Never mind the quality, feel the width

We’re all feeling the width of advertising these days. Either as a consumer being bombarded with what seems like a never-ending stream of ads or as a practitioner where the media requirements for assets are themselves never-ending.

When I started in digital advertising we had time to crack a new idea for each campaign and then some real budget to produce the creative – I remember in the interview process my potential boss told me that they had recently used the raven from a video game in a Halloween ad for an alcohol beverage client. Creative reviews were so exciting – how could we hack the system, disrupt users and generally do some cool shit to put our clients top of mind? One time, our creative director made all the clients cry in a creative presentation through a combination of a mood board, tone video and a kick ass idea…which would eventually manifest as a series of standard 40k banners.

I remember we went from really beautifully thought out concepts and crafted executions (to be fair, it was probably too much for a standard 40k banner) to spray and pray; test and learn; flood the zone sort of things at about this time…we also off shored a bunch of production https://t.co/CskotR65eK

— Ed Lee (@edlee) August 2, 2023

Nowadays, it feels like everything is an adapt of an adapt but needed in 20,000 versions and dimensions. There’s less time for the idea because the idea is increasingly taking second string to the form and format that it needs to be expressed in, based on best practices from the media platforms selling you the space and the audience.

There is an insatiable machine which demands a constant flow of new assets, which means effort and craft can be put into them which in turn means there’s less chance of the industry making durable advertising which can deliver value to our clients for years on end.

Rather, we create a huge width of stuff to feed the machine. Everything is the start of something and the continuation of nothing. Some of the best brands which used to put out the most amazing advertising are now putting out stuff that wouldn’t have seen the light of day 30+ years ago. There’s more sizzle but less steak.

We know that the half-life of “content” has shrunk year over year to something approaching hours rather than months, let alone years. Even though we know this, we’re still focusing on the increasingly short term, immediate needs of “just say something” to fill a media space (that does not “need” filling) rather than thinking about what idea will endure and what executions will reverberate through our audience’s collective consciousness.

John Long over on Twitter has a fantastic thread comparing classic ads to their more modern counterparts and the difference is…stark.

I've gotten a number of requests to create a single thread of my "How it started / how it's going" ad series. So here it is.https://t.co/c5FQmGesr2

— John Long (@janthonylong) October 10, 2022

I remember at school putting ads on my walls because they were so interesting but I can’t imagine my son being so moved by something these days that he would put it on his wall.

To be honest, I don’t know what the solution is here. Media consumption is only going one way: up. More and more companies, from your favourite streamers to your grocery store and even your bank, are introducing advertising into their offerings so the machine’s appetite for stuff will not diminish.

At DDB we preached a 70:30 split of resources towards long term brand building vs short term sales activation but even that feels optimistic these days. When Tribal Canada was in its heyday, we realised that 90% of everything would be tactical but for the 10% that would be strategic and creative, we’d really have to push ourselves to blow the doors off those opportunities.

And maybe these days, that is enough. Do the absolute best you can do with the 90% but then make the 10% opportunities 10x better than they have any right to.

[apropos of nothing, I genuinely thought the saying was “never mind the quality, feel the weight” until I googled it. #TIL]

Le Creuset Mystery Box Masterclass

In 2017, to publicise his keynote at CommsCon, Faris Yakob wrote that “everything is PR”. It was a bold, provocative statement at a time where we really were at the start of the attention economy. It echoed the “social x design” rhetoric that marketers were hearing from Facebook, YouTube and Twitter around creating things and experiences which were meant to be shared.

7 years later, the Attention Economy is alive and kicking. Marketers have long known that (thanks to Binet and Field) that share of voice was one of the best leading indicator of share of market.

Spend more money than the competition or be talked about more than the competition and chance are you’re about to become the market leader. But, marketers have also been traditionally slow to see how they could take advantage of this, vs driving message repetition.

Over the weekend, I saw one of the best examples of a company leveraging this attention economy.

It’s a 99yr old French-Belgium kitchen ware company – Le Creuset – and its “factory to table” sale which is being unboxed like crazy on TikTok.

I’ve seen skillets, mugs, ramekins, dutch ovens, casserole dishes, roasters and plenty more. Thanks to me watching these videos and thanks to The Algorithm’s reaction to me watching these videos, its gotten to the point where every other video I see is a Le Creuset Mystery Box Unboxing video, and I love it!

For $99 you get a giant box with a random amount of random Le Creuset products – you don’t know what you’re getting, what the colour is or how many. What you do know is that you’ll get outstanding value – a dutch oven retails for more than $500 so get one of those and you’re already seeing a 10x return but the ad claims each box has a value of $350 or more…still a 350% ROI. If my portfolio was doing that I would be writing a very different type of blog post.

The benefit of all this to the company is enormous as well. For Le Creuset, the company gets rid of discontinued stock (colours and SKUs), returned items and slow sellers while getting a huge amount of attention and driving FOMO. On TikTok, there are hundreds videos showing people unboxing their mystery boxes which have generated tens of millions of views… And because its on TikTok, these are generally going to be fairly targeted views shown by The Algorithm to those interested in food and cooking.

the Le Creuset Mystery Box opening trend on TikTok is the best marketing and FOMO driver i've seen for a long time: https://t.co/0aKKlEnBhW

Low price + incredible value + desirable product + loot box mechanics is a fantastic combination

— Ed Lee (@edlee) March 26, 2024

As a premium brand in what is, let’s face it, a commodity category  – a cast iron skillet is $30 on Amazon vs $250 for Le Creuset – deep price discounts erodes the premium you can charge over time so this different take on a sale event makes a lot of sense.

A great deal and a great deal of entertainment.

As the Romans knew: bread and circuses to captivate the masses.

Eating, and Changing, Our Feelings

WHAT:

Do you need coffee to start your day? How about a “stick to your ribs” meal to comfort you on a cold evening? Or maybe a glass of red wine to soothe the nerves over dinner? We’ve long known how food can impact our moods (and vice versa) and that we seek out certain things at certain times to have specific effects on our bodies. For instance, intermittent fasting has been a trend since 2019 with the promise to decrease overall appetite by slowing the body’s metabolism down.

SO WHAT:

As our understanding of our bodies, internal chemistries and advances in nutritional science expand, the ways foods are developed and consumed and how they affect our moods is also changing. The US edibles market is exploding with 20% CAGR from 2020 to 2021 and as provinces legalize psychedelics, we can be even more deliberate with the relationship between what we consume and how we feel.

NOW WHAT:

We recently wrote about the rise of snacking occasions and the decline of traditional meals – having a part of the overall snacking portfolio which targets not just occasions to be consumed, but emotions to elicit, would be the natural intersection of both these ideas. We’re not saying everything should be infused with THC, CBD or psilocybin, but using omega-3 fatty acids or selenium to fire your synapses in the mid-afternoon lull is an interesting and intriguing possibility.

Consumers are increasingly aware of, and interested in, achieving a particular end state – CPG brands who move past the occasion, and focus on the resulting mood or emotion, will find it easier to become into a habitual purchase and reap the rewards of this trend.

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I wrote this a few weeks back – to get it when it comes out, as well as all the great insights from my team mates, sign up at the bottom of the Venturepark home page.

Snack Time; All The Time

Young woman holding bowl with snacks

WHAT:

Whether it’s because there’s more WFH, the increased pace of the modern world or simply the changing consumer tastes, snacking is at an all-time high and shows no signs of abating. The category’s growth continues to accelerate and 57% of consumers report replacing meals with snacks…and maybe the same 57% saying they snack at least twice a day, with some super snackers snacking more than four times a day.

SO WHAT: When is a snack, not a snack?

As the category expands, the edges become more interesting – is a bowl of cereal with milk before bed a snack? How about a handful of almonds, a candy bar, a bag of chips or a sandwich? And, as the category expands, the number of snacking occasions are also expanding: the traditional 4pm tea and biscuits may evolve into a 3pm smoothie and protein brownie. Breakfast may be nothing more than a couple pieces of fruit, a hunk of cheese and a cup of coffee. Or, like Hobbits, we may be looking at a first, second and even third lunch scenario.

NOW WHAT:

The more consumers snack, the more variety of things they will consider as a snack and the more distinct snacking occasions or needs will emerge. This presents a massive opportunity for CPG brands to rethink their offerings. A variety of higher-calorie, better for you snacks can now be better positioned as meal-replacements while other products may become smaller but far more decadent.

As new snacks are developed, they can become more focused on satisfying specific cravings around the main tastes – more salty, more bitter, more sour or more umami – while using more unusual, more distinct flavour profiles and ingredients. Whatever the craving, there is or will soon be a snack to satisfy it – so the question we’re asking is will it be from you or your competitors?

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I wrote this a few weeks back – to get it when it comes out, as well as all the great insights from my team mates, sign up at the bottom of the Venturepark home page.

The Problem with 1% Better Every Time

Like many new converts I’ve become somewhat of fervent lover of my Peloton. In the first few months last year, I was riding 2-3 times a week. 

When I found out there was a Google Sheets template to extract and then manipulate my Peloton data, I jumped in, learned to use pivot tables (better late than never) and created my own custom metric to see how I was progressing.

And I did see a pretty steep progression. At the start I was crushing PBs (personal bests) for fun. Every ride was a PB as I really pushed myself and thanks to a low base – less footy, less running and more running after kids!

Being the competitive guy I am, I wanted to see that line keep going up and to the right. But as I kept posting PB after PB, each ride was, naturally, harder. The opportunity to keep progressing got harder and harder and harder.

It got to the point where each ride really took it out of me. I didn’t get a lot of chances to jump on as work got busier so I wanted to make the best of each opportunity

As Jules says in Pulp FIction, “… I’m tryin’, Ringo. I’m tryin’ real hard”

Just be 1% better every time. It seems really easy! I’m sure you’ve heard a podcast or a TV show or a motivational speaker or a TikToker exhort you to try 1% harder, be 1% better.

To get back to the Peloton. When your total output is in the 200s, 1% better is just 2kjs. When you in the last 300s, that becomes nearer to 4kjs and when it feel like you’re almost killing yourself to just equal your PB, let alone beat it, that 4kjs seems like it may as well be 100kj. Because of this, the bike started to look like a torture device rather than a fitness device.

Rather than think of 1% every time (which is, frankly innumerate considering how compounding works), a better model is to think like a marathoner.

For years, and thanks to an old boss, when I was building social and digital strategies for clients such as AT&T, McDonald’s Canada, Quaker Global, Canadian Tire and Manulife, I had a slide in my deck called “a marathon not a sprint”. It looked something like this:

It showed how a marathoner trains in order to peak at 26.2miles. The secret is incremental improvements and then scheduled recovery. You push yourself past your peak and then you retrench to secure your gains (gainz?).

Each week you push yourself further and then take it easier.

You don’t go our and blast 26.2miles each and every time unless you are a maniac…which some runners are.

As you can see from my Peloton data, the line is still going up and to the right but there are some dips in there. It’s ok to see some dips; it’s healthy to see the dips and embrace them for what they are: an essential part of sustained improvement.

Generational Guide: Understanding Gen Z Consumers

WHAT:

Gen Z is the second fastest growing generation in Canada, growing 6.4% between 2016 and 2021 (millennials are growing the fastest at 8.6%). With this growth comes increased spending power so therefore it is increasingly important to understand Gen Z as consumers. Gen Z-ers are currently between the ages of 10 and 25 – some are still in primary school while others have already graduated with a master’s degree.

While some of the groups are already influential consumers with real money to spend, this group will become essential for brands within the next 5 to 10 years as they’ll have massive buying power and disposable incomes.

SO WHAT:

As marketers strive for growth over everything in this pre-recession environment, we counsel them to look to new markets, new innovations and, in this case, new people. What do we know (so far) about Gen Z? Well, one of their primary values is their desire for uniqueness, which means they’re more likely than any other generation to reject designer and big-name labels in favour of small, niche businesses. More than any other generation, they also care deeply about their social and environmental impact. And their shopping habits reflect this.

NOW WHAT:

Brands cannot rely solely on their reputation to attract Gen-Z consumers. They must evolve their strategies to target this unique audience. Gen Z is also more likely than any other generation to boycott and protest a company if they don’t support its practices. Transparency, authenticity and responsibility are key traits that Gen Z seek out and hold brands accountable towards. It’s crucial to know your consumers inside out. Having a thorough understanding of this generation that will dominate spending power in the next ten years will give you a leg up in reaching this unique group.

It will also be vital to separate out what is truly unique to this generation and what are tried and true life-stage triggers – will moving out from their parents’ homes still lead to changing consumption patterns? Will being turned down for a car loan still lead to switching banks? How will parenthood effect Gen Z – will Gen Z even want children?

11 bullet points on awards

One week this summer, along with being trained by a new puppy, hosting a 5yr old’s birthday party and having a long over due vacation, I was lucky enough to judge the Strategy Awards. I had a bunch of cases to look through and evaluate – all of which represented fantastic work from agencies and brand marketers from some of the world’s most recognizable brands. The pride that people felt in their work and the effort that went into each submission really jumped off the page and it was an utter pleasure to read, let alone evaluate, them. When I clicked my last buttons, I felt inspired and refreshed and anxious to let the puppy out.

If life wasn’t stressful enough, we added this guy to our family today! pic.twitter.com/MK9NLAWxrS

— Ed Lee (@edlee) June 13, 2022

Obviously job number one is to write a compelling strategy as a springboard to come up with amazing ideas but, as I was going through the submissions, I made a few notes that may help someone else as they slave away at 10pm at night trying to write an award winning submission.

1. Grab my attention – Dave Trott is right. In all of this stuff it’s about Impact -> Communication -> Persuasion. Having impact right from the off, in either a video or written submission is so important to telling the story you want, especially against a back drop of all the other cases being looked at at the same time
2. Follow the format – there were some great cases which really made me work to find things like the problem, the insight and even the results. Most importantly, tell me what the problem you’re trying to solve is and show me how you solved the problem – not just the creative but the insight (especially for the strategy awards)
3. In this creatively-led industry, it is very hard to communicate what your “strategy” is or was in a tangible or even comparative way. Was there really a strategy or was it a great creative idea that’s been backfilled or an immediate opportunity that was spotted and brilliantly executed? 
4. Always include results…and show me how the business results mapped back from the problem to solve. If you don’t have business results it may be too early to submit. Don’t worry about timing – as I mentioned I went through a lot of cases and don’t remember seeing any of them in real life (I think this says more about the media support that many Canadian brands have to give than anything else) so it doesn’t matter if you got it in for this year or the next year
5. If you’re going to include a BHAG to solve with your campaign, I definitely want to know that you solved it or you’re well on your way to solving it!
6. Out of all the campaigns I saw, for the most part, the ones that really stood out were the Not-for-profit (NFP) ones – mainly because the business problems and results were clearer…and I’m usually more adverse to using NFP cases in pitches so this was a surprise for me!
7. Judges have written, presented and sat through so many of these case videos that we can smell BS. Talk to us in plain English as if we’re your colleagues (we are) down the pub and you’ll get a much more receptive audience
8. I love a good hack – but I saw a Spotify hack, a billboard hack and an Audible hack. Sometimes there’s too much of a good thing. The same with clothing drops – which seemed to be very popular – and to be brutally honest, I don’t really care if a clothing hack sold out if it didn’t move the needle on the actual product or brand
9. COVID loomed large as you can imagine but the picture painted in the case studies about how brands have helped celebrate the end of the restrictions is in stark contrast to the role I, as a consumer, felt they played – we always have an outsized opinion of how brands can “help” in real life and there’s a credibility gap that came across in some of the cases
10. I have always liked the one page image cases – quite often they were more useful and illuminating than the videos
11. Watch what you name your files – calling something a Cannes submission sets a level of expectation that you have to meet!

Just a final note to say a huge congratulations to everyone who was able to produce something they were proud enough of, to enter into the awards in the first place. There were some amazing cases and very worthy winners who will understandably get the plaudits.

The Underwear Recession Indicator

WHAT:

There are no shortage of technical indicators that a recession is coming. From the inverted yield curve to the Federal Reserve’s probability model, financial wonks can dive into the minutiae to their hearts content but for those of us more focused on consumer behaviour than spreadsheets, there are other indicators to look at including…men’s underwear sales.

SO WHAT:

Leading up to and within recessionary periods, consumers are forced to make stricter choices on how to spend their resources. Not only are big purchases such as TVs, appliances and cars pushed off down the road (not cancelled, just postponed) but, in what’s known as the lipstick effect, people famously spend their money on small indulgences and affordable luxuries. In this case, as the name indicates, sales for men’s underwear have declined in each of the last two recessions – in the 2009 financial crisis and at the start of the 2020 pandemic (although that may be due to the working from home phenomenom).

NOW WHAT:

When consumer behaviour is your currency, there are no shortage of cues to look for. In previous economic cycles, men’s neckties (remember them?) would become more muted in recessions, there would be more recruitment advertisements for the armed services as young people are less confident about their job prospects and incidents of petnapping would increase. Keep an eye on what consumers are doing in their everyday lives, not just as relates to your brand and industry, to predict their future behaviour.

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I wrote this a few weeks back – to get it when it comes out, as well as all the great insights from my team mates, sign up at the bottom of the Venturepark home page..

Brands and the Metaverse…a Primer

WHAT:

Technologists and futurists talk about it daily. The markets couldn’t fund it fast enough. Facebook changed its name to it. It’s supposed to be worth almost a trillion (with a “T”) dollars in the next eight years. But what exactly is the metaverse? The dictionary definition is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality and augmented reality headsets. In colloquial use, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection. To many of us, it’s people in Silicon Valley wearing silly Occulus headsets looking like the Lawnmower Man.

SO WHAT:

The metaverse is nothing new – anyone who plays Fortnite or Minecraft or any number of open world map games are participating on a regular basis. And those of us who remember Second Life still bear the scars of getting overly excited about an emergent medium. Indeed, many of the concepts on which it is being built such as social connection, identity and self-expression, are all foundational to the Internet itself, for better or for worse. This particular delivery system is new and, like the concept of mobile, may need a killer piece of hardware, like the iPhone, to really take off in the way many of its evangelists believe it will.

NOW WHAT:

In Gartner Hype-cycle terms, the metaverse is on its the way up to the “peak of inflated expectations” (NFTs, BTC and crypto may have peaked and be headed into the “trough of disillusionment”) so you’ll see many new and interesting use cases over the next year or so. Companies have started to play in this space but non-endemic brands are yet to see much business success, so we are very much in a “wait and see” phase. Meta (previously Facebook) is all in on the metaverse, including the name change, as it builds out the foundational elements of the future it envisions. But it is early days – Meta’s metaverse division posted an eye watering $2.81bn loss in Q2 and current renderings aren’t exactly inspiring yet.

But with backers like, well, Meta and Microsoft and the big gaming producers, the metaverse isn’t something to bet against…but we wouldn’t bet the house on it, just yet.

Bigger than the metaverse, and something we’ll get into in future Signposts, is the concept of Web 3.0 – and that’s where more immediate, more useful and more tangible innovation will come from.

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I wrote this a few weeks back – to get it when it comes out, as well as all the great insights from my team mates, sign up at the bottom of the Venturepark home page.

What Marketers Need to Know About…Inflation

The strategy team at Venture Play has started writing a weekly newsletter focusing in on things our clients and companies in the District Ventures Fund may want to know about, which I’ll start to publish here. We’ve settled on the classic journalism structure of What // So What // Now What as a way to get this information, analysis and implication over as quickly and as easily as possible. Let us know what you think and let me know if you want to sign up to get them all, not just the one’s I write.

Photo by Keenan Constance on Pexels.com

WHAT

Inflation is on the minds of almost everyone in Canada and for good reason. Just last week, Statscan revealed that inflation in May rose 7.7% compared to the previous year representing the fastest pace of increase since January 1983. Things seem to be coming to a head as we move into summer and the key Back to School retail season – searches for “inflation” in Canada have almost doubled since the start of June. Our consumers’ dollars aren’t going as far or buying as much and this is being primarily driven by energy costs (up 48%, year over year) and of course food costs (9.7%), in particular fresh vegetables (10.3%) and pasta (20%). 

SO WHAT

Whether this is transitory or permanent, inflation is having a severe impact on how Canadians spend their money, particularly in the grocery store. NielsenIQ released a study showing that it is effecting different shoppers in different ways – some are fortunately unaffected while others are being faced with some tough choices such as keeping the overall costs down by cutting out, cutting down or choosing from the lowest price brand from a preferred repertoire, which increasingly includes private label.

NOW WHAT

With all the empathy in the world to our fellow Canadians going through a tough time of it right now, any moment of change is an opportunity to be there for customers and enhance your brand in the process, especially in something as habitual as the grocery store. As a business growth ecosystem, here are three things we’re thinking about:

Add value – whether it’s a coupon, a promotion, a multi-pack discount or even pushing your local credentials, there are ways to make your consumers’ lives that little bit easier or to make increases a little easier to swallow

Communicate transparently – there’s nothing people hate more than the feeling they are having the wool pulled over their eyes and finding the same products they enjoy at the same price, just in a smaller size. If you are going to make changes, be clear to your consumers as to why and don’t try to just slip it past them…they will notice (and they will post about it on Reddit)

Retain switching consumers – Canadians are switching brands now more than ever. That means you’ll be seeing a bunch of new folks trying your product for the first time but also dropping some. Can you convert those switchers in the long term through subscription, through multi-pack formats or multi-purchase promotions?