Byron Sharp vs Mark Ritson - 5 big marketing truths we agree on

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I mean, I think our job is the earned best in students to say, okay, look, you're having this debate in industry. What are the empirical claims that people are making? Let's go get some evidence for them. You're not that important. Get back in your lane. But that's why you need miserable old middle-aged professors like us because we are genuine. We genuinely don't care. Biomolecationally come onto social media and sort of spank someone. And I always imagine him coming up from the depths like someone has summoned me with Donald Sips. Yeah, because that's nonsense. We proved that in 1976, and he sort of submerges himself back. I know, someone has said you're being mean, but I'm pointing out an era. And people are fascinated with what a strange motherfucker you are, right? Because you are immune to this swirling vortex of horseshit. We've got you both here. Thank you for doing this. Are we on now? We've always been on. Okay, sorry. No, no, no, no, no, that's the point. Oh, no, it's almost a decade since you two are in the same room debating marketing. Great conversation on champagne. Mark, do you want to open the champagne for us? Yes, yes, sir. Do you have the skills on the, yeah? As I said, the knowledge. And the knowledge. Yeah, you know, I'm very struggled because I'm extremely. Mark is a font of champagne knowledge, quite literally. So as we were just saying there, the entry level crew gives the pecs, right? Well, look, there were a couple of pieces of advice I would give any aspiring marketer. I've been worked in the world of luxury, but not wanting to spend too much money. If you want to get away with having good taste in wine and you know, nothing about it, order a bottle of crew non-vintage, it infers your an expert. And the other one is you're going to wear a watch, wear a speedmaster, because it's a relatively lower price watch by the luxury standards, but no one in Switzerland will give you shit for wearing an Omega speedmaster. There we go. And I just took camera there. Okay. I didn't know that. There is a dark side of the moon, which isn't there. Better. I don't think that's it. That did not sigh. It did not sigh. It screamed. There's apparently a pub in Adelaide that serves crew in the Australian, the butcher, the glass, the deer. And it's like it's always on the menu, apparently. Well, you remember old Wattis face. It was a Lord at one point. You used to serve it with the Shepherd's Pie in January. Absolutely. He was the novelist. The politician. He was a lot of things, Jeffrey Archers. Yeah, he had a lot of money right from the books. Crewing Shepherd's Pie. It was the part of the ultimate campaign. That's something quite rock and roll about that. Very rock and roll. Yeah. So when did you guys first meet each other? I've been dating history here. When did you first meet? We're quite old now. We can't remember. Yeah. Yeah, I'll borrow. I might have been in London. Yeah. It would be in London. We ever shared sort of nexus at London Business School. Yeah. Part of barwise and Andrew Aremberg had a link there. Yeah. And Biren would be in and out. And I was there often on and joined the faculty in 1999. And Virginia. Virginia. Virginia would work for petty bowers for a while. For a couple of years. And I think she stayed at your house. I would imagine that's true. I certainly would. I certainly would have been drunk with Virginia. So yeah. So I was always very generous with my accommodations. So many attractive, yeah, we would say to that house that he just got over there. You know, when I, yes, there were people coming in and out. I admit that. And not everyone that I remember. And at that time, I was, you know, in my late 20s here. I think that was a few. Well, cheers. Cheers. It's great to get you two together. It's like that joke about the 60s, right? If you're there and remember, you remember. You are there. Of course, I tell you that we're almost the same age. And one of the things about getting to you sort of mid to late 50s is you can't remember which countries you've been to. Which is a new one, right? I'm now at the point where I'm not sure if I've been to Budapest or Bucharest. Because it was so long ago, I'm now struggling with memories. I think I remember countries, but yeah, cities all win you are there. You're like, yeah, I've been there. I've been there since I was a little bit. Yeah, I've been there since I was a little bit. And of course, it was a business trip and you were shuttled from. You weren't even there. Yeah, I've been there. It's like all of the same, isn't it? That's about the right. How did you make it so natural? I'm like, well, we had no idea what we were doing. We were doing what we were doing. So yeah, I think we got away with it. Had you agreed on the five things? Yeah, that was. You agreed on that. Yeah, we had agreed on that. Then he forgot about them. So yeah, that was it was about a loosey goosey. And we were just starting to realize we really had no plan just as like 3000 people were filing into the theatre. And there's sort of very cool things and I was, you know, a little bit, because I did see someone who said, "This is a must see or that will be predictable." Oh, yeah. It could have been two old white guys reminiscing and agreeing isn't the best session of the year. Do you know what I mean? You did pull out a few disagreements, though. We tried our best. Yeah. We were in a hurry. I think we made it interesting though, because we were able to say some things that people didn't know about it or what you're going to try to recreate here. It was a good chance. Let's say we're 80% or 90% aligned. The main thing is we can bang the hammer for that 80%, 90% a different way. That's the real thing that floats both of our boats. You know what I mean? Exactly. Well, let's start with how Brown's great. So we met first in 2010 when you're doing your book to Cambridge, Vic. Discover the book there. But I don't even remember any of that. No, I was talking about, "Oh, do you remember what we met?" Oh, yeah. I remember for John. Do you remember the, "We'd inform Quests I asked?" No, no, no, no. I mean, we were only 13 then. There's a little boy down the front. I don't know. The challenge I had though, I tell you, so it's a privilege of having some big Browns and some big money. So you caught me at the wrong moment, because I was working with the head of Pepsi, who had 20 million pounds a year, the head of Robinson's had 10 million. I was working on Liptonized Tea with about 100 grand. So I was the poor guy in the corner, go, "What would you do if you only had 100 grand byron?" Yeah. That's my question to say. And we should also mention that most senior marketers that have had byron visit their company will always say, "How was it?" "Well, bracing, bracing, you know, byron goes in with a, you know, you give it your all, or you're all." Everyone's clear on what you think, I think it's fair to say. Well, I hope so. I mean, that's the challenge, right? Communication is difficult. It is, yeah. Yeah, make sure you repeat it. So my house is. Although I'm not quite so, I guess that I was the defendant on a channel, because you can tell it's been very critical of stupidity that I've been the audience. I come on those and I actually went, "So I've channeled you, did you, I went, like, your delusional." But on it, yeah, that's good. Yeah, that's good. They were arguing that in the future people will use AI to choose, you know, like what brand of frozen peas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Full AI nonsense. I mean, maybe if you've got a robot and you send it, "No, I don't even think. Like, if your robot comes back and they've got all these brands that you don't buy, you tell your robot off, right?" Yeah. We've shown far the large language models appear to be more brand-centric than humans. They're using the brands themselves as shortcuts. Right. It's going to matter more. It's the old argument about all in the age of the internet, we won't need brands anymore, a bunch of economists basically. Oh, yeah, they got so excited about that, didn't they? Because they forgot that, you know, there are many utilities of brand, and more of them are saving consumers time. So the more information you throw at them, the more they're going to lean on brands. But every one ten years, we go, "It's my Simonson and those guys." Yeah, this is a bit of an economist-wit dream, isn't it? All brands will disappear. Carmel disappear, empathize with the people. So you've got to remember John, so we were part of this generation of. marketing academics before ours, there was the economist ruled. - Yeah, absolutely. - And the rational man, an economic man, and then we were, you know, all this irrationality and stuff. And they really were assuming we were passing fat. And now, marketing's been around sort of 40, 50 years, and they're really pissed off. So when the internet came to heart, now, - Yeah, set on the back. - Yeah, now the rationality. - Yeah, I did, I did, it's my degree. And you're right, it's all about maximizing utility. And it's just a functional, you know, trade off of how do you get the most utility for the. - Yeah, well, I remember my industrial economic sector who I swig came from the public, (laughs) I guess it probably did. But, you know, during the, we're marginal revenue, equals marginal cost, you maximize profitability as a way to decide how much it's been on advertising. And well, you can do that. You can do that for purchase availability and store because everything, you should shop in sales. But you can't do that for advertising. I'm going to talk to a colleague, you know, that's impossible, you cannot do that for advertising. And he was like, "Well, then, what? "Well, how else could you do it?" - I'm like, "I'm just, I'm doing business." - I'm just my modelling, yeah. It's like, wow. Now, you got some criticism, even, I believe, didn't you, on your talk? - Oh, always, yeah. I think the best one was there was a, I think, an academic posted on LinkedIn the next day. I wasn't at the session, but basically, here's what's wrong with it. And I saw, it was very early the next morning, and I thought, "Shall I?" and I went, "Yes, I will." And I said, "I think you have to be at the event "to critique it, otherwise you might get a little foolish." But yeah, yeah, that was the top moronic comment of the day. - No, that's a classic AI world, isn't it? You know, I mean, I'm not even able to do that. But again, I mean, in the world of mental availability, at least everyone's thinking about it, even if they're thinking about it in a stupid way. - True. - Still good. - Yeah. - It still helps. - It's quite a lot of hubris there, though, right? - There is. - I feel like in coming on something, even though I wasn't there. I do sometimes get that with it, and I'm like, "Have you read How Brands Go?" Well, no, but. - Yeah. - I got a gist of it from a YouTube, I mean, he's very patient. Everyone butchers the work. And you sort of see him wincing when someone sort of quoting it, but getting it completely wrong. You go, "Well, that's not it. "It's my work. "You know what I do. "Do know what it means." And you don't. I sometimes have to go and look at it and see if I did not. No, I didn't. (laughing) - My worst academic experience is I went to Oxford to give a talk, and I had to publish the paper in the Journal Consumer Research, and on the train from London to Oxford, I sort of gend up on it, and I couldn't understand a fucking word of it. And I remember on this train thinking, "Why is this guy talking about it? "It was my paper." You know what I mean? And I got to the end of the train journey, and I was like, "I'm really, I'm struggling with what the hell. "This is all about." - You know what I mean? - That's when you start realizing something wrong with what I get a mix of doing, including me. - You know what I mean? - Well, that journal, right? It's a. - Yeah, you had to write in a certain way. - Oh, style over substance is huge and interesting. - Yeah. - Yeah. And that's a tribe, right? There's the Journal Consumer Research Tribe. And they also do the ones who do the most fraud, the most retracted articles. - I saw that. I saw that. - Do you, yeah, academic, academic is a whole system. - Oh, I didn't realize it was a hotbed of fraud then. - Oh my goodness. You wanna admit a fraud, but I don't know. Breaking news. - Particularly from the Netherlands. - Yeah, the Dutch are hot, and any behavior of economists is basically. - Did they make me afraid? It's counterintuitive because it's fiction, you know? But yeah, I mean. - I suppose it comes in arms, right? You have to have another counterintuitive fight. - Yes. - Another counterintuitive fight. - Let me surprise you again. You think it's a cat? No, it's a dog. - And so there's been a pressure to. - Keep pulling these rabbits out of the hat. You know what I'm saying? Now, come back to Halbrun's grade. 16 years since you wrote the book. As you look at the reaction to the book, what a mark to still not understanding that they should understand. - Oh, there's no one. - There's no one thing. - Yeah. - It's like. You know, it's patchy. I mean, people implement better in other places and get on top of certain things. Humans have a wonderful ability to muddle their way through to, you know? - We do. We do. We progress. We're not doing progress, but it's very muddled. - Yeah. - We're messy. - Engineering is hated, you know? - You know, academics are the hate it. You know? We need to replace all this democracy and things that just let us will just decide everything. They love that. - And Marl, what would you say the impacts of Halbrun's growth being? - I think it's still a working progress and I think we're all very clear on that. We, it sounds fancy talk, but in academia, we've always looked at paradigms in a very specific sense. A coon's idea of there's a socially constructed vision of truth within a scientific movement and paradigms do shift. That's where that phrase comes from. And what we're seeing in marketing as we live through it is a paradigm shift from what we could call the American or the Cotlerian School of Marketing to one that is now derived, not exclusively, but mostly from the Arunberg Bas Institute, but it takes time and we're talking decades for one paradigm to shift to another. And if you wanted to understand one example of that, if you take what the Cotlerian School would say about brands, they would take awareness as a small gateway into a much bigger question then. Do you have an image for the brand, you have a relationship with the brand, how do you feel about the brand? What does the brand feel about you and on we and on we go? - I do, I say to do that. Do you remember? - Yeah, I do. - If you take what Arunberg Bas is done, they kind of have inverted it. And what they've said is that awareness or mental availability piece, do I, am I there, do I exist in your consciousness, is most of it. My bullshit figure is always 70 to 80% of it. There may be a sliver of image or association there, in their case, category entry points, but it really is, do I exist, is where the focus, I think that's right. But it's also an inversion that typifies the two schools now. And if you think, if you're in marketing in the '90s, you'll remember it was all about, what's the image of the brand, how do I feel about the brand? Have a relationship with this brand, I'm loyal to this brand. We're now entering a period where, how do I get my brand to come to mind? Is the dominant questioner, and that comes from Byron's impact? But we're not there yet. We got 20 more years of banging away at the same drum. And even then, it'll take, it'll take, - That's what people forget. I think it's what you said your job is to come to mind in buying situations. - Yeah, that's the mental availability. It's not just one cue. You know, it's not top of it. You can't just be the leader. You'll be, I suppose you could lead on everything, but that's the unusual. - Yeah. - I love that. - So even big, even to, you know, banks are shocked sometimes where they're like, so you just filled out, you know, satisfaction form and, you know, you said you loved us and you do give us most of your banking and you just took out house insurance, which we sell with someone else. - Yeah. (laughing) - And we were, oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Now that you mention it, I remember you do sell house insurance, but I didn't think of you at the time. - And it's hidden by awareness data. So all these banks, of course, have got data showing that our agent awareness score is 96%. It's never 100%. There's always 4% of luminacies that haven't heard of like British airways and now we're, right? But yeah, so they're looking at our awareness data going, we got no problem with awareness. Everybody knows about us, but to Byron's point, not in certain category, entry points, subcategories where, you know, I always think about banking. - Not every day, you know. And consumers don't want more than one financial institution. They would love to have a single one, but it's this failure to be able to take the whole, you know, I'd like my bank to take, you know, all of my stuff. - Yeah, that's a good example, isn't it? 'Cause most of us have multiple banks, it's like, why are we all well, you know? I love it when you're like, you know, you're at lunch with some bankers and they, you know, they probably could have had to pay for the, it's not the amount they have been. (laughing) - It's true, it's true. I love the Sarah Carter quote, you are not the customer. - Do you do know this quote? You might not know it. I saw Sarah Lassa, Sarah Carter is a phenomenal account plan from DDB and she said something about, I don't know, it's one of these things, I have chosen to make it famous, right? I have very little, no, no, I've, I still live from Sarah and it's every advertiser on market, should have opposed it now on their desk saying the consumer doesn't give a shit. And it's a very important quote because it opens the door to a lot of things, yeah, it's a very banal sounding quote. It opens the door to a lot of Aaronburg Bass work, it opens the door to understanding, fundamentally your brand is not important, no one cares about purpose, your brand isn't coming to mind. And my big point has always been to brand managers, you think about your brand all the time and that's great, but it is an exact inversion to what your consumer is doing out there with 700 brands and 42 free brain cells. You've got it, and it's about them not about you. You're overthinking it. So paradoxically branding becomes more important. Yes, yes. But not for the reasons that people thought. That's the key point is when I say it to marketers, I say it a lot, they sort of win and challenge you and say, well, it opens in brand isn't important, but by and it points the key thing, it's true and it will make branding more, if brands are less important, branding becomes more important. Now this brings me nice, it's my favorite Aaronburg Bass chart, even though I don't fully understand it. You did a test. Amongst me, I thought you as a. I think it was Nicole, how did you know? Asking marketers how distinctive their brand assets were. Yeah, well being able to judge them, yes. And then compare that to the actual customer. Yeah, yeah. What did that reveal? Well. I mean, they're not terrible. All, you know, people are able, sometimes there's something that's fairly obvious, but yeah, they weigh over rest of me. Are you, they're not the customer? - Yeah. - Yeah, the customer. But there's also, there's also, there was a period where people are doing really quite great research, like comparing society values and what's important to them and things, and then, and then surveying people who work at Adagency's and it's like, - Yeah, I love that work. - Oh, did you live in it? - It was social media usage. It's a great early study that was like, they looked at agency people, what the penetration was on Twitter and Facebook, regular normal people. And they were labeled like normal people, which I really liked. And then they asked the agency, agents people to estimate. What's the, you know, how many normal people are on Facebook? And the numbers were exactly like the agency number and completely unlike normal people. And it's like, it's a beautiful example. Have you think you're the consumer and you're definitely not? - Exactly, exactly. Now, in this conversation we were having in the palette, one area where I think you had a bit of difference was on distinct and diverse versus relative differentiation. - Yeah, well, let me summarize that, 'cause I think Aaron's got the difference point. So we're all aligned, and I'm certainly stealing this from many years ago from Aaron Burk Bass. I think it's worth pulling this one out a bit. We didn't have distinctiveness before Aaron Burk Bass, okay? There are many things that have been rebranded and repositioned, but it's the same old, same old. You can argue, as we'll see, well branded has been around for a long time. But distinctiveness as a concept just didn't exist. They really did kind of pull it from the weeds, the D word and had to explain it very nicely. So we all became converts of that. And distinctiveness has got nothing to do with competitors. Yeah, I always think of it as a selfish decision. Does the brand come to mind in this particular moment? It's really about, you know, is the right to do it? - Do we look like us? - Yeah, and he's great quote that I've always loved is a brand that looks like itself. Either from the category entry points being associated or it leaves out of you because you look like yourself, the brand comes to mind. - 'Cause I think you didn't use to wear glasses like that. - When we were young when I didn't know, I found ones. - Right. But they became a time when those glasses became Matt Ritz and distinctiveness. - And they did. - You took those glasses off your LinkedIn profile for a while, and asked like, dude, what are you doing? - 'Cause I think I did. - You did for artificial intelligence. - Well, it's so bad now. When I do video Q&A from my classes, I don't need them, you know, I'm shortsighted, but I have a pair that they're in a non-prescription. So I can wear them even though I don't need to wear them 'cause no one knows if the fuck I am. - I get it, it's like, it's me, it's me. - You know? - That's a problem. - So distinctiveness, distinctiveness and this coming to mind is the thing. Now my bullshit stat has always been it's 70 to 80% of the job. - Yeah. - I still maintain that there should be a quotient on top of that, which is about differentiation. Now there's a caveat there though. I think Michael Porter was very wrong when he talked about differentiation. He conflates being different with being unique. Those two things are not the same thing. And we've been on a quest to find uniqueness for our brands, which is almost impossible. But if we see differentiation as a relative thing, that this bottle is slightly taller than that bottle or whatever it might be, yeah. There is the potential for differentiation. Now it doesn't happen a lot. It's hard and most marketers are crap at it, yeah? But it is possible. And I think the one thing I got from our talk that I wouldn't have thought was Byron was, yeah, in theory that's true. And not just relative differentiation in the very prosaic sense, as you've always accepted, you don't want his green and want his blue, there is room. I've always said, I'm right, this book, differentiation is everywhere. But it's largely situational. Yes, like this one's got my size. These people will deliver today. These people won't, you know, that's there everywhere. But that's not really brand level. But you're accepting-- That's right, it's purchases. No, no, it's gotta be there. But you're acceptance was also, yes, there is room for Volvo to be perceived to be more safe. It does doesn't everybody often. And that was a new thing. There is room there, even in the Ehrenberg Bass Universe, which is dominated by distinctiveness. And I always say the brand manager's big greedy. First of all, yes, distinctiveness. But double D, you know, go for your differentiation as well. Relative, hard. I don't know if you have to. I mean, you don't have to. But because-- Andrew Iremuk once said something to me. Shocked me, either. Because I came through the sort of differentiation school in John Dawes and I wrote a very academic article on what is differentiation and all the theories and things. And Andrew said, well, it said you can't launch a Me Too product. But why not? Like, and I-- Oh, my gosh. That's that too. I hope, yeah. That's really radical. Yeah, for-- I thought about it. I guess a lot of them are unintentionally Me Too. Yeah. Well, pretty much every accountant who leaves accounting school, business school, and goes and starts their own practice, launches, I mean, to accounting breakers, will do your tax return. For really? Wow. I think anyone else that does that. Well, Adelaide Central Market, you've only seen it. And there's Fruit and Vistor. And then what's next to it? Fruit and Vistor. And your point would be, if they're distinctive enough, they'll win the day. Right. And of course, they do have some differentiation, like, where we're-- Where is there? And there's that there. So even what things we think of as really the same, still don't compete the way the economists would like to think they do. But I would pull that back again, though, to when we look at brands positioning, there's, again, back to the Sarah Carter quote, "Almost every brand I've ever worked with has so much in its-- first of all, they very rarely have the sort of the palette of distinctive brand assets, which is crucial. And second of all, they're trying to jam 500 different words into the customers' heads. And none of them-- none of that's going to get through. I mean, one of the challenges to get by and to tick the box and go, OK, this is possible is, you can only position on one or two things to be relatively strong on. And if you look at Les Benettes, really nice quote about this. And then what you do is you keep saying it more than the competition. You do it more than the competition. You don't do other things. And you do that consistently for a long time. There's a chance you can be the safest brand, like Volvo. But it is a chance you're the snack for break time, like KitKat. Both these brands have spent literally 40 years pretty much just saying that. So brand managers and marketers have to make a choice with positioning. These keyholes and onions and all that nonsense. Now, my simple rule has always been, if you need more in the page for the whole thing, the palette of distinctive brand assets and whatever your positioning idea might be, it's already over. And again, no, come in since the Nest Lake KitKat has a one page position. The Volvo guys, I think, are pretty aligned as well. It still doesn't guarantee to work. No, and you've got to be careful. You don't lose sight of the main game still, which is staying competitive. Now, just keep on-- I mean, OK, see, it's tricky. It's not burgers. Yeah. But it's still competing with McDonald's and stuff. And you've got to understand that you still do that. So fast food, speed matters. So this really hit me between the eyes when we ended up writing and we only wrote it up as a conference paper, I think. But we had a lovely title, Positioning versus Petitioning. I know we-- No, I'm not sure. But I think we mentioned it somewhere and everything. But we did perceptual math on Australian department stores. And of course, you get David Jones as the upmarket store and-- Myers over here. Yeah. And then Harris Scarf, it was in the levels that was the downmarket store. And then we did duplication of purchase of people's shopping things. And you're like, well, it largely fits the law. But there's oversharing between Harris Scarf and David Jones. It's like that's not supposed to be like that. So the most premium and the least premium. Yeah, I'm slightly getting it. And then we got something explained at another model called a map. [LAUGHTER] That's brilliant. A literal map. A literal map. And you're like, oh, yeah, well, the David Jones store and the Harris Scarf store-- So you're in the office of each other. That's the one. It's further down the thing. Was it Burger King that said they're Straszy who's open within 100 yards of McDonald's? Right. McDonald's doing research. Well, I mean, I even go further. I mean, the one we all forget about is products, right? You know, these quotes about Seth Goldin has horrendous quote about it. It's not the company that has-- the company doesn't win that has the best product. It's the one that has the best conversations, whatever. Product is important. Probably. It's important. It's not everything, but it's probably a bit bit of a-- It's not a lot more than anything else, right? And yet, A, we don't think about it enough, is your-- at the end of the day, is your product good? Satisfying. And also, our market is involved in it. Well, that's the issue. I did the research on this recently. And I think 91% of Marx's own promotion. Only 23% of Marx's own products. And even less on price, yeah. Exactly. And they don't have influence either, as well. You know, it follows. Yeah, I was-- years ago, very young, who was doing smallness course with some industrial relations for this. And I explained the four piece to them. They went in industrial relations. We call that an end-to-claim. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, you can-- you can tell. - Sure, yeah. - Sure, yeah. - I mean, the back step we've got now is, okay, we're never gonna have a, maybe we never did have a situation where marketers control product or price. But if we don't have input, particularly into end-to-end understanding. - I mean, I think a lot of marketers, thanks to this bullshit culture we've built, think not only do I not have input into products, why would I? Right, I'm doing marketing, I am advertising. They don't even realize it's part of our remit. And by the way, the four P's, we're originally created to remind marketers, these are your four leaflets. - Yeah, it was a checklist, right? Don't forget. - Don't forget. And of course, what did we do? We started in all these other P's. - Yeah. - You know, all know it's about personality and it's about obviously purpose and it's about people. And the hot point was to say, no, it's about these four things. So while we're asking about over here with other all remarkably beginning with the word P things, we lost products, we lost pricing, we lost place distribution. Exactly because we didn't read the bloody book. So yeah, it's a sad old story. - I won't mention the company, but they asked me to come and look at a whole lot of failed launchers in Asia. And we looked at their plans. And I'm like, where's the distribution plan in the site? - Oh, really. - And I mean, do you just think 'cause you're big, you just would automatically get it? Maybe? - Pretty much. - Yeah. - Same with probably, I remember leaving luxury goods. - These are all failures, but yeah. - I remember leaving luxury goods in a world where every CEO literally knew the names of the people that were making their products and where they were made and going back to a regular fashion brand and saying to the senior teams, who's making your product now? We have no idea. But literally we have no clue who makes this. And you think, well, you know, at the end of the day, it's up to be a luxury good to really worry about that. You know, product design, who's, how's it sourced? How do we make it and does it work? I mean, it's got to be the most important piece. - This is definitely a big company problem. I remember my career, I moved from a small, a private XC back business where I kinda, I literally managed all the piece, everything, into a kind of big, quote unquote, CMO role. And then we were launching this new water brand and someone in a meeting goes, oh, we don't seem to have a listing, WH Smith's, WH Smith's the biggest vendor of water on the go basically. And anyway, because I just come from this small business, I phoned the buyer in the meeting and said, can we get it on the shelf? And he said, yes, and we did the deal. You know, everyone's looking me going, you phoned the buyer? You know how to get it on the shelf? But because it, large kind of, you're so distanced. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - You know, I mean, and different departments are managing different things, they're their own objectives. And that's why the 4P inference matters because somebody's got to knit that thing together and make sure that it's a proper example. - Well, and the contrast with the consumer who automatically integrates it all into a Gestalt straight away, right? We've atomized it all out into departments and various different towers. Meanwhile, you can always say, digital traditional, right? We've created these two silos of communication. We have big debates about brand and performance. And the consumer just goes, - Paul, yes, 100%. - Perfectly every time, right? We've just got to replicate that in our planning system. - Now, the other thing I think so if we get wrong is the short and long. And like my favorite Aaron Berg Bass data point, probably since you wrote the book, is a 95 fiber. - Yeah, well, I love that we're talking about it. - Yeah, just explain the origins of it because it's just so profound. - I think the reason I love it is - We have come up with this understanding. - We're realizing what that's been saying. - We have now, as Mark says, people really love it and get it. And John Dawes, just sort of a flippant thing, if it's struggling to communicate, the negative by now we have distribution. For it to be that most people are in your market and they can't go into this 95 fiber, which actually is not a bad. - It's a bullshit number but it's a good number. It's very close to the, as I say, scientists, we're not that worried, let the engineers worry about whether it's 95.5 or what. But it's right. - And it came from B2B, which is important because I've had a lot of people in B2B say, "Yeah, okay, 95 fiber, but does it work in B2B?" I'm like, "It came from B2B." And it's even, presumably it's longer in B2B because people are only changing how much fiber. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - Every five years. - Yeah, and if it's like the premium whisky or cars, this is even more extreme. - I use haircuts, so fun, that's the best example. And I've said, it's a more complex, I don't understand it. But I understand men with haircuts. I would say to a room, I say, if you go outside right now and I start offering free haircuts, first of all, it would be odd. But five out of the 100 guys that passed me, also, I just, that's exactly what I mean. And the other 95, even though it's free, well, I don't need a haircut. And it's a good way to get that model in, but I love to transpose John's model. 95 fiber, explain it, you literally show it, and then I go, "That's why, we need short, targeted performance communication, 'cause that's where all the money is." - Well, that's, purchase available, we're trying to catch. - Get them off the five percent. - Yes. - We want our, more than our fish here. - We want to get in there, 'cause the money's there. But there's 19 times more people who are not buying right now. They haven't experienced a category entry point, but we know from other data, that if I can be the salient brand for the 95, 70, 80% of the time, the brand I will buy when I enter the five percent is that brand. And again, that's just as B2B as it is B2C. The B2B guys will give you a lovely, drawn-out explanation for why they got to whatever company they bought, but it will be 70, 80% of the time, the one that they're all thinking of, before they experience that. - Well, they gave that one a chance. - Yes. - And 99, they'll deliver the goods. - And you've got that mental, you know, the tilting of the thing where, once it's come to mind, you really, you want it to win, so you don't have to think of any others. You're already backing it in a sort of cognitive way. - I think the data on B2B is even, I think what you're referring to there was how people make buying decisions, and the fact that 80% of buying decisions in a pitch process are made even before the pitch process. - Yeah. - So it's the brand that comes to mind first, before you even go into it. - But it's just getting on the list. I mean, if you're not on the line list, you can't just-- - It's the Euro version. And if someone wants auditing things, and they've got a thousand, they're not going to look at a thousand options. - Yeah. - They're going to have a short list of like three or four. - Being on that three and four is your 70% of the bed, right? - That's right. - Yeah, 100%. - Where I got properly schooled on this one was, so I was managing Luke's eight, so no one energy drink in the UK, and we went through sugar tax and said to me, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." - Absolutely freaking disaster, right? Huge backlash. We made the mistake of telling people we're changing it, which is a disaster. - It's a big problem. - I know, I was asking people, didn't drop out because they didn't like it, they dropped out because they heard it had changed. It was the rumor of it, not the thing that actually led to the disaster. - It's also the how-dee, you like, you know. - It take much more than you're probably. - It's not your problem, you're messing with it. - Yeah, eight or five years have dropped the same thing. - Remember with New Coke, it was, who do you think you are? - Well, this round with Coca-Cola, with Coca-Cola, and they're like, who do you think you are? - Well, there's an amazing article actually called The Wrong Question, which is basically, they asked when they did classic Coke, do you like the taste? And everyone said it's amazing, it's actually it's better than the previous one. - It was. - The right question was, how do you feel about the fact we've taken your choice away? Oh no, don't change the code. I would literally not drink it however good it was because it's the one that I like. - That's right. - And so they'd ask the right question, but the point I was gonna make was, we were forced into doing a big relaunch. And so the team then asked the team to get the penetration. - You were forced because of the mistake. - What are we exactly? We had no choice. The government pushed, you know, government changed. Anyway, okay. My defense. So I asked the team, I said, give me the penetration data and we're looking at 26% market penetration in the last 12 months. - Yeah, and a whole year. - Well, I'd got everyone in the team to reread your book. I said, before we have this conversation, you lot are gonna read the book and then you come back. - Was that a punishment conversation? - Yes, it was a punishment. - We clearly have to get back to basics. I then changed the question. I said, what's our penetration over three years? 46% and literally seemed like, what? 20% of the population. - It's a very typical year. - Yeah, it's honestly. - Yeah, I have a question. - So, it's a 33% penetration to the doubles. - We had been given an objective of an eight week relaunch. - Yeah. - Right, this needs to be eight years. Are you freaking kidding? - That's very good. - We can't just like, you know. - But I draw, it's a lovely example. I draw your attention to other data we've just collected along with IBSOS. Only around 45% of marketers know what penetration is. I can calculate it. I just wanna bring us back to the world. - It's true. - Less than half. - Less than half. - Representative samples. - Is this UK, US? - UK, US Canada and Australia, that data point would have had. - And they're the best marketers, right? - Or maybe well-traced on this data. So, I always think about him, 'cause I think, you know, we can have a very big argument about penetration, but first of all, we're gonna have to explain to half the people in the room what we mean. - That's wild. - Yeah. - We shouldn't forget that, right? - But that underpins this whole point, isn't it, about be yourself, be distinctive, keep doing it, turn up consistently the whole thing. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Your customer, but you look at your 25%, it's going to go, "No, that's not really true. Your penetration is way more than that, "but it'll take you a long time to reach those people." - And he brings us the next point at that. - Which is so, I don't like the Tim long term. Either thing that's hopeless for communicating to a CFO. They're just really suspicious. Like that means I can't ever tell. - Right. - I've changed my mind on this data, but I agree with you, because-- - I mean, I get the idea that investments pay off in a long term, but they're like, "What, what, what, what, what?" - Well, I think it's worse. Yeah, I think they think this is going to take a long time for an impact, it's even worse. - Right, yeah. - But the reality is, no, it's having a sales effect immediately, but it doesn't show up in your sales next week, 'cause only 5% of the employees are doing this. - This is why I use 95% of the company. because it really frames it as lasting effects. - Yes, it's brilliant. - It's what I think. - Because each one, you've got a different 5%. - And you see with that system one data, if you look at the best brand building campaigns that really work on the brand building level, they all also beautifully correlate with short term sales spikes as well. So if you have a great, but the reverse is not true. If you do something very, very promotional, which is extraordinarily targeted, which works great at the sales spike, it doesn't do anything for the brand. So the long and the shorter, long drive short, which short doesn't drive long. That's the nuance a lot of the brands that are over investing. - Well, I mean, it's so slightly. - Good, I knew you would. - So yeah. - It is true, it is working in the short term, but it will not show it. You will not see it in your sales. It's impossible to see. So it'll stretch out after that point. - The signal, you know, it's like, you're doing a fairly big aid campaign. So you've got about 5% reach in the week. - Yeah. - So even off the people who are buying this week, a tiny port, you know, even the people who are buying you, most of them have not had an exposure. So you just have no, so the, I just had some data on it. This fits with huge meta-analysis, the typical advertising elasticity for board reach advertising is zero. - Is that right? - Which means, you move it up, you move it down, and your sales go, you don't see it as a cut. - In the short term. - Presumably. - Yeah, yeah. - And there's no way of doing it in the long term, because you'd like, you just cannot see it. - Yeah. - And as you'd like to 95, five, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - You've got to go to the 95 who are nodding the market and look at their memories. Have I moved those? Because I cannot see it myself. But I purchase it a bit, like I close the doors of the store, what happens? - So I've got 100%. - So I can do lots of up to it. And if I buy that search weird or that one, I buy this face and I use a gondola in it. If it doesn't sharpen sales, it's not working. So great, optimize there. Do you mark on the next modeling, whatever, do not do that for broad reach advertising? So the elasticity is for media that are much more like, like performance, do you do one thing? - Yeah. - 10, 20 times higher. - Interesting. So TV, FM for latest metering analysis, is quite full to you, but the elasticity is 0.008. - By that. - Which we can round to zero. (laughing) - But if it's search, no way, you tend to search for it on and off, I mean, some of them go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Well, bass 95, aren't we? - Yeah, because it's, yeah, because if someone's. If someone's, I'm looking for it. - I'm looking for it. - If someone's watching, receive, they're in the 5. They are in the 5. - Exactly. - That's the point. And it brings us to the third point you guys were agreeing on, which is the role of mass marketing. And that's quite a change, isn't it, from where? - We know. - It's another third term though bass, yeah. I mean, in the early, where do you want to pick sort of 90s, we'd reached a point where it was, the classic story of Henry Ford, Eddie Carly, as long as it's black, mass marketing, stupid. And then from Ted Levy onwards at Harvard, he's one of my heroes, it was like, if you're not talking segmentation, you're not talking marketing, you must go after a smaller group, customized that smaller group, exclude the other groups and really focus on them. And we really were there. And we'd got to the point in the 90s where it was kind of bizarre that the excluding bit was kind of what marketers would boast about. I only want those horrible guys. We're for these guys. And that was when Aaron Boebass came in with, and I remember the initial reaction, was the thing everyone was most skeptical of, when the book came out, mass marketing. And we should be clear, they don't mean, my simple example is always dog food. When Aaron Boebass say mass marketing, that means sophisticated mass marketing, it's everyone that owns a dog, or even smaller than it's not everyone in the population. Yeah, and not necessarily treating them the same. Some people have smaller houses, so they've got to have smaller tins, or they've got smaller dogs, so they don't have to treat everyone the same. But you do have to reach everyone. And I think that was really Andrew Aaron Boebass, contribution, he maybe couldn't sort of expouse it. But because he looked and he saw the negative by no more distribution and Gerald did done that duplication of, yeah, of starters viewing law. And he's like, say you're reading at the marketing textbook, but I didn't see that in the data, because if you really were able to carve off a segment, you wouldn't just, just, to win a brand growth. You wouldn't see that. It pulls from every single group and you wouldn't see it. So it does not match. Well, that's his South back time, where it's before that, when was he seeing that? Oh no, that's before, on the business school. The early early days. They had a problem at, atwood panels, I think, so a panel was quite small in those days. And they had one household who bought some of like 14 times for Cadbury drinking chocolate. And they're like, which co-skilled up there. Yeah, yeah. And they're like, do we take this panel, this household out? And that's going to completely. Or are they like normal or whatever? And Andrew, and oh, okay, well, so what is normal for heavy, you know, how many heavies should you have? And he feels like it begins. And it's important to realize that, you know, Byron became a convert of this because of Andrea and Berg. And also important to realize that he's kind of our, alpha candidate from the new paradigm. So it's Andrew coming up with a lot of this stuff initially. And Gerald. And Gerald, being laughed at, literally laughed at, because they're in the middle of the American paradigm. And I saw 100% a couple of times in America. And it was just a strange reaction, which was, what are you literally like, what are you talking about? Yeah, and they didn't know what to make of it. I remember, I think it was an ACR, but any one of the early conferences I went to as a doctoral student. And this very interesting man, it was English, which was quite rare back then as well, making this very interesting presentation. And this, this weird, there were respectful. But the big American business school professors who were all the legend I was, oh my god, there's such and such. We're just like respectful, but nonsense. I can remember that. Gerald, I guess, three of you. Gerald tells us where, because the English had different paper size, right? You had A4. Yeah, so they could tell, you know, just by the paper size, who was submitting this journal article. Yeah, that's absolutely different. Absolutely different. Her viewers, saying something like that, the authors are obviously British. I was, need not count against them. That's very good. I should have said that when American actually. You should know. Yeah, yeah. So the challenge I put in on this one is, what do you do if you're a challenger brand? So going back to when we met on, in, in Broeberg, you had Pepsi, Robinsons, they had tens of millions of pounds. Yeah. I had my 100,000 pounds on Lipson. And if you look at say, you know, Fevertree or Red Bull, what they tend to do when they launched is they focus on one part of the market. And they grew penetration in that part of the market. Yeah, which is a, and then they see them gradually expand. So I did this in this, looks the state where I look. Fevertree saw, opening that had just, um, Schwab's had just, Alchemy left. Yeah. They're thinking so we are shripper vessels, we're up market. And they, uh, except we're selling 2.5 liter warm bottles in Tisca. Yeah. And Fevertree went, well, the, the world is getting richer, been more premium. It, it, it, they're in small bottles. The sparkle stays better. You know, like just, they just lift that. It's just me. What about that? So, uh, so Britvik is obviously named after, so Britvik is the after Shreps number two, uh, Tonic brand, no one knows that, but Britvik is a Tonic. That's how the company was created. That's right. So Britvik, Britvik Tonic, which, so I, I thought I was poor and lives a nice team of 100 grand. There's zero budget on Britvik Tonic. Right. But, they've been, they've had, and a shripper, Fevertree wouldn't be here. This is, this is the, this is the idea. This is what happens next, right? So Fevertree go in and go, well, Shreps is the, is the last player on the, on the team sheet. Britvik Tonics, the last player on the team sheet. They all had almost perfect distribution because everywhere they went and then he's a Tonic, you'd put in Britvik or Shreps, right? So Fevertree did what they did. Fevertree then became bigger than Britvik and market capitalization. But, but this is, this is, this is the starting from that point. This is the story of disruption that Clay Christensen talked about that nobody ever understood. You know, yeah, he did a beautiful work at Harvard looking at, how is it that a dominant brand can be usurped by a smaller player? And the answer is, for the longest time, it doesn't look like usurption. It looks like a part of the market that's unprofitable, uninteresting and small. We use service then we don't want them. But what happens over time is that becomes the source of, Netflix, supplanting blockbuster, blockbuster didn't want the DVD market because it was tiny, the niche of the niche as the CEO called it at the time. But over time, this is how disruption occurs. So I think it's a really important part of, I hate the overuse of the word disruption. And the ignorance of Clay Christensen's work, everyone in my life is disruptive. You don't know what that means. It's a very different thing. A very important thing. Galois has got this lovely quote, which is the less sex in the industry, the greater your return on investment. And I think there's something in that. Find the most boring category that can't be easily. Because other people won't look at it. They won't look at it. And then they won't, can't be bothered. And then by the time we're starting to give it a crap, toilet roll. They got into time. Who's in a baiting toilet roll? And then they had a free run. It's a great point. But with a fever-treatening thing, I think I do think it was that shrimps would just chase volume and the volumes in supermarket and in big bottles. And they just left some territory that they. Previously, I don't mean they were the posh brand. Yeah, but I think that's it. You chase margin, you chase revenue, you chase categories. And that's the correct thing to do for now, but it's not as you spin it out over time. You've let, you know, the Clay's original work looked at the steel industry and how the Indians supplanted the Americans in the steel industry. And the Indians took all the little jobs that the American firms didn't want. - They didn't, yeah. - Until suddenly they had the competence and the scale to expand out. And if you're smart, like the Chabani stories are good one, you choose a subcategory, 'cause you're too small to take on the big yogurt brands. So what Chabani started out tiny, right? So what they did was they said, right, there's a subcategory of Greek yogurt. No one's in that subcategory. So we'll take that and we'll build our scale and our salience and everything else in that category. And then of course, we will grow that category out with us inside it, you know what I mean? I think it's a very important, but you can, you know, we know about penetration. If you're not big enough, you go after a segment, very simply defined, because you can't afford to do the mass. Or you go after a subcategory for the same reason. Not because you don't want everything, but you can't have everything to begin with and you have to bulk out, exactly. - That's basically what it did on lips nice tea, 'cause in the UK, I mean, I know obviously in Australia, elsewhere, iced tea's phenomenal, it's everywhere. - Can you use to be there? - No, exactly, in the UK, no one drinks iced tea. So why would I have tea copped? So that was our problem. But because it was a unique new category, I was able to own that category and be the iced tea and the category. But I had to start really tight. I had to start literally in central London to build up the physical, very busy, and the mental about it, so. And then kind of almost. - Yeah, so this is what we say that if you're, we used to get asked, right, if I'm a small branch, should I start in a little regional thing and then move out? Should I try to, and we would say, well, there are advantages and disadvantages of both. If you start small, there's less risk, and you can wear a medical suit, then prove to the others as a business person, they can, they can come here. So you start and Sydney start to move west and someone started and first and come the other way. And we're like, I don't know. - Gotta make sure. - We've both seen success as either way. But now what I say is the way to decide is can I get overlapping mental and physical availability? So if you are an international supplier, and you can do that, go national. - But it's gonna be detected by physical availability, which is probably the harder lever than the mental one. - Well, for some companies, it's not. - Okay, depends on the category. - If you're a PNG, they can go, I can get like over 80% weighted distribution in a couple of weeks. - And also we've got a great competence of doing that mass advertising. - Yeah, so here's, but if you don't have that, if you've got limited budgets, or if you're gonna have it, you might go, all right, I'll start, I'll start in New York. - But here's the thing, right? So even on at the same time, I launched Lipsized T, Coke launched Coke Zero. They were the tax, but they were 95% distribution in six weeks. - No, they were doing that. - Which they would do, yeah. - And they got the Coke brand. They re-louged three times the next 10 years. In fact, their sales went down 50% in year two. So even Coke was struggling to keep the listings in because it was a new concept at the time. I mean, you could argue about Diet Coke where they're getting all the way. - Well, also, 'cause mental availability is, it's always, for those companies, it's always slower even when you're Coke, you know? Like, - Well, even if you're Coke, you're spending staggering. - You know, well, I don't mind. You're probably still only getting weekly reach of about 10% and it's accumulating. So I've gotten, I've got 90% weight of distribution to get 90% of people even knowing my name is probably gonna take two years. - That was it. In fact, it's about 10 years until they got to probably a sustainable rate. - 10 years is a very good figure for a lot of things. I think one of the things, you know, we've got these lovely, very fast digital firms now. And it's, you know, creating that on Monday, running it Wednesday, have the day of Friday. - Yeah. - And that's largely true. But if you step back and look at how long does it take to build a proper brand? How long does it take to fix a broken brand? Inveribly we come back to about a decade to truly get what you need to be in a decent position. And that's a mind-blowing data point for, you know, for an industry where as I learn on Monday, the average brand building campaign is 40 days long. - That's insane. Well, I got, I got, when I did my software project looking at innovation over 10 years, my conclusions to paper was it takes on average of seven years to have an overnight success. - 40 days. I should actually get some people to crunch some numbers on there of like what? Without the Super Bowl. - Yeah. - How much reach could you actually really ever expect to get in 40 days? - Talk to Tiltman here at Cannes. He's got, he's a good study from about, and these are the big brands, big spenders, $2 billion worth of investment. Yeah, the averages. And that's not the activation stuff. It's just, they're named, when they've said it's a brand building campaign, the 40, 40 days is the-- - Is that the award entry? Is that based on an entry data? - I think they've actually, I forget they've used an actual media monitoring company to look at it. It's pretty solid data. - It's because-- - Very hard without time to get a lot of reach with Super Bowl side. It doesn't matter how much you spend, what you'll just be spending more money, but your frequency begins through the roof. - It's all good, it's all good. - And there'll be some people who'll go, "Oh, no, I never seen it." 'Cause it will be the most creative work. It will be the one that runs the shortest amount of time around an event like Super Bowl Christmas World Cup. So it could be linked that rather than-- - And it's getting marketers to say, "Look, it takes two or three years for your campaign to work." Okay, you could run some of these ads through that, but just have a campaign which is joined up. I was with AB Inbevi yesterday, who I do think are, you know, you can argue, how do they get these prizes? They probably are the most advanced advertiser. They really know it. The excellence, I was waiting to do my talk and I watched them all presenting. They're on it. You know, they're really on it. They're the only ones getting this point that my campaign will run for two or three or four years. And there's no reason to change it just 'cause we're all sick of it, you know? - They're well on that. - It's very rare. They're scholars. They really are scholars of effectiveness. And-- - It used to be part of Procter and Camel's, and their competitors would fear this. The fact that Procter and would do their homework and then they would commit to something for two years. And so they-- - They wouldn't let it go. - Yeah, and-- - How did you feel about Pritchard and the gang? - They adopted your work early. Are they in the centre? - No. - He read your stuff before-- - Yeah, man, he's very complimentary. So it's good. - And you must have felt-- You and I both have the same, you know, foundational love of P&G. You know, it invented so much, right? It must have been quite the thing. I mean, I worked for them for three or a couple times. I asked them, "I said send me a razor." And they're like, "A razor?" And I said, "I want a Gillette razor from Cincinnati sent to me by P&G." And I still shave with it. It means a lot to me because it's P&G and they invented brand management. So when Pritchard was clearly singing from your hymn book, I thought, "Gee, that's a moment for Byron there." And that was seven or eight years ago, yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - They-- It was-- I'm saying to them. - And they were, sorry, they were the Kotlierian segment target positioning, until suddenly they weren't. And I had one thing here byron say, "Mark, Pritchard's on a stage talking about "savisticating my smartening." I'm like, "What was that?" - Yeah, yeah. But I remember saying, I remember, I think, probably the first time I visited P&G and I said something like, "Sweeten though, "you're held up as the best marketers on the planet." And they went, "What?" - And they called it humble, but-- - Yeah, but they also had things, because there was a long period when they were very Kotlierian. And so they didn't win awards here and stuff. I mean, and they would say to me, "Oh, you know, like those ads you showed by on there, "that's great, but we can't do that "'cause the chemists control everything here." But if we don't talk about their new X, Y, something, in Zon, you know-- - The playbook was very sort of taught in serious. - Yeah, but then, yeah, so it was sort of, it was wrong, but they did very well because they were still much more disciplined than anyone else. - Yeah, and they were halfway down your road. And P&G carries that way, even among their competitors. I think the portfolio is looking very dusty these days, but I still love, I mean, what they did in COVID, for me was still like his P&G. Well, again, it's a hundred-year-old playbook. In a time of great recession, we will go, we will double down, not because of the recession, but we know all of our competitors will pull back and we will get share of those. - Fantastic stuff with things like old-spice, some fantastic advertising. Yeah, it's just this, but weird for P&G because that brand is actually hard to find. - Yeah, it is, it is, no, I agree. Yeah, but that's weird, that's weird. Yeah, that 'cause the interview the guy did that. And that double-- - So it's a few looks. - Yeah, George Phillips, yeah, yeah. Fantastic, I mean, really, really good. But that did double market share. Got them back to number one position with Intweon. - And then he went from there to KFC. - He did, right? - And we worked with them there, and he-- - Did you? - Yeah, and just like the brand assets. - Yeah. - Brought the kernel back. - Yes, yeah. - Very interesting, yeah. - Because someone decided to be nuts and swipe guy from the South. - Oh, God. - Yeah, yeah, don't mention that. - I've got a saying, don't mention the kernel. - Yeah, yeah. - And now they're like, no, we're really leaning into the kernel now. - No, and then there's a great one for you. So my only contribution to distinctive brand assets was the idea of playing with them. And I think Jenny misses in, right? And I think she covers it better now. But and the point would be, my rule, which is incredibly basic, is 40 years of enforcement. - Oh, and then you can play. - And then you're allowed to play. - Yeah, right. - And if you actually look at when it works, you really need the KFC, for example. - Sure enough, they've had the kernel as a, as a DBA now for a number of decades. You can dress him up as a cowboy and all of that stuff. But the other message to marketers is, don't play with it until it's been enforced, enforced, enforced, enforced. Like, both Glico I work for. We can play with the yellow. Tiffany can play with the green. We've earned the right. - Yeah, I agree with that. - It was like at the World Cup, you saw the World Cup because of the naming right convention where you can't have anyone that's not a sponsor in the US, mostly the big stadiums are named by brands. So they've had to cover them up. And in the leave on the leave ice stadium, they covered it up. - Sorry, when I heard this, - Or they've been covered up in the shape of the leave ice. - Yeah, which I thought was brilliant. - Yeah, but maybe they should have used color as well or something. - If they're allowed to, I imagine. - So I think this is weird, so I agree with you, but I think what would Jenny say? What, James says? - Let's paraphrase the woman here. - Let's man explain her theory. - I was tired. - I think she would say, "Hey guys, you have to do a better research and know how you can play." And she has had, they have been more PhDs of looking like, well, can you play by sticking it next to another brand? - Yes, yes. - And you asked, - My love of it was, when I worked for Louis Vuitton, we did this thing with Takeshi Murakami, where we took the monogram, which is about 150 years old, and Murakami's like the pop artist, you know? And I think the brief from our Jacobs was, took his she come in and fuck around with the monogram with your creative genius. And he made it all neon pink and blue on a white background. And there were people in Paris having a stroke where they saw it, you know? Incredibly successful collection, but also it's that beautiful example of, when your brand is big and old and dusty, two things have happened, you need to refresh, you also usually have all distinctive brand assets that you can now play with, and then two things go together. And this is magic trick where it still looks like the brand, but it's fresh and new. - Yeah. - So you sort of tipping your hat to heritage, but you're also being creative and modern at the same time. And when that happens, you just feel that lovely sense of, it's perfect, yes. - And it can work, so I mean, - It's real quick. - I mean, for the consumer, they can get it in, I have these slides where I flash some ads, that are really using distinctive assets in a playful way than that. And I deliberately flash the ad for less than two seconds, and you can hear people laugh in the audience. - Interesting. - And I go, I use this to knock the attention people who say, you know, you go ahead and say, I like, - That was the last thing. - Yeah, brand process and you had a - A physiological reaction. So I know that that went in. - Very good, yeah. - Yeah, very good. - Back to your point, that's about 40 years of brand building to get you something. - But also it's quick for the consumer. It's also quick commercially. Like when clients ask me, what's the one thing we can do? I'm like, make your stuff more distinctive, because it will have an instantaneous impact, not just on the consumer's attention, but it'll hit the sales as well. It's an easy trick to play. It isn't a long-term mission, you know? - I mean, you're in fantastic creativity. There's a gorilla one where this, this spaghetti pasta goes, like it's obviously looks like fireworks. - Yes. - It has happy knee, you know. - Yeah, and brilliant way to do it. - It's like a joke. It's like a visual joke. - Yeah, which you get. - No, it's old and existing stuff done in a new way, and it's the perfect place you want to play. - And I mean, the genius with that and others like this, is that you get your physical variability of the back of it. You go to retailers and go, "Oh, we're gonna change our pack, "you can be the first time in 40 years, "you know, do this stunt." And then you get all the displays in store. - But the caution, of course, is, again, you've got to be working on a brand that has that old palette well established, 'cause there's no trick if they don't know the original, and then not do it all the bloody times to the point where we see this to become the new. - You still have to reinforce. And of course, every market wants to change stuff. So you've really got to introduce that concept very carefully into a client. 'Cause otherwise, like, yeah, it will change, you want to change this, and this year's one, what should we do next? - Why are you doing that? Well, it's our birthday. - Yeah. - And a version is my favorite, right? If you want to look at product orientations, a lot of companies are now getting to be 100 years old. I think, all right, it's our anniversary next year, we're 100 years old. We have to celebrate it. It's like, why? Nobody fucking cares. Corners is 100 years old. And what does that do for me? Does it mean you have older planes? - You know the people. (laughing) - You know, just fly on the original. - You celebrate it in your office, but don't waste your advertising telling me you're 100. I actually don't care. It means, what's the benefit of that fact? - Well, I should say, me a couple of, 'cause we did this last year for the year and big best being 20 years old. (laughing) - Well, I suppose we had a story to say to you, we're actually 20 years old. - Yeah, we're 20 years old. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - If it fits an existing strategic objective, I remember Burberry having there, I think it must have been 150th, and it was the quiet, sound of "Versary of All Time," and there's the CEO at the time, why aren't you making more of a deal of it? And she said, we look, we're pretty dusty at the moment. The last thing we need is 150th anniversary. - I'm gonna keep it quiet. - I should say if you come across, this was a Grand Prix award winning a bit of crazy last year, that the Star of R2R probability, did you read about this? So, what they did is they looked at classic paintings from France and Belgium, and they actually worked using history in AI. They worked out the probability that it was actually Stellar R2R in the painting. - Oh, yeah, 'cause it's a very old brand. - 'Cause it's a very old brand. - It's a really good old brand. - It's 500th year. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's 500 years they go. - 500th year. - So they were tracing that, where the brewery was, where the painter was. - It's a lurve and isn't it? - Yeah, the whole thing. So they had all these different painters, and they worked out that they had the probability, the statistical probability that that was actually Stellar R2R in that painting. And what a brilliant way to anchor yourself in terms of history in Harry Potter. - If you wanna give yourself an injection. - Yeah, if you wanna give yourself an injection. - Yeah, we can have the Ozy Ford, which is a little bit, you know, more superficial. But I mean, all my, you love my stuff. And back in the day when we were particularly with LVMH, we'd go into the archive as kind of the first step. And partly for what we would have called at the time Brand Codes, these distinctly brand assets, we would find these things. And it was this magical moment where like Le Brasam and for Hennessey, you know, which is guy holding like a big port-closting, whatever. You would see it everywhere and you'd realize, oh, a hundred years ago, these guys knew what they were doing. They were doing it better than a lot of the contemporary guys. We've just got to go back and look. There was a lovely moment on Krue. We were, every luxury brand that doesn't know itself uses black and gold, 'cause they're just like, "Wow, so Luke's, you know?" And we were really struggling with this, they were a color. And Yo-Anne Krue, the founder, there's a book in the, literally in the "Mezon in the Library," 'cause again, he was German, you know, he wasn't French, he wasn't shampoing, there was a book and he literally laid out the instructions for my, the inheritors of the House of Krue. And you had these sort of 150 pages, this guy laying out, so this is what you do. And one of the things he said is, we have this dark cherry book, the dark cherry I've picked, that is the color of Krue. And Maggie, the president at the time, was like almost weeping 'cause she's like, he's literally telling us from 150 years ago, this is our color. And she sent me a photo and she was personally, she's the president, she was painting the gates of the, of the "Mezon" in this dark cherry. And it's now since gone everywhere. But we got it from history, you know what I mean? There's that magical moment where you got, these are great brands and these are connective moments back to the founders. It's, you know, it's God's work when you, when that sort of stuff. - I mean, luxury brands have to have some sort of story, people have to, it's almost justified. I was like, why they paid that much money. - They definitely do, but I went to, it's like a top restaurant, the food has to taste good, but it has to be entertaining. - We have to explain it first to play that much. - But I found, you know, there's a lot of nonsense spoken about luxury and I bought his luxury. And one of the things we did lean on there and there was best to somebody, even there, because I stopped believing there was such a thing as luxury brand management, capferio, as a lovely book, which I entirely disagree with, about how it's different. It's the same, just more. You know, it's more concentrated, it's heightened, but the principal laws of brand management are the same. I think most of the senior guys I work with at LVMH would agree. There isn't something different. There's more of certain things, heritage and distinctiveness, actually. And if you really wanted to look at an exemplar of good brand management and how brands grow or work, luxury is a good place to go. Actually, you see a lot of principles there that you can take, you know. - A lot of the luxury brands are still family owned or there's a link or a French pension fund. So they're quite willing to be disciplined in long term. - Yes, but that has to key thing, isn't it? 'Cause they say it's taking long-term decisions. - Yeah, they like, well, we're really happy for 150 years. - We want a positive sort of plan. She was really keen on purpose. So we're, oh, Tory, that's good. We've got a team that has the skepticism and advocacy. Let's go click the data. Because I think our job is the best in students to say, OK, look, you're having this debate in industry. I think it's misconstrued by the industry because they don't understand falsificationism. I mean, I think they don't appreciate that it's not negative. You're not a bit like what you're trying to do. You're tentatively holding a theory you can't disprove. That's how we move forward. You can't do this. There was also a special crowd, of course. And someone asked why now is it sort of starting to road? I mean, I think there were a lot of people who have escaped before, but they'll scared that if they spoke out, they were going to be called a Nazi or something. Yeah, you don't want to save dolphins? We'll take a bit of a break. To be fair to me in you. So we've all been consistent on this point. Right. But you must have had lots of people saying to you, you're all wrong with you. I mean, very personal messages from people saying, you must be a terrible human being, not to support this. There was kind of a fascism in the protection of this liberal-do-goodery. There was actually quite dark and sinister. It's not brave to stand up for these things if you're not allowed not to stand up for them. But the main point was, again, let's come back to Sarah Carter's famous post-it now. Yes. Nobody gives a shit. And they've got 400 brands on their brain, if, you know, across a year, nobody cares what, you know, what your coffee brand thinks about any of these issues. And don't waste your, the opportunity cost of talking about all this nonsense is enormous to you. Because meanwhile, you aren't driving your distance. If there is an attribute that is relevant to the consumer that you're not talking about, that's the cost of this stuff. And then, of course, we had all these people selling purpose so they built their careers on purpose who were rationalizing it and justifying it with incredibly, incredibly poor data. Right. Well, that's the trap, isn't it, when it's like, you know, you're asking me, do you care about saving the dolphins to use your example? Well, of course, I'm going to say that, right? Who doesn't? Is that why you're buying a toothpaste? Maybe not. The cantile data is very important. So, cantile did a very special thing. They showed all of that. If I send out an attractive young man or woman to ask people, you've got, of course, it's very important to me. Yes. And then they just reversed it and took a bunch of consumers and said, right, let's go through the six things you've have literally just bought. Tell me why. And the purpose stuff never came up again. It was literally less than a percentile of the explanatory reasons for bait and. We already knew this for a green environmental brand. So, some of the purpose stuff was even more obscure that people would either. You could usually spot at least the green brand. Yeah. And they all looked alike. I mean, the all these purpose statements were incredibly sanitizing. The whole thing was really bland. We should be clear, I mean, I can't speak for Byron. Have a socio-cultural purpose, but do it because you believe in these things. Now, I will put a little defense in because I. Because you have to. Well, I heard Peter Field, because Peter Field does some analysis in the IPAD database. Yes. Byron's good on this. Now, Peter came out. He came out swinging. Well, he was almost like. He anticipated criticism. I was like, "What's your guess?" "Oh, 'cause it was shocking." But what was your guess? Okay, on the headline level, so basically found what you'd expect to see, which is purpose-ersan on purpose, you get about a 30 or 40 percent under performance of purpose. On average, purpose-ersan performance. Yeah, the headline was quite. Purpose campaigns do not work as well on average. Be fair. And he came out saying that totally. And then he said, "Will you dig under it, what you find is, in certain situations, where the brand was created for the purpose." No, that's not what he found. He just found that some of them, obviously. Yeah. Mark did this really well of things. Like, okay, but, you know, the best goal score is a right-footed. Oh. Oh. But there is a. There is one left foot of. He scored lots of goals. Yeah. Okay. We just look at him, because that's. I mean, I did ask Peter. I looked at Peter's one, my heroes. But, yeah, it wasn't good, because what he showed was, yeah, normally non-purpose campaigns are much better. But if you take the very best purpose campaigns. It's not bad. Yeah, actually, they're a little bit better. But you're comparing it to the whole set of non-purpose, right? And I actually asked Peter, I said, if you take the best set of non-purpose campaigns. Very, very. Yeah, how do they compare. Oh, not that much better than the best purpose campaigns. And we get this point, we were trying to prove a hypothesis. That we've clearly disproved, because the ideology. And we got a round of applause on Monday, right? When we both said that, we think purposes are done. Big round of applause. So people. It's good that people feel safe to do that now. But I said to them on the Monday, I said, "Yeah, great. Thanks, Prairie Fogger, much round of applause." You were all here five years ago. Yeah, yeah. And I said, "Don't forget that some other nonsense will come." And you'll all be like this again, the wisdom of crowds. I mean, it's a very good point. I'm blowing out horns here a little bit. But that's why you need miserable, old, middle-aged professors like us, because we are genuine. We genuinely don't care, right? We don't fucking care about being unpopular. And we may be wrong sometimes, but you need us there, because everyone else is. [APPLAUSE] You know? But digging in this data more, though, what it also told you is that the role of purpose was basically to make hiring better. You know, it was basically. Maybe that was. And rather than the data, right? Yeah, of course. But that stuff was a lot of work. What it shows is with the purpose campaigns, you saw this increase in kind of employee engagement. Yeah, sure. That's a different thing. You also saw customers want to do business with people that. Yeah, I think. But you saw that benefit. Look at that. So I'm sure these benefits could be there, but no one has done serious research to see whether that is. And the payoff and be worthwhile. I talked to a philosopher, which I don't do very often, in a pub once about this. Quite a smart, physical. A fist philosopher. A fist philosopher is always a great source of insight to me. So I told him the story, and he said, "Oh, there's an immediate problem with all of this, which I don't need anyone got, except for this philosopher." And he said, "Look, if you're saying the reason you're following this purpose agenda is it makes you more money." Then you've instantly, completely ruined your argument. Because if I can show you that imprisoning women or destroying the planet will make you more money, your logic says, "That's what you'll do instead." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's true." We choose to do these things because we believe in them. The minute you say it's being driven by a profit, then it's clearly not purpose. That started me off with my favorite line of money. - That was on his purpose, yeah. - Yeah, the purpose of purpose. His purpose. And the minute you put dollars on to it, it's not purpose, it's some other thing. And then I think everyone was happy then to prove that. It doesn't really give you the money it does. Now, you closed your presentation, Mark, with your famous description of Byron as the Dark Lord of Penetration. - Oh, yes. - Which I thought was funny. - Well, also his response was good. - It was very good. - It was very good. - If you're not aware of this, so I've been very naughtily referring to Byron as the Dark Lord of Penetration for about 10 years now. It still entertains me whenever I write it. And people will ask me questions and they'll say, "But the Dark Lord wouldn't agree with you." And if I was talking about it, and it's just become, you know, the dark is the dark. And I always like, "As Biomolecation come onto social media and sort of spank someone." And I always imagine him coming up from the depths. Like someone has summoned me with Donald Sinclair. - I did. - And he comes up and he goes, "That's Nolcents. We proved that in 1976, any sort of submerges himself back with a ripple, barrier ripple on top of the leg." So I got to ask Byron, I said, "Well, you've never, as you have done it with other at the topic, said be a short one-line email saying, "I do not appreciate you calling me the Dark Lord, so I just inferred it was all right." Which it turns out it was. - Yeah, but also, I will send you those notes if I think you've straight into. - He's not denying it. - Speculation rather than something. But I'm like, "You're allowed to call me the, "what if you let me call me, what if you'd like?" - It's not actually incorrect. - So that been a case bar and what do you call Mark? - I don't have a name from Mark, but I'm, what do you say about this? - We were told about this in the car over. And oh, I was, I, yeah, I was saying, and I think you were slightly offended. When I said you were like one of the best business journalists on the planet and you thought it was sort of a backhanded, like you're not having a plan. - I really liked it. - I really liked it, but it was a way. - Can I know how can I fill in the thing? Because I've always had the view that, I mean, it's like journalism is not great, but business journalism is just, we don't have in vestig of journalism. We do not have journalists who understand business and can do insightful, and we have so, at least to get it in politics, maybe a bit, but in business you get things like, so and so, it's released there, and your report today. - Wow. - Yeah, wow. - Yeah, yeah. - Oh, as you were calling them, so, they're like, because you, you, you didn't go through journalism school, you came from a business school. - Yeah, yeah, it's true. And I think one of the things, - It's hardly, you need to have it. - One of the things people misunderstand about academics is when we do talks, which we've both done at universities with each other in the audience and many others, someone presents their work, and in the room, as a matter of, as a show of respect, everyone from the university tries to rip their data apart, and then afterwards we go for a beer. And it's not like the, they all think, well, like a dean is very soft, it's much harder than business, and you go after each other because you're trying to apply riga. And if I can't find a floor in Byron's data, I accept that it may be true, right? And I think when we take that, [BLANK_AUDIO] of discourse into the business. Everyone's, oh my goodness, you know, I know sometimes people are like, you're being mean, but I'm pointing out an era. Isn't that good? Isn't that what you want? You know, but no, I remember him saying it to me at some, and I always I did smile. He's like, oh, Mark's one of the best, no, there's nothing wrong with Mark. He's a fine journalist. Yeah, that's fine. Give me a phone. No, it wasn't. I said, you were like, I think, I mean, I can't, if someone said me, he's the best business journalist on the planet. I have a say, I suppose there's possibly someone in finance or something's pretty good, but, you know, for me, it's Mark Ritton. And that's why people redo, right? Because and I think to be fair, I've always been very lucky that people conflate me writing about marketing with my skills for marketing, which are actually too very different. That's how I'm quite happy for them to be conflated, you know. Oh, don't, not except you know, you've built the mini MBA as a brand. There was a real moment there, right, where I thought if it doesn't work, not only will it be a waste of time, but I look like an absolute fraud. There's a double loss there, right? So thank God it did work because otherwise, it's like, you, if you'd, I mean, we shouldn't, if you're happy, we shouldn't mention this. He, I mean, I'm not even an ex-professor, you know, I've never been a real professor of any standing. But if you look at what Byron does, he doesn't, well, I've made millions of quid from my thing, he doesn't, right? I mean, he's paid a professor's salary, the money they make goes back to the institute and pays for PhD students. Yeah. And this is why I get snarky when you, when there's a slight ripoff crowd. I think there's people when we did the making money from it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, when, when, when brains go dark, you know, like when they switch off advertising and we publish that in a journal, no, sorry, we'd, we'd given it to sponsors three years before, but it was about to come out in a journal. And I mean, oh, there's going to be people who are going to pick this up. And there's going to be people who over exaggerate this like, yeah, they're not understanding the, yeah. And so I mean, the only defense we have is for us to put out some beautiful charts that people can steal the beautiful charts that are branded in a movie of Bassins due because there are these people who take our stuff, making money from it. And they rebranded up and they might suddenly put in a tiny, tiny, tiny, full six, or something or I don't, so one of our researchers is Ari and then his Indonesian, his last name is this, I'm pronouncing it. I'm not putting that there. I'd like to know who he's there. Yeah. But, but I think we've all got to remember that right. He works as hard as I do, but I'm getting a very decent payback in a variety of different ways from what I do. And he's not. Right. And so I want the power. I want the institute to get fame so that businesses still buy our benefit. And that funds the next generation of marketing scientists. He doesn't say he's so stupid. He doesn't even get my point. Yeah, I know. He doesn't even think about it. But he's a lull, lull. Well, we do get, I mean, we do. But a lot of money comes into the institute. And so, I mean, we are just off the charts for any research income, for any, you still doesn't get the point. Yeah, I know. I'm not going to say that in a terrible day, but I think he's there. I get a little bit Australia. Yeah, yeah. He's happy. I get a little bit elderly. We go down and call Tasmania. One of the few places that's certainly more interesting than Tasmania. I've been like, but yeah, when we when we look back on this era long gone, you know, I'm going to certainly be a good footnote. You know, my cons will be remembered a little bit, a little bit. But Byron and his impact will be the singular. I mean, it will be that he like this, but it'll be the Kotler of that era. It'll be Byron Charple. There was the Kotler period. And he likes to, and again, he likes to deflect it to the Edinburgh Bass Institute. You know, you can't get him for long with it. Well, actually, it's other people at the institute, but it's Byron. I mean, Jenny's been is a very sizable, you know, there's other people. There is, but Andrew started this, but it's Byron that will have the impact and will be the one they remember. And in my career, it doesn't take more than five minutes for someone to say, are you friends with Byron? You're in touch, you know, I mean, so he does the Dark Lord does cast a shadow over the, yeah, and people are fascinated with what a strange motherfucker you are. Because you are immune to this, you know, swirling vortex of horseshit, right? You don't, you don't care. Well, you're a tour. I mean, I think it's one of the reasons I don't like both of them, because it's in so wishy-washy and things. I think, you know, I think it's off-brand. Your brand is, you know, one of the, you know, the kid is going, hey, I'm not wearing any clothes. That's what I thought. That's the Ritz and I love. I think there's a lot of Ritz and the world loves, right? Yeah, thank you. Well, what a beautiful place, friends. Yeah, you guys are agreeing on how to have a lot here. It will happen. I feel like it is a doing a politics. Well, we spent, this is good. We spent, we spent this week, like we've had three things together, right? We'll once each other now for another 10 years. So there's plenty of time for us to start beating the shit out of each other on LinkedIn. We should do this in the US, yeah. In 10 years time. Let's do it in the US next year. I don't think they have any clue with any of us. Well, because I know, yeah, I got this to try. It'd be good fun. Gentlemen, thank you. Honestly, thank you so much for doing this. So glad we got to do it. Great fun. Let's keep it up. Great fun. Thank you. So I hope you enjoyed that episode of UnSense to CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter. So if you'd like to get my thoughts on the one thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the one thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast just launched UnSense to Renegades with the fabulous Corey Marchesoto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that. It's in your feed UnSense to Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast. It would not happen without them. It's a big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.