Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hello, and welcome to another episode of Screen Bites, our thought leader series where we learn from industry experts about the latest trends and challenges from across the conversion TV space. 0:09 I'm your host, Michael Beach. This week, I'm joined by Simon Andrews. Simon is the founder of Addictive and the publisher of MobileFix, which is a must-read newsletter that I highly recommend. 0:19 In our talk, we cover the future of agencies, along with the convergence of commerce and video advertising. Please enjoy my conversation with Simon Andrews. All right, Simon, thanks for joining us today. 0:29 Pleasure to be here, Michael. Excellent. Where, where are we finding you today? I'm in sunny Hackney in East London. Oh, excellent. Well, everyone calm down from the, uh, the soccer Super League, uh, uh, uproar? Yeah. 0:42 We found out today that the, the teams are gonna pay 20 million pounds compensation to grassroots football, which is good. Um, and we're now gearing up. 0:48 The Euro starts this weekend, so, you know, we now got the national team to worry about, which we tend not to do that well, but, um- [laughs]... it'll be fun. Excellent. 0:56 Well, we'll start you off with an icebreaker, um, that we ask kind of all our guests. Um, you know, what was your first job, and kind of what learnings do you take away from it that you applied to your career? 1:06 It's interesting. I had to think back. My first job was actually, um, a lemonade salesman. 1:11 So in the UK, this is a long time ago, we had, um, basically this company had trucks and would drive to people's houses and sort of sell them lemonade and pop and different things from there. 1:20 And I got this job as a Saturday job, which then grew into a Sunday job as well. 1:24 Um, and it was really interesting because I got the job, I got paid a basic sal- you know, a wage, which wasn't very much, but I also got commission. 1:32 And what I really learned w- you're seeing the same people every week, you're talking, they're buying the same product every week, but you're selling. 1:38 I sort of learned that actually getting on with people is important, listening to them, taking signs, and selling, and it's one of the things I think sometimes we miss. 1:44 If people don't work on the selling side now, I think they under- you know, don't understand how important selling is. 1:51 So I learned at a very young age, getting people to sort of, you know, buy a bit more from you or whatever is, you know, a very good skill. An entrepreneur from the start. 2:00 Well, working for somebody else, but, you know, getting paid commission is actually r- quite enriching. And run up to Christmas, I did really well that year. Oh, love it. 2:08 Well, how'd you get your start in the media space? Well, I just decided, I don't really understand quite what happened, but I decided I wanted to work in advertising. 2:16 I was living in Leeds, which is a sort of like a, you know, medium-sized city in, um, the UK. All of the advertising industry's in London. There's not much else from there. But I'd wanted to work in advertising. 2:26 I started reading all the job ads, and everything to do with advertising I applied for. 2:30 And one for a media planner, I got an interview, and the guys told me it'd take about six or eight weeks to learn it and I'd be an expert. Um, I never heard from them ever again. 2:38 But two weeks later, someone advertised for a media executive, and I went and told them what I'd learned at the f- first one, and I got the job. So I was working in media, in advertising. 2:46 I hadn't really understood the different disciplines or different types of jobs, but, um, enjoyed it, you know, very much. 2:53 And then what happens in the UK, I think it's a bit like the States, you know, at some point you have to go to the big city to, you know, um, learn how to do it properly. 3:01 So after about two years in Leeds learning the trade, I moved to London and worked in media sort of on and off ever, ever since. Well, that's great. And I know, um, 3:11 you know, kind of, you know, currently at, at Addictive today, would you mind giving our, our, our audience kind of a little bit of background on, on Addictive and kind of what, what projects you're focused on? 3:19 So we started Addictive just over 10 years ago as a mobile agency. I left WPP really excited about mobile. I was convinced that we were gonna see the same trajectory we, we'd seen with, um, you know, the web. 3:31 I'd been involved in that like 10 years earlier. And so I started Addictive. We partnered with a very cool company in São Paulo who were great engineers who were building apps for us. 3:39 But over time sort of realized that there's not a huge amount of money to be made in building apps for people. The more interesting thing was the strategy. So we morphed into more of a strategy firm. 3:47 Um, and what's-- over time we still do strategy and consulting. We've started this media area, which is really the work we've been trying to educate people about how things are changing. 3:57 You know, the pace of change continues. There's so many things going on. So we started a newsletter 10 years ago to update people about that, and we still do the newsletter. 4:05 We do events, and we've got a community around there. Um, and then with the consultancy, there tends to be two areas we're very interested right now. One is merchant media. 4:14 So the idea that l- peop- you know, Amazon's a prime example, but you tie media spend to the places where you think people are buying things. 4:22 And so rather than advertising, you know, on Yahoo or on Facebook, you're advertising on Amazon or, or, um, you know, Instacart. Very interested in that space. 4:31 And the other thing that's a passion is trying to improve creativity in advertising, because in digital we know all the fabric works really well, all the plumbing works really well, but the ads are terrible generally. 4:42 And we also know that if you improve the ads, it makes the plumbing work much, much better. So the best way of unlocking your media budget now is better creative. 4:49 So that's a big passion for us and trying to do more projects around that. Excellent. I wanna definitely dig into, you know, kind of the intersection of mobile and commerce more in a little bit. 4:59 But, you know, interested with your background, you know, 20-plus years and, and launching five agencies, you know, w- what do you think, um, you know, what do you think agencies should be focusing on in 2021? 5:12 So I'm still a big fan of agencies. If you go back to Mad Men, that idea of a bunch of really smart people are gonna sit and listen to your problem and solve it for you is a fantastic model. 5:21 But what's happened is, you know, the Mad Men, all the rest of them, have turned to, greater or lesser extent, into factories. 5:27 Whatever your problem, they're gonna tell you the answer is what they produce in their factory. A TV commercial, a web plan, SEO plan, Facebook ads. 5:35 And I think that advertising agencies are, you know, need to be about understanding what's changing. People don't change, but the tools, as we say, live their life change. 5:43 Understand how things are, are changing and how you can apply advertising to work across those areas, and avoid that being a factory. 5:50 'Cause once you're a factory, you can make a lot of money, but you're sort of, you know, you're slowly dying because the market for TV spots, websites, SEO, is diminishing as more people get serviced with those. 6:01 So trying to understand what are the new opportunities where you could apply that great advertising skills on get people to do what you want. 6:10 On that note, as you, as you look forward, you know, say five or 10 years from now, you know, what does the, what do agencies look like? I think they're going back to being smaller again. 6:19 I think that, you know, the, the in-housing thing's interesting, but I think the idea, you don't need an awful lot of people to do this. We have this model, architects and artisans. 6:28 So architects know how to build things, so if you're, um, you know, some world-class architect, you understand how Ove Arup can now build very tall buildings or very s- different buildings. 6:38 You understand the principles of the, you know, the craft that's involved from there. But you partner with the people who are good at that craft. So we're, you know, very much we're architects. 6:47 We know how to do some stuff, like we can buy Facebook ads, we can build a website, whatever. 6:51 But we'd rather partner with people who are experts at that, the, the artisans that are really good at their craft, and find that, you know, balance between those two things. We'll help with the architecture. 6:59 We'll help you find the right artisans to do that. 7:02 And I think in the future you'll see agencies more in that architect space and go to a production company or a media company, you know, and have them execute the craft skills. 7:14 So is that, you know, similar to kind of a bigger version of a consultancy, or is there a still a gap there that the agency needs to fill? I think 7:24 the, the, the gap between consultants and agencies isn't as big as people make out. They're both very smart people. I think agencies are best at how that, you know, understand the power of creative. 7:33 I think consultants understand the power of logic and data. 7:36 And obviously there's a happy medium between the two of those, but if you're trying to work out how do you identify someone, the DNA of an agency is about creativity, the DNA of a consultant is about that data and understanding, I think. 7:48 So there's a little bit of a gap, you know, between them still. Excellent. Well, I wanna go back to, again, kind of the intersection of mobile and commerce. 7:57 You know, you've written a lot lately about TikTok and, you know, you appear to be bullish on kind of the value that provides marketers today. I guess I got a two-part question there. 8:04 First, you know, do you think the market fully understands the value of a, of a platform like TikTok enough, um, as they launch an ad offering that, uh, you know, will, will the marketer look at them more like Facebook or Twitter and Snap? 8:18 And then second, uh, you know, do you think their algorithmic feed will, you know, help the user experience, um, as kind of their, their amount of content explodes, um, you know, as marketers fully adopt the platform? 8:32 That's a great question. Yeah, fascinated by TikTok because it's blown up so quickly. It's so big. It shapes culture in so many ways now. 8:39 Um, but I don't think many brands or marketers understand it 'cause it's really hard to get into. 8:43 When you go to TikTok and just sit there scrolling through things, it's really hard to understand what it's about 'cause it's so varied. And that algorithmic, you know, 8:52 knowledge they've got, the expertise they've got, is really gonna surface in lots of different things. But it's very hard to work out, well, what is this? And then when you start... 8:59 you suss it out, you find, you talk to a friend and they've got a completely different take on it 'cause they're seeing different content from that. So I think it still needs more understanding. 9:07 People get the scale, but don't really understand the nuances of this, you know, and the little corners you find, so book TikTok or chef TikTok, et cetera, and how, how strong those things are from there. 9:18 I think that converting that to advertising, you know, they followed the Facebook playbook. They've hired lots of people who've been at Facebook and Snap, et cetera, from there, and they're going down that route. 9:28 The algorithm does make it more difficult because I don't think we're gonna see a time when there's as many ads in the feed as there is on Facebook. 9:35 'Cause I think that would become overwhelming because of the way you, you can't scroll past them quickly, you know? Um, so I think, you know, what they do now is quite interesting. 9:43 You, people pay, you know, quite a pretty price for the seeing the first ad that someone sees when they start a TikTok session. I think that scarcity of advertising will continue to be a thing. 9:52 You'll pay a lot of money on TikTok to be one of the few ads that gets seen by people, rather than you raise more money to be one of the many ads seen by people. 10:01 And I think that sort of idea that, you know, it's, an ad's more of an occa- not an occasion, but more of a special because you don't see too many ads, is a way of balancing that out. 10:09 Whether they can pull it off or not, I don't know. But the algorithm should be able to find the perfect ad for you and the perfect ad for me, and I think advertisers will pay for that, you know, 10:20 that per- perfection of targeting if, if you call, can call it that. I love that. We talk so much about the, you know, the incremental value in targeting, but, you know, 10:31 you probably don't look at it enough of the incremental value of being, uh, you know, first in a, you know, a really scarce environment on, in digital. 10:39 You know, that's kind of traditionally just been used in, to justify the pricing in television. Yeah. 10:44 I think, you know, if you look at the mobile web or the, you know, desktop web, sites are so cluttered now with so many ads chasing every possible ad dollar, they've turned the customer experience really, you know, into a nightmare. 10:54 I think smart people going forward will realize, let's respect the customer, um, because, you know, we're gonna have less ability to target them, we have less data on them, so we need to respect them as strangers, for want of a better word. 11:06 But, you know, show them the ad we think is most appropriate, and then hold off, you know, showing them loads of other ones as well. There's a discipline needed there, which I wonder how many people are able to exercise. 11:16 Excellent. You know, and another, you know, you, you coined the term new TV, uh, which is fantastic. 11:23 Um, do you see, you know, commerce-enabled creative in video, kind of on the brand marketing, uh, truly converging, or will they be separate disciplines in the future? 11:31 And kind of going back to, to the agency of the future, you know, are agen- agencies built to handle this? Um, I'm not sure agencies are built to handle this. 11:40 You know, it's a bit of a nonsense, this whole idea of long term and short term and brand and performance. You know, if I was spending some marketing money, I'd like to see my sales happen tomorrow. 11:50 The average CMO stays in the job 15 months. So the idea that a CMO is gonna spend a lot of money now for, you know, brand, um, 11:57 value 20 years down the line, I think is just, you know, it's a sales pitch for people who sell TV commercials. 12:02 You know, the, the, the favorite thing about, you know, if you see an ad for a Mercedes, buy it when you can afford it, it's too late. But kids don't grow up loving Mercedes for the ads. 12:10 They grow up because Janis Joplin sings about them, or they see it in a fantastic movie, or they see one parked on the road, you know? 12:17 Advertising long term is, builds up, but you've gotta have it delivering value in the short term. 12:23 So I think that whilst, you know, that allows performance marketing to be sometimes a bit brusque, a bit brutal, um, but knowing that something's working is really important. 12:32 If it's got a long-term value as well, that, that's even better. But you know, I, I think you need to pull the two things together. 12:37 And the idea that, es- especially as video becomes, you know, the first choice for everybody, 'cause why wouldn't you use video if you can? 12:43 The idea that some video's brand are long term and some video's performance is short term just feels like a false construct to me. 12:50 But having said that, your question's very pertinent, because I don't think many people in agencies can think about it like that. They tend to look at one or the other from there. Yeah. 12:59 It s- definitely seems to be a, a legacy of how they're structured. You know, and one thing we find is that, you know, a lot of times when we get into the team that handles, you know, the brand marketing, 13:08 they really have no idea where, uh, you know, the agency or brand, you know, how their CRM data functions or, you know, how any of those, those elements that you'd use in more of a, 13:18 a, um, kind of more of a direct marketing, uh, element even works. So I'm interested to see how that, those two worlds converge. I think that, you know, 13:27 you are unusually sensible, but I wanna know as much as possible about this company before I start doing something. And if you come from... And I'm being a bit unfair to, to television. 13:34 If you come from a world, we're gonna buy impressions that reach everybody sort of all the time, and the people who like it will find their way to the, um, you know, the, buy the product, you don't need to do that. 13:44 Well, that laziness, which it really is, you know, it's just gonna go away. You know, you're gonna target. In the future I'm not gonna run one ad for everybody, because I'll have the tools to actually show... 13:54 We worked on, um, a diaper brand, and we worked out they spend 10 million pounds a year advertising, 90% of which was wasted 'cause the people who were seeing the TV ads didn't have young children anymore or no connection with young children. 14:05 You know? The economics of that don't make any sense. 14:07 'Cause if you can say, "Okay, I'll save you a million dollars and redu- eliminate all your wastage," there's a huge amount of value for the broadcaster there, the brand's happy, the people are happy from there. 14:16 So I think we're gonna really see people think about how you can use targeting at that sort of macro level to just eliminate wastage and add through it lots of value for people. Absolutely. 14:27 Well, yeah, more of a high-level question. You know, what's one major thing in the media space that you think is really important that, that nobody's talking about? Creative. 14:38 The world of media and creative is very separate these days. 14:41 Um, and I think while people respect the importance of each other, they don't really have the relationships or the language to really sort of, you know, partner those two, two things together. 14:49 So mobile is, you know, this amazing tool. It's every- everyone's remote control to life. They do everything on there. But the ads we serve up on Facebook or on display or, or whatever tend not to be very good. 15:00 And if you p- you know, if you imagine if you took the average ad that you see on your mobile and that was on your linear TV and that, there'd be a revolution. 15:06 You know, people would be burning their TV sets 'cause there's so many terrible ads. So I think that getting that 15:11 better balanced and, you know, the importance of creative being seen and, um, respected I think is a big thing. Excellent. We, we touched on it earlier, yeah, but you put together a, a fantastic newsletter fix. 15:25 Uh, we'll make sure to, to link to that, and it's a, you know, must read for our team. And you kind of provide a lot of insight on a wide range of topics. You know, I wonder if you'll give us a little sneak peek. 15:33 You know, what do you think the big stories are to watch the, the rest of the year? Well, I think that the thing that, you know, we're all focused on is, you know, the whole privacy thing. 15:43 So from GDPR, California, you know, um, cookies coming out of Safari, you know, the whole IDFA is now Google too, you know. Things we found this week, you know, that you won't be able to use, um, IP addresses. 15:56 So all the fabric of the things we've been, you know, built the business doing are all melting away. Um, and yes, you know, does anyone care that Facebook make less money? Probably not. 16:06 But actually, you know, advertising fuels our economy. If you're Ford, you can only employ thousands of people to make cars if people want to buy the cars, so you have to do that. 16:15 If you're NBC, you can only afford to ha- have all those people do all those shows if advertising pays for all that. 16:20 And if you're a person trying to work out, "Well, what do I want to watch," et cetera, you know, "What do I want to buy? Go on holiday, buy my new car," et cetera, ads work really well. 16:29 And when we play around with the fabric and that make it harder to do that, we hurt lots of people. And I think that, um, the idea that one company, Apple, is able to exact 16:39 this, you know, impact on so many other companies because their business model doesn't require them to r- worry about advertising just seems a little bit unfair and unusual. 16:50 And one wonders if regulators at some point start to look at, you know, that as an issue that, um, you know. So there's something we know about it. 16:56 I think there's a long way to go b- before we get some resolution of what happens next and how do we cope with this and what the ramifications are for everybody. Excellent. 17:07 We'll, we'll get you out of here on, uh, you know, one more question that we ask all of our guests. Um, you know, if you could have everyone on your team read one book right now, what book would it be and, and why? 17:17 So I'm gonna go back to one of my favorites. Um, I got a job at a direct mar- marketing agency about 25 years ago, and I'd always worked on brand advertising agencies. I've been very sniffy about direct marketing. 17:27 But I took this job, it looked interesting. It was an interesting client. I asked for a reading list, and he gave me this pile of books from David Ogilvy and Lester Wunderman and Stan Rapp. 17:36 And I just was blown away by them. But the one that I really, you know, rate, Claude Hopkins, My Life in Advertising. 17:42 So here's a guy in the 1920s, 1930s who's, you know, moving around the Midwest of the United States just, you know, helping people sell stuff by having great ideas. 17:51 And very quickly, my favorite example, he got charged with, um, building the sales of koitsu, which is a meat, um, derivative product used for cooking. Um, I think it was in Chicago. 18:02 He found out that, um, the local department store, Rothschild's, had, had a refit and had a spare floor they hadn't used yet. 18:08 So he went there, persuaded them to build the world's biggest cake, bake the world's biggest cake using this koitsu at, from, uh, there. Then ran ads in the local newspaper saying, "Come see the world's biggest cake. 18:18 If you've bought some suet, you've got a chance to guess the, um, weight of the cake, and you could win something fantastic from that." 18:24 So here was a campaign that used lots of different tools, um, and now would be TikTok and experiential, whatever, but he just used whatever great idea was available to actually execute a great idea. 18:34 And I love that simplicity of, you know, a good idea, what could we do? Who do we involve to make that a fantastic event for people that will drive some sales as well? So Claude Hopkins, highly recommended. 18:46 That's a great recommendation. Well, Simon, I've en- en- enjoyed our conversation, and I know that our, our audience are gonna love the talk. Um, yeah, I appreciate your time. I appreciate the invitation, Mike. 18:57 It's really interesting to chat with you. Um, interesting questions, you got me thinking. Um, you know, and look forward to seeing, you know, with all the work you do, how these things play out in the coming months. 19:08 Absolutely. [upbeat music] Thank you for joining us on this episode of Screen Bytes. I hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as I did. 19:14 You can find out more about Crossscreen Media at crossscreenmedia.com, and please don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, Straight to the Screens. You can find us on social media @crossscreenmedia. 19:24 Join us next time for more insights and analysis straight from the experts.
