Conditioning

Let's talk about conditioning.

No, not HVAC.

No, not about aerobic fitness.

Let's talk about "well, it depends" being the most honest answer to even the most earnest questions about creating effective, sustainable, memorable, brands and campaigns over time. Even with a roadmap to guide us, reading the map takes practice.

The StratCo at TRG has been on a journey over the past two years - one of Christopher Ferrel 's big bets has been that by bringing the outside in, bringing research and analysis from the world's leading practitioners of advertising effectiveness, we'll be able to build a culture of effectiveness that repeatably delivers outsize value to our clients.

But making effective strategic choices, coordinating a common understanding of the work & world across diverse teams, and consistently delivering upon them is, quite simply, hard. Common language is the first step - language is a virus, and the more you are able to speak the lingua franca, the easier it is to communicate across tribes: nuance holds meaning, less room for mistakes.

Getting past that point, though, there are still traps. While advertising effectiveness principles are being distilled and proven through a great deal of scientific rigor, the application of these principles is anything but color-by-number. Operating in this world requires training teams to think, not just know. The language, and the "canon" of which work is most reliable to base your understanding on, is a start. But how do you put it into practice for a new client...."well, it depends."

Back to Conditioning.

How can we "program" effectiveness into the culture of a team?

My understanding of programming is that it is all about distilling any intended effects into a series of discrete if/then actions - the most basic form of Conditional Logic.

If this condition is met, proceed/return this value/shift to this next action, which ultimately triggers another "if/then" action step until the end state is reached.

Conditional Programming does not necessarily have to be linear, it is merely capturing the inherent logic at the heart of a complex system. Some steps can be conditioned to be skipped, trigger different elements of pattern recognition to get to a desired state more quickly, but it is still based on inserting a series if "if/then" steps to achieve an effect.

So in my mind, programming is all about understanding what the right sequence of steps it takes to reach a desired action. Applications & Algorithms are simply a daisy-chain of diagnosis + interpretation, made elegantly out of code.

Embedding an Effectiveness Algorithm into Practice

Connecting with humans is ~thankfully~ far more complex than even the most advanced algorithm. How dull would life be if every day was merely a series of "if/then" interactions played out over time? But the concept of an Effectiveness Algorithm may give shape to the idea of distilling the complexity of connecting with people (e.g. advertising) into repeatable patterns that, over time, teams can learn how to improve upon.

A starting point, for an Effectiveness-Based Comms Planning Algorithm:

1 - Uncover Waste

Most brands struggle to invest sufficiently in advertising, meaning even the largest brands in the world are failing to capture all the value a strong brand can create because they do not match the investment with the full return. Practically, this means nearly every brand does not have enough budget to fully tackle all the jobs-to-be-done within a communications plan. The first and easiest way to expand the impact of a budget is to find the waste.

Note: Waste is one of those words that people often misinterpret in advertising. My meaning of waste = un- and under-productive use of a budget.

Evidence-based areas to search for waste:

Advertising in market areas where people cannot buy your brand. Focusing more investment on people and markets where you have strong availability makes the budget more productive. Reinvest the "waste."

Inattentive media placements. Advertising needs to be seen, and remembered, in order to work. Dr. Karen Nelson-Field's research continues to prove out that most forms of digital media do not have even the potential to be effective.

Investing in digital rent well-above market share. Ad formats that are within the direct path to purchase, where if you did not invest, your brand would not be found, should be considered a form of rented shelf-space. It does not make financial sense to try to "own" this space, as competitors will nearly always react with increased spend - which further entrenches the market leaders position. Instead, invest just enough to capture an impression share just higher than your current market share.

Staying blind to non-productive fees in the media supply chain. It's practically criminal the amount of working media investment that is siphoned away from productivity by media platforms (primarily) in the digital landscape. The Association of National Advertisers estimates that just 36￠ on the dollar actually makes it past the platform, tech, SSP, audience fees and other darker shenanigans (h/t Arielle Garcia ) that mushy buying guidelines permit. Find and limit this form of waste to reinvest.

Note: pay attention to what isn't being mentioned - hypertargeting for niche audiences is an extremely wasteful exercise - "off-target" media waste is not really wasteful, as long as it is still a quality media impression.

2 - Increase Commitment Despite Fragmentation

We're living through a complexity crisis. Fragmentation leads to uncertainty and choice paralysis, pressure to deliver guaranteed results further leads to diluting your impact by placing a wide range of "CYA" bets. While research from magic numbers , 凯度 , and many others shows that more truly is more for many brands when it comes to channel planning, it also requires sufficiency. Since most brands do not invest sufficiently to capture all the value advertising can deliver, the most effective thing you can do with your Comms Plan is to make choices that minimize tradeoffs. You by definition cannot do everything, choose which things to let go of in pursuit of completing the most important jobs-to-be-done.

Evidence-based areas to increase commitment:

Create "Systems of Impact" by planning in tight campaigns, rather than planning with for channel allocations & flighting. Media works hardest when designed with complementary effects in mind - some channels naturally improve the performance of others when used in concert. Going further, designing an integrated campaign with Media + Creative all working to amplify the same core brand platform idea turns additive complementary effects into exponential effects.

Media Signaling. There are two forms of signaling that are proven to aid effectiveness. Channel Signaling - some channels, by nature of them being broad and expensive, signal the stability and quality of a brand, merely by being broad and expensive. If the brand is willing to invest THIS MUCH in advertising, the product must be worth it. The second is Community Signaling - embedding campaign ideas within specific communities and cultures multiplies their effects when handled appropriately. This strategy is not without risk, but potent when done well, because it offers the greatest chance of converting an audience into a tribe of advocates.

Prioritize media choices that enhance links to buying occasions (read: Category Entry Point identification and prioritization). This is not about investing more and more in performance media, retail media, activation, and digital rent. Choosing media that heightens the link in context between how people are exposed to the campaign and how they will retrieve the memory in that context makes the return on a campaign stronger.

Working this algorithm isn't linear.

Teams will benefit from getting into a cycle of reducing waste + increasing commitment, the more productive the plan becomes the more likely it is to unlock a further investment.

Practice does make perfect.

Maybe we were talking about fitness after all.