Holiday special: The best new ideas in effectiveness

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome back to the Walk Podcast. I'm Anna Hammel, Senior Editor at Walk. This is the last episode of the Walk Podcast for 2025 and it's a big one because it is our 400th episode. So if you're new to the pod, or whether you've been with us from the very start, thank you for listening this year. Over the holiday period, we will be rerunning our most popular episodes in 2025 with new content coming in January. It's fitting that for the last episode of the year, we are reviewing some of the most interesting and influential ideas that have shaped effectiveness thinking in 2025. Walk released its ideas of the year report, so you can check that out for more of a deep dive on all of these new ideas from creators to GNII and much, much more. And today I've invited some of our in-house experts here at Walk to share their favorite new ideas and effectiveness thinking from the past 12 months. But before we get into it, a quick word from our sponsors at Can Lions. - Do you have brand new research, groundbreaking insight or an outstanding brand story that the industry needs to hear? Good news, Can Lions is now inviting onstage content applications for the festival in June, 2026. This is your chance to make history by speaking on the most coveted stage in the creative industry. You pitched the topic, the speakers, session format and more. Can Lions brings together inspiration from every corner of the creative marketing community. This is your chance to be a part of it. The deadline for submissions is 31st of December 2025. To submit your idea, visit can Lions.com. - Our first guest joins me now, David Tiltman, his chief content officer for Walk and a regular host on this podcast. Welcome to the 400th episode, David. - Thank you and a 400 episodes. I can't believe it. - Who would have thank it? I feel like that's a significant chunk of my life. It's been dedicated to this podcast. - Yes, so yeah, 400 episodes, unbelievable. But we are here to talk about ideas of the year. - Yes, very bizarre. - And I know that you have a big idea and we thought, oh well, we may as well shout out one of our own ideas. So tell me. - Yeah, it's a height of narcissism to go for our own ideas as one of the ideas of the year. But look, the point of this report is it's sort of a bit of fun at the end of the year. So it's an opportunity for us to sort of look back and pick out some of the things that really stood out to us. Yeah, so the first idea is the multiplier effect. - It's been a big one to be here. - Yeah, so if anyone's been sort of hiding in a cave and missed this particular report that we released back in January, it was called the multiplier effect. And it was about brand versus performance and how the two played together. Now, this is not a new problem. And indeed, many of the, part of the goal of the report was to flag a lot of the thinking that's out there around it. But I think what was new around it and why we flagged this as one of the ideas of the year is firstly that we worked with four different data partners to produce a sort of up-to-date viewpoint on the sort of relationship between brand building advertising and performance, what's the performance advertising and performance marketing. Secondly, we did that specifically with US data because we were sick of presenting things like the IPA data or and being asked where's the US cut? So we wanted to fill that. And then I think the third point and probably the key why it's, we think it sort of moves the conversation on a little bit, is that focus on the multiplier effect? That is why brand and performance are not independent variables and independent techniques. But there are opportunities to improve the performance of your performance by having a stronger brand. And when conducting your performance marketing as most brands now do, there are opportunities to reinforce the sort of core brand assets. So the idea that these are two entirely independent techniques is an issue. And there's a whole load of sort of knock on consequences of that which we can obviously talk about. Yeah, I think let's talk about one of those because when I have been talking to CMOs over the course of this year, they keep talking about the doom loop from the multiplier effect and how that framing has really helped them talk to the CSWE about investment and brand and performance. Can you tell us a little bit about the doom loop in this research and what it means? Yeah, so the doom loop was kind of a little visualization we drew up when we were looking at what the limits of performance marketing on it. I don't want to take over this podcast with a long explanation of all the background. We did do a podcast on it. There was plenty on it. But really, this idea of the doom loop, it's a similar idea to the performance plateau that Tom Roach talks about. But it's more about what happens with it, the sort of danger of what happens within an organization where you're optimizing against the wrong metrics. And particularly the kind of metrics that come out of our digital platforms, like attribution modeling, all that sort of thing. Now, the problem with these is they, by giving you only a partial view of the truth. I'm not saying it's an entirely inaccurate view of the truth. Some might argue differently, but it's only, best it's only a partial view of the truth. You're not necessarily seeing the full picture and therefore you're making spending decisions based on incomplete information. So we see this happening in a lot of brands where they've grown through performance marketing or other big brands that have shifted money out of brand building into performance marketing. And what happens is there is a natural limit to how far those advertising techniques will take you because you are only ever reaching the people who are in market at that particular time. They focus, the techniques focus on the intent to buy and to have intense, you need to be relatively close to making a purchase. So there's a natural limit to that. Now, as growth advertising driven growth slows as your cost per acquisition starts going up, you start to make diagnoses based on incomplete information. And what often happens is those metrics are telling you to shovel more money into the performance machine which is at its limit at the same time. So growth actually then slows even more. So you get this sort of vicious circle where your response to the problem is actually then accelerating the problem in the first place. Right, and that's the doom loop. That's the doom loop. Yeah, okay, so what's next for the multiplier effect? Well, we started with the multiplier effect. We started looking at the consequences of these findings in a few key areas. So what does it mean for how you plan campaigns? What does it mean for the way you budget, for the way you measure? So we started to look at some of the sort of next, you know, the decisions that need to be made within the original report. But what we've found as we've gone through the course of this year is as we've talked to lots of CMOs about this, we've talked to people in agencies, the sort of research vendors and others. We're finding is that the blockers to applying some of these findings are often cultural or structural within organizations. So it's not necessarily about knowledge anymore. A lot of companies know the problems now. And we've even seen this in recent research in McKinsey that has found that there's been a big desire by marketers to move back towards brand marketing next year. And I think anything actually the rise of LLNs helps accelerate that because all of the sudden people are obsessing about their brand's visibility on these things. Spoiler alert that may be another idea of the year. - Good point, I will not steal LLNs Thunder. So we know there's a desire, but often what we find is there is what you might call a say do gap or an intention action gap. There are blockers to taking the sort of necessary actions. So what we've tried to do is really sort of catalog a lot of the most common blockers that marketers face between what they want to do and what they're actually they're enabled to invest in. And to sort of interrogate those and say, well, okay, what are the different plays, the different tactics you can do to try and unblock those blockers, if you like. The result of that is a report we've got coming out in the first quarter of 2026, which will be called the multiply playbook. So that interrogates some of these blockers and gives some, gives evidence or frameworks or things to think about that can hopefully help resolve those issues. - Awesome, sounds like a really good build. So thank you for being on the podcast for our 400th episode. - Amazing, thank you Anna. - Our next idea of the year is shaking up the world of media strategy. So who better to share more with us than Alex Brounsell? He's here of Content for Warp Media and another one of our regular walk podcast, Host for our 400th episode. Alex, what is your idea of the year? - Okay, well, it's quite complex, but we're gonna try and boil it down around the word influenceability. And then this is based on a big landmark study that came out this year from a site business school, Oxford University and WPP Media called How Humans Decide. And the key focuses on the rising importance of quality and context in media planning and not just reach. - Yes, I am familiar with that one. We did a podcast episode on that one earlier in the year, which I believe we are running in the next couple of weeks as it was one of the most popular episodes of 2025 on the walk podcast. So why did you pick that idea specifically and what are the key points we need to know about the research? - So as a topic of discussion, this has been building up for a little while. So Philippe Tomas, outside business school, who some of our listeners will be familiar with his work. Last year, put out a paper called Beyond the Pair, which started to challenge the importance of the sort of orthodoxy around reach-based media planning. This has been built on this year. Philippe has worked with WPP Media, Stuart Baughan at WPP, where they've analysed 1.2 million consumer purchase journeys to get a better understanding of how media works. I mean, you know, this is what we're talking about, you know, how each touch point works, how consumers engage with media. And the really key point is that they're trying to land, is that there is more to media effectiveness than reach. There are two further key factors in the mix, if you like, and one is audience receptivity and the other is touch point, influence. So audience receptivity, there's this great stat in there, which is that 84% of purchase journeys that you and I make, all of us make. We already, the product or service that we buy, is kind of the one we had in the back of our head anyway. Only 16 of those can be influenced at the sort of point of purchase. So priming is really, really important. And across your whole audience spectrum, there's 10% of people that will be influenced by just about anything you put in front of them. There are 25% that are really resistant to marketing. And then there's this sliding scale of the extent to which a consumer can be swayed by what you're doing from a media standpoint. But what you're doing from a media standpoint is also highly variable. And this is where touch point, influence or influence ability comes in. So if you pick four random touch points to lead your campaign, you have a 20% chance of success. If you select the optimal four touch points, that chance of success goes up to 47%. So it's really important that they're, you know, reach still matters, but there are these other two factors to kind of bring in. Yeah, that sounds really important. So is this research a direct challenge to buy and sharps theory of how brains go? Or is it more of a build on his existing work? I suspect it depends a little bit on who you ask. I think that for WPP and some of the media plans, I think this augment that thinking, reach still matters, particularly if you're in categories where you're trying to reach the population at large, CPG, think of things like that. But if you're selling a service that will product that is maybe a little bit more targeted, I think that this challenges some of the notions that buy and shop brought forward with how brands grow. And that's particularly because the media landscape has changed. I'm sure Felipe would argue over the last 15 years. Not all media touch points are equal, and not all impressions are equal in maybe a way that we could have taken for granted in the media industry. A 30 second view on TV is very different from a fleeting glance from an online display ad on the internet. It doesn't mean that reach doesn't matter. You still need to reach your audience. If you're not reaching your audience, then you're not in the game. But there's more to the game than just hitting them because you can't take the quality of the impression for granted. So if you want any more information about this idea of the year, as Alex mentioned, it is quite complex. So we do have a lot of content about it on walk.com right now that we're able to give you the deep dive. And of course, we have the podcast episode earlier in the year digging into that research as well. So Alex, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. OK, our next idea should brand stick with their creative ideas or twist, flex, and switch up their creative routine. Next up is Addy Kishore. He is Walks Insight Director. Addy, welcome to the 400th episode of the Walk Podcast. Wow, great to be here. Yeah, so what's your idea of the year? So I'm focusing on something that Jellyfish strategist Tom Roach talked about at Cannes this year. It's the dilemma that modern marketers face today, balancing the proven effectiveness of consistent brand communication with the demands of platform algorithms that prioritize constant streams of fresh varied content. It's a real challenge for many marketers because advertising research from System One and the FEs has proven the value of sticking with the creative concept over time. In fact, consistent brands are six times more likely to report very large brand effects. But at the same time, old-- and I put that in quote marks-- old content is effectively penalized on the big tech platforms. Matter reports a 60% drop-off in conversions after just four exposures. So marketers have a real challenge figuring out what to do here. Yeah, it is. So why did you pick that idea specifically and what are the key points we need to know about it? You mentioned a couple of things about drop-off. I picked it because I think it's really important. I mean, advertising spend is shifting towards the tech platforms. More ad investment is flowing towards user-generated content. More now than professionally-produced media, such as TV or radio. That's a huge shift from just six years ago, where professionally-produced content accounted for almost three-fourths of ad spend. And next year, 90% of the growth in ad investment will go to online channels. So we really need to figure out how to optimize on these platforms. I think the key points to address here are that firstly, as Dr. Grace Kite explained it can, lots of little impressions do add up. Lots of small ad placements can add up to a big impact, but the approach needs an integrated strategy to work. And that's where Tom Roach's concept of a brand is a system of ideas comes in. Brands need to be more flexible and adaptable than they have in the past, being able to run off scores of platform-optimized variations without losing that core identity of the brand. Tom advocates tapping AI for this, allowing for brands to create variations at a pace just not possible before AI. Yeah, Dr. Grace Kite and Tom Roach have really led the charge on this in 2025. They have some amazing ideas and perspectives. Of course, all of that is on walk as well for you to read. So how does this research build on what we already know about marketing effectiveness? Well, I think one of the fundamental concepts in advertising is that of mental availability as advocated by Aaron Bergbas. Brands that have consistently invested in brand building are more likely to deliver on mental availability at category entry points when consumers are actually looking to purchase a product. And it always did seem logical, at least to me, that a brand that has stood for something consistently will be more likely to have built up that mental availability. But this research provides the data to back that up. Another area is the work from Walk, James Herman, and Peter Field in the Effective Code study. That found a tight correlation between effectiveness and what they call creative commitment. I won't go into the details here. That knowledge has been out there for a few years now. But they discovered that duration was one clear driver of effectiveness. And that's partly why reaching the top clear in the creative effectiveness ladder makes a campaign an enduring icon. So in a world where digital algorithms seem to constantly require that freshness, as you suggested. More brands are thinking about AI to help them own those algorithms to really scale up the content production. What are the key watch out brands need to be aware of here? Well, one challenge Tom Roach has identified is that campaigns now face three audiences. Firstly, the tech platform algorithms looking for endless creative variations. Secondly, the LLMs as search starts to shift towards them and perhaps agentic AI in the near future. And then last, but certainly not the least, the human consumer. Brands will still need to be able to talk to real people. Let's not forget them in this rapid advance of technology. I think AI will increasingly be used to build on core strategic ideas to generate these endless variations of the platforms need. Brands will need to define guidelines to maintain brand consistency while meeting these algorithmic requirements. But brands are also starting to restructure their content to ensure they show up in AI driven search as more users start to shift towards it. AI search is a very small component right now, but it's nearly tripled in the last year alone. So it's growing really fast. Brands are reshaping own media dedicated to this while also developing new earned practices to ensure they show up in AI searches, essentially moving from SEO to Geo. The key I think is not to forget human customers who respond to the warm human and emotional appeal of a brand. That can't be sacrificed for algorithmic effectiveness alone. So winning marketers must find ways to balance the, again, in quotes, core, sort of very practical, list-oriented content required to cater to algorithms with the warm dawns needed to directly appeal to humans. Yeah, really good idea there. And again, Geo coming up on another idea of the year. It's going to be a huge topic in 2026. So watch the space. Eddie, thank you for joining us. Thank you. If you're listening to this podcast, you'll know that Walk is the home of leading effectiveness thinking. And now, we're teaching you everything you need to know about the fundamentals of strategy. Walk strategy fundamentals is our new digital course for junior or entry-level strategists. You'll learn from award-winning case studies and here directly for top strategists and Walk's own experts, giving you the latest industry insights alongside proven practical frameworks. Shopping up your skills to excel in 2026 with Walk Strategy Fundamentals. Available now at walk.com/learning. The world of search has seen a huge shakeup this year and the ramifications will shape marketing and advertising for years to come. And next guest is Lena Rowland. She's Conti Director for Walk Strategy. Lena, welcome to the 400th episode of the Walk Podcast. Amazing. Thank you, Anna. Great to be here. Congratulations. So what is your idea of the year? OK, so my idea of the year-- isn't that? I didn't create this idea just to be clear. Well, the one that we wrote about in the report is generative engine optimization. Otherwise known as GEO. Yes, I know, I know. It's another acronym, sorry about that. But look, GEO is an extension of SEO, traditional search engine optimization. GEO doesn't replace SEO, but it is an extension of it and could have big implications for brands. So why did you pick that idea beyond the obvious as there? It's everywhere all at once. But what are some of the key points that we need to know about it? So we picked GEO because it's shaking up search marketing. The rise of LLMs like ChatGbT, Gemini, and Claude-- platforms that we all use-- is changing the way people discover and research brands. And that's disrupting traditional search. Instead of people being served a list of 10 links, LLMs respond to consumer queries with answers, which means marketers need to think about how their brand is visible in LLMs responses. It's both a challenge and an opportunity for brands. Yes, sounds great. So SEO isn't dying. It is changing quickly. And as Tom Roach, the strategist, put it, it's having babies. And you mention that in your social media video, covering this concept. So how is the rise of GEO platforms like ChatGbT, as you mentioned, likely to impact traditional search marketing, as we've known it up until now? Yes, so in the GEO world, marketers need to rethink their paid, owned, and earned media strategy. Because they need to build presence where AI models actually look for information and create content these models want to reference. Here's what's fascinating. AI engines are obsessed with UGC. Yes, user-generated content, Reddit, TripAdvisor, Wikipedia, Quora. These platforms are having a renaissance because AI models favor authentic or at least perceived to be authentic user voices. They also love authoritative sources like the BBC, The New York Times, and academic sources. So the question becomes, how does your brand show up in these spaces? Suddenly PR and earned media are critical again. You need people talking about and recommending your brand in the right forums where AI models are listening. Yeah, so it sounds like there's quite a lot of important things to get right there. What are some of the most important things to both get right and also to watch out for? OK, so as mentioned, AI models love user-generated content. So positive reviews and sentiment are crucial. Partnerships matter more now too, partner with trusted media sites. And if you're working with creators, make sure they're recognized experts in their field, not just influencers with big followings. Strong brand storytelling gives you an edge because AI models favor brands with consistent identity and clear signals. And here's something really tactical. Brands that understand their category entry points have a huge advantage. CEPs, that's a concept developed by the A&Brow Bass Institute, are basically mental triggers that connect a consumer's need to a buying moment. If you can identify those triggers and build content around them, you're much more likely to show up in AI responses. For more on this, I urge walk clients to read Shane O'Leary's brilliant paper on Geo, which is available on walk.com. Yeah, a really good paper. And of course, a few weeks ago, we also did a podcast episode on generative search, new rules of search in an AI world. It has been hugely popular with Shane and also Gemma Spence. So Lena, thank you for joining us. Thanks so much, Anna. [MUSIC PLAYING] Our final idea of the year reveals the highest ROI of any channel over the long term. And joining us to share more is Amy Rogers walked own head of content for walk creative. Amy, what's your idea of the year? Hi, Anna. So my idea of the year is creators as brand builders. Big topic. Why did you pick that idea? And what are the key points that we need to know about it? Well, I picked it because brand investment in creators has been massive this year. We're in an era where advocacy really matters. Consumers are looking to online creators and influencers who they feel are like them, who have the same pain points, the same interests, the same lifestyle. And they're listening to what these creators have to say. And brands have really tuned into this trend this year. Spend exceeded $32 billion in 2025. And the majority are planning on increasing their investment next year, according to a walk research too. So that's one key point that spend is growing. And that growth in spend is for a good reason. We've seen research from the IPA this year that showed the long-term effects of using influencers was higher even than linear TV. And then Effie and System One research found that creators were the strongest touch point in creating both immediate performance effects and for building future demand. So a couple of points there on the long-term ROI and significant short-term ROI as well. And that's led to creator marketing being labelled as Digital Marketing's first true brand building channel. Yeah, we've seen quite a lot of breakthrough in the world of the creator economy this year and a lot more interest and effectiveness research around it. Influences and creators, as you mentioned, they returned roughly the same amount of short-term ROI as TV, which was something that surprised me. But over the long-term, they deliver the highest ROI of any channel, but not all influencer work has created equal, is it? No, exactly. So that research that I was mentioning from the IPA, it showed a large amount of variance in the ROI's from creator marketing. So it's a bit of a tightrope between creator authenticity and brand control. And that tightrope means that some partnerships don't always get it right. We've used the term death or glory with respect to creators a few times this year. Those ROI's are much less likely to be average. They can be really great or they can be really bad. Yeah, I think that's a big challenge, too, is finding what the benchmark of effectiveness is. So what are the creative best practices marketers need to know to make their creator marketing more effective in 2026? Well, we know that creative quality is really important here as with any media channel, but creative quality is just as important with creator and influencer marketing. There's often quite poor branding within creator led assets, which reduces attention on them. And like I alluded to earlier, that balance between creator authenticity and this branding of assets need to be really carefully managed. I think we'll see a lot more creator and influencer best practice around kind of creative effectiveness over the next year as that spend on the channel continues to rise. So watch this space. Yeah, absolutely. And for more information on that, you can of course check out the ideas of the year report that we released recently on Walk, but also we did a deep dive podcast just a couple of weeks ago with Becky Owen from Billion Dollar Boy, digging into some of these creative trends and a lot more depth as part of marketers' toolkit. So plenty to read on this one. Amy, thank you for joining us. No worries, thank you. That's all we have time for on the Walk podcast today. Thank you for listening to us this year. We'll be back with a brand new episode on January 2026. But in the meantime, be sure to check out our top six episodes for 2025 running over the holiday season. And be sure to follow us for more great effectiveness content in 2026. Happy holidays and thanks for listening.