Being willing to experiment, thinking long term and appreciating the value of old and new media channels alike are all part of a successful approach to effectiveness, Mondelez’s Matt Stockbridge says
Campaign 25th July 2018
Small and big agencies and some of the biggest names in adland have their fingers and toes crossed for victory, after the IPA shortlisted 38 campaigns for the Effectiveness Awards, which take place this autumn.
It got me thinking about effectiveness beyond awards, as an intrinsic part of business culture and what can marketers do towards growing a culture of effectiveness?
Back at the end of the noughties I was very excited about my new role at Cadbury and even more excited about all that we were planning as a sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics.
We were investing in initiatives above, below and through the line and part of my job was to evaluate these efforts.
The goal was to drive a legacy. The feeling was that this was probably a one-off opportunity for us to engage with a huge market locally.
However, this created a challenge: how do you measure a legacy? How do you know if you’ve created one and how much revenue is it worth?
The answer to all of this would take a much longer article than this but one thing is very clear now.
We’ve been able to apply a number of learnings from and since the Olympics, which have been applied in our first year of partnership with the Premier League.
Over the last few years we have steadily been growing a culture of effectiveness in our business, which is now consistently driving real and measurable business results.
Based on much of what you read in the marketing press we are supposed to be spending less on advertising, spending less on TV (because it’s, at best, not being watched or is dead), spending more on digital, creating more content in house, killing the agency model and destroying creativity through big data.
So far we’ve managed to avoid doing all of these things and, in most cases, have done the opposite while building a healthy culture of effectiveness.
The approach to creating great campaigns is not exactly rocket science and isn’t in need of reinventing despite many people seemingly being intent on doing so.
As soon as you start with the channel or being deliberately “digitally” led, you are immediately potentially limiting your success.
The combination of the story or idea, the audience and finally the channels pays back on far more occasions than the other way round.
An added element for more impulsive, snacking brands like ours is how to involve our customers in the process too.
For the Premier League activation in particular, this has been an essential part of our efforts.
Test and learn
We don’t always get it right and not every one of our campaigns drives a record-breaking ROI. We can’t always explain why every element of a campaign works even if we know what the ROI is.
But this is liberating as it allows us to have a test and learn culture and to work with many partners who are constantly helping us to evolve and develop how we advertise.
Over the last couple of years, as well as Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snapchat, we’ve also worked with likes of Oath, Mumsnet, Spotify, Buzzfeed and Match.com.
At the same time we’ve done specific activations with The Sun, The Daily Mirror and Global Radio.
This allows us to incorporate different thinking and create specific content to reach new audiences.
Great work doesn’t always drive a short-term uplift in sales and neither should it be expected to.
There should be room in your plans to do both and not one at the expense of the other.
Looking at ROI in relative terms
Another evolution in our thinking is in moving away from seeing an ROI in absolute terms but rather how can we improve it.
This allows an even playing field across all of our brands and categories across our region and helps to focus our efforts on growth.
It’s easy to get lost in a debate around why an individual ROI is higher or lower than the expectation but it’s far more productive to talk about how it’s evolved from one year to the next.
How did the plans change, was the creative the same, was it optimised for the channel that was used, how many impressions, cost per point?
The answers to all of these questions are helping us to make better decisions and build learnings, which identify what sort of campaigns are more likely to drive better results.
Working with partners
We are also keen to be involved in healthy ongoing conversations around wider issues of brand safety, transparency and measurement.
We welcome being a part of the work that ISBA and the IPA are doing to improve things from an industry perspective.
It’s also encouraging to hear about the work that the IAB, Newsworks, Thinkbox and Radiocentre have been doing to help build an understanding of how consumers respond to advertising.
A lot of this work doesn’t necessarily create headlines but it certainly helps nail the point that long-standing media channels have somehow become dated or unsound.
My view remains that a culture of effectiveness in a client will allow all media channels to play to their strengths.
A growing number of CMOs are leaving their roles without a new position to go to. What is their rationale?
Marketing Week 29th January 2020
Marketing is a demanding career and, if you’ve been in senior posts for many years, there can come a time when you need to take a step back.
For some people it is not simply enough to just change jobs. Instead they feel it necessary to remove themselves completely from the day-to-day rigour of working for a leading brand, even without a new job to go to. Such a move can appear to others as an incredibly brave, if risky, career decision.
But is it? We ask four senior marketers why they have left their posts in the past few months and what they plan to do next.
Matt Stockbridge’s LinkedIn profile simply says: “Taking a Break”. Like many senior marketers who have left their jobs without a new one to take up, Stockbridge is not overly worried. He has just left his role as analytics lead at Mondelēz International, where he spent almost nine years. He had become frustrated. Three times he applied for a new role internally and on each occasion the position was offered to an external candidate.
“I just thought it was time to move on, nothing against the company,” he says. “I feel I need to rest, reset and restart my career.”
Stockbridge comes from a research background, having previously held a senior business insight role at Cadbury and led consumer insights at Kantar Worldpanel, where he spent 17 years – if you include his time at TNS UK. He does not consider his latest career decision to be particularly bold.
“People look at what you do from their own perspective, but they do not walk in your shoes,” says Stockbridge. “I have been working since I was 14 and I have always spent a long time at the companies where I have worked. I’m now looking for more flexibility.”
He expects to be drinking a lot of coffee as he networks tirelessly over the coming weeks.
“I have given myself three months, but I’m very relaxed about things. I am just crystallising my thoughts. I might even do something completely different such as find a house to do up and turn it into an Airbnb property. Who knows?”
Stockbridge says the fact many senior marketers are choosing the same path is a reaction to the uncertainty in the economy over the past three years. This has led to stagnation in the marketing industry as brands wait for things to happen. While younger marketers are prepared to bide their time, older ones have got itchy feet.
“My advice to others would be to try other routes first, such as applying for moves internally, ensure you can afford to just leave and be confident enough to buy yourself enough time to really benefit from a break from the industry,”
If you have had success with a campaign it is tempting to over-analyse and post-rationalise. Don’t. Just move on and get some perspective
Marketing Week 19th February 2020
Until September 2018, a railway bridge on the anti-clockwise section of the M25 between junctions 16 and 17 carried the graffitied slogan, ‘Give peas a chance’. This light-hearted message had not fallen foul of rules on obscene or offensive slogans and its disruptive nature enlivened the daily commute for many.
It was an example of creating work that was interesting, shareable and prompted an emotional response. It still has a Facebook group with more than 9,000 followers. Rumour has it the work featured only the word peas to begin with, which at least suggests some collaborative testing and learning took place before the slogan was complete.
Maybe the next time you are considering a new campaign, you might want to apply the ‘Give peas a chance’ test to see if it will fly. Try asking the questions: is it easy to like? Is it clever? Does it stand out? Is it inoffensive (or does it offend the right people)? And does it allow others to iterate and improve the work?
At Mondelēz, we got Oreo to “sponsor” the lunar eclipse in 2015 by cover wrapping The Sun newspaper. At the time, there were very strict global guidelines around how the brand was positioned and supported, and this idea didn’t really fit in that context.
The idea then evolved into actually showing the eclipse ‘live’ on digital screens. We got lucky, the weather was so bad the Oreo ‘exclipse’ may have got more coverage than the actual one. It was a great campaign that definitely passed the give peas a chance test.
“Data is killing creativity and creativity is the most important driving factor in ad success and response”
I don’t agree, data isn’t killing creativity but crap ads might be. It also doesn’t matter how amazing your ads are if no one sees them. Arguably, reach and brand size are therefore more important drivers. In an equal playing field creativity can be the biggest driver, but the field is rarely equal.
One of the most respected figures in publishing, Hearst’s Joanna Coles, went a step further recently, declaring
“People hate advertising. What’s more,she said, it is all the fault of brands”
The truth is that truly great work, like an artist’s masterpiece, is often not a repeatable success. How many great films, books and albums have not been bettered? Businesses are built on the need to grow and advertising, fortunately or unfortunately, can play a key role in this. This should be an opportunity for doing more great work and not just an excuse to harp on about why things are not like they used to be.
Marketing is a tough job and getting tougher. The power and even the point of brands is being challenged. There needs, therefore, to be a shift in thinking, attitude and approach on all sides to improve the industry.
Orlando Wood, chief innovation officer at System1 Group, has written an excellent book, Lemon, on the issues that I’ve highlighted and suggests that a renaissance could be on the way. At the end of the book he’s written a manifesto for agencies, which it would be great to see them sign up to.
Whether your agency signs up or not, here is what you need to challenge your partners with:
Always work to a written brief to hold everyone accountable
Possibly the least interesting or fun part of the process but so important. These are best put together collaboratively. Lean on your agencies for this and make sure you all agree that they pass the give peas a chance test.
Keep it simple and easy to explain by keeping it to just a few sentences, creating a lens through which any ideas and suggestions can easily be tested.
Only work with people who are as passionate about your brand as you are
Once a creative person has an idea or a view, they are way more experienced at defending their point of view than the humble client. In larger agencies, there are plenty of other decision makers for them to lean on than you.
“There’s nothing wrong with awards but please don’t make them the reason for doing the work. You are in the business of selling products or services, any recognition on top of this is a bonus“
If someone leads you down the wrong creative path once then more fool them. If you work with them again on another campaign then more fool you. Remember, you will be left carrying the can if the campaign bombs.
Beware the illusion of choice
I remember this happened at Mondelēz on a largely forgettable campaign for a new product we were launching. We got into a position where faith in the output was gradually draining on all sides.
In order to try and build some enthusiasm for the campaign, we were asked to choose which music should back the ad. It was pretty obvious which was the preferred option. It was the process, however, that got the brand team back involved and enthusiastic about it to an extent.
Know how the work supports the brand so you can convince others
I mention this because quite often I’ve seen additional ideas and ‘opportunities’ pop up, often once a larger campaign has been agreed and signed off. Multiple channels with the right creative can help increase the reach and frequency of your message but sometimes the link between these is not clear.
On one occasion at Mondelēz we were a few months into a new campaign and someone suggested we could do a specific activation targeting a group of people who would be fasting. An interesting thought but there didn’t seem to be an obvious link with the wider work we were airing.
While this conversation was playing out, a voice somewhere in the background in agency land pointed out that this could be award-winning work. Whether this was what was actually said I don’t recall but it did rather help to explain our concerns over what the activation would do for the brand.
Nothing wrong with awards but please don’t make them the reason for doing the work. You are in the business of selling products or services, any recognition on top of this is a bonus.
If something really flies, keep it flying
Surely one of the ways of halting the surge in short-termism is for campaigns that are showing initial, measurable success to be continued. Views on measuring long- and short-term activity are evolving but one thing all econometric experts will tell you is that in order to have a long-term impact, your campaign has to have a good short-term return.
In other words, if your campaign is crap to begin with, it probably isn’t going to become less crap if you keep on airing it.
I recall one time when we had copy that was performing well but had second copy lined up that we were doubting. In the end, we decided to just air the same copy three times. In campaigns I have worked on, ROI tends to improve over time.
You can help this by shortening the copy length to focus on distinctive parts of the copy. Once we did the full econometric testing of all of the airings, it turned out the third burst was the best performing.
How does the latest campaign build on the previous one and open the door to the next one?
This has become a drum I’ve ended up beating a lot. To be fair to those in agency land, this is something clients need to take better ownership of. Yes businesses work on quarterly and year end reporting but advertising needs to get out of thinking in these cycles.
I can count on the fingers of no hands how many media plans I’ve seen that run for more than 12 months. This is not helped by the constant change in personnel. In my time at Mondelēz I had nine bosses in 10 years. Organisations with a matrix structure rarely promote from within and will therefore always struggle with continuity. A new brand manager arrives at least every 18 months or so and, of course, will want to do something new, different and better than before to stand out.
“Look at most people’s LinkedIn profiles and you’ll see that they collect brands like Panini stickers. We see value in breadth rather than depth”
Revolution is often preferred over evolution and is often passed off as being disruptive. The sensible brand building lessons preached by Byron Sharp et al suggest the need for continuity and leveraging distinctive assets to grow brands. This is also supported by findings in the aforementioned Lemon.
There doesn’t seem to be any value in being the guardian of a brand for a long period of time regardless of which side of the fence you sit. Look at most people’s LinkedIn profiles and you’ll see that they collect brands like Panini stickers. We see value in breadth rather than depth.
With all this churn driving so little consistency, is it any wonder trust and love for advertising is waning? There has to be a better way of providing variety and interest to keep things fresh while rewarding those who are willing to commit to a brand for more than just a few months.
Don’t disappear up your rear
You’ve aired the work, you’ve won the awards, you’ve reinvented advertising, created a new platform or some other version of alchemy. Congratulations to you, go and have a biscuit.
Once you’ve polished your awards and adjusted the LinkedIn profile to include your new entry in to the industry’s latest most influential, up and coming, hot list, the work really starts.
Nothing wrong with such plaudits at all. The problem is that you might be enjoying a time you might look back on as the good old days.
You can cement this by writing a book or doing endless conferences about it or maybe even set up your own business. As time passes, you can then moan about the fact everything is rubbish now and share details of the great campaign you did back in the day.
As Tennyson said: “It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” But surely marketers want a better legacy than that?
The reasons something becomes great is a combination of many factors. This is part of the magic. Once you’ve had some success, don’t over analyse and don’t post-rationalise. Just move on and get some perspective.
Remember, it’s only an advert for chocolate, frozen peas, an energy provider or a betting company.
