Sound Strategy

Welcome to Season 2 of Ad Infinitum, this Episode’s title is “Sound Strategy”; discussing the importance of strategy in advertising and ranking 5 recent top spenders in audio (Pfizer, Verizon, Progressive, Apple, and AT&T) through that lens with guest Mark Pollard - podcast host and CEO of Sweathead and Author of Strategy is Your Words.

Transcript

Stew Redwine:
Hit it. Ad Infinitum is the only podcast solely focused on audio ads, the creatives who make them, and/or the latest thinking that informs them, how the space is evolving, and my favorite part, a roundup of recent audio ads and analysis by yours truly, Stew Redwine, VP Creative at Oxford Road. And each episode's guest, welcome to season two of Ad Infinitum. This episode's title is Sound Strategy, discussing the importance of strategy and advertising. And then, we're going to be ranking five of the recent top spenders through that lens, and that's why our guest is the strategist supreme. Welcome Mark Pollard, podcast host and CEO of Sweathead, and author of Strategy is Your Words.

Mark Pollard:
Happy to be here, Stew. Intimidated, intimidated, but very excited.

Stew Redwine:
Mark, thank you so much for joining. So, for our audience, the chief audio officer, those are people that are responsible for setting or executing the audio budgets in advertising. It's so important for them to be intentional in audio. That's something I've been thinking about a lot because audio is so powerful. I've been talking with prospects and clients that just showing up in audio, you already come with all these advantages. It's processing the same part of the brain that processes emotion. It's our quickest sense. It's a sense that because we process it so quickly, it colors everything else. Its linkage to memory is incredibly powerful, so if you just show up in the space, it's already going to have a powerful impact. But how can we be intentional with it?
And for years, it's been undervalued and kind of an afterthought, but I thought it was really cool with WPPs 2024 marketing trends, one of the main things they talked about is how audio is an afterthought no longer. And I've got a quote from Michele Arnese, Global CEO of sound branding agency Amp, who said that consumers will forget what brands say, probably. They will forget also what brands do, but consumers will never forget how brands made them feel. Sound is gaining momentum in the brand world because it's responsible for that feeling. I like that. There's such a linkage between audio and emotion.
We all feel it. We all could sense that. It's borrowing Maya Angelou's quote here, but it's a great application. This is an area that's increasingly getting interest in advertising, Mark. I know you've been in advertising a long time and your focus is on the strategy piece of it, and I'm sure you've experienced that it's like, for a long time, audio was this afterthought. It's this thing that we do. Oh yeah, and we need to do some radio ads too, but now it's in the forefront. And I just noticed, getting into your stuff and your book and your podcast, that obviously you understand the power of sonic branding. You've got your own sonic logo, or sonic as they're being called, at the opening of your show. I'm going to play it right now.
So, why did you decide to do that and how did you come up with it?

Mark Pollard:
Oh, wow. Well, the first year or so of the podcast, I was kind of just recording myself and people I was interviewing, barely editing and putting them live. It was super raw. And I was like, "Dude, you got to slow down. You should have segments, you should have sounds, you should do all of that sort of stuff." But also sometimes, I roll my eyes at the sort of traditional podcast structures and the podcast voice. And I was like, I'm not into that. And also, this industry does take itself pretty seriously. In a lot of events, a lot of people who speak, they're very formal and I like to do weird stuff. I like absurdism. And one thing that I think is useful for a discussion about audio is, I did radio for five years, underground hip hop. And pretty much anyone who came to Australia who was well known and a rapper, maybe even a graffiti artist, break-dancer, DJ, etc., would come through my little world.
So, I grew up at the tops of massive buildings making radio, sometimes in the middle of the night, difference in time zones between Australia and my favorite rappers. So, lots of background that comes into this. And then, I just thought I needed a little logo, a little sonic logo, and recorded myself saying, "Sweathead," that's my voice. And I was like, okay, I think that's enough. And then, I did experiment with a little tagline, which was, "Strategy with friends." And I sang it. So, I sang myself in five different layers like, "Strategy with friends." So, just trying to be a silly, childish thing, and haven't really rolled it out. It didn't quite work for me. But the reason I just wanted to have that Sweathead thing is for the reasons that you and people like Steve Keller would tell me to have that thing for, that it's useful as far as building brand. Very simple.

Stew Redwine:
And it's cool to hear you talk about that. Yeah, that is so... It is true to your tone and your approach of like, let's take this stuff deadly serious on the one hand, like you do, it's obvious. And then on the other hand, let's not take ourselves too serious, I suppose. So, that's embraced in that sound. And then, like I'd mentioned before, I've got a copy of your book here. It's all marked up, and I mean, there's so much great stuff in here. The title Strategy is your words, and then you've got a great sentence at the end, "Either do the hard work of finding the words that work hard, or use words that make hard work for everyone else." I love that.
We talk about that at Oxford Road of finding exactly the right word, or Thomas Jefferson's never used two words when one will do, like Mark Twain's, "The difference between lightning and a lightning bug is one word." It's so important to focus on that. How do you think that that applies specifically, when you're talking with advertisers and brands about their campaigns, how do you see that apply specifically to audio advertising, both with produced spots and with live read spots?

Mark Pollard:
It's funny, I was thinking through a few moments of my career where audio has come up. So, obviously when I was doing a radio show, I would often record ads on behalf of brands, hip hop brands, etc. They were usually very informative, not a lot of storytelling, so kind of like what I would call a PowerPoint presentation, but out of your mouth, so to speak. Probably did the job, but not really following along with all of the research that we're now familiar with. And then, I remember when I was about 28, 29, this guy who, years before was actually a pretty famous singer in Australia, he'd set up this sonic branding studio. Well, I think it was like a senses branding studio, so not just sounds but smells and working with maybe retailers about the flow of places and trying to create a sense of brand through all of the senses.
And I was like, I don't know. It just felt a bit intellectual and a bit wishy-washy. And then, I also remember working with a chief creative officer who, radio was more prominent when I was in my twenties, and then it disappeared. It wasn't very glamorous, and I guess a lot of the people in creative departments, maybe they weren't listening to a lot of radio for a while. But there was a moment there, and I think it's still there, where some smart creative directors believe that it could be, with a little bit of attention, easier to win awards and be effective in radio. And so, they get their teams to focus on it a little bit.
So, there's sort of a few moments where all of this has come to life. And then, I think, actually talking with Steve Keller and seeing how much he loves this and how much he knows and some of the stuff he sent me over the years, has informed some of my interest in the space. But I don't think I'm doing it as well as I could with the podcast and with my brand. So then, when it comes to talking to advertisers about radio, here's the deal, we don't. I've worked with hundreds of companies. I've trained tens of companies in the past few years. Radio never even comes up. Podcasting barely even comes up. And so, I think that's probably what's interesting, the lack of a discussion around format, my world at least.

Stew Redwine:
That's amazing. But then, when you see what a small slice podcast is even of the radio world, and then to hear you say that, it's like, okay, well I see the green shoots. And then, in the world I'm in, we're talking to each other going like, "Audio, more people are talking about audio." It's interesting to hear you on the front lines and talking strategy with tens of brands that, wow, it's still not coming up. We're about to listen to some ads, and something I think about a lot is that it comes up in doing the show is, I've got advertising professionals on here and we'll play the ad, so to speak, just as if you were hearing it in the wild. And some of the immediate questions are like, "Well, I don't know what the strategy was for this ad," or, "I don't know what the plan was."
And what comes up in my mind is like, well, the audience doesn't either. How do you think of that when you're going, okay, I'm doing this planful, thoughtful, strategic work, and then how do I balance that with, okay, I got to remember that at the end of the day, this is going to result in an advertisement that someone's just going to, they may not even notice, or if they do notice, it'll be subconsciously. How do you think of that? How do you not overdo it on the one side and remember how this thing is ultimately going to be experienced on the other?

Mark Pollard:
Well, I think it starts by acknowledging that you do have at least these two compartments, where you have one compartment when you're doing the work, which has a lot of information, which is largely confused most of the time, trying to work out where the bullet points go, where the statistics go, what's going on, what's the problem that we're trying to solve for? And then, oh, I've got to somehow synthesize all of that into a sentence. And this sort of compartmentalization comes up in so many books on writing. I mean, Stephen King will talk about how, write with the door shut, as in don't tell people your ideas. Get your thing done and then put it in a drawer for as long as possible. Compartment one, right?
Compartment two is, open the drawer when you're ready and edit it, so that you can switch between that writer and editor's voice. For me, it's the same thing. I love standup comedy, and when I'm watching it or listening to it, I am paying attention to what they're doing, and I'm thinking through it because that's just the way my brain's wired, but I'm there to enjoy it. So, those two things happen at the same time. And a big part of this is also just the ego. You don't have to be smart all the time, you're allowed to enjoy things. There was an ad that came out of Australia recently for lamb. It's super absurdist, it's hilarious. And I posted, I like this, it's a banger to me. As in, I like that ad like I like a song, and all these people are trying to correct me about my opinion. "Oh, it's not doing this correctly." And I'm like, "That's not what I'm talking about. I just think it's well done and I'm allowed to like a thing."
Whether or not it sells a whole bunch of lamb chops is not what I'm talking about. So, relax guy. But the compartmentalization, switching between the two, knowing when you're in one versus the other, I think, is really, really important. I just got a call with amazing agency that I'm doing some work with, and they've got a lot of information. And I'm like, okay, we have a lot of information. What are we going to say that's simple in the presentation to the client, let alone what are we going to say that's simple and put in the world? And then, you've got to go through the ego massaging phase of all of that, which is, you know what? Put the information in the appendix. You don't need it. Let's just go simple, provocative, get into people's heads, the clients especially. So, it's those two, balancing both of those things because you need the information, but you also need simplicity, drama, and emotion.

Stew Redwine:
No doubt, no doubt. Let's see how well the folks over at Pfizer, Verizon, Progressive, Apple and AT&T do that. See how they balance these things. All right. So, we're going to be listening to those five ads from those advertisers. These are top spenders on national radio in the United States for January, using [inaudible 00:10:54] to take a look at that. So, approximate media spend from when we pulled these spots for Pfizer, you're looking at approximately $3.3 million in national radio, and let's give that spot a listen and talk about it.

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Stew Redwine:
All right. The strategist Supreme, the floor is yours.

Mark Pollard:
Well look, strategically, there's not a lot going on there, and the language use is not very interesting to me. What this ad is doing that is strategic, it's using the word migraine, it's using a female voiceover, it has baby or a kid making sounds and the music is happy. That's really what they're trying to get into our minds. Now, I don't know if they use that music all the time, I don't know if people would associate that music with that brand or with migraines. If someone hears that ad a lot for years and years and years, they would.
So, that's probably a question I would have for the people making that ad, is that like, do you own that or is that music really connected to the brand? Then it's good. Otherwise, you're just going to be reinventing the wheel the next time that you make an ad. Verbally.,Not that interesting. I don't really rate it, and if that language came through on a brief, which probably would be 80% of briefs in this particular category, I'd be like, "Come on, let's try a little bit harder." And no disrespect to anyone involved with any of the ads, just trying to be direct.

Stew Redwine:
Oh, of course, of course. No, thank you. We also ran this one through our system just to give it a grade using AudioLytics, and it came in at a 69%. There's some opportunities as it has for improvement that I see immediately. But what I want to do is I want to just jump right into the next one so we can keep the conversation going. So, here is the next spot, so we can get some relativity between the two, and then I'll have you rank those two against each other. Then, we can keep going. So, this next one's for Verizon. Here we go.

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Stew Redwine:
Woo. I want to jump in right in on that one. These last two, they're both 60s, and fully half of both these guys were disclaimers.

Mark Pollard:
Yeah, and the difference between both of them is that the first one at least tried to be a little bit creative. That one was just generic information, verbal diarrhea. I mean, after the third or fourth sentence, I didn't want to keep listening, but you forced me to. No emotion, not revealing anything about humans. They have the benefit of being Verizon, so that name, I guess, allows them to get, in their minds at least, get away with maybe not trying that hard creatively. But I would say that that would perform worse than the first one.

Stew Redwine:
Well, and something I want to point out too is that, so having pulled these spots, is that the beginning of this spot, it goes, "Hey Chicago." What's interesting to me about that is that they did customize for markets, right? But like what you're saying, this generic message and it's invisible. But then, I also see the effort there of going like, okay, that localization has an impact. That's Cialdini 101 is making something localized helps persuade. So, I want to give them some props for that, that they're customizing it per city. But then after that, your assessment is, it falls apart.

Mark Pollard:
I don't think a brand with that amount of money and reach gets for mentioning the city name they're advertising in, and I think that's us having very low standards.

Stew Redwine:
Tell me more about that.

Mark Pollard:
No, I mean, there's no more to say. I just don't... Why wouldn't you if you've got the means to do it? But also, that means that if they have thought about it, someone's like, "Hey, how do we get people's attention?" But if you think about how people write hooks or say hooks on TikTok or Instagram Reels, "Hey Chicago," yeah, it might get your attention, but then here's a 1,000 word essay I've got about savings. Tell us about savings, tell us about our lives, something you've observed about us. Maybe a little bit of comedy about the lengths that people go to save money on their phone bills or in life. Use the psychological hook and then I might pay attention. Otherwise, you're just like some overeager young guy trying to pick up at a bar by telling someone their entire CV, and it doesn't work.

Stew Redwine:
Hey guys, you come to Chicago often? I'm Verizon.
Okay, okay. All right. This is good. Okay, so right now, you're grading Verizon under Pfizer, if we were to put them in a ranking system, the Mark Pollard ranking system. So, we've got Verizon's under Pfizer. From a structure standpoint, Verizon actually scored higher using the AudioLytics system at a 72%. But that's in the transference of information and the fact that it is talking about savings, there is kind of more to sink our teeth into. But to your point, on the emotional connections side of things, storytelling side of things, there's stuff to be desired. What we're looking for when we're grading the ads is, are we at least, do we have the right information in there? But then, there's this whole other dimension of how is that information communicated?

Mark Pollard:
That's what I was going to say. The nine things that you look for are about information, and I start with emotion. There's no emotional hook. You don't get me to listen past the second sentence. I'm not listening. And by the way, just because you have 60 seconds doesn't mean you have to have 1,000 words. Maybe you could have a pause or a few sounds, but advertising works by getting asked to have an emotional reaction. I feel nothing. I feel like a zombie listening to that kind of advertising. I would immediately skip it or turn it off.
It's not creative, no insight, it doesn't appeal to the emotions. It's literally, and that sort of stuff gets through pretesting because it's all about message. But literally no one sitting there for 60 seconds going, "Oh gosh, okay, I've got those 20 points. Thanks for that."

Stew Redwine:
I've got a couple thoughts on that, but let's keep going because I want to see how some of these other people execute. So next up, we've got Progressive.

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Stew Redwine:
Yeah. Half the length of the other two, we'll say that first. What do you think?

Mark Pollard:
Well, they respect their audience. I think Progressive is probably one of the best advertisers in the country. You have characters there, there's something playing out. There are stakes in this story. Who's going to win? You've got two voices or three, or at least one of the voices had two voices available to them. You've got sound effects, and it doesn't try to man spread its way through your ears. It's 30 seconds. So for me, that's much more interesting. And for me, that would be 80% up.

Stew Redwine:
So, it's the top of the heap right now.

Mark Pollard:
Yeah, for me it is. Yeah. What did you put it at?

Stew Redwine:
We came in at 71%. And the thing is, I'm right there with you. Progressive knows what they're doing.

Mark Pollard:
Yeah.

Stew Redwine:
Their biggest thing, and they've come up in episodes before. It's probably the biggest correction that I would see with any kind of ad like that that's choosing a storytelling approach, that's great. I'm absolutely connecting emotionally, right? People remember how you make them feel. What I tend to see and what we've seen with campaigns that have come in both in audio and in television, we've made simple adjustments with creative like that where we just, we'd shorten up, we give a little bit less time to that aspect of it to be able to transfer a little bit more information, right? And I don't think it has to be all or nothing in an advertisement. I like Rory Sutherland, he breaks down advertising into six different lenses, like the blind man and the elephant.
It's advertising showmanship, it's salesmanship, it's seduction, it's social connections, it's salience, it's spin, right? It's all of these things at once. And so, I see the folks working on the ads, we can go, either we can go too far one way or the other. And it's like the Verizon ad, it's like, wow, that went, that's all information. And then Progressive, it's fantastic, it's entertaining, but perhaps there's some small adjustments they could make. Could they take out one line of entertainment and put in some more substantiation, or beef up the call to action, or create a little bit more of a sense of urgency for that aspect of the listener, right? That's the trade-offs that we're looking at a lot of the time.

Mark Pollard:
Yeah. I'd be open to one sentence added to that that does what you say. And the only other thing that I'd be curious about, because they've done such a good job of casting and building this crew of characters in their television commercials, was one of the voices, one of those characters actually repeating the characters, and they know all this stuff. I think they're exceptional at what they do,.but that would be another way to keep building the brand assets, in this case, characters that we're familiar with, rather than who are these people speaking? It's funnier if it's the characters that we know from television or from YouTube videos, etc. And also, I think the job that they have to do, it's not dissimilar to Verizon, right, which is people don't want to think about phones, money they're paying for phones. They don't want to think about insurance.
So, all Progressive really needs to do, in my personal point of view, have the word progressive, get into our minds by making us react emotionally and maybe one piece of information, so that in a few months time, and repeat, repeat, repeat. Get into our heads a lot so that in a few months time, if somebody needs to renew, they're like, "Oh, maybe I should check with Progressive." So, some of these ads, I think with a lot of information, they misunderstand the role of advertising, and there's a certain insecurity that can come across if you're using too much information or laziness.
I know that if I was doing a strategy training event and I did something like Verizon, "Oh, it's next Wednesday, it's next Thursday, please come. We've got 10 spots. All the information, all the information." Deep down, I know I'm being lazy as opposed to maybe leading with some kind of insight about... One of the biggest fears of a strategist is they write a creative brief that gets ignored, so how can I tell a story around that? Or do I just say that? I don't know, but I would need a hook before I give the information. But when you're just information, people skip, they turn off, they change the channel, however this stuff's coming to them. So, I honestly wouldn't mess with Progressive too much. I think it's, I believe it's strong.

Stew Redwine:
I think so too. And I will say, when we're doing new to audio tests and a lot of our early days in building even the AudioLytics model was direct to consumer performance marketers, right? So, you have to kind of know that as you're looking at it. When we look at more brand advertisers, right, so something like this Progressive spot, it's like our benchmark for all in market creative is typically a 90%. But when it comes to a message like this, what we end up doing in working with an advertiser is we set a different benchmark for them because we know we're going to be making those trades. We know we've decided to prioritize this aspect of the message, so we're not going to be able to hit all of those points and not going to be able to fill them all the way out.
But we have found that early on with advertisers, especially if they're new to audio, making sure they're equipped with the clearest information so that the host can do their thing, and so that we have the best opportunity to have the clearest message come across. That's powerful, but as you're looking at the campaigns and your measurements change from just short-term performance to what's the long-term brand impact, you've also got to adjust the model so that it's not a it always for all time, every ad has to achieve a 90%. But it's still a useful tool just to see where you stand.
All right. So, this next one is from Apple, and their ads on radio in January was a lot of different shows. It was actually multiple different movies and shows on the Apple platform. So I had to pick one, so I just picked one and we'll listen to that right now.

Speaker 7:
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Stew Redwine:
Okay. So, 15 second ad. I will also give you a bit of context in that, since we had to pick one, is that yes, Apple is one of the top spenders in January. This ad accounts for of their total spend in January, about 14, 15% of what they spent. 15 seconds, what do you think?

Mark Pollard:
The Verizon ad and the Apple ad, I'm depressed by them. It's like try a little harder, try a little harder. Now, yes, it has all the information, so it's going to score well in a test that looks for information, but I would've turned it off. I wouldn't be paying attention. And I feel like they're taking the audience for granted. The fact that they're a big brand with these big acting names and these big media properties is incredible. You still have to get our attention, you have to deserve our attention. Otherwise, whatever you're just, you're in the background.
So, I mean, artificial intelligence could have written both of those. So, I don't know, I'm not creatively impressed and I don't know if they're great for brand. Maybe they do well for performance, but splitting those two things out like that is also overly simplistic and ends up destroying brand. So, yeah, not a big fan. Not a big fan.

Stew Redwine:
Okay. Wow, there you go. You're not holding back. Does it depress you more or less than the Verizon ad?

Mark Pollard:
I think, and the reason that it sort of depresses me is because I believe in creativity and I love people who are creative, and those two ads I feel have shut out people who are creative. And we've had this decade, and sorry if you like this kind of approach, but we've had this decade of people into performance and programmatic, this and that, and data on logic, dominating creative people, being suspicious of creative people. And at least advertising like that, it's nothing. You're not building a brand. Maybe you can prove click through or some kind of last attribution, but it's not trying very hard, right?

Stew Redwine:
Yeah, yeah, no, you're bringing up interesting points. Well, I mean, there's the thing that, if a thing works, there's a perennial top spender in audio, it's ZipRecruiter. For years now. I don't know, we might be coming up on a decade, that the creative is, "Finding the right hire is like finding a needle in a haystack. That's why you need ZipRecruiter. Fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. Call to action, ZipRecruiter for free." Okay. Millions, millions, millions of dollars spent against it. These things are all simultaneously true. Just because it works, or like I was saying at the beginning, just showing up in audio, there's these cheat codes that you're training the audience.
So, that's what I'm hearing you call out is like, okay, fine. Yeah, I guess, you do Killers of the Flower Moon, did it score well in AudioLytics? Yeah, it did. It transferred a lot of information, right? Because looking at the words and going, "Was this information communicated in the right sequence?" It right now is the top spender at 73%, but you're calling for another dimension.

Mark Pollard:
Yeah, because that's not how the brain works. So, Orlando Wood talks a lot about this stuff. He's an English academic researcher in this space and he's sort of looked at a lot of neuroscientific research. He's worked with System1, which tests TV ads, etc. And what he talks about, which I think is borrowing concepts from other people as well, and if not, Orlando gets full credit. He talks about narrow beam and broad beam communication. Narrow beam communication is lots of information, and we do need some of that. Broad beam is closer to the progressive thing, where there's a thing going on in the world. It could be a painting to be honest, but it could also be a scenario with people. Things are evolving, something's happening, there are stakes. So, if you think about progressive television ads, there's always some kind of joke and you're like, "What's going to happen here?"And then we get surprised.
That's how you build memory, and advertising's role is to build memories. So, something that's exclusively about information, to me, it defies what we've learned, especially over the past decade, maybe two decades, about how advertising works. And it can be a case, and the US is infatuated with numbers and information, and I love football, English football, soccer, right? And people are always like, "Oh my God, why are there so many numbers in the game in the US?" And I'll be sitting in a hotel bar in the middle of nowhere and these two guys will be talking about 21-year-old college players and how long the guy's arms are and how long his legs are. I'm like, "Why do you keep talking about numbers all the time?" And so, if you're going to have a system that rewards sharing information, then of course you're going to get more of that.
But that's a small part of the story and what we've learned about how brands grow over time, emotion first, word play, unusual scenarios, maybe some comedy humor is underutilized. These are the things that help get brands into our heads, but to get them into our heads, you also need distinctive brand assets. So, yes, a name, sonic branding, a jingle, characters, all those sorts of things. So, because the stuff that's more information, I think I'm getting triggered because some of this is one of the reasons why I no longer work in advertising in the US. I train people because I got tired of, at times, very arrogant focus on data and information, and eyes would sort of just glitch. When we started to talk about anything else, we were weird for being creative, for having ideas. I'm like, "I can't do this anymore." So, I left, and do what I do now. So, I think that's what, I'm projecting, I'm bringing a whole lot of baggage to this.

Stew Redwine:
I get it. No, I think it's great. Well, what's great is we swim in the same information, the same inputs. Another book I've got, I thought, I don't have it right here, but it's also yellow and white. Yours is Orlando Wood's Lemon, and I've been going through it, and I have ideals and what I would like to be a part of creating as a commercial artist. And then, I have what works and all of that dynamic you're talking about. I think it's too bad when it gets to the point that it's an us and them and people are checking out. But he does such a fantastic job in Lemon, and it's convincing to me of just looking at art. For 500 years, we've devitalized ourselves. We've turned everything into, like you're saying, a soccer player is the sum of the length of his arm, the length of his foot, his number...
I'm going to break everything out and mechanize it. And he was pointing out in this book, Lemon, just showing two ads, one from the 70s or 80s where there's a story, and people with accents and more like the progressive creative, right? And then, the other one is a GoDaddy commercial that's just literally text on a screen, flat images. And so, to your point though, I think it's like, our audience out there in this culture has been trained to respond either consciously or subconscious to that. But is that optimal and is that the best way to connect to people's hearts and minds? No, but unfortunately, it continues to work.

Mark Pollard:
Well, relative to itself.

Stew Redwine:
From the metrics. Yeah, exactly.

Mark Pollard:
Yeah.

Stew Redwine:
So, it's hard to change that behavior if it keeps getting rewarded.

Mark Pollard:
But it's like a group of people invented a game, and it's one game out of infinite games, but it's one game, and the people who do really well at the game do really well at the game. It doesn't mean that that can be the only game in the universe.

Stew Redwine:
100%.

Mark Pollard:
And so, when you go back to first principles thinking, it's like, well, what's the role of advertising? Rebuilding through emotion, dah, dah, dah, dah, lots of research about it all. Let's start there. Be gentle with the information. And look, sometimes for my own company sometimes, I'm a little bit quick and I will put more information out than maybe I should. In my social posts, I'll usually try to have some kind of provocative emotional hook. Why people disrespect strategy to your face? I don't really write like that, but I would start there. So, these things do have to work with each other, but I think for me, Progressive, if I was in an advertising agency doing radio, Progressive is the only one that would leave the building if I had any say in it.

Stew Redwine:
Okay, and I'm right there with you. Progressive is outstanding. You can see that they're reaching the heart, they're reaching the mind, and there's the short-term aspect, but then there's the long-term of how do we... It's such a small number of people that are actually in the market at a given time for anything, so I've got to take up more space more powerfully in their mind. And it's like, we're not, was it Howard Gossage, right? We're not taking out a hunting license on people's private preserves. We're renting a stage., We're performing for them, so we might as well make it entertaining and delightful for them as well. Okay. So, this last one is from AT&T. Here we go.

Speaker 8:
Oh, yes. Okay. I love what you've done with the place.

Speaker 9:
Thanks my guy. I still got to show you the third floor.

Speaker 8:
Okay, send me on up.

Speaker 9:
That's where the action happens, man. Now, Sarah calls this the panic room.

Speaker 8:
The panic room? Okay, I didn't know that you were a doomsday prepper.

Speaker 9:
Oh no, I'm not. It's just where I watch my football games.

Speaker 8:
Right, right. Oh, snap. Who's playing?

Speaker 9:
Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no. Did he get picked? No way.

Speaker 8:
Yeah.

Speaker 9:
Yo. Yo, what are you doing? Get him. Get him.

Speaker 8:
Oh my.

Speaker 9:
Are you seeing this?

Speaker 8:
Yep, yep, I'm seeing it. Yeah.

Speaker 9:
No. Please, somebody tackle him. He's running to the echo. No.

Speaker 8:
Okay. Wow.

Speaker 9:
I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

Speaker 8:
Oh, boy. Where's Sarah? Sarah?

Speaker 10:
AT&T Fiber with All-Fi covers your whole house, even your aptly named panic room. Get AT&T Fiber with All-Fi and live like a gazillionaire.

Speaker 11:
Limited availability. Coverage requires AT&T wifi extenders at additional charge.

Mark Pollard:
Not as strong as Progressive, but I like that there are characters, there's interaction, there's word play, there are surprises with panic room being rolled out. You hear the guys reacting, so you're like, "What's going to happen? What's going to happen?" Football obviously helps people relate to it all. I wanted them to do more with the panic room. It sort of gets introduced, it disappears, appears at the end. I'm like, hey, now we're watching football. So, that didn't quite work for me. But I like that, next to Progressive. I think Progressive is tighter.

Stew Redwine:
I'll have you venture a guess. You think that one scored higher or lower using the transference of information, AudioLytics' structure grading system?

Mark Pollard:
Lower.

Stew Redwine:
Exactly. So, it came in at a 58%.

Mark Pollard:
But again, let's put ourselves in the car. We've just heard Monaco by Bad Bunny and a string of amazing reggaeton hits from Rosalia and Rao and [inaudible 00:35:08] with a little bit of Brazil funk from MC Bin Laden, a controversial name, but incredible artist. And then you're like, oh, ad break's coming up because you look at the time, they always do an ad break. Which of those ads are you going to tolerate for a few seconds, or which of those ads are you like, "No, let's go to another station."

Stew Redwine:
That's the question, isn't it?

Mark Pollard:
Yeah. So, for me, I would possibly listen a little bit to Progressive and AT&T, and as soon as someone's just like, "I've got all this information. I'm so desperate for your attention. Information, information, information." I'm like, no, stop it. You're stressing me out. Next. And I don't think that's an unusual reaction. But then, are you saying that what I believe works based on what research I've read doesn't work? Because now, I'm going to feel gaslit. So, am I wrong about all of this? What's going on? Help me understand this.

Stew Redwine:
Who, you? No, I don't think so. I think it's, there's simultaneous truths. And so it's like, there's a way... And listen, it is all about how we're measuring success and how long we have to get there, which is what you're talking about. Who's invented the game and how we're measuring it, that if I accept, like you're saying first principles, that there's a very small number of people that are even in the market at a given time, that I need to do certain things that are going to build a relationship with them over time and make them feel good so that when they have a need for this product or service, they think of me.
System1, like you were talking about, fame, feeling and fluency. I need to come to mind, I need to make them feel good, and I need to be understood when I'm heard. At the same time, blunt force also works, and it works particularly well in the short term. And I think that's the constant struggle for strategists and creatives, is having to accept that My Pillows of the world can work.

Mark Pollard:
But then, to talk about why something like My Pillow might work, I think you've got to talk about all the elements, such as the founders part of the thing, and there's research about founder-led advertising or founder-led brands. Big problem of people not sleeping well. Who they target, some of these brands are targeting people who are susceptible to advertising, especially as they get older. They accidentally buy something, right? I'm not saying all old people do that, but we know what's going on. We know the channels they focus on, we've seen people through some of those age groups and we know how they sometimes buy things. So, there's some other stuff going on there. It's not just about information. There's already often an understanding of a brand or a development of a brand over a long time. That guy's mustache, the My Pillow guy, he's got that crazy mustache, right, that's part of the brand. All the political stuff he does, that's part of his brand now.
So then, just judge one ad that he's in purely based on information, doesn't take into account all the other stuff that's going on that is implicitly communicated in that particular example. Another similar example, the Dollar Shave Club. I interviewed the CEO when they launched. He was a comedian, an improv guy, and he worked out this format, very similar to sketch comedy, where he did deliver a lot of information, but the information was contrasted against scenes of absurdism. And the absurdism that median or that kind of ad portrays gets our brains to pay attention because it's a bit of a survival instinct.
Like hang on, those things don't belong together. I better pay attention in case I need to learn from that so that I can survive. So, some of these examples are operating in different ways. And also, we have to really, for Verizon and AT&T and Apple, they're big brands, so they get a headstart. If you came out of nowhere as a small business and you're like, "I'm going to do some local advertising," and no one knows about you and you're just doing information, that's probably not going to get you where you need to go. So, I think both of us are saying, you can't be simplistic with this stuff. My yearning is really for there to be more of a role with creative storytelling and for that to be loved and applauded a little bit more, not in spite of the information, with it. That's really what I'm interested in.

Stew Redwine:
And that comes across, and I think that makes a point, even in Zoom, like focusing on the Progressive ad and looking at your quote there, it's at the tail end of the book there. Spoiler alert. But the hard work of finding words that work hard, or use words that make hard work for everyone else, right? That, okay, I'm going to have to balance emotion and information. I'm going to have to do this dance. So, let me choose very carefully every single word so that I know that every single word is counting and doing the most that it can do in this given advertisement. So, if there's any closing thoughts you would have for the chief audio officers that are listening as they're thinking about their audio, what guidance would you give them from a strategy standpoint when they're thinking about their audio?

Mark Pollard:
Sort of thinking about themselves, their role, let alone how they're rolling out audio. I think now must be a really, really good time because there's so much research out there that can support the development of brands, including the things that we hear or the way that we hear brands. There's so much research out there, so definitely warp your arms around all of that sort of stuff. And the US, corporate America is very, very information heavy. You go to an advertising conference in the UK, very different from the US. The US is very commercial, people are kind of giving you a whole bunch of facts. You go to the UK, they're quoting Aristotle. There's other cliches. They're quoting Aristotle and Socrates or some famous Italian painter from 400 years ago. They're trying to tell stories. They're working the room, they're trying to get emotion to build up. Very different styles of presentation.
And the thing is, there's a lot of research about how a lot of advertising right now is not very good. Not triggering an emotional response. It's just in one ear and out the other if you are lucky, if they don't skip it. So, I think, for a chief audio officer, that now must be a really, really good time, or could be. Maybe it's at the start of a really good time. And I think, hopefully they're able to band together. I'm sure many of them would be feeling that nobody understands them in their own organization because, hey, we could affect the customer experience, we could affect customer support, we could affect the TV ads. Why don't I get the TV ad sooner?
Hey, that thing appeared on TikTok. Did we use the whatever? Right? And so, I'm sure a lot of them have that, "Nobody takes me seriously," which is nearly every single creative person right now, worried about AI taking their jobs, especially over the age of 40. So, hope they can band together. I hope they find that the research doesn't feel repressive because I feel it's liberating. I feel like with discipline around the research that's out there about brand building, it demands us to be more creative, and there's so much research about creativity being a multiplier of business. So, I'd be excited to be in that.

Stew Redwine:
Absolutely. It's having a moment and it's looking to only increase. Well, thank you so much. Where can the listeners find you, sir?

Mark Pollard:
I'm pretty active on Instagram @MarkPollard and on LinkedIn as well, if you like. Strategy is done with an Australian accent and a funny face. That's me.

Stew Redwine:
I do like both of those things. And the book Strategy Is Your Words is fantastic, and it's got a really cool thick cover, the paper. This is very much not digital, which is cool. I like that you made those choices and I know that that does not come cheap to actually take the time to make the book cool. You even did the color, so it's distinctive for sure. Check out Mark Pollard. He's awesome. If you've got aspects of audio advertising you'd like us to discuss, or suggestions for a guest on the show, or want to be a guest, please email creative@oxfordroad.com. And until our next show, remember to have fun making the ads work.