21 September 2025 The job of advertising is not to sell

David Ogilvy said “We sell or else.” And it’s a hard position to argue with. We make ads, not art. Clients come to agencies for commercial outcomes.

But the language “sell” can be problematic. It can leads us down the wrong path to deliver on that promise.

Yes, the job of advertising is to deliver a lift in sales. But it doesn’t have to sell.

When you say something must sell, you play to the misconception that advertising must be persuasive to be effective. This is not the case. We know most buyers are not in-market right now. Therefore they are not interested in your message. Or your reason to believe. Or your feature. Or your benefit. They do not want their arm twisted, because they do not want to convert right now. Attempt to persuade them and they only shut you down.

Binet & Carter in How Not To Plan say: “When you talk about functional benefits, you’re actually giving your shopper reasons not to buy, because you’ve engaged their rational brain instead of the more powerful gut instinct.”

Instead, we should be aiming to build muscle memory. So when these buyers do come in-market tomorrow, or next month, or next year – your brand is a little more likely to come to mind. And therefore they’re a little more likely to choose you.

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute call it pre-suasion, not persuasion. Because people don’t buy the best brand, they buy the brand they’re most familiar with.

Here’s a game-changing piece of research on how we achieve this, challenging conventional wisdom. Using the IPA database of effective case studies, APE with System1 and Peter Field split the work into two categories – campaigns which achieve an emotional reaction, and campaigns which have a clear message take out.

And they found: “Campaigns which ‘landed the right message’ lead to fewer lasting and large effects, just more direct effects. Where campaigns with a greater emotional response lead to the opposite.”

Read the above paragraph again, then consider the implications. Do we even need a single-minded proposition when we’re creating ads for the top of the funnel? Or do we just need something which elicits an emotional reaction, that is well branded, to build muscle memory between your brand and the category need?

Critically, my argument is not “brand ads don’t need to sell”. I often cite Jenni Romaniuk’s infamous quote: “If marketers could stop claiming it is a good thing to spend large amounts of money on advertising that is not aimed at generating sales (short or long term) – that would help. […] One of the biggest own-goals of the advertising industry is the invention of the ‘brand-building’ campaign.”

Yes we want to see sales growth. But generating sales and selling are not the same thing.

Paul Feldwick suggests adland could do with less salesmanship, and more showmanship. Olando Wood supports this too, saying “the more people feel, the more people buy”.

Be more entertaining. Be more interesting. Be more attention-grabbing. Hit people in the feels.

This also explains why lots of great advertising fails in research groups. Respondents naturally think the role of advertising is to sell, and therefore reject concepts which don’t persuade them. How many times have you heard a punter say “it doesn’t make me want to switch or doesn’t say why I should buy them”. Consumers (and perhaps too many marketers) don’t understand we need different approaches for capturing existing demand, versus building future demand.

The new work from Allianz is textbook effectiveness. Building positive associations between care and the brand, eliciting emotion as a tool to encode it into memory.

(Personally my only challenge with this work is attribution. I suspect ANZ will get a free kick in the short term, who have a long-standing bird distinctive brand asset. But hey, if you’re building something new, you have to start somewhere.)

So next time you’re building a brand, be less persuasive. Because the more you to try to sell, the less you actually will.

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published on CampaignAsia.

24 March 2025 It’s better to be interesting than right

In 1870, the founder of Angostura bitters dies and passes the business onto his sons. They rebrand, with one brother designing the label and another sourcing the bottle. Without collaborating, they mistakenly end up with a print too big for the glass.

But someone gives them sound advice; make the label your signature.

A century and a half later, we’d call it a distinctive brand asset. An error that is far more interesting, and valuable, than if they’d done it “properly”. And still stands out on bar shelves today.

This might sound oxymoronic coming from a strategist, but it’s better to be interesting than right.

Because we spend too much effort pursuing the right thing, over the interesting thing. The result is boring. And our job is to make ads that aren’t boring. The opposite of boring even.

An ad that’s strategically correct, which is also uninteresting, is ignorable and forgettable. Unlike the 1870s, we now have decades of marketing science which tell us this is not the most effective way to be effective. The principles have never been clearer – grab attention, seek fames, and be memorable. Understand the convention, then break it.

2023’s The Extraordinary Cost of Dull report suggest dull ads must invest 6.1x more in media than interesting ones to deliver the same results. It’s a pretty compelling reason even your CFO would buy, to be less “right”.

Here are a few recent crimes, as marketers trip themselves face-first into the conventional.

Firstly, the boringification of logos. To be readable on mobile screens, brandmarks across tech, auto and fashion all lose their distinctiveness.

Secondly, Lyle’s Golden Syrup – the world’s longest unchanging brand, after 140 years, replace their logo of a rotting lion corpse with something modern (read: like everyone else).

Thirdly, this building in the Sydney Harbour.

Okay, so that one’s not recent, nor is it real. It’s a render of what the Sydney Opera House could have looked like if the judges of the design competition had played it safe. Instead, they went interesting. To much criticism at the time. And they literally put Australia on the map.

A quote unquote right decision, leads to a dull outcome. And as a result, your brand becomes a little more ignorable and a little more forgettable.

David Ogilvy got it. When shooting an ad for Hathaway Shirts, he asked the talent to put on an eye patch. With no rhyme or reason, or explanation. It’s simply more interesting with than without.

Likewise Telstra’s recent Better Network campaign from Bears Meets Eagle on Fire and +61, is a bit wild and totally not consistent with where the brand has been for years. And maybe that’s why it’s so exceptionally good?

Remember, people in the real world don’t give a shit about your brand. Or your ads. You don’t build appeal with accuracy.

Of course I need to put in the caveats. Yes, you can’t be flat out wrong. But the opposite of right isn’t wrong, it’s just less right. And don’t go offensive for the sake of it. At TBWA we say “disruption not destruction”.

Our industry could afford to be little less right. Even occasionally unhinged. Still strategic. And still on-brand. But if I had to choose between a “right” ad that’s boring, and an interesting ad that’s not perfect, I’d choose the latter every time.

Sometimes you can achieve both. But often we trade one of the other, and we trade the wrong way.

So inject some interesting into your brand. Hold onto your happy accidents. Or create some. Be a little bit weird, even if it feels random. Especially if it feels random.

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published on Campaign Asia.

10 October 2024 Don’t tell them how good you are. Tell them what you’re good for.

Years ago, I was working on Cadbury Favourites. They were coming off their hugely successful ‘What to bring when you’re told not to bring a thing’ campaign. The strategic challenge was; do we double down on the BBQs moment, or do we move onto a different one?

In hindsight, with the benefit of marketing science, the answer is obvious. It’s classic Category Entry Point theory. And we don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about them, and building them.

What are Category Entry Points?

CEP theory was first popularised in How Brands Grow Part 2 (2015), but thanks to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s latest book Better Brand Health (2023) we have an even better understanding of why they matter. One of their key findings being much of brand health tracking isn’t useful, and we should be spending significantly more effort measuring CEPs instead.

What is a CEP? The official definition is “the cues buyers use to access their memories when faced with a buying situation”. Simply – it’s the trigger which brings a brand to mind when you have a need. A fancy way to say occasion.

Brands win by linking themselves to these buying situations. Guinness have famously built associations with a range of different CEPs – when in Ireland, when it’s cold, when I’m in a pub with a sticky carpet.

Some brands build them through campaigns, like Aperol Spritz’s annual takeover of the Australian Open. Others build them through their brand platform, like Canadian Club’s multi-Effie-winning platform ‘Over beer?’.

And it all sounds kind of obvious. If I explained to my mum that brands grow by associating themselves with moments when consumers need brands, she would say “no shit”. And yet, we never talk about it.

The more CEPs you own, the more you win.

Your job is to build muscle memory, so when consumers have needs, your brand is a little bit more likely to come to mind first. That’s mental availability – being easily thought in buying situations. If you’re easily thought of, you’re easier to choose.

And the latest marketing science gives us a clear answer to our Cadbury Favourites challenge – bigger brands own more Category Entry Points.

The more occasions you own in the mind of consumer, the more customers you have. And the lower your defection rate. You don’t want to own one occasion; you want to own many.

One of the new metrics to come out of Better Brand Health is ‘mental market share’ – your brand’s share of all CEP linkages in a category. As visualised here by Smart Marketing, there is a good correlation between Mental Market Share and Actual Market Share.

Do work which builds associations with one occasion. Then, move onto the next (while also refreshing the first as necessary). Repeat.

The problem with positioning.

The approach might be obvious, yet Category Entry Point theory is counter to how we’ve been thinking about brand growth for more than half a century. The prevailing tool being ‘positioning’ – owning a single position in the mind of a consumer. Philip Kotler first suggested this approach in 1969 with his STP Model – you segment, then you target, then you position.

But CEPs theory says this is wrong.

Jenni Romaniuk, of Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, says “[CEPs are] contrary to how we’re brought up to believe branding works. It’s contrary to this idea of positioning, finding that one thing you can own to be different from everybody.”

Don’t worry about what people think of you, instead worry if they think of you at all.

Don’t tell them how good you are (positioning), tell them what you’re good for (CEPs).

Apple was once famously positioned for creative rebels, with its now largely-absent platform ‘Think Different’. But today, they build the brand through CEPs like devices for remote work, devices for privacy, and devices for accessibility.

This work from Guinness generated a lot of head scratching, with pundits asking “Who would drink a Guinness in summer?” That’s exactly the point! They own winter – their growth comes from owning more buying situations. Perhaps this strategy helped them become UK’s number one beer in 2022 for the first time ever.

Why we’re slow to jump into CEPs

Despite this theory surfacing nearly a decade ago, and some case studies showing incredible growth deploying it, our industry has been slow to adopt. A few reasons why:

Firstly, it challenges conventional tools like the Benefit Ladder. CEPs theory says features and benefits can bugger off, just build associations with category needs instead. But it’s hard to stray away from established frameworks.

Secondly, the ‘differentiation versus distinctiveness’ argument raises its ugly head. KitKat has no functional reason to own having a break, but they do because they’ve been banging on about it for a long time. You don’t need a point of difference; you can own something by owning it.

Thirdly, category needs are often labelled as category generic. But that’s kinda the point – that’s why consumers are entering the category. It’s a strategy that often goes against ‘finding the white space’.

Lastly, CEPs briefs don’t tend to solve a big insightful consumer problem – which is traditionally the point of a planner. Perhaps some self-preservation prevents agencies from writing briefs as simple as “VB is for after you mow the lawn” or “Four’N Twenty is for when you’re watching the footy.” Mark Cichon, from The Commerical Works, asks “What if there is no problem, and your task is simply to communicate how a brand fits into peoples’ lives?”

Think about CEPs on your next brief.

Of course, it’s not the only message to build a brand platform on. Nor is it the only way to write a prop for your next campaign. But Category Entry Points are under-appreciated, under-utilised, and under-understood.

On your next brief, try starting with the occasion. And once you’ve owned that in the minds of consumers, move onto the next one.

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published on Mi3 Australia.

24 April 2024 It’s too hard to be inclusive

We’re too scared to have this conversation. Because it’s uncomfortable. I certainly feel that way writing this. Especially as a straight white cis able-bodied male. But I’m happy to be a punching bag. It’s a convo we need to have.

In a former agency life, we were in post-production on a million-dollar ad campaign. But after months of strategy, concepting, production, even testing – we got a surprising email.

“The Board has seen the offlines, and they’re cancelling the campaign.”

Seven figures of investment, pissed away. And the reason? “They think the campaign is a bit racist.”

Because we’d cast a person of colour in a major role. Who was holding some gardening equipment. Which the (all white) Board said elicited images of slavery and was exploitative.

But the script had nothing to do with slavery, in fact the character was successful and independent. Oh, and the actor wasn’t from a region you’d historically associate with slavery. We’d made a deliberate effort to cast diversly, and right at the finish line the brand stumbled over its own feet. And there were two fall outs from this.

Firstly, the client, and perhaps the agency, become a little more likely to cast “safer” (read: more straight white able-bodied people).

Secondly, a trend emerges where diverse talent is only cast into “safe” roles. Glorified extras. Often non-speaking. Never the baddie. Or the butt of the joke. Or, god forbid, someone with a flaw. Diverse talent don’t tend to get characters with depth, who are imperfect and interesting. The good roles go to people who look like me, while the paper-thin boring ones are allotted to diverse hires.

This was a while back, but not long enough that it isn’t scary. Particularly given how little has changed.

Just a few weeks ago, Dylan Alcott highlighted just how far we have to go when it comes to representation in advertising. Despite nearly 20% of Australians living with a disability, they make up fewer than 5% of people in our ads.

We need to do better. But, sadly, it’s easy not to.

I’ve been in rooms where there’s been a suggestion to cast, say, someone in a wheelchair. Not for a role which has anything to do with wheelchairs, but because, as Alcott says, people with disabilities “still buy cereal, fast food, toothpaste, insurance, underwear, travel and open bank accounts like every other Australian”.

But the argument against comes in many forms.

Five pushbacks you hear against making more inclusive ads.

1. Meritocracy should win.
How many times have you heard “We should just cast the best talent, irrespective of other factors.” This is super tricky. Because no one wants talent who isn’t up for the job. But this argument overlooks the privilege the “best talent” has been afforded – experience which hasn’t been available to others because we didn’t create the opportunities. It’s paradoxical.

2. It’s too hard.
“Diverse talent is more difficult to find and cast.” Yep. Absolutely. It will take time and money. But there are dedicated partners who can help with this.

3. It confuses the story.
“We don’t want to muddy the water by introducing an unnecessary element to the narrative.” Another one that is tricky. Stories should be simple. But don’t underestimate your audience – they can probably takeout the key message even if someone in your ad is on crutches. Or transgender.

4. It’s token and/or virtue signalling.
“We’re just doing it to be trendy.” No you’re not. This is how change happens. You can’t be what you can’t see. Social norming is critical to behaviour change.

This usually goes hand in hand with the fear of being labelled as woke. And I get it – brands should be cautious of being seen as political, particularly after Bud Light’s debacle in the culture wars last year. But you must understand your audience. If you’re a traditional brand targeting middle-aged conservative white men, maybe there’s some merit here. Sad, but true.

5. We don’t want to accidentally stereotype.
“What if we get it wrong and make things worse?” Well, you gotta do the work. And bringing more diverse people into the process is the best way to catch mistakes or unconscious bias. But don’t let perfection paralysis stop you – you get points for trying.

Sadly these hurdles all add up.

It’s too hard to be inclusive, and that’s why we’re not progressing fast enough.

Humans are creatures of habit. And we’re lazy. Once something gets difficult, it tends not to get done.

Any hurdle is enough to stop change. But many make it nearly impossible.

It’s really not good enough. We can do better.

Clearly whatever we’re doing isn’t working. If we want to see change, we need to disrupt the way we work. With initiatives more substantial than using foreign-sounding names in scripts. Or optional requests to “consider diverse casting here”.

Here’s a few we’ve been talking about. (Which are by no means new, nor mine.)

1. Mandate options.
Require at least one in three proposals aren’t from cis men – director’s treatments, crew, talent, etc. Make diverse casting options a requirement, not a throw away comment. And put them in front of clients.

2. Bring more diverse people into your team.
Hire people who don’t look like you, in your teams and in your crews. Take meetings with new partners and suppliers. This comes with the added benefit of making better work too – with more diverse insights and being able to tell more diverse stories. Set quotas.

3. Acknowledge it will take work.
A new generation of talent (in agencies, on camera, and behind it) aren’t coming from the same sources as the last. We’ll have to work harder to find them, convince them, and cultivate them. Start mentor programs, allocate resources and investment, and be willing to get it wrong.

4. Track objective data.
Audit your employment records and call sheets. Collect better data moving forward (ask people for their pronouns and background). Set targets, publish them and hold yourself accountable. Transparency matters.

5. Start having tough conversations.
I can’t tell you how many productive conversations I had just writing this. These topics are messy. There’s nuance, and grey, and emotion, and politics. But we need to start talking about it. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Because it’s uncomfortable.

It’s time to move beyond wishful thinking. Because there’s too many barriers in the way, and it’s too hard to break through all of them. Instead we need more substantial efforts if this is something we really want to tackle. And it starts with a convo.

Maybe then we can drive change, to reflect the real face (and body and mind) of Australia.

Zac Martin (he/him) is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published on Mumbrella.

09 December 2023 Pray for Wear Out

We’ve been trained to fear wear out. The premise that at some point, consumers get tired of an ad so much so it becomes ineffective. Or even damaging to the brand.

We spend a lot of time talking about it. And money measuring it.

Wear out is not a bad thing.

We know marketers get sick of things long before consumers do. When we work on it every day, of course we do. But consumers don’t get that kind of exposure to your brand.

Research from Analytics Partners tested more than 51,000 ads and found only 14 of them showed signs of wear out. And most of those were announcement ads which naturally lose relevance.

Even if punters do supposedly get tired of ads, it doesn’t adversely affect buying behaviour. In a recent Reddit thread, Aussies were asked “Which advertisements do you hate so much that you wouldn’t buy their product?”. Popular answers include KFC, Crimsafe, Budget Direct and National Tiles – some of the most effective campaigns running at the moment. In fact, KFC was just crowned Australia’s most effective advertiser at this year’s Effies.

Don’t worry about wear out, worry about wear in.

As humans, we like things that are familiar to us.

It’s why bold work can tank so badly in pre-testing research. Unfamiliar = scary. Advertising is the same. Ads grow on us, and often so does attribution and message take out.

Building memory structures (muscle memory) takes time.

Many ads actually get more effective the longer they run, not less. Research from System1 found the worst-case scenario for long running campaigns is they maintain their effectiveness, but where they use characters or slogans, results actually improve over time.

It’s hard to imagine now, but Yellow Pages’ Not Happy Jan ran for four years in the early 2000s. And this was pre-fragmentation. Now with so many channels, and divided audiences, it takes even longer to culturally imprint something.

Do you think we’d still be quoting it today if it ran for 12 weeks?

Good ads age like wine, not milk.

Of course, time isn’t the only thing that matters. This isn’t an excuse to be terrible at your job. Bad ads that run for a long time are still bad ads. Disruptive work, which breaks conventions, works. A 2013 paper found “creative ads that are more liked, demonstrate wear in effects more quickly, and are less susceptible to wear out”.

In 2022, NAB relaunched their brand platform More Than Money – disrupting the category by acknowledging how wild the world was feeling. By giving new meaning to the line they’d been using since 2016, they delivered a 5.1x profit ROI, and the highest consideration for the brand ever.

So, what did NAB do in 2023? They kept running the same ads. Attribution and message take out improved over time, not declined. And because the campaign ran again, it allowed for optimisations to drive further effectiveness.

Or take a more extreme example – Irn Bru in Scotland have been running the same Christmas ad since 2006.

It was disruptive then – emotional storytelling for the holidays long before John Lewis made it a thing. And it’s still working now – between 2014 and 2023, ad testing metrics improved by 30%. In 2021 it was voted as Scotland’s most memorable Christmas ad.

It helps if your brand hasn’t changed in decades. And you’re not releasing a new car, a new phone, or a new burger. You probably won’t run the same ad for 18 years. But it might stretch further than you think.

So, we say pray for wear out. Because it means it worked. It means you had a disruptive piece of creative, and the media investment to achieve enough reach and frequency. And you stuck to your guns long enough that you didn’t leave anything on the table. It’s bloody hard to do.

If you achieve wear out, pat yourself on the back.

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published on Mi3.

02 October 2023 State Schools’ Relief

I grew up poor.

Three boys on a Dad’s single-parent pension.

In my final year of high school we didn’t have car. Which sucks when you live in the country. I would have given up hockey, which was a 45-minute-drive away, if not for one of my teammate’s Mum. She offered to take me to games every Friday evening, and stay overnight at her house. I’d never met her or her son before that year. She was just a generous person.

My school shoes would wear out halfway through the year, in the middle of winter. But I had aunties who wouldn’t blink in buying us a new pair. Or paying for hockey fees. Or paying for repairs on the car when we had one.

But many kids aren’t so fortunate.

That’s why I’ve long been a supporter of State Schools’ Relief. They’re an incredible Victorian charity – helping kids in public schools by discreetly providing shoes, uniforms, iPads, glasses, and more.

Last year they assisted more than 67,000 students. That’s 1 in 10 public school kids in Victoria.

And I’m pleased to say that I’m joining their Board as a Non-Executive Director.

For 15 years I’ve been volunteering on the Board of my hockey club. (Funny how that one Mum’s generosity kinda kicked off this whole thing.) But for a while I’ve been thinking about doing something with more impact and scale.

So I applied for The Observership Program. It’s an initiative designed to bring young (ish) people onto Boards – providing training and experience observing a non-profit organisation in action.

I’ve spent this year observing the very well run non-profit Regional Arts Australia, sitting in on Board meetings, seeing the concept of “noses in, fingers out” in action. Which gave me confidence to build a game plan for getting onto a Board officially.

And State Schools’ Relief just happened to have an opening.

If you’re interested in joining a Board one day, I can’t recommend The Observership Program enough. Applications open in July each year.

In a cost-of-living crisis, more Victorian kids need more support. Please donate to State Schools’ Relief.

04 August 2023 Should ads punch you in the face, or slowly wear you down?

Despite the fact it’s our bread and butter, as an industry we don’t talk enough about how advertising works. Like, how does seeing an ad actually process in your brain? And how does this ultimately influence buying behaviour?

And these are important conversations. The way you think ads work will shape the concepts you turn into campaigns. Or what your clients will buy. Or what creative teams are trying to sell.

So how do ads work? Let’s propose two opposing schools of thought. One which punches you in the face, the other which slowly wears you down. And interestingly you can almost perfectly determine which philosophy you subscribe to based on one question…

“Was Mouldy Whopper a good ad?”

It picked up a suitcase of awards, including the Cannes Lion Grand Prix and an Effectiveness Lion a year later. Here’s why it might just be the most debated ad of all time (at least among marketers).

Is a good ad one which grabs your attention?

The first school of thought suggests the ads that win are the ones which grab attention. They stop you in your tracks. You don’t ignore them because you can’t. And maybe you’re inclined to share them or talk about them.

Their mission is to make the brand famous. Often using that moment in the spotlight to communicate a key message, after you’ve grabbed someone’s attention.

Like this incredibly insightful work from Ikea. It takes a moment to click, but you’re rewarded for doing so.

Since The Long and the Short of It was published a decade ago, we know campaigns which aim for fame outperform those that don’t on all business metrics – sales, markets share, price sensitivity, penetration, and profit.

Salespeople have known this forever. The AIDA Model, which first surfaced in the 1890s, suggests before you can ‘sell’ to someone, you must first do something to grab them. Attention first, then comes Interest, Desire, and Action.

In his book Anatomy of a Humbug, Paul Feldwick explores the many ways ads can influence. He would call this school of thought “advertising as showmanship”. You arrest public opinion and entertain the masses. The results come thereafter. Mark Ritson might call these campaigns “empty but effective“.

When most ads aren’t remembered, this advertising fights to be noticed and recalled.

And if you’re nodding along reading this, you probably like Mouldy Whopper. You believe that being noticed is half the battle. A good ad is one that gets people talking, at almost any cost. You applaud brands like BrewDog, Nike, and Apple.

But there’s a second school of thought.

Are good ads processed implicitly over time?

The challenge with aiming for fame and grabbing attention, is it’s really bloody hard. And often asks a lot of the audience. Which is difficult when you’re driving past a billboard at 110km/h on the highway.

Even when we’re stuck at a bus stop – it’s rare we stop and actively process something. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman suggests we spend most of our lives in autopilot.

But this doesn’t mean the ads we ignore don’t work. Maybe good ads are the ones which lean into the zombie mode? In their 1997 paper The Attentional Blink, researchers found “Advertising has the potential to affect future buying decisions, even when subjects do not process the ad attentively and do not recollect ever having seen the ad”.

This philosophy is better aligned to the Associative Network Theories of Memory (Anderson and Bower, 1973), which suggests the brain builds associations slowly over time. For advertising, ideally, it’s connecting your brand to a need.

It’s not an argument for wallpaper. You still want these ads to be disruptive. Break conventions, be creative and elicit emotion.

But these they tend to be simpler. Easy gets. Your brain processes them implicitly. Only if they’re well branded (which is why Distinctive Brand Assets are so critical).

Consumers don’t have to be leaning in for ads to work.

And this can be contentious. Byron Sharp of How Brands Grow calls this ad “an excellent example of how great branding and creativity can work with a mere second of attention”. This ad doesn’t stop anyone in their tracks. But it’s not meant to.

Personally, I don’t see a lot of great creativity here. But the argument is for clarity and branding, connecting to a need.

Insurer AAMI have, for decades, been creating mildly amusing ads. None of which aim for fame, but slowly and surely build associations between the brand and insurance needs. They’re incredibly well branded. And they work hard.

In this school of thought, you embrace the fact that advertising is a weak force, which works very slowly.

And here, you probably don’t like Mouldy Whopper. The compelling argument against is that it simply builds associations of mould and disgust. The key message is buried behind a wall of attention your average punter won’t break through.

So which one is right?

You need jabs and right hooks.

The answer is both. The ideal marketing plan allocates opportunities for both schools of thoughts. A mix of hard-working-but-slow-and-steady ads in the background, and big moments in the sun which aim for fame (which are also hard working).

KFC have the right balance. Their marketing plan is built on ongoing campaigns like Did Someone Say KFC? (brand = long) and Shut Up And Take My Money (sales activation = short). And sprinkled between are big culture grabs like Michelin Impossible and KFC Weddings. And they can’t seem to stop winning effectiveness awards.

But most importantly, whichever school of thought you subscribe to, let’s talk more about it. Have a conversation (or debate). Ask your clients/agency where they stand.

Don’t try to pack a punch if your client is looking for something that simmers. Or vice versa.

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published on Mumbrella.

13 December 2022 The single most important thing is being noticed

Last month, Netflix released Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?, a documentary series on the infamous Harrier Jet consumer-promo-gone-wrong scandal.

It’s a real David and Goliath story. Deep into the Cola Wars of the 90s, Pepsi launches a loyalty program, and jokingly advertises the opportunity to purchase a US$23m military aircraft for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points. One enterprising young man discovers you can buy the required points for just US$700k, and a very public legal battle ensues.

The marketing industry has been quick to criticise Pepsi, suggesting the negative PR back then, and now with the doco, could easily have been avoided by ponying up for the jet. Spin a negative into a positive. But does the scandal actually harm Pepsi? Or help them?

Indeed, Byron Sharp suggests in How Brands Grow to never give people a reason not to buy you. But we might be stretching the definition of “a reason”.

People don’t walk through the supermarket debating the morals of brands. In fact, we don’t really make rational decisions at all. For the most part, we’re in zombie mode, not overthinking, grabbing whatever is easiest.

Our brain doesn’t like to think too hard. We like choices, and brands, which are no-brainers.

In that way, brands are like safety nets. Rory Sutherland says “brands don’t exist to make you think a product is excellent, rather to reassure you it won’t be terrible”. If it does what it says on the tin, and if I believe people like me won’t think I’ve made a bad decision, it’s a no-brainer.

Of course, for brands to be a safe choice, they must still tick the right boxes. You don’t want to be famous for unsafe reasons. When Vodafone’s poor network trended in Australia as #vodafail, it became a lot less choosable.

But is the questionable moral behaviour of a company really enough to make a brand unchoosable? And does it affect purchasing behaviour?

How does Volkswagen fare when they’re outed in the 2015 emissions scandal? Four years of consecutive growth (disrupted only by COVID-19).

Likewise, what happens after the Pepsi scandal plays out in the media over years? US market share grows +0.9pp between 1995 and 2000. Can’t have been too harmful, hey?

The best marketing science tells us humans choose brands which easily come to mind. Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls it ‘mental availability’. Stand out, be noticed, and be recalled when needed.

Years of media coverage over a scandal which isn’t really a scandal, may have only helped Pepsi. And when millions of people spend hours once again with the brand watching the doco, I suspect PepsiCo won’t be too upset.

Of course, the lesson here is not “Do bad things”. As a general rule, people and brands should live by the motto “Don’t be a dick”. And there’s plenty of research suggesting consumers increasingly seek brands which align with their values (although I remain cautious of stated behaviour).

But we must be careful in overstating the extent to which a brand acting like a dick adversely influences buying behaviour. Unless it breaches the ‘safety’ requirement with something truly heinous, some bad PR and a few negative tweets likely help a brand in the long term. Not harm it.

BrewDog has largely built its business on this approach. The latest is a campaign calling out the World Cup. Cue massive criticism once it was revealed they’re still streaming games in their pubs.

This is the BrewDog playbook. Do things which stand out, even if it means some backlash. Maybe, in hope of some backlash. And it works, they grew 31% last year.

It’s a good reminder of Les Binet and Sarah Carter’s research in How Not To Plan: “In over 30 years of evaluation research, we’ve not seen a single example of an ad campaign that’s been shown to have a negative effect on sales. Not one.”

So, what is the lesson? Salience really matters. Do things to grab attention and disrupt. Push your brand into culture. Create work which people talk about and share. Aim for fame.

And yes, do good as well, but don’t forget the getting-noticed part. Heck, maybe even do both.

But there’s no point being right if no one notices.

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published in Mumbrella.

25 May 2022 Don’t overthink it. Your consumers aren’t.

There’s a tradie at my house. We’re talking about a local bar, who have gone full QAnon. Like, anti-vax posters in the windows.

“I guess we’ll have to hit up the other pub from now on” I say.

He looks at me and shrugs: “Nah, as long as the beers are cold.”

It was a good reminder we don’t spend nearly enough time talking to real people. Desktop research and bouncing ideas around your marketing/agency bubble really is a dangerous place to view the world (to butcher a quote from John Le Carré).

Real people don’t overthink brands. Only marketers and their agencies worry about “being authentic”. Or changing the world. Or whatever the latest white paper is claiming based on stated behaviour supposedly representing an entire generation.

People don’t need more purpose from their brands. Yes it can be a valid way to position your brand, or to build a campaign around, but it’s not the only way.

When you talk to real people you find it’s not that they don’t spend time thinking brands should be doing more, it’s that they don’t spend time thinking about brands at all.

In his book Decoded, Phil Barden shares a study where people were asked to purchase either their favourite brand or their non-favourite brand. Which one lights up the brain like a Christmas tree?

Despite common rhetoric, those buying their favourite brand are the ones who don’t light up (the left). Choosing something familiar to you is easy and doesn’t require thought. That’s how we like it. When we have to process the decision, we have to change gears. Which is hard.

Humans are hard-wired to be lazy. We don’t like to overthink. Or think at all.

Tom Roach says we need to “make our brands no-brainers”.

When we’re deciding where to grab a beer, most Aussies don’t have an internal debate about the pub’s position on vaccines. Or any other matter. Most people are ‘satisficers’ – good enough is good enough.

We must remember this when we’re building brands and creating ideas.

Our job as marketers and advertisers isn’t too difficult. Understand Clayton Christensen’s ‘jobs to be done’. Build distinctive brand assets. Connect your brand to a need. Invest in creativity to stand out, be famous and remembered. Then spend as much as you can building mental and physical availability.

Before worrying about your brand’s social cause, or how you might be able to save the world, consider if you’ve done enough to cover the basics needs real people want from you.

Be the car brand who comes to mind most easily when someone wants to keep their family safe (Volvo). Be the thing to bring when you’re told not to bring a thing (Favourites). Be the computer for creative people (Mac). Be the chocolate you eat when you’re not being yourself (Snickers).

Don’t overthink the importance of your brand. Or its role in the world. Because consumers don’t.

Instead, be the brand who comes to mind when someone wants a cold beer.

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at TBWA\Melbourne. This article was originally published in B&T Magazine.

01 July 2021 Turn non-buyers into buyers by finding what makes them different

Sometimes you come across something which is so obvious you feel stupid in hindsight.

Like Stephen Fry’s movement encouraging parents to Turn on the Subtitles when children are watching TV. Of course!

Another was when I first stumbled across the forgotten art of Acceptor/Rejector Analysis.

I realised, the way we analyse brand health market research is wrong.

You survey a sample of the target audience to better understand your brand funnel (awareness, consideration, etc.) and brand perceptions. The latter helps you understand how much people associate different attributes with your brand.

Normally it looks like something like this example. Sometimes it’s presented in a fancy spider chart.

The problem with brand associations

When presented with the data above, you might make a decision to double down on your strength (Perception A), or focus to repair a weakness (Perception E). Or if you compare the same attributes with competitors, you might identify white space to go after that.
But there’s two issues with this:

Firstly, it doesn’t tell you which perceptions matter to consumers. Your brand might have strong associations with “is a brand you can share with friends” but this perception might be meaningless in influencing decisions. Likewise you may under-index in “is an Australian brand”, but there’s no value in addressing it.

It’s not uncommon to have complementary research where you ask consumers which factors matter to them when making a purchase. But we know what people say and what people do are almost always different.

Secondly, the brand associations above are averages. This data includes both your most loyal heavy buyers, and those who despise you. Hardly useful.

Finding what matters by analysing the differences

To overcome these issues, we do Acceptor/Rejector Analysis. Rather than look at brand associations as whole, we split the data into two cohorts:

1. People who are aware of you but not buyers, let’s call them Rejectors.
2. And buyers, let’s call the… Buyers.

To turn the Rejectors into Buyers, we look at what makes them different. And we close the gap.

Here’s what the same data above looks like when it’s split out:

We’re less interested in the absolute numbers of each cohort, but rather, the biggest gap between them.

In the case above, a new insight emerges. Perception C was something we’d ignored to date – not quite a weakness and not quite a strength. But once we split it across the two cohorts, we see it is our most polarising brand association. The biggest difference between Buyers and Rejectors is the one we want to focus on.

So you would build a campaign to tackle Perception C.

The best part, this analysis you can often do for free using an old brand health study. No extra cost, just 15 minutes to cut the data in a new way.

Watchouts on Acceptor/Rejecter Analysis

There’s two things to keep in mind when looking at the gaps:

Firstly, sometimes people have a good reason to reject your brand. If you’re a brewery you probably aren’t interested in perceptions among Coeliacs. Avoid this by filtering responses for people who aware of you AND who don’t buy you AND who buy your competitors.

Second, as Jon Bradshaw reminded me, behaviour isn’t linear. People don’t always think or feel first, then act. Often it’s the other way around – your thoughts and feelings change after you take action. Cognitive dissonance means we’re great at post rationalising, and why some suggest the fastest way to change behaviour is action first, then thoughts and feelings take care of themselves.

As George Box said: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

Zac Martin is a Planning Director at Ogilvy Melbourne. This article was originally published in CMO Magazine.