Speaker 1: You're listening to Math and Magic production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: The scientific laws which are they're not laws like boushaltons,
Speaker 1: the laws that this is the way the world behaves,
Speaker 1: so you can make predictions. I think they get wonderful guidance. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Bob Pittman. Welcome to this special episode of Math
Speaker 1: and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers and Marketing. In this episode,
Speaker 1: my teammate at I Heeart Media are rather Spectacular CMO
Speaker 1: and former Gasto Math and Magic Yale Trouberman is going
Speaker 1: to do a special marketers focused interview with one of
Speaker 1: the world's great marketing thinkers and researchers, Byron Sharp. He's
Speaker 1: a genuine marketing guru and he is the director of
Speaker 1: the Ahremberg Bass Institute and a Professor of Marketing Science
Speaker 1: at the University of South Australia. His approach is best
Speaker 1: captured by the view that to break through to the
Speaker 1: frontier of any field, first you have to navigate the
Speaker 1: fog of conventional wisdom, the established group think that says
Speaker 1: these are the rules because this is the way it's
Speaker 1: always been done. Byron had the intuition to question accepted
Speaker 1: marketing wisdoms and chart a new path. Born and raised
Speaker 1: on a sheep farm outside of Auckland, New Zealand, Sharp
Speaker 1: partners the magic of serendipity. Early in his career. He
Speaker 1: was a marketing manager who, despite an early aversion to academia,
Speaker 1: ended up working for an academic institution, the University of
Speaker 1: Southern Australia. After determining that the business school there was
Speaker 1: underperforming due to a strategy error, Sharp trusted his gut,
Speaker 1: took a left turn, and here's where the math comes in.
Speaker 1: He decided to apply rigorous testing methods to study buyer
Speaker 1: behavior in a field he would help develop the science
Speaker 1: of marketing. His discoveries led him to author a surprise bestseller,
Speaker 1: widely considered one of the most influential marketing books of
Speaker 1: the last fifty years, How Brands Grow and It's built
Speaker 1: on his learnings. As the head of the Ahrenberg Bass Institute,
Speaker 1: the world's largest center for research in the mark marketing
Speaker 1: at the same University of Southern Australia where he started
Speaker 1: as a marketing manager, Byron's research provides a wealth of
Speaker 1: insight on the range of industry topics, including one near
Speaker 1: and dear to me. Best Practices for CEOs around finding
Speaker 1: the right CMO. Byron says, the best cmos of the
Speaker 1: folks who are laser focused on the business needs and
Speaker 1: the big goals. And in my experience this advice is
Speaker 1: spot on. In fact, Gail has excelled in her role
Speaker 1: at I Heart because of her laser focused, goal oriented approach.
Speaker 1: So time for me to pass the mic over to
Speaker 1: Gail to lead this conversation with Byron on this evidence
Speaker 1: based expertise on how brand growth actually works. Marketer to
Speaker 1: marketing guru. Here's Gale and Byron. Thank you, Bob, Byron,
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here with you. Before we get
Speaker 1: into marketing science and growth, Bob always starts as interviews
Speaker 1: by giving listeners a picture of you in sixty seconds.
Speaker 1: Are you ready? I'm ready early riser or night out?
Speaker 1: Have a later offer my Chisenhun Coker PEPSI I live
Speaker 1: in a current country. Where's that? You know? The stats?
Speaker 1: Mac PC, Matt Twitter or Instagram, Twitter, CEO or c MO.
Speaker 1: Well that's an interesting Christian. I'm not gonna be pissing,
Speaker 1: but I guess well near in invests. You know, I'm CEO,
Speaker 1: not see bring your fault springing Becausan is coming call
Speaker 1: or text taste. It's gonna get a little bit harder.
Speaker 1: So the smartest person, you know, it's not a prison.
Speaker 1: I think I have and you would have to be, Andrew.
Speaker 1: You're big technology. You can't live without my Santa Sun
Speaker 1: PROJECTA first job. My first job was actually a Rando
Speaker 1: send a Minshapa roller Coast operator. Oh wow, secret talent
Speaker 1: be at Johnson. What are you reading, watching, or listening
Speaker 1: to right now? I've just finished watching the same man
Speaker 1: on Netflix, Guilty Pleasure, my wine cell are okay? From here,
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into why we're here today. In your
Speaker 1: seminal book How Brands Grow, which has just been the
Speaker 1: must read bible of marketing in so many ways. You know,
Speaker 1: I think the major laws of marketing that you've outlined
Speaker 1: and How Brands Grow, it's probably one of the most
Speaker 1: underrated or misunderstood marketing laws. What is it really that
Speaker 1: you think many marketers are just still getting wrong even
Speaker 1: though you've given them this plaint book. Oh no, I
Speaker 1: mean not just terribly impressive. I think the profession is
Speaker 1: terribly imprisson But we are many ways, like so many
Speaker 1: other disciplines. I used the medical analogy in my book
Speaker 1: medicine used to be absolute rubishing stakes. You short people's
Speaker 1: loves in spite of its being well educated and well
Speaker 1: in teaching and believing that that we was doing right.
Speaker 1: I used to say I started in PR. It's when
Speaker 1: I used to say all the time, when people were
Speaker 1: you know, in that exaggerated marketer fear moment, it was like,
Speaker 1: it's PR, not R. It's okay, it's gonna be okay.
Speaker 1: That's true. And particularly people who were really big brands,
Speaker 1: have established meeting, physical availability and means of nots can't
Speaker 1: really do that much damage. But there it lies also
Speaker 1: the problem, and that they can be doing a lot
Speaker 1: of things that are wrong, but they don't realize they're
Speaker 1: wasting their time on trivial issues that really aren't kind
Speaker 1: of build the value of the organization. Yeah, before we
Speaker 1: go deeper up, we usually dig a little bit into
Speaker 1: your early life so we'll get a little more sense
Speaker 1: of who you are if we travel back in time.
Speaker 1: I read that you grew up any sheep farm outside Auckland. Yes,
Speaker 1: how about painting a quick picture of your childhood? Well,
Speaker 1: it was quite ideal, like in the wential great country
Speaker 1: school my mom was a teacher who several times the years,
Speaker 1: which is a very good teacher, I think, into a
Speaker 1: very large high school with no academic pretensions at all.
Speaker 1: It was quite good though, because you know, I studied
Speaker 1: well if humanities history and remember an art history. There
Speaker 1: are only two of us in the class until the
Speaker 1: other day left in the final year, so he had
Speaker 1: one on one teaching, which was pretty good. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to be an academic, and if
Speaker 1: you're going to be a history you end up in
Speaker 1: an academic or something. So I was a business degree.
Speaker 1: I was pretty put off when I studied the management classes,
Speaker 1: which I thought that terribly pseudo academic. I love the
Speaker 1: marketing classes because they talked about customers and the reason
Speaker 1: why firms existed, making products, working out what you would
Speaker 1: tell to you know, there's a eighteen year old. I thought,
Speaker 1: this is a business. This is what I wanted to learn.
Speaker 1: I knew on accounting and things like that, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to know how businesses work, and the marketing classes
Speaker 1: seemed to do that. So that's the first sort of
Speaker 1: serendipitous all into marketing, and then the other one is,
Speaker 1: as Bob mentioned, I ended up being a marketing manager
Speaker 1: for the commercialization company of the university, and that was
Speaker 1: actually really very useful because, you know, as a market
Speaker 1: PRIs interesting to do as you go through the books
Speaker 1: and see where the sales are coming from. And you know,
Speaker 1: much to my surprise, the business schools rather ship and
Speaker 1: it was all the revenue was coming into. It was
Speaker 1: the chemical technology and pharmacists, and the Business school was
Speaker 1: just selling you know, short versions of its courses and things.
Speaker 1: The only futures if you make discoveries. The real world
Speaker 1: wants discoveries, and you've got to do that, got to
Speaker 1: do research, and so well, you know, in the rest
Speaker 1: is history. So how did the idea of an institute
Speaker 1: that focuses on research about marketing actually come about? Oh? Well,
Speaker 1: that was easy. We were marking people, so we're supposed
Speaker 1: to do research on that. But the I think the
Speaker 1: odd thing was we pretty low respect for particularly top
Speaker 1: American journals. They seemed to be just trivial questions, either
Speaker 1: showing off long words and the sort of humanities orientered
Speaker 1: marketing ones, you know, the general consumer research and things,
Speaker 1: or showing off statistics and obscuring findings. So again it's
Speaker 1: been inspired by those sort of Victorian scientists who actually
Speaker 1: got out and got their hands to look to the
Speaker 1: real world and collected real data and didn't try to
Speaker 1: obscure the data was ridiculously over fitted models and things.
Speaker 1: And so I started a journal which is about empirical generalizations.
Speaker 1: You know, we're doing replications and extensions to see does
Speaker 1: it hold in winter as a hold in summer? Does
Speaker 1: a hole in this country? Is it for fast growing rands?
Speaker 1: Is low growing rands? That sort of replication work, which
Speaker 1: is the major journals at the time, just did not
Speaker 1: touch that. That always have that new. Everything has to
Speaker 1: be new. So the basic work of science wasn't being done.
Speaker 1: And someone suggested to me, you should ask Andrew Ainberg
Speaker 1: to be on the editorial board. And it knows is
Speaker 1: he still alive of and do oh yes, well all right,
Speaker 1: Andrew any broke back. Immedia is amazing, that's what creates
Speaker 1: the best. But well, we wanted to not be broken
Speaker 1: both sides of the Atlantic. So Frank Bass also it
Speaker 1: was a great proponent of you know, he had the
Speaker 1: view that we can make the marketing's real world science
Speaker 1: studies the real world. You should be able to find
Speaker 1: law like patterns just like everyone else has and we have.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things that you talk about is
Speaker 1: the importance of open mindedness in marketing, right, this idea
Speaker 1: of science and letting the data lead you any marketing
Speaker 1: suppositions that you actually thought were right and then we're
Speaker 1: proven untrue. But started dawning on me that the idea
Speaker 1: of being differentiated will did not fit with some of
Speaker 1: the scientific laws, like like couple of jeoparty, I mean,
Speaker 1: that shouldn't happen. You should have you know, two grands
Speaker 1: that are differentiated away from the others, that they're sharing
Speaker 1: more with each other but way less with the others.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we did some studying and compared patterns ex
Speaker 1: entublication of purchase with the partial map data and you
Speaker 1: know the perceptual map data which you can predict right,
Speaker 1: you know, the high premium brands clustered together and the others.
Speaker 1: This is for the department stores. When you looked at
Speaker 1: the actual shopping, the low price and the high price
Speaker 1: were sharing. Was than you'd expect. And then suddenly we
Speaker 1: got out an actual map, a map map, geographical map,
Speaker 1: and then oh it's obvious, it's where the stores are.
Speaker 1: You realize that geography is a way bigger driver if
Speaker 1: you're going to go buy a toaster or somebody can
Speaker 1: buy it or either one and young ruberkan had was
Speaker 1: part of the cantor the two people to be studied
Speaker 1: track of things, and they kind of gave us their
Speaker 1: whole data. Yeah, they had a perceived differentiation measure which
Speaker 1: had be never been done in academia. Academics always infod
Speaker 1: differentiation from perceptible maps or that you know, complicated things.
Speaker 1: This actually just directly ask people in multiple ways, you know,
Speaker 1: questions like you could just take it or not? You know,
Speaker 1: it's just been different, is it unique? You know? And
Speaker 1: schools are really really low, really love so even regular
Speaker 1: buyers of something like two thirds of Apple users wouldn't
Speaker 1: even take any of those things. Wow, and this is
Speaker 1: what the real world is. Mind blowing right, Just that
Speaker 1: surprises even me. And I was chief creative officer at
Speaker 1: Microsoft for a while, so competing with Apple was We've
Speaker 1: been of my existence quite sometime. People know that, you know,
Speaker 1: the mecan dash is built on a Unix operating system,
Speaker 1: you know, PCs based on that. And then I realized,
Speaker 1: I thought about my parents and if I see it. Actually,
Speaker 1: then let's say what's an operating system exactly exactly, and
Speaker 1: they'd say, you know, we've got this map bar. You
Speaker 1: told us to buy this map bar. We store our
Speaker 1: photos on, and we do email, and we serve the web,
Speaker 1: you know, And is that different? No, it's not different.
Speaker 1: All the computers do that. Yes, the real world when
Speaker 1: you realized that, Okay, the reason the scientific rules are
Speaker 1: like that is because consumers they don't terribly see huge that,
Speaker 1: you know, they do sometimes they know it Ferrari is
Speaker 1: not half that you don't need to talk to day
Speaker 1: to know. They see a lot of brands is in
Speaker 1: the change, and they don't know much about the brands
Speaker 1: they're not buying. We're so enamored of our brands, right.
Speaker 1: We spend so much time in the data and thinking
Speaker 1: about all the nuances, and we think that translates into
Speaker 1: the real world. People are just like, what's on the shelf?
Speaker 1: How much is it? What's convenient? Yeah, and we know
Speaker 1: all about our competitors and things. But you know, if
Speaker 1: someone banks with well Sargo and you asked them, what's
Speaker 1: Bank of America? Like there, I don't know Stargo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so true. In as marketers. Right, I can tell
Speaker 1: you all the nuances of first brands superentiation, and they
Speaker 1: go they just see big banks. Yeah, exactly. Your book's
Speaker 1: been out for a dozen years, for two years. Now,
Speaker 1: what are you most proud of that you accomplished with
Speaker 1: our brands grown? I guess that so many people have
Speaker 1: brought it and read it, that's a good sign. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean some of the earliest findings of the Institute
Speaker 1: and our advisory board members who are all you know
Speaker 1: cmos of corporations told us to write it because they
Speaker 1: needed a book to explain to the CFO and the
Speaker 1: CEO what they were trying to achieve was marketing is
Speaker 1: they're trying to move marketing to be evidence based, and
Speaker 1: there was some for the first time of real evidence
Speaker 1: behind it. So on that goal. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it has been useful, but to transform a big corporation
Speaker 1: takes off lot of work and talk about it any
Speaker 1: Bruce McCole, who is probably one of the most famous
Speaker 1: in starting with the gene at Mars, he still says,
Speaker 1: this gets forward, one step back, you know. Yeah, more
Speaker 1: a math and magic right after this quick break, welcome
Speaker 1: back to math and magic. Let's hear more now from
Speaker 1: the conversation between Gail Troubleman and Byron Sharp. Some of
Speaker 1: the criticism of your work was that it eliminates creativity
Speaker 1: or what we Mathew Magic called the magic of marketing.
Speaker 1: Why do you think people feel that way or why
Speaker 1: do you think that completely misses the point of the book.
Speaker 1: I used the example of the architecture of the book,
Speaker 1: that it is a wonderful creative people, but they slept
Speaker 1: build buildings that they can hand out. It's an engineer
Speaker 1: and they going to stay out. Yes, and so the
Speaker 1: scientific laws, which are the not laws like dur Shart laws,
Speaker 1: their laws that this is the way the world. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: so you can make predictions. I think they'll give you
Speaker 1: wonderful guidance. I remember creative saying to me a blank
Speaker 1: sheet of paper was a very scary thing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: doing research, knowing what your distinctive assets are and then
Speaker 1: saying that it's not optional. We used to what we
Speaker 1: now call distinctive assets used to be called creative devices,
Speaker 1: and they were sort of optional, you know, like, well
Speaker 1: stop using for a whole decade, stop using the M
Speaker 1: and MS characters because someone thought, oh, you know what,
Speaker 1: all these say about chocolate, you know, but then we say, no,
Speaker 1: we must use those. And I think to creators, that's
Speaker 1: really useful. It's like, okay, right, so I'm doing an
Speaker 1: M and NZ it will be m ends characters. Right.
Speaker 1: Marketers are so invested in their brands and all this
Speaker 1: detail and all the nuance and personifying our brands that
Speaker 1: I think sometimes when we get bored. You know, I've
Speaker 1: seen so many times where people, you know, new new leadership,
Speaker 1: new management, new team agencies, and people just want to
Speaker 1: do new things. It's human nature. They get bored with
Speaker 1: the same things, and and it's not necessarily because they're
Speaker 1: not working. The duration of a campaign now it's got
Speaker 1: to be so much shorter than the days of sort
Speaker 1: of iconic I mean, which are goes to your whole
Speaker 1: point of mass marketing, right. You know, one of the
Speaker 1: things we talked a lot about it, I heart because
Speaker 1: we reached nine out of ten US consumers just on
Speaker 1: broadcast radio, and then we have our podcasting and our
Speaker 1: events businesses, which are also bidding. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that you know, why we quote you so often
Speaker 1: and are huge believers, is you dispelled that false assumption
Speaker 1: about mass marketing just not being competitive anymore in an
Speaker 1: error of targeting as marketing still critical. Talk to us
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. Well, I remember which UNI
Speaker 1: legal ones said. You know, the great thing in the
Speaker 1: past was that Marcas came up with these targets that
Speaker 1: excluded most of the bias. I don't want to talk
Speaker 1: about the bias. But unfortunately, when I handed the money
Speaker 1: out of the media agency that was impossible to deliver,
Speaker 1: the brand was saved. And you know, we've got to
Speaker 1: stick to your grown anyway. But you know that we
Speaker 1: now have the technology that the bus could actually deliver
Speaker 1: on those highly restrictive targets, and that would be a
Speaker 1: fantastic way to drink the brands. Funny, I do a
Speaker 1: podcast like a clubhouse to podcast conversation with marketers called
Speaker 1: maybe You're Not the Target. Yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: human bias comes in in so many ways. We have
Speaker 1: so much data at our fingertips now as marketers versus problem.
Speaker 1: When you wrote this book, it was much harder to get,
Speaker 1: you know, research and data. Now we have so much
Speaker 1: data at our fingertips, and yet I think we're making
Speaker 1: less informed decisions very often. The send was why I
Speaker 1: now it's find as anybody who wait for big brands people,
Speaker 1: we can like some category grows. Of course we like
Speaker 1: category grows. You know, category, How do categories grow? I'll
Speaker 1: give you a clue. It's like brand. It's okay, people
Speaker 1: who are not buying the category buying the category? Right,
Speaker 1: would you like to talk to people who currently do
Speaker 1: not buy the category? Oh yeah, I suppose we would. Right,
Speaker 1: So not only have to reach all category buyers, including
Speaker 1: the lightest you know, but you actually people who are
Speaker 1: not in the category at the moment. That how you
Speaker 1: will grow? Well, you can chase our big drink your brain. No,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. We see this all the time that I've heard,
Speaker 1: you know, Mark Pritchard at PNG just a terrific example
Speaker 1: of years back when P and had sort of moved
Speaker 1: dramatically away from a lot of mass reach media. They
Speaker 1: moved almost entirely out of broadcast radio. They were making
Speaker 1: some decisions to cut budgets. So instead of just like
Speaker 1: a lot of marketers cut across the board, marks started
Speaker 1: digging in and to that principle was like, we need growth,
Speaker 1: we need mass reach. Let's start trying some master each
Speaker 1: media again and affordable media because we're in a moment
Speaker 1: of making cuts, and he started reinvesting with a lot
Speaker 1: of their big Master reach brands back into broadcast radio
Speaker 1: and into out of both of which they had they
Speaker 1: had pulled way back from, and they saw this just
Speaker 1: amazing growth. The premise again, if you're talking to night
Speaker 1: out of ten Americans about your laundry to churchy, you're
Speaker 1: probably going to find some new consumers who pop into
Speaker 1: the storm by it complementary emails saying how it really
Speaker 1: turned the hats and you put them back up to
Speaker 1: the christ to yes, you know a few years ago
Speaker 1: and I think now they're in like the top probably
Speaker 1: four or five broadcast radio spenders all up, and they've had,
Speaker 1: you know, just a phenomenal track record of growth. You know,
Speaker 1: tons of their brands now are very loyal, very dependent
Speaker 1: on broadcast radio, which we love. Obviously, they're great clients
Speaker 1: of ours. People going dark right, doing visted campaign and
Speaker 1: then going silent. You know that suddenly the consumers have
Speaker 1: stopped buying or some people they need to risk right, yes,
Speaker 1: or they'll just remember for these long periods of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have any data on this.
Speaker 1: I've seen some research about how long it takes when
Speaker 1: you go to our how long it takes to kind
Speaker 1: of buy back that recall, you know, that mind share
Speaker 1: with consumers someone else has coming and taken. Part of
Speaker 1: the problem is reducing the efficiency to spend by clustering.
Speaker 1: You know, you're pressing, clustering all your money and stid
Speaker 1: of one month and then nothing the next month. You
Speaker 1: just spread it out out of the two months. Golden
Speaker 1: rule is buying media spread it out. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's probably gotten a little better in the you know,
Speaker 1: the digital era. There's a little more always on probably spending,
Speaker 1: but there's still this heavy reliance we see from so
Speaker 1: many customers. And you talk about our OI not being
Speaker 1: the best driver or measure of growth. So many customers
Speaker 1: you see buying these very precious targets. I call it
Speaker 1: the gritty strivers, you know. And so I'm gonna pay
Speaker 1: a premium on a premium on a premium to reach
Speaker 1: the this this epicenter of my target. And and I've
Speaker 1: added so much cost to my media because I'm targeting
Speaker 1: and targeting and targeting, and again I've shrunk my POE
Speaker 1: consumers dramatically by doing it. Why are you paying that
Speaker 1: huge premium because I don't want wastage? Right? Some of
Speaker 1: that listage is the future customers. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about how you think about late
Speaker 1: buyers versus heavy buyers have to have friends. What we
Speaker 1: did five year analysis by the continuous panel analysis and
Speaker 1: ships a typical consumer good about eight percent of your
Speaker 1: buio only buy you once a year or thessault than
Speaker 1: once a big two years, with three years of fouritious
Speaker 1: or five. And people go, okay, well, but then they
Speaker 1: can't make out much of my sales, right because they're
Speaker 1: so light. You know, well, i'mbout forty so am I? Right?
Speaker 1: Your brand tracking only talks to people who have bought
Speaker 1: the category of the last two months, and you're actually
Speaker 1: buying these precise targets to only try to reach really
Speaker 1: you're just talking to your friends basically. Yeah, And it
Speaker 1: so feels like that sometimes I read these briefs. In
Speaker 1: the States, there's a lot of media decision makers and
Speaker 1: people writing the briefs and making a lot of these
Speaker 1: decisions are very centralized in New York and Brooklyn. Increasingly,
Speaker 1: Bob always says, how many of you in this room
Speaker 1: own a tesla. How many you've been in a tesla?
Speaker 1: You know, it's a It's less than one percent of
Speaker 1: cars on the road in America. So that's what we're
Speaker 1: always talking about it. I heart because we have this
Speaker 1: mass reach and much lower CPMs, So we've got two
Speaker 1: things going for radio there. What do you see as
Speaker 1: the challenges about mass reach? Well, fragmentation obviously, but we've
Speaker 1: got clever people that's got computers and then we do
Speaker 1: get that reach. I mean, once upon a time these
Speaker 1: I grew up in a country and in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: we only had one of the TV stations. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you put an ad on, you pretty much reach the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I caught some great brands and built doing that.
Speaker 1: And then you know, later it got more complicated. And
Speaker 1: so I used to tell offic I told and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, you guys used to say, you know, this
Speaker 1: is all of this new media and it's difficult at
Speaker 1: leit about it. You know, whereas we new TV, you know,
Speaker 1: really you didn't know TV. It was just easy. It
Speaker 1: was just there's three choices. Most of Americans watching so
Speaker 1: often people you know, they'll hear the data. Americans lower costs,
Speaker 1: like we have all these cases of other brands and
Speaker 1: chrome like g by using the mass media and people
Speaker 1: very they'll be very skeptical, but they'll they'll do a
Speaker 1: little test and then they'll just go Wow. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like buying TV back in the day in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: You know, you're just reaching a lot more people. You're
Speaker 1: gonna start seeing sales grow. So I would like to
Speaker 1: see market has drink a lot more research and learning
Speaker 1: a lot more about things like radio, TV, outdoor. It's
Speaker 1: like always there's also we must know a lot. Really,
Speaker 1: what do you know about it? Yeah? You know, I
Speaker 1: love saying so in the front Time TV show, how
Speaker 1: many people who watched this week will be back watching
Speaker 1: next week? People, I don't know. We've known this for
Speaker 1: fifty years. We can predict this. But you know, I've
Speaker 1: played the universities because most universities don't teach media at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so interesting because, yeah, on the media side, I
Speaker 1: think people get so caught up in the r o
Speaker 1: I metrics and these sort of momentary KPIs. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people touching a campaign, a lot
Speaker 1: of hands on keyboards going I'm just going to drive
Speaker 1: that number or that number or that number, and they're
Speaker 1: all in isolation of they're not actually growth of sales. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not thinking about mental and physical availability. Those are
Speaker 1: the two big things undependent value of your company. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: what about message? You know you talked a lot about
Speaker 1: not getting too specific on who you're targeting, so you're
Speaker 1: going after the biggest pool of potential customers. But when
Speaker 1: it comes to messaging, you do believe in specific messaging.
Speaker 1: How do you advise people if you're talking to everyone,
Speaker 1: how do you find a message that works. Well, that's
Speaker 1: why we have advertising agencies because it was certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: just all that persons interesting cats, right, Well, we put
Speaker 1: again that the dollars and put a dollar. It was
Speaker 1: that easy. We wouldn't need every agencies. No, we need
Speaker 1: avertyping agencies because we go, okay, well you need to
Speaker 1: communicate to millions of human being and they're all very different.
Speaker 1: They do have a comment that they're human. M h.
Speaker 1: You to work with Matt, Okay, we need will resonate
Speaker 1: because it's very hard to act and do customization. People
Speaker 1: are realize that. But all the research of the tests,
Speaker 1: the academic tests we try personalization, the results of miserable.
Speaker 1: So it's much better to place at bit on great
Speaker 1: creativity that resonates with lots of people, with a little
Speaker 1: bit of sophisticated mass marketing. I mean, obviously if someone
Speaker 1: speaks Spanish by than English, then you talk to him.
Speaker 1: It's been but what we wanted, mass scale without creativity
Speaker 1: appreciate actually did that. We we set what do you
Speaker 1: call it the crap track. Yes, I was there in
Speaker 1: that room for that spanship brilliant. We're wasting all our
Speaker 1: money creating all this different content and so we had
Speaker 1: little money left that actually by media actually make sure
Speaker 1: anyone heard it or so. Yeah, that's true, It's very true.
Speaker 1: What do you think about in this world where everyone's
Speaker 1: talking about privacy, you know, a world where we've become
Speaker 1: so dependent on targeting and now with the Kingbridge Analytica
Speaker 1: and all of the maybe abuse of targeting that's happened,
Speaker 1: it's people are going to be pivoting back to mass marketing.
Speaker 1: But also because they're targeting never worked. You know some
Speaker 1: reports Nico human is very good work in this area,
Speaker 1: you know, buying on programmatic platforms and showing that you know,
Speaker 1: you could do a targe of saying men, and you
Speaker 1: reached men about half the time, and half it's only
Speaker 1: reached women. You know. I mean, we absolutely thought we
Speaker 1: could do this and we couldn't. But most of the
Speaker 1: time we don't need to target geographic right, Geographic is
Speaker 1: hugely important because I do not have physical availability. It's
Speaker 1: a very pat and so I would want to be
Speaker 1: able to buy media on geographic basis. Yes, that's a
Speaker 1: really important tipling thing. Where people live really matters to
Speaker 1: their lives. Ducan lots re search shows that you know,
Speaker 1: where people live affects what they do online. And then
Speaker 1: some categories have end debased, you know, like I'm selling
Speaker 1: women's clothing, so I want to the women or some
Speaker 1: have some age. But after that it all gets quite trivial. Really,
Speaker 1: we don't need anything much more than that. You think
Speaker 1: consumers are easier dis way than we think. We don't
Speaker 1: need to get seven hundred data points. I've seen literally
Speaker 1: target lists from you know, digital campaigns where there's you know,
Speaker 1: fifty sixty different criteria people are buying one impression that
Speaker 1: is a mistaken belief. It's in shoudive belief that if
Speaker 1: we get more datas My bit of predictions the forecasting
Speaker 1: side of just just shape their heads and go Now
Speaker 1: you wan't now you want a preid simple models out
Speaker 1: before the most complex. Uh. How do you feel about
Speaker 1: loyalty programs? Same problem, talking to too few people too often.
Speaker 1: It might be a multi programs. Yeah, we now know
Speaker 1: why they don't do a lot. You can detect the
Speaker 1: dot lifting nualty. But it's rather disappointing. And the reason
Speaker 1: it disappointing isn't because why do you join that department's
Speaker 1: stools dualty program? Because I shot there regularly, right, And
Speaker 1: if you don't, you don't even hear about the little
Speaker 1: very true, that's the recruits are getting glass. And then
Speaker 1: there's also the incentive effect if you don't buy, then
Speaker 1: you go on up to get many points. So they're
Speaker 1: very extensive or lower reach. And the low quality media
Speaker 1: it's like Facebook friends. You know, I'm going to build
Speaker 1: up a big thing of people who liked on Facebook.
Speaker 1: That is low quality media because you're just talking to
Speaker 1: the same people. I don't know that. It's so funny,
Speaker 1: it's so true. I'm not a big loyalty club person,
Speaker 1: but you have a certain retail story shop at all
Speaker 1: the time so I accruit points. It's usually the first
Speaker 1: story I go to, and I shopped there quite often,
Speaker 1: and every time when they go, oh, you get fifty
Speaker 1: dollars off this, and I'm like, amazing, but I was
Speaker 1: going to buy this anyway. And country like, you've got
Speaker 1: a lot of people living in the rule though you know,
Speaker 1: there's only one guest station. I'm going to buck them anyway,
Speaker 1: the one into down. That's so true. Yeah, no, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: We've been talking a lot lately about rural America, you know,
Speaker 1: smaller towns where you know, obviously because we have reached Americans,
Speaker 1: we're reaching rural, suburban, urban, all of the flavors of
Speaker 1: this nation. And I think so many marketers, you know,
Speaker 1: you see campaign after campaign after campaign we want to
Speaker 1: buy the top twenty markets, top twenty markets again, most expensive,
Speaker 1: top twenty markets. You know, there's so many consumers out there.
Speaker 1: You've never exposed your message too, if you just went
Speaker 1: a little bit broader. I've done some diagnostics and brands
Speaker 1: launches that have failed. One of the reasons it's the
Speaker 1: people in the country you never reached, never even got
Speaker 1: your message once. Wow. And usually it's the sales can
Speaker 1: has done a great job, and you know they've got
Speaker 1: it into Walmart or something. It's there, it's ready to
Speaker 1: be bought. Sword on ship because you only top twenty markets. Well,
Speaker 1: that's interesting to memory structures that you talked a lot about.
Speaker 1: Can you explain the theory about memory structures. Consumers are
Speaker 1: fairly naturally loyal. They don't really care that much about brands.
Speaker 1: They keep going about to the same restaurants, the same stores,
Speaker 1: the same brands on shelf. And this is what is brandiquity.
Speaker 1: You have mental and physical availability, but you need to
Speaker 1: have this to overlap. And you know a lot of
Speaker 1: times it isn't overlapping, and that a lot of people
Speaker 1: who are coming into the store just do not see
Speaker 1: you because there's pins of thousands of items in the
Speaker 1: store and they zoom in on the few that they
Speaker 1: know and then they get out of the store. You
Speaker 1: get a terrible return on the physical availability, whether that's
Speaker 1: on a website or in a physical store, you get
Speaker 1: a terrible return on because you went in their heads. Likewise,
Speaker 1: there's no point being in people's heads. They don't know
Speaker 1: where do I get this thing from? Nic As the
Speaker 1: scot Line, the world's biggest search engine is between people's ears.
Speaker 1: I spent so much time trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to do audio creative well. And we always say that
Speaker 1: the world's best production machine is between your ears. So
Speaker 1: you know, by saying Grand Canyon with jello, you're picturing
Speaker 1: what color jello. It's amazing how we can fill in
Speaker 1: the pictures and be even you know, targeted with audio creative. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, I could say did you have lunch today?
Speaker 1: Was it good? Do you even remember it? Yeah? Right,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I have you thinking about
Speaker 1: your lunch. Whereas you know, back like in Microsoft, I
Speaker 1: would have to make four spots for year for Xbox
Speaker 1: for thirty one countries. And that living room didn't look
Speaker 1: like anyone's living room because I was trying to bash
Speaker 1: up you know, Southeast Asia and Europe, and no one
Speaker 1: had that living room. But if I said picture yourself
Speaker 1: in your living room, I'm relevant right there with everyone.
Speaker 1: The impultance of having audio distinctive assets, even if you
Speaker 1: are using video, the fact is you've got to expect
Speaker 1: fleeting exposures. People will not be at tension to all that,
Speaker 1: and there's something you can do about that. And you
Speaker 1: shouldn't worry. You should just be cognisive of all that.
Speaker 1: So I need this tv AD to work in audio
Speaker 1: as well as as individual Yeah, I know, particularly people
Speaker 1: multitasks too. I think a lot of brands have gotten
Speaker 1: more sophisticated in understanding how important audio is because it's
Speaker 1: tastes in your head and then like you said, there
Speaker 1: it is on the shelf. Oh yeah, I don't even
Speaker 1: know why I am picking that up, but it's in
Speaker 1: my head. To stop paying more attention to jingles again, Yes,
Speaker 1: you know we Yeah, we used to do some jingle hacks,
Speaker 1: would get musicians in with marketers and actually work on
Speaker 1: collaborating real time, and some amazing campaigns came out of that.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of household you know brands, we know
Speaker 1: what they are, We just need to remember to buy them.
Speaker 1: Remember they're available. I cannot end a Math and Magic
Speaker 1: interview if I didn't ask you to shout out your
Speaker 1: favorite mathematician. Who's your favorite numbers person? That would be
Speaker 1: Gerald Goodhart, who which with us as a cheer about
Speaker 1: advisable Frank Emeritus Professor Honor Doctorate from the University of
Speaker 1: Southstralia and colleague with Andrew and why do I say
Speaker 1: Gerald because Gerald described himself as a reformed statistician than
Speaker 1: he would always right, what's the simplest way of showing
Speaker 1: this very key, not what where did the data come from?
Speaker 1: I really understanding the data stable before subjecting it to
Speaker 1: any sort of complex he could cut through the bullshit
Speaker 1: very well. There's a danger when people learn statistics like
Speaker 1: Gerald did, they just get enamored by their it's like
Speaker 1: their machinery and yeah, the slice, and they totally lose
Speaker 1: picture of the real world. So, you know, with someone
Speaker 1: who needs statistics the Cambridge but became a silist rather
Speaker 1: than someone who played being a statistician, that's what we
Speaker 1: need more of. Definitely being true to the science of marketing.
Speaker 1: How about the other side of the table, who's your
Speaker 1: favorite creative? Who's your favorite MAGICI ship on the other
Speaker 1: side of the mouth and magic coin. George Felix, who
Speaker 1: was at Proper and Campbell gets responsible for the old
Speaker 1: Spice revival fantastic magic and totally fitted in with you know,
Speaker 1: the scientific laws that was really word and did it
Speaker 1: when he went to Knowing a Chicken. He was part
Speaker 1: of the team that finally brought back the Colonel l back.
Speaker 1: I think there was a time where yeah, turn Chicken
Speaker 1: changed its name at KFC because because the mont pun't
Speaker 1: worried about that weird fried. This is a classic example
Speaker 1: of marketing team just in their own little bubble, right, simnicate.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows it's fried. Everyone knows it's fried chicken. That's
Speaker 1: why they lost on you when you're wiping the grease
Speaker 1: off your hands. That's why it's good. Yeah, might go, oh,
Speaker 1: you know this old white guy from the South, that's
Speaker 1: not really so good to go, Well, don't think about that.
Speaker 1: It's a distinctive asset. It's branded. As I always point out,
Speaker 1: no one stops to think, why does the bigger chant
Speaker 1: a spot of shame? Also, nobody cares bringing the king back.
Speaker 1: That was also genius. Yeah, that's totally in line with
Speaker 1: the signs. And that's wonderful, gradual and right ready to
Speaker 1: do it. So true, it's so true. We need more
Speaker 1: bravery definitely the creative side of the equation. Well, this
Speaker 1: has been amazing. I think marketers out there are ready
Speaker 1: to learn a little math, a little magic, and your
Speaker 1: book Our Brands Grow has just been really the bible
Speaker 1: for so many marketers. Who are succeeding, and it's amazing
Speaker 1: the advice you have from marketers holds up so well,
Speaker 1: so so well today. So here are a few things
Speaker 1: I've picked up from Gail's conversation with Byron. One, A
Speaker 1: data driven approach can fuel creativity, not killing. Byron uses
Speaker 1: the example of architectural design. Math and magic must come
Speaker 1: together to create buildings that are beautifu full and structurally sound.
Speaker 1: Stay rooted in data and facts, and your creative ideas
Speaker 1: can flourish. Two. In an era of targeted advertisements, mass
Speaker 1: marketing still works. While targeting can be a powerful tool,
Speaker 1: over targeting can cause missed opportunities. Byron's research still finds
Speaker 1: that reaching more people brings in more customers. Three numbers
Speaker 1: don't lie. As marketers, it can be tempting to create
Speaker 1: the campaigns we want to hear, but the data shows
Speaker 1: that our preferences might not reflect the mass audience. Byron
Speaker 1: reminds us that we need to cast aside our biases
Speaker 1: and stick to the messages that have proven success or
Speaker 1: Conventional wisdom often hides the truth. When we buy in
Speaker 1: the group thing without examining the proof, we often miss
Speaker 1: the right idea I'm Bob Pittman. Thanks for listening. That's
Speaker 1: it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to
Speaker 1: Math and Magic, a production of Radio. The show is
Speaker 1: hosted by Bob Pittman. Special thanks to Susan Ward for
Speaker 1: booking and wrangling our wonderful talent, which is no small feed,
Speaker 1: Marissa Brown for pulling research, our editors Derek Clements, Mary
Speaker 1: Dow and Ryan Murdoch, our producer Morgan Levoy, our executive
Speaker 1: producer Nikki Etor, and of course Gayle Roel, Eric Angel Noel,
Speaker 1: and everyone who helped bring this show to your ears.
Speaker 1: Until next time,