Cannes Report #2: 15x ‘What?’ met marketing-enfant terrible Andrew Tindall

De Engelsman Andrew Tindall van onderzoeksbureau System1 analyseert (lees: fileert of bejubelt) The World’s Best Ads & Why They Work op LinkedIn en heeft ruim 120.000 volgers and counting. We spraken het enfant terrible, die er niet voor terugdeinst vakprofessoren als Byron Sharp de maat te nemen, In de verzengende hitte van Cannes.
‘I would rather have one second of attention to a distinctive, emotional, strategically aligned, fame-inducing ad than five seconds of attention to a dull, generic, forgettable one.’

‘The industry has become too visually obsessed’

#1 What’s your background, where are you from, and why are you such an enfant terrible?
‘I’m from Huddersfield originally, which probably explains most of it.
I studied medicine first, which gave me a love of science, evidence and poking at lazy assumptions. Then I moved into marketing, working at Diageo on innovation and Johnnie Walker, then Bacardi across commercial, brand activation and incubation, helping work out how to scale challenger brands.
For the last four years I’ve been at System1, where I’m now Chief Growth Officer. My job is essentially helping some of the world’s biggest marketers, brands, agencies and effectiveness bodies make better advertising and media choices through research, thought leadership and books.
Besides my contributions on LinkedIn I write The Drum’s second most popular marketing column after Ritson, which is a very specific and mildly painful achievement.’

#2 What do you like so much about the industry?
‘The blend of science and magic. At its best, advertising is about understanding human behaviour, creativity, culture, evidence and business all at once. It attracts interesting, inventive, slightly odd people. Which is usually a good sign.’

#3 What has inspired you most at Cannes so far?
‘Working with Mark Ritson has been a big one. We’ve extended some of our System1 and Effie research from campaign effectiveness into social, including new work with TikTok looking at how emotion, distinctiveness, consistency and time matter on social platforms. What I find inspiring is that it brings classic marketing strategy into social, rather than treating social like a separate, lawless little island where normal effectiveness principles magically stop applying.’

#4 What’s the biggest joke so far at Cannes this year?
‘Probably Ritson debating Byron Sharp on stage. It was meant to be five things they agreed on, but somehow they managed to disagree on almost all five.
The funniest bit was differentiation. Ritson sees real usefulness in relative differentiation. Byron, less so. Watching two of the industry’s sharpest minds argue about whether brands can be meaningfully different while half the room was checking LinkedIn was very Cannes.’

#5 What’s your opinion on the Croisette being taken over by tech companies?
‘The Croisette reflects where media money is going. Tech companies dominate because digital media dominates more and more marketing budgets.
I’m not a dinosaur who thinks you can’t build brands online. Of course you can. But we need to be careful not to overcorrect and behave as if every pound, dollar or euro should now go into digital by default. The job is not to worship the newest pipe. The job is to build brands and grow businesses.’

‘A lot of people still think advertising works by giving people reasons to believe, calls to action and arguments to buy. But most advertising works by using emotion and creativity building subtle memories and associations that compound over time’

#6 What’s the biggest misconception about advertising?
‘That advertising is rational persuasion.
A lot of people still think it works by giving people reasons to believe, calls to action and arguments to buy. But most advertising works by using emotion and creativity to build subtle memories and associations that compound over time. Those memories then influence behaviour, often without people being able to explain why.
Advertising is less courtroom speech, more compound interest.’

#7 What’s the biggest misconception about marketing?
‘That advertising is a weak force.
People say it all the time, and I understand the point. Marketing is much bigger than advertising. But gravity is also a weak force, and it’s the reason we are all walking around rather than floating into space.
When you look at excess share of voice, creative quality and long-term effects, advertising can explain a large amount of market share movement in some categories. Not current share, but changes in share over time. That matters.
Once the strategy is set, advertising is also one of the few levers marketers can actually keep pulling every day.’

#8 What makes a brand famous, beyond just being known?
‘Fame is deeper than awareness. It means people talk about you.
The word comes from the Latin “fama”, meaning rumour. Fame is a brand effect. It is what happens when a brand becomes mentally and socially available, not just recognised.
In Les Binet’s IPA work (The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), and in the System1 and Effie research we’ve built, fame is one of the most powerful effects you can create. It boosts profit and makes media spend work harder.’

#9 What’s the most important development in the industry right now?
‘We’ve moved from “impressions are impressions” to “not all impressions are equal”. That gave us the attention debate.
Now we need to move again, from “attention matters” to “not all seconds of attention are equal”.
I would rather have one second of attention to a distinctive, emotional, strategically aligned, fame-inducing ad than five seconds of attention to a dull, generic, forgettable one. The industry is starting to understand that attention quality matters as much as attention quantity.’

#10 What’s your view on creative agencies, especially with many struggling?
‘As execution gets cheaper and easier through AI and technology, creative agencies have to move further up the strategic ladder.
The value can’t just be in making the thing. Increasingly, the value has to be in knowing what thing to make, why it matters, how it builds the brand, how it stays consistent over time and how it gives the client a platform they can keep refreshing.
The agency of the future has to sell sharper strategic thinking, bigger ideas and long-term creative systems, not just more assets.’

#11 What’s the most underrated discipline right now?
‘Audio. You can close your eyes, but you can’t close your ears. Radio, audio channels and audio brand assets are often far more powerful than they get credit for.
In the new creator effectiveness work we’re launching with TikTok, WPP and System1, one of the clear findings is that creators need to say and show the brand early. Visual and audio attention working together is incredibly powerful. We’ve become too visually obsessed.’

#12 What’s your view on CMOs still battling for proper budget?
‘They are right to fight. One of my recent pieces looked at the relationship between ROI and profitability. ROI explained about 10% of profitability. Budget explained closer to 90%.
That doesn’t mean efficiency doesn’t matter. Of course it does. But effectiveness comes before efficiency. You need to reach enough people, enough times, with strong enough creative, for long enough. You can’t spreadsheet your way out of being underfunded.’

#13 What’s your view on purpose, after being bullied by Ritson and Sharp (who said during their talk purpose was heavily overrated, ed.)?
‘Purpose deserved some of the bullying. A lot of it became forced, preachy and disconnected from what people actually buy.
But I think the industry sometimes makes a category error. We say people can’t recall a brand’s purpose, therefore purpose doesn’t work. But people also can’t recall most of the emotional memories and associations advertising builds, and those still shape behaviour. Purpose can be a useful strategic tool when it creates better, more moving, more distinctive creative ideas. It just shouldn’t be stapled onto every brand like a moral Post-it note.
There’s a nice irony here. In the Ritson and Sharp debate, Ford came up as an example of relative differentiation around safety. But that is partly because Ford developed the seatbelt and chose to share the patent. That’s a pretty good example of purpose creating a real brand association.’

#14 What’s your favourite brand?
‘Guinness.
A brilliant product, brilliant codes, brilliant consistency, brilliant advertising. Annoyingly hard to improve.’

#15 What will be the buzzword at Cannes this year?
‘ROI. Everyone is obsessed with it. But ROI is efficiency, not effectiveness. It tells you how efficiently money came back. It doesn’t always tell you whether you spent enough, reached enough people, built enough memory or created enough future demand.
The danger is that Cannes becomes a place where everyone talks about effectiveness but only means efficiency.’

Een uitgebreidere versie van dit artikel verschijnt op 22 juli in FONK 445, een speciaal nummer met alle ins en outs over Cannes.