Mark Ritson on what does and doesn't matter in marketing

Summary

In this engaging talk, Mark Ritson highlights the critical areas marketers often overlook while being distracted by trends with little relevance. He challenges the obsession with technology like VR and blockchain, misconceptions about the death of traditional marketing channels, and the misaligned focus on brand purpose over practical marketing strategies. Ritson advocates for a middle path that leverages history and innovation wisely, emphasizes proper training, and integrates traditional and digital media. His advice underscores the importance of strategy, the inefficacy of falling for digital-only tactics, and the need to focus on core marketing principles that stand the test of time.

Highlights

• Mark Ritson tears down current obsessions with VR, Bitcoin, and other tech trends, calling them distractions unless they're directly relevant. 😎
• He humorously debunks the idea that traditional marketing is dead, highlighting its evolution and sustained relevance. 💪
• Using examples, Ritson stresses the ludicrousness of some brand purpose claims, urging marketers to focus on real, actionable goals. 😂
• Digital isn't everything—Blending digital with traditional marketing techniques often yields the best results, Ritson asserts with data. 📊
• Training in marketing is crucial for improvement. Marketers should not ignore academic learning or training programs. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Don't get caught in the techno-porn trap; not all shiny tech trends are relevant to your marketing! 🤖
• Marketers shouldn't panic about the 'death' of traditional marketing channels like TV and print. 📺
• Brand purpose often distracts from real business objectives; focus instead on effective marketing strategies. 🎯
• Digital marketing is important but shouldn't overshadow traditional channels; integrate them for maximum impact. 🌐
• Marketing training enhances skills; don't dismiss it in favor of digital-savvy alone. 🎓

Overview

Mark Ritson delivers a captivating and humorous talk that cuts through the noise surrounding current marketing trends. He declares technology fads like VR and Bitcoin as largely irrelevant distractions unless they directly improve a marketer's impact in the near future. His arguments dispel fears about the demise of traditional marketing methods, supporting their ongoing importance with historical evidence.

Ritson critiques the modern marketing world's overemphasis on brand purpose—a pursuit he deems mostly nonsense. Instead, he calls for a return to focusing on customer satisfaction and making real impacts. With witty examples, he exposes the absurdity of corporate statements promising societal change while skipping foundational marketing principles.

Covering the digital versus traditional marketing debate, Ritson advises an integrated approach rather than choosing sides. He emphasizes that while digital tools are vital, traditional media continues to provide significant value. Training and strategic planning across all platforms are essential to effective marketing, according to Ritson, who advocates for a balanced, informed approach over fads.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview In this introductory chapter, the speaker expresses the honor of concluding a significant conference. The focus is on distinguishing between what is irrelevant and what truly matters. Initially, the speaker intends to discuss aspects that are not crucial and subsequently address how to overcome current challenges without dwelling too much on the negative aspects. The aim is to set the stage for meaningful questions and discussions towards the end.
• 00:30 - 02:30: Techno Obsession and Distractions The chapter titled 'Techno Obsession and Distractions' delves into how technology can distract us from our real jobs and the larger challenges that we face. The discussion begins with 'techno porn,' a term used to describe our obsession with flashy technologies like virtual reality, AI, and Bitcoin. This obsession is compared to a 'jackdaw discipline'—the habit of stealing or absorbing trends and theories from other fields. Over the last four or five years, this fascination with technology has become prevalent, often distracting us from more substantial challenges. The chapter aims to address how we might overcome these distractions.
• 02:30 - 04:00: Obsession with Death in Marketing The chapter delves into the theme of 'Obsession with Death in Marketing,' highlighting how marketing professionals can become overly engrossed with trends or technologies that may not have long-term relevance. For instance, the sudden fascination with VR and Pokémon Go is critiqued. These topics, while intriguing, may not necessarily contribute significantly to effective marketing strategies or outcomes. The speaker questions the rationale behind investing time and resources into these trends without clear evidence of their applicability and sustainability in the marketing world.
• 04:00 - 06:00: Death of Traditional Media The chapter titled "Death of Traditional Media" discusses the shift in focus towards emerging technologies like virtual reality, 3D printing, Bitcoin, and blockchain. These technologies are considered more significant now than traditional research and strategic planning in marketing. The transcript suggests a forward-thinking attitude, encouraging focus on future years and dealing with challenges as they arise, highlighting the rapid evolution of technology and its impact on marketing and media.
• 06:00 - 08:00: Challenge of Change Misinterpretation The chapter titled "Challenge of Change Misinterpretation" discusses the execution of current strategies and the necessity of planning for future strategies, specifically for 2019. The speaker indicates that unless technologies like virtual reality, machine learning, AI, Bitcoin, blockchain, and 3D printing will heavily impact the market in the next year, they should not be the focus. The emphasis is on returning to essential work and realizing that businesses require their attention without unnecessary distractions.
• 08:00 - 13:00: Reality of Brand Purpose The chapter titled 'Reality of Brand Purpose' begins with the notion that the marketing industry is preoccupied with technology, often at the expense of deeper insights. It then delves into the industry's morbid fascination with declaring various aspects as 'dead.' This obsession is pervasive, suggesting a funeral-like atmosphere pervading the field. The chapter illustrates this theme with examples, such as the rapid decline of print newspapers. The text hints at a broader critique of how marketing discourse can overly fixate on the idea of demise and obsolescence, exemplified by commentary from figures like Shelley Parma, which is labeled as nonsensical.
• 13:00 - 18:00: Myth of Digital Separation The chapter titled 'Myth of Digital Separation' discusses the perceived crises and predictions of the demise of traditional forms of media and advertising. It highlights how various forms of media like television and marketing are rumored to be dying or already dead. The chapter reflects on the hyperbolic nature of such declarations, emphasizing the dramatic shifts in media landscapes and the challenges faced by professionals in the industry who are grappling with these changes.
• 18:00 - 30:00: Strategy and Communication The chapter 'Strategy and Communication' discusses the claim that traditional marketing techniques, such as market segmentation and mass marketing, are becoming obsolete. The session references views from the Harvard Business Review, suggesting that if businesses do not adapt to these changes, they face existential threats. The conversation reflects a sense of urgency and concern about the future of marketing strategies.
• 30:00 - 39:00: Middle Path to Marketing Success The chapter 'Middle Path to Marketing Success' challenges the notion that traditional marketing channels, like TV, are obsolete. It stresses that the idea of 'death' in marketing is misleading, as historical trends show evolution and adaptation rather than disappearance. The content discourages dwelling on the end of established mediums, advocating instead for recognizing their transformation and continued relevance in the marketing landscape.
• 39:00 - 41:00: Audience Questions and Answers The chapter titled 'Audience Questions and Answers' discusses the impact of technological disruption using the example of the VHS video recorder. When it was introduced to Australia in 1976, it notably affected the cinema industry by reducing both box-office sales and the number of people attending cinemas. This demonstrates how newer technology can disrupt and transform existing markets.
• 41:00 - 41:00: Conclusion and Outro The chapter focuses on the false prediction that VHS would lead to the decline of cinema. The speaker humorously points out that despite assumptions that people would prefer to watch movies at home, cinema attendance remained robust and even thrived. They correct a misleading chart with real data, illustrating that cinema did not suffer due to VHS but rather continued to be successful, especially in the last decade.

Mark Ritson on what does and doesn't matter in marketing Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone it's a great honor to finish this wonderful conference so at marketing the [ __ ] that doesn't matter in the [ __ ] that does 25 30 minutes from me and then I hope we'll have some decent questions and discussion I'd like to start with the with the the stuff that doesn't matter and then I'd like to then transition to what how we get out of this place that we've currently got ourselves into but I'm not going to dwell on the negatives for too long but let's just go through the stuff that you shouldn't worry about because it's
• 00:30 - 01:00 distracting you from your real job and the big challenges that we all face and then we'll talk about how do we get out of that okay so the [ __ ] stuff let's start with techno porn we've always been I think the jackdaw discipline we've always wanted to steal theories from other areas for the last four or five years we've become obsessed with technology it's very hard to go to these events without sort of getting involved in VR AI Bitcoin type stuff and that's lovely
• 01:00 - 01:30 stuff but it's fundamentally not relevant to almost every one of you in this room it's it's interesting but unless you can show me how VR is some relevance to you next year why would you be wasting any of your minutes on it you know we have bigger fish to fry you remember a couple of years ago a Pokemon go turned up and every [ __ ] idiot lost their brain saying it was the future of marketing yeah where's Pokemon go now right it was a kids game and yet we had all these people saying it's the future of marketing we're obsessed with
• 01:30 - 02:00 [ __ ] virtual reality right strapping on headsets appears to be far more important than doing research having a strategy 3d printing just hangs around like a bad smell you know I mean like what the [ __ ] is 3d printing got to do with marketing Bitcoin yeah and and you know blockchain I mean these are things that we all talk about now as if they have some relevance what are you worrying about you should be worrying about next year yeah you should be worrying about 2019 2018 is over from a
• 02:00 - 02:30 strategy point of view all that's happening now is execution you should be planning your strategy for 2019 and unless virtual reality machine learning a AI Bitcoin blockchain 3d printing have a massive impact on you market next year and I'll give you a clue they don't put them down and go back to [ __ ] work yeah we have lots to do yeah our companies need us and they don't need us strapped into a VR headset looking at fake bitcoins so I
• 02:30 - 03:00 think techno porn gets in the way the next thing is we're obsessed with death in marketing we have this morbid obsession with saying that everything is dead have you not noticed it's a bit funereal to work in marketing at the moment right let me give you some examples well let me give you bigger examples than that you'll notice there's sort of a death theme everywhere stuff like this print newspapers aren't just dying they're dying faster than you think yeah shelley parma writing nonsense in
• 03:00 - 03:30 advertising age TV may actually die so it's literally gonna [ __ ] die yeah TV's dead apparently 2017 was the year that Twitter either learns to thrive or dies yeah one of the other there's nothing in the middle tough [ __ ] for all of you people who work in advertising because for it [ __ ] Forrester you should know better than this right the end of advertising as we know it yeah advertising's dead branding also [ __ ] dead apparently marketing you know it's also dead tough
• 03:30 - 04:00 [ __ ] Russell this [ __ ] conference is totally pointless because the whole of marketing is [ __ ] dead right according to the Harvard Business Review or the CML you're also [ __ ] as well apparently you're dead if you're not dead you're dying big problem here because if you look at this you'll find that everybody panic market segmentation is dead there's no more segmentation and targeting that's a massive problem because we can't do any target marketing anymore and that's really problematic because we can't do mass marketing either because that's dead as well yeah
• 04:00 - 04:30 [ __ ] now so why is this obsession with death entirely and utterly stupid yeah it's stupid because in the end it takes time for stuff to happen [ __ ] TV's not dying for God's sake it will never die it will never die and if you study the history of marketing for longer than three seconds you'll discover that our history is not filled with death it's filled with everlue and change death rarely happens in me
• 04:30 - 05:00 you are marketing for the old [ __ ] in the room like this is what disruption used to look like right this is an electrical electrical sex tool right no it's not it's a VHS video recorder okay and in 1976 the VHS video recorder was launched into Australia and I've got the UK data but it will look very similar when the VHS recorder landed into Australia guess what happened to cinema both box-office an actual number of people who went to the cinema well no surprise right it destroyed cinema
• 05:00 - 05:30 attendances because why would you drive to a cinema pay more money sit with strangers when you could sit at home and watch movies in the comfort of your own home clearly VHS killed cinema except it [ __ ] didn't this chart is the wrong way around this is not the real data you want to see what really happened to cinema when VHS arrived this is what happened to cinema yeah and cinema continues to be successful how did best decade in the last decade this is how
• 05:30 - 06:00 media really works if you stopped writing stupid [ __ ] articles and look at history we learn to live together we blend together nothing actually dies and also because we take tiny little incremental lines over two years voice right and we extrapolate them into complete and utter madness let me demonstrate right in 1977 the year that Elvis the king of rock and roll died there were only a hundred and seventy Elvis impersonators in the world registered Elvis impersonators there
• 06:00 - 06:30 were a few Cowboys I'm sure but there were a hundred and seventy registered Elvis impersonators by the turn of the century that number had grown to 85,000 Elvis impersonators now if we take that growth over that period of time if we apply an extrapolation estimation calculation which I don't understand but somebody smart gave it to me and we apply it to that growth and extrapolate out I have some terrible [ __ ] news for everyone this is the global
• 06:30 - 07:00 population looking forward to 2050 and this is the prevalence according to the formula of Elvis impersonators what that means I'm afraid to tell you is that d-day d-day is March the third twenty thirty one because that's the day according to my calculations when every [ __ ] person on the planet will be dressed like Elvis and the point is
• 07:00 - 07:30 lines curve they slow down things mature they don't go straight line Facebook are discovering it in the moment Facebook isn't dead it's slowing down it will be here but it's softening the other problem we've got is we live in our little techno bubble here with our phones and our gadgets and our love of tech and we forget we are not the customer yeah you don't look like the customer you look like marketers and marketers are not very representative of the people
• 07:30 - 08:00 that we market to think box is a lovely piece of research couple of years ago that looked at well how marketers and advertising people use different tech platforms and this should look pretty familiar to you because you're in that survey and you see at the top LinkedIn is used by 93% of advertising and marketing people but they also surveyed a representative sample of actual normal consumers and this is what they look like we're not normal yeah we're
• 08:00 - 08:30 extremely abnormal and we sit in meetings with abnormal people and we have dinner with abnormal people some of us will have sex with abnormal people all of whom work in marketing and media and we forget that in Rochdale and Glasgow and Cardiff 62 year-old men don't look like us don't behave like us the market is not the marketer and we forget that point and because the consumer is not changing as much as we think the greatest advertising man of all time in my opinion was Bert bill
• 08:30 - 09:00 Bernbach this is a quote from 50 years ago it uses sexist language I apologize it was a long time ago but what he says he's still relevant to this day human nature hasn't changed for a million years it won't change in the next million years only the superficial things have changed it's fashionable to talk about the changing man we keep hearing people's attentions fans are reducing yeah people's behavior is different it's not it took a million friggin years to get us here it takes more than text and email to change the human brain the
• 09:00 - 09:30 tactics are changing but the fundamental nature of consumers does not change not over a very very long period of time on top of the death myth let's also put nihilism nihilism we've become a discipline that is proud of not knowing anything about marketing I struggled with this one the most yeah so I went on the train to Carlisle where I'm originally from up in Cumberland about a year ago and somebody sent me a tweet and the tweet said these are the 24
• 09:30 - 10:00 marketers you should follow on Twitter and because I was on a train I was bored I looked up all 24 LinkedIn because I wondered I wonder how many of them have actually been trained in marketing they're all the Guru's right how many of them have a industrial or academic or anything any form of training in marketing and the answer was out the 24 four of them four of them I'm gonna send up bright what I'm saying is your gurus don't know [ __ ] all about marketing yeah because they've never actually learned
• 10:00 - 10:30 or studied the discipline themselves and so I wrote a helpful column suggesting that before you become a ninja or a guru you might want to actually know what you're a ninja of yeah before you start changing marketing maybe you should study it and learn it cuz we're a hundred years old and respect it and just to make sure it was a real hit I sent it to the 24 because I had their LinkedIn details and they loved it they thought it was terrific let me make a bold and unpopular statement I believe
• 10:30 - 11:00 that training in marketing makes a marketer better I believe that yeah I believe that but I'm in the minority because most people disagree they don't think any training in marketing is relevant at all this is a quote from dawn pain is a wonderful chief marketing officer my view is Jay's over the past ten years we have entered a new era of digital transformation and you need a different skill set from what you can learn in a book another quote give me someone with a degree in robotics a master's in anthropology or a PhD in
• 11:00 - 11:30 philosophy every time that's Gemma graves the head of the marketing Society I'm in the minority here and when we run an article asking the question in marketing week do marketing experts experts need a qualification in marketing we asked marketers you guys to vote 57% of marketers said no they don't around 60% of marketers have no training in marketing so I wonder if there's a correlation there yeah I repeat my statement to you I believe a training in
• 11:30 - 12:00 marketing makes you a better marketer I believe that I'm haunted by a tweet I got from a marketer who's a young market who sent me this tweet online I'm proud to be a marketer that has no training in the subject she's proud of that this is the discipline we've become yeah Philistines Philistines I know I know this is a difficult message or I'm a marketing professor I teach you know as part of my living so I'm bound to think this right I offer an online mini MBA
• 12:00 - 12:30 which has got stunning customer satisfaction scores and it's fantastically popular among the people that do the course right clearly I have a dog in this hunt but nonetheless I believe that marketers are better when they've been trained in marketing and finally brand purpose let's talk a little bit about brand purpose what a load of [ __ ] nonsense brand purposes yeah if you know it's recently all these companies doing all this weird stuff so Starbucks started writing on the side of Starbucks cups messages about racial
• 12:30 - 13:00 equality when they were giving you your cappuccino in New York kendall Jenner solved racial problems and disharmony by wearing clothes and stuff and drinking Pepsi Heineken had a beautiful add in which people came together and discuss their differences over a beer possibly Heineken who knows it wasn't really clear yeah brands are suddenly messing around with societal things now why are they doing that it's because they're positionings have disappeared and they've adopted complete BS statements
• 13:00 - 13:30 of societal mission Starbucks hasn't got a brand position anymore it has a mission and the mission is to inspire and nurture the human spirit one cup one neighborhood at a time nothing about coffee they're inspiring and nurturing the human spirit Pepsi did this stupid campaign with Kendall Jenner because they were trying to project a global message of unity peace and understanding and Hayley can no longer brews beer its corporate
• 13:30 - 14:00 purpose is to brew a better world well let's make it clear I support marriage equality I support all forms of animal human rights and everything else these corporations need to stay out of it let me show you why let me just be unpopular and unsexy and show you what a joke a total joke brand purposes let's start with the fact that there's no [ __ ] differentiation between any of it let's pray brand purpose bingo here on the right hand side you'll see a wide collection of different brands that all
• 14:00 - 14:30 have a super cool brand purpose I'm gonna read the brand purposes to you I'd like you to tell me which brand in which purpose statement let's make today great inspire moments of optimism get more out of today inspire the human spirit make everyday life better create a more positive future ok anyone here's the answer look I don't [ __ ] know either they're all the same right I think what
• 14:30 - 15:00 happened to differentiation what happened to authenticity will happen to brand heritage in this era of brand purpose we threw out the [ __ ] window here's another problem it's all total [ __ ] [ __ ] here's you know you remember the brand purpose of Starbucks inspiring and nurturing the human spirit one person one cup and one neighborhood at a time I've got a great tactic for Starbucks to deliver that brand purpose pay your [ __ ] tax pay it pay it pay it up until the year 2014 Starbucks open
• 15:00 - 15:30 735 cafes generated 3 billion pounds in revenue and paid a total in more than 14 years of only 8 million pounds in tax pay your [ __ ] tax yeah partly cuz it pays for hospitals and schools but because your [ __ ] brand purpose is to support communities how you support communities is paying your tax they have paid more recently because the government made them
• 15:30 - 16:00 this is Tim Cook the CEO of apples a lovely person on Martin Luther King Day put some nice gloves on he went and dug holes to help communities by building underprivileged housing that happened to be the same day that over in islands they agreed to pay back 15 billion dollars of tax they hadn't paid that they owed the European Union another tip for mr. Cook take your [ __ ] gloves off and go back to work and just pay your tax it's a lot more helpful for underprivileged communities it's
• 16:00 - 16:30 [ __ ] it's all [ __ ] there are exceptions now let me be clear what I'm telling you if I make a lot of money I'll be honest with you if my accountant said to me listen man I've found a way for you to complete they're doing nothing illegal here we found a way for you to pay no tax next year would I say to the accountant an excessive it's legal it's completely aboveboard but you'll avoid all tax we're to funnel all your earnings through Luxembourg zero tax yeah I paid six hundred thousand four hundred thousand pounds in tax last year if they can't said that to me am I
• 16:30 - 17:00 telling you I'd say listen I believe in paying tax I'm sorry I'm not interested in that [ __ ] you I would take that deal right in a heartbeat but then I wouldn't stand on this stage and pretend to be a socialist pretend to give a [ __ ] about hospitals pretend to get my gloves on and dig holes I would stay silent the issue isn't not paying tax it's legal they're doing the right thing it's talking [ __ ] about corporate purpose while back in the room there they're not backing it up it's not consistent there are exceptions you know this famous story one every advertising
• 17:00 - 17:30 award last year literally everything fearless girl State Street Global Advisors a bank that believes in the u.s. in only investing in companies that have equal representation of women built this beautiful bronze statue of an eight-year-old girl and she's facing off the Wall Street bull and the message is very simple and the CEO of State Street made it very clear today we are calling on companies to take concrete steps to increase gender diversity on their boards or we won't invest in them the most awarded campaign in the world last
• 17:30 - 18:00 year fantastic fantastic one small [ __ ] problem State Street had to pay twenty eight million dollars in December to the US government because all the women and the people of color in that company were being paying less than the White men it's [ __ ] [ __ ] nice statue the problem with brand purpose is it distracts us from the real job there's an opportunity cost in wasting our time with this nonsense and the opportunity cost is we ignore brand awareness we
• 18:00 - 18:30 ignore distinctiveness brand image and getting the practical jobs done last week Dropbox and Spotify both applied for IPOs they're gonna float at some point and in those files if you read through them they actually contain the brand positionings of both companies guess how they're positioned right now Spotify is going to unlock the potential of human creativity yeah and that makes sense right you've all got Sephora fine your computer you open it in the morning not to listen to Madonna no no you open
• 18:30 - 19:00 Spotify to unlock the potential of human creativity and most of you have Dropbox on your computer and I know why you've got Dropbox on your computer you've got it because you want to unleash the world's creative energy [ __ ] me let's be honest let's be honest marketers are ashamed to be marketers they're ashamed to satisfy customers there is same to make good products yeah there's shame to make money they'd rather do something more important with their time I'm not
• 19:00 - 19:30 ashamed to make money I'm not ashamed to satisfy customers I think it's a worthwhile pursuit that's why I became a marketer very hard to go to a dinner party in West London and when someone asks you what you do and you work at Pepsi I sell sugared beverages it's much easier to be able to say I don't sell sugared beverages I promote unity and understanding around the world equally it's very hard to say you sell beer if you work for Heineken but I don't sell beer anymore I'm brewing a better world and very hard to say my job at Starbucks is to sell really nice caffeinated
• 19:30 - 20:00 beverages much more politically correct to say I inspire the human spirit yeah we've become embarrassed to do our job embarrassed to be marketers last one digital let's talk about it there are a couple of problems with digital marketing okay the first one kind of a big point is it's totally [ __ ] meaningless okay so we've got radio at outdoor and newspaper all those horrible traditional tools let me show you how traditional they are
• 20:00 - 20:30 in the United Kingdom last year guess how many people listen to the radio digitally forty-four percent we're about a year away from it being a majority digital pursue you're gonna add radio now into the digital toolkit outdoor the original most traditional medium JCDecaux now is more than 50% digital in this country it's more digital than non digital should we add outdoor now into the mix newspapers I don't know a newspaper that doesn't make more money from digital subscriptions than it does
• 20:30 - 21:00 from newsprint so what do you want to do you want to add these to the list or do you want to accept something else the d-word makes no [ __ ] sense everything is digital so why do we keep saying it it's also dumb why would you be a digital marketer and restrict yourself to a silo we're only half of the tools are relevant to you why would you tie one hand behind your back more importantly if you look at the great campaigns the greatest one of this year is easily the f ck KFC campaign it tells
• 21:00 - 21:30 you a really nice simple lesson that most marketers have forgot this was a print campaign that then synergistically LinkedIn with social media is it digital is it traditional I don't give a [ __ ] it's just good marketing its prints multiplied by social equals impact and the [ __ ] silos we can set fire to them they're just tools just tools but if you're sitting there with a D in your badge you've restricted yourself to not
• 21:30 - 22:00 doing some of the most powerful tools synergy a times B will always be greater than 2a or 2b do you spend all your money on print or all your money on social you wouldn't have got as big a response as a bit of print and a bit of social let me prove that to you we've data from three and a half thousand case studies this is research done in America over a five-year period filling a massive number of campaigns platform is another word for tool so about 29% of the time marketing campaigns only use
• 22:00 - 22:30 one platform might have been radio might have been digital video who knows the minute they took some of that money and spent it on a second platform might have been Facebook my I've been outdoor the return on investment of that campaign left by nineteen percent when you had a third tool it left by 23% a fourth by 31 percent of fifth by 35% you spread your money synergy yeah diversity beats homogeneity
• 22:30 - 23:00 it's time to come back to the idea of a campaign and we call it a campaign goes there's many weapons and we use them together to get the job done fortunately there are a few people who get this and they will lead us into the next era of marketing I'm a big fan of Kiran Hannon he's the CMO of Bell King he was recently asked the phenomenally stupid question have we reached a point yet where advertisers and marketers think digital first and traditional platforms second if not why
• 23:00 - 23:30 not what a [ __ ] ridiculous question you want to take whoever asked that question out and shoot them in the carpark right Hanan was more patient Hannon said to him my new year's resolution is to ban the notion of digital and traditional being separate elements they're not it's all marketing with a capital M teams must be proficient in developing strategies and tactics along with the prioritization of such programs that is an answer from the future roll DeVries my favorites email from Nissan everything is digital we should not
• 23:30 - 24:00 separate we should integrate Stephane Berube the new CMO or L'Oreal very smart guy in an interview in marketing week I don't believe we have an online and offline consumer right that damn marketing needs to move from having digital priorities we need to stop talking about what is the digital strategy I'm making a big point of this in the culture at L'Oreal I always smile when agencies claim they're doing digital honestly maybe that was good in
• 24:00 - 24:30 2010 in 2017 they should claim they just do marketing we need to stop talking about digital it's all part of marketing let me be very clear because I'm widely [ __ ] misquoted all the time I do not think digital media is pointless with my clients several of them I'm a hundred percent this year in digital media over other forms I've just taken a big pile of money out of outdoor and stuffed it into digital video for a client in Australia yeah I don't think it's pointless I do think it's oversold
• 24:30 - 25:00 and I do think it's been overused by many clients the proof came out yesterday in the radio centre research the biggest piece of research that's been done in this country for a very long time they asked a representative sample of marketers spending big budgets and agencies how they perceived the different channels and they scored them on 13 different criteria yeah TV online video social media these are proceeding with the strongest media but then they
• 25:00 - 25:30 did a massive study of lots of secondary data to look at what really are the strongest media across about a hundred different studies and what emerges is something that may not surprise you there are certain media that are underrepresented radio newspapers magazines and Direct Mail strong in reality perceived to be weak by most marketers and there's certain media that are the opposite social media online video perceived to be strong but actually we still good tools we've over
• 25:30 - 26:00 valence digital we've fallen in love with the hot stuff so digital marketers I know you're out there about 40% of the people in the room you're a digital marketer let me be very clear I love you I love you but we got to talk about your name you need to come with me now out of that [ __ ] dark silo you need to come and learn about TV and radio and outdoor they're all digital now anyway and you need to become a true master of tactics and once we've done that I'm
• 26:00 - 26:30 gonna take you upstairs to a place we call strategy the d-word makes you look like a tactical buffoon yeah you're a marketer come upstairs let's do some strategy let's stop [ __ ] around with the toys let's start being grown-ups they pay your [ __ ] money trust me one final point about this you know that email I got about these are the most famous marketers you should follow and only four of them had training guess that many of the 24 worked in
• 26:30 - 27:00 communications all of them that's very important too we've become obsessed with communications Communications is about five to eight percent of the marketing challenge the other 95% is other stuff but somehow now all we talk about is comms there are always three steps in good marketing first we diagnose what's going on second we develop a strategy strategy has got nothing to do with tactics nothing yeah it's cold and it's blue and
• 27:00 - 27:30 it's been the same for more than 2,000 years and then finally the tactics deliver on the strategy mostly we think of tactics in an old-fashioned world I do as the four PS even though they don't stand with P's right what are the tactics that we marketers use short communications distribution channels the product itself and pricing they're all equally important and a good marketing plan at least the ones I've seen over
• 27:30 - 28:00 the years they normally do a pretty good diagnosis clear strategy good tactical delivery and we all make money but that's not what's been happening what's been happening is what I call communication I made that word up what that means is we don't bother with tactics anymore where were the presentations on pricing and distribution this week we don't bubble with that and we just focus on communications we don't call it communications we call it you know content marketing and we call it you know social and digital and TV but the
• 28:00 - 28:30 point is it just calms it's a small part of marketing and then it gets worse we also do what I call tactic ocation in most companies in this country there's no [ __ ] strategy anymore there's just tactics and mostly just comms we've lost the ability to build a strategy and it's just ultimately communications I have a good way to find this out to see if you're guilty of this take your advertising agency and ask them hey what
• 28:30 - 29:00 do you think of our strategy now because of your advertising agency they and their loyal partners and lying [ __ ] sometimes as well they're going to say aw [ __ ] mate it's impressive it's impressive strategy proud to work for you it's impressed were you laughing it it's impressive strategy very clear very very very clear I am so then you have to apply the truth serum which is often otherwise referred to in some cultures as large amounts of beer okay agency men and women have many
• 29:00 - 29:30 talents but drinking large amounts of ale is not one of them so you inject 7/8 perhaps 9 pints of beer into them and then you repeat the question and you say to them again how's that strategy and you get to the truth what [ __ ] strategy yeah it's a joke this is what I hear from your agencies when you're not there they've been mown the fact that strategy is dead and all they get now when they get briefs tactical wish lists think about briefing the lost art of
• 29:30 - 30:00 marketing the IEP aid is the best briefing courses in the world no one goes on a money mortgage that too busy strapped into their VR headsets in order to brief an agency you need three things you need a [ __ ] strategy because that's what your briefing second you need to know that your tactical ideas are [ __ ] yeah that's why you hide an agency we're clients our ideas are bad you've got these amazing creative people and you're giving them [ __ ] ideas and finally you have to know how to brief it's a skill how do you learn how to
• 30:00 - 30:30 brief you get trained in [ __ ] briefing not by people from me I got any skills in briefing from people at the IPA or run courses and we stopped being nihilists about it and we start training ourselves again there's two kinds of briefing in this country yeah you turn up and you got 400 grand what can we do with that right that's the first kind of [ __ ] brief right the second brief which is even worse is you turn up with his agency and you start sketching ideas on the wall there's a monkey and there's a guy here and he says this and she says that can you do that for me right and
• 30:30 - 31:00 you reduce this [ __ ] tactical idea to people have genuine and creative talent learn to brief so that's what I like to call the [ __ ] mess we're in let's try and get out of the [ __ ] mess with my last five minutes and suggest how we might solve some of these problems because we need to solve them quick because we're getting to be a bit of a joke in the rest of the company I'm gonna propose a middle path yeah a middle path in marketing the middle path is boring yeah it's not as interesting as saying everything's dead or you
• 31:00 - 31:30 should move all your money there it's really boring but it's the right path to take a middle path first of all for where we should focus not just on the history but not on [ __ ] VR headsets and Bitcoin in 2029 where we should be focused is slap-bang in the middle next you're worried about next year and then in another years time we'll worry about a year later focus on what we must do in the year ahead number two a middle path for our development you've got to start
• 31:30 - 32:00 believing in training again don't come and get it from me or marketing week or a business school seek you out but you can be made better by training and we have to kill these morons who are walking around saying training is bad I've got no training and I'm great trained and become better now I'll admit you on this one there are two challenges here first we've got to fix marketing professors who were by and large completely [ __ ] hopeless I understand that I know we have to improve I accept and acknowledge that most marketing professors have never done a day's
• 32:00 - 32:30 marketing in their lives that is a problem we have to fix that but we've also got to study by garyvee wandering around talking about how education is a waste of money we have to believe again that training not necessary University but training can make us better marketers because we're not that good anymore a middle path for our positioning this is a big one everyone asks me this all the time you got two choices increasingly dominating your thinking yeah so you've got idiots like simon Sinek talking about brand purpose
• 32:30 - 33:00 that consumers don't care what you make they just want to know why you make it whether it's you know pokers or gin just really matter but why are you making it right pushing this brand purpose agenda down our throats totally over the top the other end of the continuum you've got people like biro and sharp the Dark Lord of penetration by Owen sharps message is very simple differentiation is not possible anymore so you must be distinctive Starbucks certainly isn't
• 33:00 - 33:30 inspiring the human spirit it's a combination of distinctive assets that combine together own some certain mental links in the customers minds they're both wrong there's a middle path brand meaning now I don't say that's the right answer for Starbucks I do like Starbucks as a product for me I'd say it's American it's on the go and it's superior and that's a sample of one but my point is Starbucks is not just green and a cup shape but it's also not restoring the communities of the world there's
• 33:30 - 34:00 somewhere in the middle between these two points symbolic differentiated valuable brand meaning and we seem to have lost that plot and we're trapped between these two extremes targeting same challenge the Dark Lord of penetration tells us we must do sophisticated mass marketing go after everyone which is also why he doesn't believe in differentiation because he's [ __ ] you and after everyone meanwhile Facebook is offering its amazing opportunities to micro segment stuff we've never even been able
• 34:00 - 34:30 to do before so who's right both of them and neither of them I believe now more than ever in the work of Peter field and lesbo net I believe there's a long and emphasis on and a short of it you want a nuclear explosion of emotional non-targeted brand based communication but you also need then targeted perhaps more digital executions that focus in on particular segments with particular propositions you want both of these things and yet we're fighting as if it's
• 34:30 - 35:00 one or the other a middle path for our tactics is it digital first is it traditional those titles are [ __ ] ridiculous man it's a mix remember it's a media mix we used to call this integrated marketing we knew how to do this 25 years ago be media neutral depends on your strategy we used to call it a campaign I don't know whether it's traditional digital it's just tools I'm gonna blend them together to get the best result every year based on my strategy and finally
• 35:00 - 35:30 the middle path for this talk yeah some of you are thinking what a tall [ __ ] wanker yeah some of you gone he's a guru I like everything he says neither of those things are correct some of this is [ __ ] some of it's brilliant I don't [ __ ] know what make your minds up and find a middle path take the bits that make sense and reject the bits that don't but let's stop following this insane path where some things are dead and some things are the future we have to take the middle path to get marketing back on track thank you
• 35:30 - 36:00 [Applause] a manifesto to make marketing great again it's not a question let's do three laps my wife's not here well who wants to who identify themselves okay let me
• 36:00 - 36:30 go to the second question first if you had a new job as a marketing director starting on Monday what would be your first 100 days to get the department up to your standards for what it 70 question look follow that 1-2-3 section right well you and it's similar to what I do with companies and with brands the first thing we do is we gonna go in and we're gonna do that diagnosis step we're going to do some qualitative work we're gonna do some ethnography work we're
• 36:30 - 37:00 gonna just listen to customers and we're gonna try and work out what's going on and we're gonna take the call and we're gonna put that into a really nice tasty survey we're gonna sample a representative selection of the market through yoga or through one of the panel companies and we're gonna get beautiful insights and segmentation and at that point we can then do a bit of strategy but the first hundred days or the first part of it is put down the strategy put down the tactics let's go back to customers and learn the humility of
• 37:00 - 37:30 marketing we have to learn you are the least qualified person to know what your product is about you can't see it you have to go out and listen to the customer so that's how I would begin I'm not sure whether or not you so au fait with macroeconomics of the UK to answer the first question I loving I'm always gonna be English I moved to Australia after being in America a long time because of my wife I worry about as a bit yeah we we're gonna lose a lot of
• 37:30 - 38:00 talent and it'll be a hard ten years so you know you have to make your own decision but make no mistake what's going to happen to this Beloved Country is not it's not good and it will affect us first because we're the Canaries in the so yeah if you have an option to head for a while much is it you know hurts me to say it head there's a storm coming and it's not going to be a good one and our recession will be borne of you know we can't do much about a recession we can help ourselves but we
• 38:00 - 38:30 entered dark times no easy way to say that um I fear Paul's question might be setting it up or setting him up but how do you recommend measuring the effectiveness of those traditional offline channels such as print radio etc so you can justify spending more money yeah there's some great ROI you can get off many of the great digital tools and they are great the problem is they're down the bottom of the funnel so you're seeing a good immediate return on investment but what you're missing is a
• 38:30 - 39:00 lot of those customers you're converting you built much earlier with other tools that say TV the initial awareness and positioning and so what happens is you're picking up that immediate return on investment and the TV and the outdoor the radio guys look like they're not good value for money they're watering the tree and good digital tools and sales promotion is then giving you the fruit to pick so the key just to try and persuade marketers on the value of top of funnel tactics out door for example is to link it more
• 39:00 - 39:30 to non immediate returns but still show significant correlations basically brand tracking show that awareness consideration and the various attributes you're trying to position on are being strengthened by some of that less targeted top of funnel stuff but let's be clear you still want the ROI stuff at the bottom you still want to get that beautiful strength of digital but what's happening right now and less I'm well sure to turn the slide be net and field
• 39:30 - 40:00 have this scary chart the last eight years the effectiveness of all communication campaigns in this country is in decline and it's in decline because we we've put too much money at the bottom of the fund and we've peaked too many fruit initially that works but now the trees are starting to fade I'm not saying don't do Facebook I'm not don't do LinkedIn I've used them to such great advantage I love them but don't neglect the tree and watering it with the top of funnel stuff measuring it is
• 40:00 - 40:30 tricky but you have to link to more than just which is getting me the best sale next week you have to do both I'm told we've only got time for one more question so I'm a Democrat so hoe both have got three now I'm gonna go with the second one what's your view on influences or influencer marketing is it worthy part of the media mix or a complete waste of time like every tactic it depends it depends it depends
• 40:30 - 41:00 show me four things show me the budget show me your target segment show me your position and show me your objectives for next year and I'll answer your question because it might be the very best thing you could do or it might be totally [ __ ] pointless you cannot judge tactics until strategy has been fixed and that's probably the key message of the session amen to that Thank You MA recently [Music]