

Rob: Whether it's a simple focus group or a more highly quantitative survey panel - now we're actually transitioning everything to synthetic audience testing using AI and finding it incredibly powerful and extremely accurate. But definitely, the pre-testing of creative is just another huge element in making a successful TV ad. Ang, anything you'd add?

Angela: One thing I would add that just always shocks me, and I see it all the time, that's just not done well is just full credit. You're airing a 15 - goal is to get full credit for your brand in that 15 seconds or 30 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever your spot length is. I see far too often you watch and there's the story we've got to go and not until the very end are you like, "Oh, that was for Honda."

Angela: No shade to Honda. I don't even know if Honda is getting full credit for their ad, but like back to the attention thing - if it's hard to get attention and then we're not doing full justice with it once we do have it, you know, just a big opportunity there.

Rob: I love that term. Did you coin that? Full credit is actually - that's such a great point though. Like, are you getting full credit? I mean, you're paying for the full ad. Are you getting full credit? That's great.

Elena: Yeah. I like to sometimes try to guess who the brand is. I see it all the time and I'm never right. I'll say that. I like never get it right when you can't tell through the whole commercial. You're like "I think this is for so and so."

Angela: Yep. It is fun when you do get it right. Because then you're like, okay, you for sure get at least a C, if not a D, for not getting full credit. But when you do get it right, there's some level of distinctive assets that they're using throughout the spot that you're like, I was able to pick up on it. But like we're marketers, and at that point, you're like studying the ad. Let's remember that this is unfortunately passive, especially the commercial breaks.

Elena: It probably depends too on your brand, because you think about a brand like Apple, who has so many - everybody knows their distinctive assets. They have a recent spot right now, which is a really sweet spot about their new AirPods. And it's about a dad and his hearing loss and his daughter. And you know it's Apple right away because it's AirPods.

Elena: But some of these smaller brands, you're kind of acting like Apple - none of us know who you are. Like we don't recognize your distinctive assets and you probably don't get as much creative freedom in your spot because you got to let people know right away.

Elena: Who you are.

Angela: Get the full credit.

Elena: Rob, one thing - so you brought up the insight and when we produced a spot for the agency recently, I found that to be the hardest part because I feel like my team, we're all overthinkers and we had a really hard time getting to an insight and nothing felt good enough.

Elena: And finally we picked one, which I think was a good one because it was clear, simple, universal. But it honestly wasn't as groundbreaking as I thought it would be, but it worked really well. So, do you have any other advice, if you're a team of overthinkers and you can't seem to get to an insight? Do you have any advice what you could do?

Rob: I think part of it just has to do with, can you uncover the story? Like what's the story behind the product? It actually makes me think about one of our own products from years ago when we as an agency created our own products in the Hurricane cane.

Rob: And saying okay, well, what could be more dull than a walking cane? But that's where we as marketers have to go to work and say, okay, well, every product has a story. You just got to stare at the product long enough. And I remember the creative director working on Hurricane, given the assignment: "Okay, let's make a really famous cane brand." And I swear, Ryan just sat there and stared at this cane for like 2 weeks straight.

Rob: I'd walk by his office and I'm like, "Are you okay?" Because he'd just be sitting there staring at this thing. He's like, "No, I'm good. I'm good." And we came back to the team and he's like, "Yeah, there's a real story here. I mean, this cane, it has this unique base to it that allows it to grip on different surfaces." And he's like, "This isn't just a cane. This is the all-terrain cane. This is a cane that empowers people's lives to go anywhere and do anything."

Rob: And it's like, okay, this isn't a tool for the crippled, this is a tool for the empowered. And it's like, okay, there's the story, there's the insight. And I think just being able to stare at something long enough, spending enough time with it and knowing that there is a story and that story gives birth to that insight.

Rob: Which can seem a little backwards, especially when we talk about, you know, it starts with a great insight, but I think insight and story are one in the same. It's just kind of a different way of articulating. At the same time, I'm going to pick on that same product - Hurricane had a lot of science that went into the development of it and we were both the advertiser and the client and we committed a cardinal sin.

Rob: We said, okay, this thing is just so freaking awesome and the science that went into it is just so great. And we made an ad that talked to ourselves. And we made an ad that just took what we thought was an insight, which was "Oh, just look at how amazing the science was that developed it." And nobody cares. We missed the story that connected to the consumer. So, I think that's where you have to be careful on defining your story or insight - is it truly the insight that the customer cares about? Or is it the insight that you, as the advertiser, care about?

Angela: Always a good lens, like jobs to be done.

Rob: Mm hmm.

Angela: Right? Because that really what it led to was this story of empowerment. You're at this phase in your life where people really fight getting a cane. It's like a cardinal transition from being aging to elderly, that is really hard for people. And does this cane give you that stability? It's the cane that stands alone, kind of gives you your - you extend your life a bit, and we kind of made it cool, but you're right, we almost kind of went down the features, benefits, science. We all make mistakes and learn from them. You guys did really great stuff, though, too, with Stuffies, which was a child's toy stuffed animal with seven secret pockets.

Angela: And we developed this jingle - wasn't out of the gate though, Rob?

Rob: It actually was. Yeah, we ended up making a jingle playing off of "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck?" It was "How much stuff can you stuff into Stuffies? You tell your Stuffie can stuff enough stuff." And it was actually developed by our audio engineer at the time, Eric Hall, who now heads up all of our audio production for the agency. But he was having breakfast with his son and his son said it.

Rob: And he's like, "That's brilliant." And ended up scoring the jingle and turning into something that ended up getting sung on, I think, on the Tonight Show.

Angela: I remember that. Yeah, it went a bit viral for a little bit there and just exploded. I mean, I remember those holiday seasons where we had to stop the agency and literally stuff boxes with Stuffies to meet all the holiday orders. So it was a wild success. But I think back to your question, Elena, about insight - I think sometimes as an industry, we get a little over-focused on the process to uncover the perfect insight. Is there a perfect insight really? Versus there's a lot of angles you can go down and in Eric Hall's case, it's inspiration from his kid.

Angela: And that's not necessarily the insight, but there are a lot of ways to play this. I think if you're operating with a marketing effectiveness framework so that you're starting from the right place, you're valuing distinction over differentiation and have a solid understanding of how your competitors compete and things like audio, things like character.

Elena: Yeah, I think what Stuffies and Hurricane had in common was we really understood the audience. We respected them and we were able to find insights that really spoke to them. So I think that's why it's so important to start with your customer in mind and not just your brand when you're producing work. So this is a really great discussion. I wanted to try to end with one more sort of example, which would be, was there an ad that you saw recently that you feel like really met the criteria for effective creative?

Rob: You actually stole mine - whoever brought up the Apple ad with the AirPods. That is a powerful way of finding the story in the product and just connecting to the heart of the consumer. But just clear, like you cannot remove the insight from the commercial and it's just so core to it. It's just genius.

Elena: I've been waiting. I was thinking the hearing aid category had the same opportunity that the Hurricane did. Like that ad was a beautiful, inspiring ad. And I know that people have the same barriers to getting hearing aids. There's a lot of resistance and I'm amazed that nobody has done that yet. And now Apple did it. But yeah, I've heard a lot of people talk about that ad.

Angela: I thought about this for a while, and I landed on one that does break one of the rules that you talked about, Rob. I don't have a perfect example, but I was going to go with Amazon Pharmacy. I don't know if you guys have seen this campaign, but it's story-based, it's engaging, it's a little funny.

Angela: One of the spots is a guy in line at the pharmacy waiting to purchase his mom's medication, and she should have used Amazon Pharmacy - that would have been delivered to her. Instead, he's waiting in line and there's a guy at the front that's buying like half of the store at the pharmacy counter, which of course is frustrating if you're trying to get in and out quickly.

Angela: Early branding, heavy audio, like there was a lot that they did really well, got full credit for the ad. The portion that I felt they missed on was the clear call-to-action at the end. Very easily it could have done a visit or QR code CTA to check if they accept your insurance. Almost half of all adults have taken a prescription in the last 30 days. So presumably there's a lot of in-market opportunity to potentially grab. So that was the piece I felt they kind of missed on a little bit of opportunity there.

Elena: Yeah, I haven't seen that ad. I'll have to look it up.

Angela: You always see it on Sundays during football.

Elena: Okay, interesting. I have to pick one. One is a classic that they continue to run again and again, which is Mayhem. I think it's just such a great example of a unique character. They're funny, they stand out in their category, and he's very transferable to different ads. I mean, they've been doing Mayhem for like a decade now, it feels like. And it still feels funny and new in all the concepts.

Rob: So funny you bring that one up. I was just thinking about it the other day because they've been running those in the movies too. They just keep coming up with good - I absolutely - it's just so evergreen.

Elena: Yeah, they're really funny. My personal favorite one was when he's like on the Peloton bike and he flies back through a glass window. Yeah, they're funny. And then my other is actually Rob, an example of what would qualify as an earworm, which is the Paxlovid commercials when they say, "If it's COVID, Paxlovid".

Elena: Like this morning my husband was sick, and I was like, "Oh, maybe we should take a COVID test." And the first thing he goes is, "Well, you know, if it's COVID, Pax-" like, it's just so annoying, but so stuck in my head forever. So I don't know if they picked that name because it would rhyme or if there was just a marketing team that all of a sudden realized it. And if it was a marketing team, I would have loved to be in the room when that happened because that must have just been like the biggest "Oh my gosh, it rhymes with COVID".

Rob: That is a great one.

Angela: And in a field that typically we don't talk a lot about marketing effectiveness in the pharma field. So that stands out.

Elena: Yeah, it definitely stands out. Although they can only talk about that fun rhyme for about five seconds. And then it's just, "Hey, here's everything bad that's ever gonna happen to you once you take this" - all the disclaimers, but still, it's an accomplishment. You're right, to get some creativity in those ads.

Angela: Yeah, for sure.

Elena: Alright! I think that wraps us up. That was a fun episode!