Reflections + Resolutions (2.0)

Newsletter #24 | Reflections + Resolutions (2.0)

It’s that time of year again: to be making lists.?

Gift ideas for yourself (or someone else), ingredients for the stuffing recipe your mother-in-law swears by, and crucially, your New Year’s resolutions.?

This time last year we set out a list of reflections on advertising in 2022, and resolutions for the year ahead. One of which was to follow CreativeX on LinkedIn. I promise this year’s list will not contain as much self-promotion.?

Reflections on 2023?

1. Optimize, don't cut.?

The start of 2023 was marked by anxiety around an impending recession, and what that would mean for advertising budgets. But as Les Binet emphasized, producing and executing excellent creative work unlocks budget to invest in core marketing efforts. Working with CreativeX, Diageo was able to “reduce the cost per 1000 digital ad views over the first half of the year by 50% compared to the same period the year prior.”

2. AI, AI, AI: Will it solve all of our problems, or steal all of our jobs??

Throughout history technology has typically created more jobs than it has displaced. As Tom Goodwin pointed out, generative AI won’t take jobs, it will take tasks. Rory Sutherland doubled down on this. “Half of advertising job titles today didn’t exist 20-30 years ago.” His advice: “Be good at more than one thing.”?

AI and technology more broadly should be seen as an opportunity for marketing teams to save time and money and get back to what’s important. As Aude Gandon , CMO of Nestlé, pointed out, new tools give marketers “the space to talk about the creative again.”??

3. 2023: The year of the creative.?

If the 2010s offered brands new opportunities to become more advanced in their uses of media, the 2020s are set to offer brands new innovations to put the creative at the core of digital transformation efforts. While targeting and media placements are important, their impact is negligible if the creative is subpar. As the ever-astute Rory Sutherland surmised, “If you optimize targeting, that’s helping you find your customers. But good creative can actually create them.”

4. Sexism persists (sneakily).

Despite assertions otherwise, sexism still persists in the advertising space. But as Jane Cunningham and philippa roberts explored, it has become ‘sneaky’, implicit rather than explicit but nonetheless present.?

CreativeX’s 2023 Gender in Advertising Report, an analysis of over 10,000+ ads supported by over $110M in ad spend, found that women are increasingly portrayed in domestic and family roles, and women over the age of 60 are almost entirely absent from advertising.?

5. Do well by doing good.?

Sustainability and profitability have historically been seen as incompatible, but it is possible to do well by doing good. But while 83% of companies support the UN’s SDGs, CreativeX analysis over over 2.5 million ads found only 4% contained sustainable messaging.?

Communicating sustainability effectively has the potential to overcome and address key aspects of the say-do gap. Brands have an opportunity to act as facilitators not enforcers of sustainability goals. Ensuring the products they produce, and the campaigns connected to them, help consumers (and themselves) close the say-do gap.?

6. We could do a lot worse than make people laugh.??

“Comedy is the hardest thing in advertising. When you get it right, when you get a smile, it makes you want to like that business.” todd sampson’s comment still rings true. 90% of people say they are more likely to remember a funny ad, and a study from Oracle found that 48% of people don’t feel like they have a relationship with a brand unless it’s made them smile or laugh.?

Andrew Robertson ’s closing remarks from his talk at Cannes, “But Seriously Though”, summed it up: “If brands are truly looking to make the world a better place, we could do a lot worse than make people laugh (and make some money).”?

Resolutions for 2024?

1. Connect with consumers in a meaningful way.?

How to connect with consumers in meaningful ways is an age old question for brands. 2023 provided the perfect example of a brand exploring new avenues to reach consumers through advertising. Barbie was essentially a 2 hour long advertisement for Mattel and the whole host of brands that jumped on board their pink bandwagon. But it was also “a riotous, candy colored feminist fable”, tipped to win big at the Oscars next year.??

When creating their campaigns for 2024, advertisers could do worse than keep Howard Gossage’s adage front of mind: "Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them; and sometimes it's an ad.”?

2. Focus on fame not fragmentation.?

“The defining story of the last few decades in advertising has been about adapting to fragmentation.” But while the fragmentation challenge is often framed as a media problem (more media, more content, more ads), Faris Yakob argues that the deeper problem for marketers is the fragmentation of fame as “the communal stages that they [brands] can buy access to keep getting smaller.”?

Focusing on fame not fragmentation, heading into 2024 marketers should heed Les Binet and sarah carter ’s warning that the “relentless pursuit of novelty leads to wasted money…And ROIs fall as people are subjected to a flurry of inconsistent campaigns.” Great creative work doesn’t simply ‘wear out’ .?

3. Marry science and creativity.??

Orlando Wood has argued that we’re currently living in a period of ‘left brain dominance’ in advertising, with fewer displays of human connection, cultural references and emotion evident in ads today. But System1 analysis determined that “the greater the number of left brain features in the ad, the less likely it is to achieve a strong star rating.”?

Creating ‘right brain’ ads is possible. But with a focus on digital tools and data here to stay, how can they be employed to more creative ends? Speaking at DMEXCO, Aude Gandon, described marketing as “a blend of science and art”. For Gandon, “The science of the new digital tools, the science of the new data, is in service of the thing we’ve always known and we’ve always done, which is the art of creativity.” In 2024, advertisers need to look at the art of creativity and the science of new technology as two halves of the solution to the greater overarching problem. Creative effectiveness cannot be achieved without both.?

4. Excellent creative relies on creative strategy.?

As Rob Campbell , Paula Bloodworth and Martin Weigel reminded us at Cannes, strategy should be the first creative act. Their advice? See strategy as a future creating process. Identify people who are passionate and committed to a cause, and focus on how they operate within that category. Strategists also need to get comfortable with sacrifice. Not allowing the context of the times to overshadow where you want to go, and letting the idea reach its full potential.?

5. Make representation count.?

Kantar’s AdReaction study ‘Getting Gender Right’, found adverts that featured women demonstrating intelligence and expressing opinions performed better, increasing brand impact by 37% and purchase intent by 27%. Despite the evidence demonstrating the impact of representative content on key performance metrics, advertisers continue to fall short.?

6. Execute effectively.??

Truly successful creative relies not only on an inspired idea, but excellent execution of that idea, as Eric Gregoire , SVP Global Head of Strategic Marketing and Digital, Bayer summed up at Advertising Week New York: “If it's a fantastic creative idea, not executed properly, it's a missed opportunity.” Executing creative effectively at scale in 2024 means moving beyond subjective measurement to objective tools that can deliver repeatable, actionable results.?

Thank you for reading and sharing Solve for X this year. We’ve baked cakes, shamelessly self-referenced, and installed a new author. We look forward to keeping you informed (and hopefully entertained) in 2024.?

Happy Holidays!