The most important lesson in Marketing is also the simplest:
Simple, no?
Yet, in my experience, it is rare that either part of that equation is understood or optimally executed. This disappointing reality limits the success for your Performance Marketing campaigns, and is death for your Brand Marketing campaigns.
1. Creative. 2. Media weight.
There is, of course, extraordinary complexity underneath getting both of them right.
Brand ethos. Storytelling. Aspirational audience focus or CMO-happiness focus. And, 17 more layers for the Creative. Plus… Channels. Frequency shaping. Spike and sustain budgets. And, 47 more layers to get to sufficiency re Media weight. Then when it is all out… In-flight optimization via metrics like Viewability, AVOC, and more.
But, the big picture is simple: Effective Creative. Sufficient Media weight.
Attempting Marketing without a sharp focus on both will yield the same results as removing all your clothes, smearing yourself with honey to move a bee hive from your backyard. Painful, embarrassing, failure.
[Carveout: The very best Marketing can do is amplify. If your product/service is great, Marketing helps amplify that. If your product/service sucks, Marketing helps amplify that. Hence, in life, the equation for successful Marketing is always Product + Creative + Media Weight. Since Marketing has near zero influence/control over the Product, I’m going to assume there is something worth amplifying and hence focus only on the parts that Marketing does control: Creative + Media Weight.]
[Recommendation: If you were taught 4Ps of Marketing at University, remember the 4Ps Are Dead. If you are a Premium Subscriber of my newsletter, please see TMAI #400 — it will change your professional life! If you are unable to find it, just email me.]
This blog post is the most important one you'll read because following my advice will ensure you win before you spend. You'll be able to go to your CFO and say:
Powerful, no? Worth a bit of smart hard work.
Marketing's Chasm of Doom.
It is common to discover that Creative and Media live in entirely different, disconnected, universes.
It is not uncommon for the Creative team to go from:
to what will it take for me
to let’s build a Creative that will make my university classmates truly feel I’m still magical
to what is the next super-cool storytelling technique we can deploy that will finally get our CMO off my back about “capturing the zeitgeist”, VR for sure
to how can we take our super subtle nearly invisible “buy this product” technique to the next level so that the focus is on the humanity inside the creative I’m making
to …
I’m surely teasing my Creative peers a little.
Sill, due to the chasm above, you would be surprised just how often the above scenarios capture the truth — especially for large companies. Be they in Magnolia or Brazil or Canada.
An additional implication of the chasm: Creative ideation and development is done in a silo inside a vacuum. Creative VPs, agencies, strategists rarely take into account that their Concepts and Executions need to work as skippable AND forced views, as video AND display AND animated gifs, as 6-sec ads AND (if you have massive media budgets) 30-sec ads, and be effective in attention-deficit Pull vs. Push media channels.**
Every Media element will have an insanely causal impact on the Creative effectiveness — yet the chasm prevents this basic internalization and implications adjustment.
From an Org perspective, the death sentence is that Creative and Media teams are kept completely separate.
One final kiss of death: Creative teams rarely have KPIs or Targets with a loose relationship to business Outcomes. Their comp is based on Activity.
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It is not uncommon for the Media team to go from:
to let’s make sure the 19,456 different buttons inside Google Ads are being pressed randomly by Media Agency because it is a good way to show how sophisticated we are
to what do I need to persuade our CMO that we don’t really need “AI” from TikTok because if that happens maybe my job goes poof
to what’s the learning agenda for the quarter, does it have enough quantity of “things” to make it appear like we are an “innovation engine”
to …
I dearly wish I was kidding.
And, for Media, I actually have 72 more things to list! Curse of knowledge, I am a Media person after all (and always awed by the storytelling skills of my Creative peers).
With an obsession about all of those “Media bits,” in their silo in a vacuum, the Media team tends to simply be the recipient of what comes out of the Creative team.
Typically, the Media team’s only mention of the Creative team is: They always send us the Creative at the last moment or after the Campaign has started! (So often, so true.)
As mentioned above, the Org structure creates a chasm between these two crucial teams. An additional frustrating complexity is that the Media team might have some native skills, often they are outsourced to a plethora of agencies (neither of whom typically work with each other!). The Creative team will have an agency or two, but unlikely to be a small army of them so common with Media teams in large companies.
A secondary causal factor is a lack of understanding in the Media leadership of the super-crucial role Creative plays in Media’s success. Even for Performance Media, they do not realize it is basically a Creative game (and even more for Brand).
A tertiary causal factor driving failure is the tendency to make mind-bogglingly complex Media plans. Instead of focusing 90% of the execution on the two channels/strategies that will deliver 75% of the impact… Media teams will make career-limiting 48-row Media plans – leaving little mental space for Creative need/optimization/collaboration.
Even as I write about the chasm of doom, there's a voice screaming in my head, HOW CAN IT BE! It drives me mad. Yet, more often than not, it is reality.
Deep breath.
The first step to a new reality is accepting facts. I accept.
Then, for my Strategic Consulting engagements, I work within the constraints the CMO sets to address the chasm of doom, to change the reality. This can only happen with support from the leadership, and in partnership with Marketing peers.
Through that collective hard work, progressive change ensures that we build a competitive advantage for the company. Because, this is challenging to do.
** Set up a quarterly session between your Creative and Media teams just to cover these bits. It will bring them together. It will get them talking. Exchanging knowledge. Delivering reality checks both ways.
[Recommendation: TMAI Premium Subscribers, please ensure you re-read and activate: TMAI #386: Branding’s Secret Formula: Spike and Sustain!]
Creative + Media, Getting It Right.
Across the previous 429 editions of TMAI, on this blog, I’ve unpacked the layers of complexity underneath Creative and Media Weight.
Today, a summary picture for you, as you go on this wonderful adventure to revolutionize the practice of Marketing in your company.
Media is responsible for 30 – 40% of the success of your Marketing.
That’s it. 30 – 40%.
You can see now why I’m so freaked out about the chasm.
You will deliver Media, most often, via Digital and Offline ad channels.
The entire exercise of Media boils down to four elements, in this order of importance:
There is a lot that goes into being super, smart and currently effective strategies, about each of the four elements.
Implication: Simple, focused Media Plans are your friend.
[Recommendation:TMAI Premium Members, please review: TMAI #408: Frequency-Centric Media Planning for Success.]
Now something even more important…
Creative is responsible for 60 – 70% of the success of your Marketing.
One of the above Creatives is incredibly effective, and the other one is incredibly poor.
Figure that out before you spend a ton on ads plastered all over the Tube in London (or on Meta, TV, etc.) Because, no amount of Media Weight is going to save the campaign.
[Advanced Insight: If you are a Smart Alec, you are likely muttering: Wait, if I have an insane amount of Media Weight, I can drive a KPI like Unaided Brand Awareness. Yes. But. It will be incredibly inefficient. AKA: It is possible to make a bad creative work with a ton of Media to it. It is possible to get people to hate it into remembering your brand — it's also expensive, and possibly undesirable.]
This is the reason, in our Strategic Consulting engagements, I obsess about how the business of Creative works in a company. I have an entire Creative building process flow, roles and responsibilities, variables at each step, etc. that is a basis for optimizing. Topic for the future.
Let's bring the two pictures together, as God intended… This is all it takes to deliver massively high incremental impact via Marketing….
Step 1. Start with understanding why you are doing Marketing, why this specific campaign. Get that down to 1. lift Purchase Intent by +3, and 2. deliver $48m in Incremental Sales.
Warning: Don't jump to Creative or let Creative drive Media. Reverse that reality.
Step 2. Sketch an 80% there Media plan to achieve the above two objectives, with the budget you received, for the audience prioritized by your CMO. Channels (very few). Ad Formats. Duration (for computing Creative wear-in and wear-out). Ship this to the Creative team.
Step 3. The Creative team understands how the creative will be consumed, they can take that into account as they deploy their brilliance and build a Creative Concept and the many Executions. Ex: If the Media plan has OOH, the creative has to work on flat surfaces. If the Media plan has video, the creative has to work for sub-six second formats and regardless of the ad length, grab attention in 2.5 seconds — that's all you'll get in 2024.
Win before you spend mandates that the Creative is Pre-Tested with Human Made Machine. [Note: I'm an Advisor!]
[Recommendation: TMAI Premium Members be sure to read TMAI #416: Rock Creative Pre-Testing — The Right Way, to learn how to pick the right Vendor. If you can't find it, please email me.]
Step 4. While the Creative team is doing its magic, finalize the Media plan with the latest considerations, ex Competitor movements.
Step 5. Go to Market. Ensure your internal team, external army of Agencies is obsessed with in-flight optimization.
Step 6. Incrementality-centric measurement. Campaign success. Job promotion, with 40% increase in salary!
: )
The Win-Before-You-Spend Matrix.
Here’s a decision-making tool for your CMO (and, if you are lucky, your CFO).
Once you get the Creative Pre-Testing results and the assessment of Media sufficiency…. Ask this simple question BEFORE you spend any money:
Just so you have it in text as well, here's the key to the matrix:
A. Failed Creative + Insufficient Media Weight = Vanity Play.
B. Failed Creative + Sufficient Media Weight = Sure Failure.
C. Passed Creative + Insufficient Media Weight = Likely Failure.
D. Passed Creative + Sufficient Media Weight = Almost Guaranteed Success.
If it is A or B, save your money (and career). Stop the campaign. Live to fight another day.
If it is C, go beg for more Media budget. The most likely scenario is failure, any chance of success will be small and evaporate quickly.
Careers are made in D.
Bottom line.
Why be the Marketer who is defined by campaign launching activity? And on failure, cannot explain what went wrong?
Why be the Analyst who is defined by post-facto analysis of why things went wrong? Why not use data to ensure failure does not occur?
Play the smart game: Win before you spend.
Carpe Diem.
PS: I ran out of room, but just want to add that the Pre-Tested Passed Creative + Media Weight applies across your Owned and Earned Media as well. It explains why your Emails rock or have never driven profit. It explains why your Organic Social barely has any impact. Etc. Etc.
Via 
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