Simon Richardson

Nick Manning has an excellent piece (https://lnkd.in/ebjX_YUF) in The Media Leader today on how agencies make money on what I always knew as broking and which today has been relabelled 'Principal-Based Media', presumably in the hope that that makes it alright...! There's a danger that Nick's points will be dismissed by many as the mechanics of media buying, the dark arts perfected by the few in order to squeeze a better deal for their clients by the agencies. As Nick shows it's nothing of the kind. And it's far more concerning than that. If you accept that the agency can act as a broker, or reseller of media space and time then you have to accept that the media agencies doing this are no longer objective in their recommendations; that their plans are not worth the paper they're written on; and that measuring the advertising's effect by channel is no longer possible. Trading media becomes just like trading a commodity. If you think that 'media' is more than a commodity defined by largely meaningless numbers on a spreadsheet, that instead 'media' is an integral component of advertising; and that creativity and craft matter, then you can join Nick and me (and an increasingly large group of supporters from all corners of the ad business) in the 'Advertising: Who Cares?' movement, and maybe join us at our event in September. Mail me on brian@bjanda.com or Nick on nick@encyclomedia.international for more details. Geraint Davies Julia Linehan

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In the latest episode of the IAB UK podcast, Dave S. sits down with Sophia Haynes and James Chandler to talk about the IAB's newly launched Environmental Sustainability FAQs, it's rationale, and how we at GroupM UK are using them day-to-day. Listen here 🎧 https://lnkd.in/eTDyKXGD #GroupMUK #Sustainability

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'Proprietary Media' (or 'Principal) is a hot potato in our industry right now. A new report from the Association of National Advertisers is a great, in-depth guide to the pros and cons, with very good recommendations for advertisers. Here I go into the cons and cons and argue that it is bad for everyone and ultimately the Media Agencies themselves. I call it 'unprincipled' media. As the WFA meets in Toronto for Global Marketer Week the health of the advertising industry should be on the agenda. Advertisers may not be able to solve issues such as climate change, but they can take actions with a more immediate impact on the well-being of the people who service their needs through how they spend their money. The news piece contains the ANA report can be found here https://lnkd.in/geKeFjBX All comments welcome, as ever.

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🚀 Out today is my latest podcast episode 'creatives in AI', with host David Brown 🎙️ In this episode, we delve into key topics: - Audience Intelligence: using AI's NLP and meta-language analysis for deeper audience understanding. We use this to fuel our research tool ‘Data Kinetics’. - Creative Intelligence; using the above data helps guide creatives on the words / images stories that appeal to different psychographics 🎯 - Operational AI: Streamlining business tasks for enhanced efficiency and performance metrics. - Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). A technique combining retrieval and generation based models to improve doc retrieval and summarising. We are working on using this technique to source and summarise strategy / research / creative docs. - Virtual influencers (creating awareness) and assistants (customer service) - together they are the new face of CRM, redefining customer engagement and brand-consumer relationships. 🤖💡 Its a short - only 30 mins -any questions on the subject, feel free to DM me. 🔗 Link to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eXxYb4FW #Datakinetics #AI #CreativeIntelligence #OperationalEfficiency #VirtualInfluencers #AIAssistant #PodcastEpisode #AIInnovation Live & Breathe Virtual Influencer Agency

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In the words of Dan Black, Teads’ CTV Pulse is the culmination of a deep dive into the 'shift factors' affecting consumer content consumption, marketers willingness to commit shifting ad dollars and the driving factors for agencies looking to help advertisers move into CTV. Please click on the link below and have a read. #CTV #bestinglass

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Media Marketing Compliance helped the Association of National Advertisers study the market for 'Principal' (or 'Proprietary') Media, and the results have landed. The report is incredibly thorough and provides great guidance for advertisers. While not a new phenomenon, PM is increasing dramatically and becoming a much more controversial way for Media Agencies to make extra profit at the expense of transparency into their true revenues. Advertisers should take a firm view on whether this is in their best interests.

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Today's all-new Cog Blog is unusual. First it comes from two of us, myself and Nick Manning (ex Manning Gottlieb, OMD and Ebiquity). Second it's got a point to it. We are seriously worried about the threat from various quarters to the craft of advertising (creative and media) and the failure of our industry's biggest players to face up to the challenges we all face. Indeed, we suggest many are part of the problem. We've decided to do something about it and we would like as many who share our concern to join us. At the moment we are at a planning stage (as we explain in the post); how far we take this does depend on the level of support our ideas generate. We urge you to read the post; and if what we're suggesting resonates with you then let us know. Talk about it, comment, share as widely as you can. We hope this will be the start of something.

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Brian Jacobs and I tend to write and talk about the same themes, so we thought it might be good to convene like-minded people to share ideas about how we Make Advertising Great Again (without the red baseball caps). We all know what the issues are so we don't need to elaborate, but we would like to discuss practical solutions. Read Brian's blog and if you're interested in being part of the discussion, our contact details are therein.

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Brands and Prof G Jon Evans spent some quality time with Prof G, and it was a good show. Scott is entertaining, smart, and pulls no punches when conveying his beliefs, especially regarding social media. He clearly believes in brands- he’s a brand himself, values the importance of storytelling, and understands that products and experience are key to brand success. He challenges that brand advertising is how to build brands in 2024 because people have better ways of getting information. He doesn’t acknowledge that advertising has helped many brands grow in many categories. For many others, it has transformed their businesses. He also doesn’t get that the big agencies do far more today than make ads- he’s stuck in Don Draper’s Mad Ave. Those points aside, he’s a compelling listen. It’s just that brands aren’t dead—far from it.

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Do you believe that segmenting media into brand v performance is "the most unhelpful bit of language the industry has come up with"? Its for sure that the ProfitAbility 2 study has come up with some really interesting debates and suggesting that instead of looking at performance versus brand, marketers should be considering the three dimensions of effectiveness being scale, efficiency and time is definitely one of them. #mediaplanning #results

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Extremely proud of this work based on a killer insight. The Challenge: Why don't British people seem to really care about germs? The Insight: Because they've been conditioned to not really *believe* in them. They think their homes are mostly germ-free, most of the time. The Creative Response: Well they might not think there are germs in their home, but there are other people, and those people have habits that spread germs... This small pivot has lead to a huge unlock for Dettol UK - no longer a brand just about killing germs, but a brand focused on human behaviours. Very excited for the new creative platform; Spread The Love, Not The Germs. Focusing on all the germy behaviours that the people we share a life and home with have. A HUGE team effort from everyone at Reckitt and McCann London. Watch this space for more great work.

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Another month, another batch of rich, culturally relevant insights for brands from DRUM. This time from our Strategy Director Adam Wyatt on all things AI, entertainment and a renaissance in analogue formats... 👇👇👇 #brandsinculture #brandpartnerships #media #advertising #genai #music #brandedcontent #entertainment #culturalinsights #brandstrategy

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Understanding the nuances of #OOHadvertising effectiveness is crucial for maximizing impact. Talon OOH UK's research unveils key insights: simplicity and central placement are paramount, with brand logos noticed only 42% of the time. Understanding viewer behavior and optimizing creatives pre-campaign or mid-flight ensures a stronger impact for brands. 🗣 #OOHAdvertising #CreativeEffectiveness #TalonOOHUK

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With all the hype around AI and yesterdays big new releases (and i'm very pro the hype) it's worth demonstrating the potential risk of diving straight into reliance on AI without a strategy. I spoke to someone recently about an industry leading brand, where somebody senior made the decision that all product descriptions onsite could be generated via AI a lot more efficiently. Ultimately they faced a lawsuit when the descriptions made claims about the product that were untrue. I've tested a couple of well established AI models below, to get a summary of Middlesbrough FC's 2005-2006 season. Nothing opinionated, nothing recent, and all readily available information. Of the two models, this was the outcome: - Final League Position ✅ ✅ - Final League Points ✅ ❌ - League Cup ❌ ✅ - FA Cup ❌ ❌ - UEFA Cup ❌ ✅ While models continue to improve, and there are better ones available for this job, the key takeaways are: - Be specific with what you're asking from AI and know exactly what response you're aiming to get. Being surprised by the output isn't good. - Govern any open-ended outputs like this, but ideally rely on datasets that you own rather than the black box approach to what it might know. Up the Boro.

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🎙️ Had a lovely chinwag on #CreativitySucks talking 'Diversity in the Creative Industries – Is it Working?' Spoiler alert: There is still work to do. What’s not working is agency and brands’ understanding of the difference between DE&I and Social Impact. When diversity is boxed in as an HR issue and headcount is limiting, we need to treat it as a creative opportunity, not a tick-box exercise. It's about baking these values into your agency’s DNA from pitch to production. When every department—creative, accounts, or production—champions social impact, it becomes more than a policy; it turns into a narrative we all live and tell. My key takeaways: 1️⃣ Quit short-term gestures and really commit to a long-term vision. And stick to it.  2️⃣ Is your approach embedded across your people, your culture and the work?   3️⃣ Is your work leading towards a more equitable and inclusive world? 4️⃣ Can you substantiate and measure your impact? Basically, do you have your receipts? Thank you for having me Creative Review 🙏🏾   Eliza Williams Anoushka Khandwala Ravi Amaratunga Hitchcock https://lnkd.in/ehZKukh2 #DiversityInCreativity #InclusionMatters #CreativeIndustries

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The latest Cog Blog updates on the Advertising: Who Cares? topic of a month ago, that has morphed into something of a movement. This is about helping progress improvement through discussion, as opposed to finger-pointing and blame. Nick Manning and I both really appreciate the support and want to encourage more to join us. We can be reached at brian@bjanda.com or Nick@encyclomedia.international IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising)

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“I think there’s a lot of fear mongering in the industry around proprietary media, and that it can be a win win win for the media owner, for the agency and for the client,” said Cyd Falkson, business director for MediaSense. “So long as everyone is aware of what everyone has to gain and there are governance models in place.” Well, this is a different take from MediaSense. What is described here as 'fear-mongering' is entirely legitimate concerns about a practice that absolutely isn't a 'win win win' for all three parties involved (not to mention the unnamed intermediaries who are also often involved). If this were a w for everyone it would have been the default operating model for our industry for decades, unless no-one had spotted it before roughly 15 years ago. Do people not see why none of the agencies doing Principal Media talk about in public? Might it just be that they're not proud of having to do it? And as for 'governance models', what could possibly go wrong? They have worked so well before, haven't they, so why not now? It's as though the last 15 years and numerous industry studies hasn't happened. The podcast below goes into this in a lot of detail if you have time to spare. Proprietary Media is too good to be true and people need to understand it better. https://lnkd.in/gcXnQGnC

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Trust is advertising has improved albeit from a very low base. Although media remains at 26% and on par with government (which given the current state of UK politics certainly says something). Trust is the hardest to build and the easiest to loose. We talk about it a lot with the clients we work with as it's so essential for brands. Advertising quality remains a key driver "Chiefly, whether a consumer finds an ad enjoyable is most important to creating trust. Other main reasons cited for trusting ads include whether the ad provided useful information, whether there existed a clear value exchange for viewing the ad and whether it made some social contribution" On the other hand, bombardment remains the biggest challenge to it "The feeling that ads are not only seen too frequently but also get in the way of enjoying the content they are bought against. Additional distrust drivers include whether ads target vulnerable groups, issues related to data privacy and targeting, and advertising deemed “unhealthy” to people or the environment. So good to know things are improving, but essential with the rise of AI and automated creative that we keep the user experience of the consumer as a priority. Otherwise the small gains will evaporate in a flash. It's something we've been really leaning in on at DAIVID 🦩helping advertisers measure creative quality quickly and at scale so they can measure all of their content. For our media partners we are helping with best practice creative playbooks for new formats that get the UX right.

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Making Dull Interesting- Virgin America and the In-Flight Safety Film I am a huge fan of Adam Morgan's podcast "Let's Make This Interesting" https://lnkd.in/eEjYVDuf and I was trying to think of brilliant examples where the ad industry did something revolutionary- I am not talking about great TV spots, but something that changed communication and the way stories are told. Something that disrupted more than just the narrow world of TV spots. In 2007, Anomaly created a ground-breaking film in the form of the Virgin America in-flight safety video. It took a medium that everyone was forced by regulatory requirements to pay attention to and had until this point, been the video that everyone on the plane ignored, into something that became a must-watch. For the start-up Virgin America was- this was breakthrough thinking that helped catapult the brand into public consciousness well before social media existed at scale. In the past 16 years, dull and lifeless airline safety videos have been relegated to a thing of the past and have become the ultimate branding vehicle for airlines and the countries they represent. There have been tie-ins with brands like Lego and movie franchises and appearances from pop stars, Bollywood stars, Hobbits, and memes. Mass social media has helped them become viral megahits, with some airline films having more viewers than people who have ever flown the airline. Perhaps these films would not be what they are today without the creative smarts and bravery of Anomaly and Virgin America. I guess this is a pitch for Adam to do a podcast episode on the story behind this film. And while I am it- I might as well ask Andrew Tindall if he knows whether System1 test these safety videos and what the learnings might be!

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