This (Short!) Week in Strategy: What happens when you cross a turkey with an evil spirit? Poultrygeist!
Hi Strat Pack,
Thanksgiving is right around the corner! Like tomorrow! And that means three things: 1) I'm going to eat so much turkey and stuffing and gravy and potatoes and fixin's and stuff. 2) Nobody's going to read a full edition this week. So we've got 3 short summaries of, honestly, great articles, and great work. No quick hits, no platform updates. 3) Black Friday is this Friday. And so begins continues the Christmas shopping season.
All I want for Christmas this year is a Carbonite Han Solo™ frozen into a 5 1/4-Qt Le Creuset Cast-Iron Signature Roaster. At the low low price of $450, it's truly the perfect gift. But this is the season of giving. So while you're scraping together the funds for that roaster, won’t you please also seriously consider getting me the matching Darth Vader Le Creuset dutch oven? (A steal at $395...) It is the season of giving after all. That's why I'll be placing this scented candle for F*cking Meetings that smell like they could have been an email in every conference room at the office.
In other, equally important news, an intrepid Twitter user has finally found a use for the MacBook Pro touchbar. The answer was staring us in the face the whole time. And now it's real: Touchbar Tamogachi. Thankfully for my productivity, corporate IT has neglected to give me the appropriate administrator privileges to install this brilliant creation. So please enjoy this while I turn green with envy.
Alright, stop messing around trying to figure out my shipping address for the Star Wars kitchenware (Just ask! I'll happily provide it!). Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) When clarity beats 'disruption' [Salmon Theory - Rob Estreitinho]
If you're not subscribed to Rob's newsletter, now's your chance! I highly recommend it. Among the gems in this essay is "Impact-per-word ratio" which isn't a thing, per se, but also is very very much a thing in practice. I can name one person with an extremely high impact per word ratio off the top of my head and about 45 with a low ratio. Perhaps time to think about our communication styles...
Clarity is an interesting concept because it feels like the hidden answer that none of us really asked for. We know what, for example, the marketing opinion leaders are asking for. More disruption. More agility. More budgets for ad campaigns. The problem is that, when you're surrounded by a near-infinite amount of information, it's hard to know what to believe. And opinion leaders operate on extremes, whereby their vision of the world cancels out the other things. The best way to sell you something is to make you believe there is no possible alternative.
But in fact, investing in clarity is a way to not only allow people and teams to navigate an increasingly complex world, it's also a non-obvious way to add value. Because if anything, clarity is about removing distractions.
Confusion adds distractions that generate value for the ones on the proposing end of the conversation (because they feel smarter and can charge a fee). Clarity removes distractions in order to add value to the ones on the receiving end of the conversation (because they feel meaningful and can make decisions). And in a world that often feels confusing, clarity is a rebellious act of creating meaning in people, teams and organisations.
So over to you: what's your top tip to create clarity?
2) Stories Can Be Powerful Persuasive Tools. But It’s Important to Understand When They Can Backfire. [KelloggInsight]
From the business school, not the cereal company. This is absolutely fascinating. And I think crucial to take into account when building marketing communications
the persuasiveness of narratives depends on whether the facts they contain are strong or weak. If you have a powerful case and an ironclad set of facts on your side, stories might do you no favors, the research revealed—you’re better off presenting that content in a straightforward way, like a list. By contrast, if you are trying to sell people on slightly less convincing information, stories can vastly increase your audience’s receptiveness.
Read that paragraph, then read it again.
Narratives demand a lot of attention. When we’re tracking character and plot, we’re often not able to notice whether the embedded factual information is strong or flimsy. When people interact with a story, it blunts their attention to facts. This is good news if your facts are weak—a story can sugarcoat less-than-compelling information—but not if you have strong data on your side.
What does this mean for advertisers and marketers?
Stories shouldn’t always be your go-to tool. Stories can have either positive or negative consequences for the storyteller. If the storyteller is trying to actively persuade an audience, and the facts are weak, the story can obscure those and increase persuasion. But the story can backfire when you have strong facts. In that situation, presenting information in the most straightforward way possible might be a better route.
And for consumers, we should consider raising our guard when stories become part of a sales pitch. If a salesperson spins a great yarn, go back and do your homework before you buy. You might want to exert extra effort to process those facts and understand whether you’re being sold by the story or by the factual piece of information.
3) Learning the right lessons from Adidas [Brand Equity]
One of the biggest problems in science today is called positive publication bias. For the sake of their careers, scientists tend to only publish research that has positive results and thus the scientific world largely ignores null results. The same is true in advertising since we only share successful case studies to enter award shows.
We should all be grateful then to Simon Peel, Global Media Director at Adidas, for his candid EFF Week presentation last month. He stated that focusing on efficiency not effectiveness had led the brand to over-invest in digital advertising.
60% of Adidas revenue came from first time buyers - not loyal customers. Well, yes, we know all that - and so did the people at Adidas, as Simon said in his talkYet the overall budget split was heavily skewed towards digital and performance - 77% versus 23% for brand. Why?
Whilst they were aware of the IPA benchmark to allocate 60% of budgets to brand activity to maximize growth, a multitude of things got in the way. The issue writ large can be described as “metric fixation” and it operates at every level of modern business:
“The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment with metrics; and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching rewards and penalties to their measured performance.” (Jerry Muller, The Tyranny of Metrics)
Adidas used various data points to make investment decisions. Direct to consumer sales, whilst only a small portion of total, are the most profitable, which biases the business toward them. It used attribution modeling from Google and Facebook and had no brand tracking in place. Thus it succumbed to the McNamara fallacy, ignoring that which it didn’t measure, and began to believe that last click digital advertising was driving sales, a fallacy its digital partners were complicit in propagating. These short term and indeed short sighted metrics are unfortunately part of a much broader issue, which is short termism foisted on companies by finance.
“We had a problem that we were focusing on the wrong metrics, the short-term, because we have fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.” - Simon Peel
The problems didn’t stem from a lack of knowledge. They were organizational and systemic, which is often the case. As well as a better measurement framework, both brand and communication strategy must be integrative and centralized, allowing for executional variance at the local level within the established strategic guidelines. Finally, incentives within the company must be aligned to the strategy because no one is going to risk their annual bonus even if investing in the long term health of the brand is the right thing to do.
The danger of being beholden to metrics is particularly acute when we consider the amount of fraud in the digital media ecosystem. Facebook recently paid a $40M fine for consistently overstating its metrics and this is simply the last of a long line a measurements it has misstated to advertisers, always in its own favor. Even if one believes wholeheartedly in data to drive decisions, it seems unwise to commit vast sums of money based on metrics that cannot be trusted.
4) Department of Great Work
'Tis the season for longform brand films...
This Adorable Star Wars-Themed Ad Has An Ending We Didn't See Coming [AdAge] Filipino telecoms firm Globe Telecom is getting on the Star Wars "Rise of Skywalker" bandwagon in preparation for the movie's release with an utterly delightful ad. Look. I'm not going to tell you this film is perfect. It's a little long and the ad takes you on a bit of a walk, but the payoff is 100% worth it. According to the agency, the aim is to show that "the wonder of Star Wars can touch the lives of everyone." From Wunderman Thompson Philippines.
Oscar the Grouch Becomes Art Scene Enfant Terrible for Squarespace [AdWeek] His meteoric rise in the art world leaves him sulking more than ever. In addition to the ad, Squarespace partnered with artist Justin Gignac, who sells New York garbage (yes, you read that right) in cubes for $50. “Limited edition” cubes that include trash from special events, like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, go for a whopping $100. Done in-house at Squarespace in partnership with Children's Television Workshop.
Macy’s celebrates the holidays with a girl, Virginia, who really believes in Santa Claus [The Drum] The first :15 made a lot more sense to me after I read about the oft-repeated 1897 editorial from the New York Sun that spawned the phrase ‘Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus’ – who sees Santa during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and decides she wants to be him. Cute spot, beautifully shot, starring the adorable kid from the Florida Project. Earned an "awww" from me, even if it might not pass Mark Ritson's distinctiveness test. From BBDO New York
Here's why Dunkin' new ads tell customers 'double cup is breaking up' [Brand Equity] The environment is important, regardless of what Byron Sharp thinks. A new campaign focused in Massachusetts and Rhode Island tells customers they can no longer nest their iced drinks in a second, foam cup for extra insulation as the company moves to eliminate its polystyrene cups. The brand says the double-cup habit was started in New England and is most common there. But by Dec. 1, all the region's stores will swap foam cups for paper ones that the company says are more environmentally friendly.
FILTERFACE Is an Unnerving Visual Commentary on ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’ [Little Black Book] This short film isn't advertising. But every advertising professional needs to watch it. It looks at the unhealthy importance young people place on social media validation and the disturbing trend to go under the knife to look like their flawless filtered selfies. The choreography was crafted by Isabella Mahmoud with the help of the talented Ellie Gordon who really interrogated the brief and took the feeling of discomfort to another level. End on a downer? How unlike me. Quick! Pivot to something more positive...
Waze adds Cookie Monster voice navigation to celebrate the puppet's birthday [Good Morning America] Just in time for Thanksgiving Traffic! And who knew Cookie Monster was a Scorpio? Personally I'm a huge fan of the BTS voice navigation (especially "Hazard Reported Ahead"). But obviously this is great. Two Sesame Street ad like objects in the same week? I'm in heaven!
Department of Work that isn't bad, isn't good, but you should know about.
Ads We Like: Apple’s holiday ad tells a gentle story of everyday creation and grief [The Drum] This is an "Ads we Like"?! In a nutshell: the ad didn't earn it for me. It checked all the right boxes but didn't tell the right story. Contrast this with the narrative arc and emotional payoff of their 2013 Misunderstood ad. And another thing is for sure -- these kids are a lot less creative and enterprising than the pair in the Globe Telecom ad above. It's not a bad ad. But it just missed the mark for me. From TBWA\Media Arts Lab
Department of Work that is, in fact, bad.
Carl’s Jr.’s ‘Food Porn’ Ads Aren’t The Most Pleasant To Watch With Your Family [DesignTaxi] In one video, a woman’s voice can be heard sultrily calling the Big Carl a “piping hot piece of lunch,” at the same time taunting McDonald’s by claiming the Carl’s Jr. burger makes “Big Mac look like a micro patty baby lunch.” from agency Argonaut. Gross. Seriously.
Beef industry brings 2-hour sizzling meat video to the big screen [MarketingDive] Titled "Drool Log" — a pun on seasonal Yule Logs — the feature-length YouTube video has no script, save for a brief bit of voice-over upfront that notes the video is two hours and mentions the "Beef. It’s what for dinner." tagline. "Drool Log" will also be screened at select movie theaters in 10 states for a limited run between Nov. 22 and Dec. 5. Created in partnership with agency VMLY&R. I think it's a fizzle of a PR stunt. I honestly expect more from VMLY&R...and I think they expect more from themselves, judging by the fact that I had to dig through 6 sources to find agency credits.
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