Monday Inspiration: (May 2023): the importance of writing, lessons in innovation and how to improve marketing performance with brand salience

As it’s been the case since the start of the year, the news, comments and updates from the tech world about the ever-growing power of AI has continued. Following a report by Goldman Sachs suggesting that AI could replace ~300m full-time jobs, Chartr visualised data from a Pew Research survey about what Americans think about artificial intelligence’s impact on the workplace:

Interestingly, whilst a majority of those surveyed thought that AI will have a major impact on workers generally over the next 20 years, only 28% believed that AI would have a major impact on them personally, with 35% expecting only a minor impact.?

Is this a case of optimism bias? When I think about the impact of AI on marketing I’m somewhere in the middle. Whilst AI will continue to automate copy and testing for digital ads (e.g. paid search), and even conceptualise creative ideas for agencies (e.g. using Midjourney), humans still have the edge when it comes to strategy, storytelling and presentation. Although at the current rate of change who knows when that might change too!

Why write | Farnam St

“Writing about something teaches you about what you know, what you don’t know, and how to think. Writing about something is one of the best ways to learn about it. Writing is not just a vehicle to share ideas with others but also a way to understand them better yourself.”

In a world where AI can generate copy for nearly anything, the process of writing will become more important than ever. When we write, it forces us to think clearly about the subject and to organise our thoughts in a way that communicates an idea to the reader. Whilst average writing lacks structure and insight, good writing engages and informs.?

It’s for this reason that Jeff Bezos created a writing culture at Amazon. Jeff Bezos was himself famous for his annual shareholder letters and he also banned the use of PowerPoint, instead requiring Amazon staff to write narratively-structured memos:

“The reason writing a ‘good’ four page memo is harder than ‘writing’ a 20-page PowerPoint is because the narrative structure of a good memo forces better thought and better understanding of what’s more important than what.”

Seven Lessons In Innovation From Dick Fosbury | Ian Leslie

I remember practising the ‘Fosbury Flop’ at school in PE and thinking how silly it felt and looked! Yet I had no idea of the ridicule its inventor Dick Fosbury endured when he used it in the 1960s by persevering with his invention.

Like many pioneers, Fosbury had to deal with many doubters but his persistence, ingenuity and strength of character made him an Olympic champion. In this article Ian Leslie shares 7 lessons we can all learn from Dick Fosbury. Thee of my favourites include:

• Be a ‘thinkerer’ - great innovations rarely occur as ‘lightbulb moments’. Instead they are the result of a “slow hunch” - an intuition which the innovator pursues over time. Fosbury combined thinking and tinkering to iterate, experiment and tweak his idea until he got it right
• Seize the adjacent possible - Fosbury was only able to put his idea into practice because foam rubber mats replaced sand pits (otherwise he might have broken his neck!). This small be significant change allowed him to exploit the adjacent possible and take his idea forward
• Don’t be afraid to be weird - as humans we’re wired to conform so being weird or different goes against our natural instincts. But Fosbury had an extraordinary ability to make himself immune to the noise of derision and ridicule and without this he never would have found success?

The Benjamin Bowman podcast?

Despite being overwhelmed by great podcasts and audio content, I’m always looking for something new and different. Last month I stumbled across this podcast from marketer Benjamin Bowman. He’s interviewed some interesting guests, including Canadian marketer Ian Barnard from this episode on how to improve marketing performance with brand salience.

It’s a great conversation and I really like the way Ian explains why we need to get the balance right between performance and brand marketing:

• Research from Ehrenberg-Bass and the LinkedIn B2B Institute published the 95/5 rule. This tells us that only 5% of our customers are actively in-market and shopping for what we sell - meaning 96% aren’t!
• Performance marketing (e.g. PPC, digital advertising etc.) doesn’t work on the 95% of people who are not currently in-market. If people are not actively researching, then performance marketing will not deliver the right message?
• Brand marketing is designed to speak to people who are not ready to buy today. It does two important things:

1. Lowers cost of acquisition (CAC) because you stop competing at the point of purchase?
2. Lowers price sensitivity because people are prepared to pay more because they are familiar with you