[MEGA POST] The 30 most important takeaways from the three best marketing books released in 2018...

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It was another incredibly interesting year of turmoil, change and debate in marketing land.

On the face of it our industry seems to be swaying towards anti-intellectualism and vain 'thought leaders'. We often focus on tactics more than timeless principles, and fail to learn from the past.

But if you scratch under the surface, there are enough reasoned, intelligent, evidence led marketers fighting the good fight.

People like Ritson, Alps, Binet & Field and Edwards are at the top of their game and not afraid to call bullshit. Unfortunately there's plenty of bullshit to be called.

Though we can debate the merits of our current media landscape, it's hugely helpful to have access to this calibre of marketing thinkers via Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube lectures, online articles, courses and of course books.

And holy shit what a truly golden year it was for marketing books. Three stone cold classics were released.

Firstly, Les Binet and Sarah Carter celebrated 50 years of account planning by releasing 'How Not To Plan', an epic read consisting of the best advice from their renowned Admap columns.

Secondly, Wiemer Snijders did marketing a great service by getting some of the brightest marketing minds to contribute to 'Eat Your Greens'. 

And then at the back end of the year, Binet & Field came back with their long awaited follow up to Media In Focus, 'Effectiveness In Context', a guide for planning effective marketing that's full of excellent research and advice.

I once heard of a famous 'social media guru' offering day long classes that cost €5000. For less than €100, these three books give the greatest bang for buck that any marketer could want. Seriously, if you haven't bought all three, make it a resolution to do so. And read them cover to cover.

When I read great books, in order to cement some of the learning in my own head, I try to take notes during and after reading. What follows is 30 of the most important things I jotted down. Interestingly, there's plenty of overlap too.

At the beginning of one of the books, there's a great quote:

"Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it"

These three all achieve that status.

Enjoy.

(Note: Each quote is taken directly from the book. For some, I've used slight editorial licence to help contextualise it. The paragraph after each quote is my attempt at a brief explanation using my own thoughts and some snippets from the book. Please excuse my horrendous photography skills!)

How Not To Plan

1) "To maximise growth and profitability, talking to your existing customers isn't enough."

Reach is strongly correlated with effectiveness. Too often we focus on increasing purchase frequency and driving 'loyalty'. Loyalty does exist, but it's more a function of inertia. If you want unfailing loyalty, get a dog. Penetration is a far better goal generally. Don't be seduced by the loyalty myth.

2) "Conscious beliefs have less influence on real people's behaviour than most marketers think."

When asked in a survey, people will tell you they're fully in control, but we tend to make most purchase decisions in a low involvement, system 1 manner. So it's better to presume that most people don't have strong beliefs about brands. Focus on driving emotion, fame and social proof. Real people don't think about consciously about brands much.

3) "One of the great lessons in marketing is that things don't always need to make sense."

In our search for rationality and repeatability, we've become far too concerned with making sense. We're in danger of reducing everything to logical and measured, stripping out all the magic. Often, the most brand value is created from things with no logic or function. It's more important to be distinctive than truly different. So nonsense sells. It's sensible not to make sense. Just ask PG Tips' monkeys, Sugar Puffs' Honey Monster, Cadbury's gorilla or the Smash Martians. Variance in creative builds mental availability.

4) "Most of us want brands to make our lives easier, then get out of the way."

When you're working for a company, it's easy to fool yourself into believing that everyone outside the company feels strongly towards it. But most people don't care about most brands. Most brands are heuristics, they help us shortcut decision making in a way that 'satisfices'. People don't want 'relationships' with most brands, no matter what your social media agency might say. Brand 'lovers' might have had many books written about them, but they'll always be the exception to the rule.

5) "Marketing that appears effective in the short term can lose you money in the long term."

In an era of short-termism, many brands have engaged in scorched earth direct response tactics, particularly with digital. Incessant retargeting with high frequency might look good on a spreadsheet, but it's annoying and can ruin your brand in the long term. Don't be fooled by short term response measures. Use the 60:40 rule of brand building:sales activation. And remember, excessive activation damages brands.

6) "We don't understand our own thoughts, feelings or behaviour. We all lie sometimes."

Focus groups are like watching dolphins in captivity. People's behaviour changes when they know they're being examined and watched, and group dynamics have a big impact. We're notoriously bad descriptors of our own behaviour. This isn't to dismiss focus groups, but make sure you're very careful with how you use them. Pay attention to how people say something and also what they don't say.

7) "Never assume your problem is unique."

Most markets are pretty similar, many brands are more alike than they'd care to admit. We have a tendency not to learn from history, and thus we're doomed to repeat it. Others will have faced this problem before, so know your 'case history'. Look at similar brands, learn from those who have gone before and have some humility. Steal with pride from other areas and try to find consilience between disparate areas.

8) "Sometimes new technology does make the old one extinct. But more often than not, the two find niches or work in symbiosis"

Think in a media neutral manner. Integration between media is far more powerful than being biased towards one channel. Don't be a luddite, but don't be a digital zealot. Channels generally don't replace each other, they make each other worker harder. Understand and use the multiplicative effect of using a mixture of media channels in tandem. You get more punch for your marketing pound if you spread it across multiple tools rather than plopping all of it down on just one option."

9) "To even have a chance of moving the dial, you need big numbers of people to see what you're doing."

Wastage is wonderful. Do interesting things and tell lots of people. Don't create loads of content and then put small amounts of media behind it. Populism isn't a bad thing, it's exactly what you should be aiming for. SOV drives SOM and famous campaigns make more money. Make sure your brand is known by many and comes to mind easily.

10) "Effectiveness is the extent to which you've achieved your goals. Efficiency is a measure of effort needed to reach them."

Focus on effectiveness first. It's about doing the right thing. Efficiency is about doing things right. There's a big difference. Efficiency metrics tend to be ratios, which are helpful. But the easiest way to be efficient is to cut budgets. You can quickly become so efficient your brand goes out of business because you spend nothing on marketing. Narrowly targeted media has a seductive illusion of efficiency. But you need to build your brand too. And remember, ROI is a dangerous measure if you use it incorrectly.

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Eat Your Greens

1) "The heavy buyer fallacy - the tendency to overlook the fact that most customers are lighter buyers who together buy enough to matter a lot. " - Snijders

Light buyers are incredibly important, and thus so is penetration. 'Negative binomial distribution' or NBD applies across all major categories, and illustrates that no matter what you're selling, it's likely that many of your customers will only buy you fleetingly each year. Attracting large numbers of light buyers is critical for brand growth.

2) "(Use media) with the casual insouciance of someone who looks at strategy first and then makes choices." - Ritson

Too often we come to a problem with preconceived tactical ideas. But this is harmful. Media neutrality is a much more effective approach. You shouldn't be pro-digital or pro-traditional but rather you should set a strategy, understand your audience and then choose the right tools for the job. This could be TV, digital ads or carrier pigeons.

3) "Brand building...is a long term job involving conditioning consumers through repeated exposure." - Field

Most purchase decisions are not some damascene conversion that happen like a lightning bolt. They come as a result of repeated conditioning over time and being consistent with what you're saying to people. This requires broad reach media and wastage. You must talk to people before they're ready to buy and prime them. Thus it's foolish to constantly targeting 'in market' audiences and nothing else.

4) "It is quite wrong to see the internet as a rival medium to TV. This is not a zero sum game." - Alps

We forget that so far, the internet has decimated print because of its direct response capabilities, but has actually complemented TV and grown the total video landscape. It's not about one channel or the other. Radio didn't kill print. TV didn't kill radio. And the internet won't kill TV. Change yes. But not kill. In the real world, advertising is about using all the tools at hand. The best thing we can do is integrate, not isolate.

5) "Social media platforms work far more like traditional media channels than we seem willing to admit as an industry." - Daykin

Though we've been told for years that social marketing is about 'interaction', 'engagement' and 'relationships', actually social channels are valuable to marketers because they attract large audiences where you can build cheap reach. The vast majority of people won't ever like your fan page and social certainly isn't free. In any case, engagement doesn't correlate with sales, The people who are likely to be fans of your page are buying your brand anyway. So use social in the same way you would traditional media. Limit the amount of creative you create but make it good. Then use paid to amplify and reach people outside your current audience. Less, wider targeted and with better production value is generally far better than more, tighter targeted and 'low cost'.

6) "The point is not that brands should target everyone, but rather should aim to target everyone in their category...please try not to reach below your means." - Biglione

The Sharpian approach to marketing is not about refusing to consider targeting. Rather it's about think hard about who your true target is and not overtly limit yourself by segmenting. You should reach as far as you can given your budget. Don't limit your category reach if you can afford it.

7) "Brands are getting distracted by standing for [insert important or worthy or socially conscious aspiration here] at the expense of standing for something relevant in the minds of their audience." - Richardson

While the power of brand purpose might be attractive and seem convincing, too many brands are making the mistake of orienting themselves around a lofty purpose that goes far beyond what they can achieve and what people actually want from them. Brands are right to think about drivers of authenticity, but should carefully consider hitching themselves to the social purpose wagon. Don't confuse the need to stand for something with the desire to stand for something worthy. If you just come up with some random 'why' to make more money, then it's not purpose, it's just marketing. In the quest to be authentic, it can come off as incredibly contrived and inauthentic. Just ask Pepsi.

8) "Emotional communication is an effective vehicle, but it is not the message." - Barden

Sure, emotion is a great way to get yourself noticed. But it's a necessary yet not sufficient element of effective communication. Too many ads prioritise emotion for the sake of emotion without understanding that you also need to sell. Emotion helps us to process, remember and share, but ads like Budweiser's puppies show that the idea of 'emotion is all that matters' has significant limitations. People also need to remember the brand and feel sufficiently motivated to action. To impact sales, an ad needs to convey the right motivational message in an emotionally engaging way. One without the other and it will fail.

9) "Finding new ways to reinforce or build existing assets through imaginative repetition is where our focus should be to build strong resilient brands." - Waters

Too often marketers engage in change for change sake. We're novelty addicts. We can quickly strip away a brand's mental availability by not leveraging the distinctive assets (logo, colours etc) that made it famous in the first place. Instead, we should strive to understand our brand's distinctive assets and refresh/reuse them with regularity. Think Guinness' black and white pint, Nike's swoosh or Cadbury's purple. Focus on 'imaginative repetition' by using originality to reinforce existing assets rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is not to say that brands shouldn't evolve. But the take away is clear. Don't need to reinvent the wheel. Build on what you already have but refresh it.

10) "Brands are in the business of anticipating and shaping mass behaviour...they acquire meaning as they circulate in society." - Price

Brands are built in the open. We focus too much on individual personalisation and not enough on building shared, collective knowledge. Social proof has a huge impact on our purchase decisions. We're evolutionarily wired for this. So in communication, we should generally focus on big ideas that drive fame and publicity. Spending in media that reaches lots of people using high quality creative delivers a 'signalling effect' that shows the value of the brand and engenders trust. That's why the film was called 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri", not "Programmatically Targeted Digital Display Outside Ebbing, Missouri". People have never trusted advertising, but they've always trusted brands that advertise in mass media.

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Effectiveness In Context

1) "Marketing works in two broad ways. The first, sales activation, produces an immediate response. The second, brand building, creates memories that influence future behaviour."

In order to grow, brands need a mixture of both activation and brand building. They need to prime their audiences and seduce them before converting them to purchase. Binet & Field's previous work has illustrated that the optimum balance between brand building and sales activation is circa 60:40, though this new book reveals that this can differ depending on category. Brand building dominates long term growth and involves the creation of memory structures that prime consumers. Sales activation is focused on short term sales uplifts that nudge customers to buy now. In a short-term focused immediate marketing landscape, the danger is we over-prioritise activation and de-prioritise brand building. Marketing needs to work hard over both time horizons because both brand and activation work in synergy, each enhancing the other.

2) "Sales activation effects tend to be particularly big for more considered purchases."

Though it may seem counterintuitive, the more mental energy and 'system two' thinking people put into a buying decision, the easier it is to elicit an immediate response from them. Expect high response rates from DM and other forms of performance marketing when consumers are more actively involved in the decision. People respond better to direct activity when the buying decision involves a lot of conscious, rational thought. Thus, if you're in a high consideration category (buying a car or taking out home insurance) you can do proportionally less of it if budget is an issue.

3) "Marketing produces much stronger business results in high consideration categories."

In low consideration categories, people use brands as a shortcut, and often have a default brand in mind, so it's harder to change behaviour. There's more 'system one', autopilot buying. But in high consideration categories, when people are highly engaged, the proportional effect that marketing has is higher. For example, extra share of voice (media spend) produces bigger shifts in market share in high consideration categories than low consideration ones (see below). Where the brand is more incidental, you need to work harder to get people to buy. Growth is harder to achieve in more rational categories. The more interested that people are, the more effective marketing tends to be. When consumers are emotionally involved, advertising works harder.

4) "Sadly for loyalty marketing fans, our analysis shows that regardless of the nature of the purchase decision, penetration is always the main driver of growth."

In line with Andrew Ehrenberg and subsequently Byron Sharp's findings, loyalty rates don't differ much between competitors, and pure loyalty strategies are a dead end - brands never grow by loyalty alone. Penetration is the main driver of growth, whether the category is emotional or rational, high or low consideration. This doesn't mean loyalty strategies are irrelevant, but it does suggest the biggest impact comes from focusing on growing your audience rather than driving more frequency from existing purchasers.

5) "There is certainly no evidence to suggest that online research makes emotional brand building redundant, quite the reverse."

While we're constantly being told that access to more information and declining 'search costs' for consumers means branding is becoming less important, Binet & Field's findings indicate the opposite. In categories where high levels of research are conducted, emotional campaigns work even harder. Emotional campaigns create competitive advantage in such an environment. Also, it is a mistake for high research category brands to not include 'non customers' in their target audience. Wastage is important and reach is a driver of effectiveness. You need to prime people before they become prospective buyers. In high research categories, the optimum brand:activation split is actually 74:26. However in reality, the current budget split in high research categories is 55:45. Direct Line is a great example of a company in a high research category that invested in brand and prospered. Look up their IPA award entry for more.

6) "Compared to offline brands, growth for online brands is even more dependent on broad targeting beyond existing customers."

The perception amongst online marketers is that tight targeting and direct response marketing is the way to go. But this research points out the opposite. If you want to grow in the crowded online world, reaching out to new customers is vital. Also according to the writers, emotional advertising in online categories is considerably more efficient than rational advertising. As a rule of thumb, online brands should be spending 74% of their budget on brand activity. The reality though is that the average current balance of campaigns for online brands is 56% brand building to 44% sales activation. In no uncertain terms, online brands should be spending more on brand building than they currently are if they want to maximise growth. This is because they're generally in competitive, research heavy categories where branding is important and where activation is proportionally easier than offline. So you don't need to spend as much getting the same bang for your buck.

7) "Minor innovation is worse than no innovation at all."

We live in a world where innovation is king and NPD is a huge priority. The writers found that the most radical innovations can produce very big effects. Launching a new brand, creating a new product or launching an existing brand into a new category are very effective strategies. But when innovation is smaller (new variants within an existing portfolio, new packaging, new features), you're better to do nothing. It doesn't justify the effort. Brands have convinced themselves they need a stream of new news, but unless it's a radical innovation, it's likely to be ineffective. The addiction to minor NPD is harmful. The highest ROIs come from advertising core products, not new marginal variants. Most minor innovation tends to produce gains that are much smaller than the cost of developing the product.

Brands that take an emotional approach don't need new news, and can use their existing assets in exciting, interesting, creative ways. The writers offer Felix cat food and Snickers 'You're not you...' as examples.

8) "Generally, advertising is more effective in new, fast growing categories. As time goes on and categories mature, advertising tends to produce smaller effects."

We're also constantly being told by Silicon Valley experts that new brands in emerging markets should focus on organic customer acquisition and ignore the 'drug' of 'paid marketing'. There may be some truth in this for some tech platform companies, but Binet & Field show that most brands who do this miss a trick. They don't take advantage of the early stages of a market when functional differences are likely to be wider, brand perceptions and habits are less entrenched and it is much easier to expand the market. Advertise early and often is the message, and as always focus on penetration not loyalty if you want to grow. As the writers say, "It is perfectly possible to launch a brand without much advertising support and grow organically. But much more dramatic results can be achieved with a big launch campaign".

9) "Balancing brand building and sales activation activity appropriately for the sector in which the brand operates remains a vital requirement."

One of the biggest and most revealing findings of this whole book is how the writers build on their 60:40 rule of thumb as described above. Firstly, the describe that is now in fact 62:38. But more importantly, they examine how the split differs based on a number of factors, including category. The basic theory is that in categories where sales activation is easier, you should do more brand building (like financial, telco).

In categories where brand building is easier, do slightly more sales activation (like FMCG).

For example, in financial services, it's easier to conduct direct response and performance marketing, and it's effective too. You can easily target 'in market' mortgage or banking audiences and speak to people going through life stage changes. So you can afford to spend proportionally less on sales activation (20%), and need to spend more on brand building (80%). This is completely opposite to how most modern banks market themselves. Lloyds Bank's black horse campaign is a perfect example of a bank getting it right.

10) "The optimum balance of brand building to sales activation is in fact trending upwards over time. At a time when commitment to brand building should have been growing, it has in fact been falling. As a rule of thumb, it will always be better to err on the side of brand up-weighting rather than down-weighting."

This is probably the most important part of the book. We risk decimating brand value and price premium by over-investing in rational sales activation and under-investing in brand. The current situation is dangerous for the long term health of brands. And we're seeing both effectiveness and efficiency declining because of this negative imbalance. If you want to go out of business fast, spend all your time and effort massaging the lower funnel with sales activation while not filling the funnel at the top.

At the very least, if you overspend on branding it means the campaign won't be as efficient, but the brand will remain strong so in the long term effectiveness is secure.

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And there you have it. Hopefully you're still with me and you got something insightful out of all of that.

I can't stress enough, please, please please go out and buy these three books. There's so, so, so much more in each of them. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

And please feel free to share this post with others. The ideas in these books deserve a bigger audience.

Here's to making 2019 the year marketing matures and returns to effectiveness and evidence.

Shane O'Leary

@shaneoleary1

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