CEO Communications Intelligence | Weekly

1. Can you name the top 2021 Super Bowl ad?

2. Say yes to that podcast interview

3. "No one cares about ads"

4. “Pressure can create diamonds or can burst pipes."

5. Turning Pro

Brand marketing in a direct marketing world

Pop quiz:

What was the top 2021 Super Bowl ad according to USA Today's Ad Meter?

Heck, if you can name one of the top ten, I will give you bonus points.

The reason you can't remember the best ad or any ads from the big game, it's not the best tool.

It's not the best tool because it doesn't connect, make an impact, or leave a mark.

You see, brand marketing doesn't work in the direct marketing world.

Brand marketing is from a different age. A different business environment. A different communication era.

Brand marketing was created when John Wanamaker's statement "half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half" worked because it could work.

It could work because advertisers created a mass broadcast communications environment to serve its needs.

Radio was created to sell ads.

Television was created to sell ads.

Brian Millar, a co-founder of the Emotional Intelligence Agency, writes, "traditional advertising went after 'share of mind’–the idea was to get you to associate a brand with a single idea, a single emotion. Volvo: safety. Jaguar: speed. Coke: happiness. The Economist: success. Bang, bang, bang, went the ads, hammering the same idea into your mind every time you saw one.

"Advertising briefs evolved to focus the creatives on a single unique selling position and a single message. Tell them we're the Ultimate Driving Machine. Tell them in a thrilling way. It worked when you saw ads infrequently on television, in a Sunday magazine, or on a billboard on your morning commute."

This type of advertising worked because it was a communications environment of one to many with only a handful of vehicles to reach an audience.

But that is not today.

Today we are living in a direct marketing world powered by the WWW.

Now we have micro-media and personalized broadcast communications environment which serves the needs of the end-user.

The internet was not created for ads.

The internet is not mass media.

The Emotional Intelligence Agency conducted a study to understand what kind of content works to better understand this new communications environment. The firm found communications that used funny, practical, beautiful, and inspiring content delivers the best results.

Not surprisingly, the most successful brands do all four.

Also, not surprising, these are the adjectives used by any top storyteller.

She knows they are the best words when executing micro and personalized communications.

Yet most of us communicate using only one type of emotionally compelling content - if at all - employing brand marketing techniques that are closer to the days of Mad Men than to the present day of Laundry Service.

We still communicate like once a day, or worse, just a few times a month.

Instead of using tools that follow and engage our most active supporters in their media diet.

When it comes to the WWW and the direct marketing communications environment, being multidimensional beats being single-minded.

Surprise beats consistency.

Emotion beats fact.

Funny beats dour.

Useful beats sales.

Beautiful beats boring.

Inspirational beats directional.

The best communicators have always understood this instinctively.

By the way, USA Today's Ad Meter ranked Rocket Mortgage's "Certain Is Better" with Tracy Morgan, Dave Bautista, and Liza Koshy" as the best 2021 ad.

I don't remember the ad either.

Say yes to that podcast interview

Next time you are asked to join a podcast, say yes.

Pew reports while terrestrial radio listenership declined in 2020, the audience for online audio has grown.

In fact, NPR's weekly podcast audience nearly doubled in the past two years, from about 7 million in 2018 to about 14 million in 2020, according to data provided by the broadcaster.

Today around three-in-ten Americans ages 12 and older (28%) now say they listened to podcasts in the past week, according to "The Infinite Dial" report by Edison Research and Triton Digital.

After years of almost perfectly steady listenership, terrestrial radio ( you know AM or FM on the radio dial) saw its overall audience – not just for news – decline in 2020.

Not surprisingly, the decrease coincided with a sharp reduction in automobile use during the COVID-19 pandemic - no one comments anymore.

In 2020, 83% of Americans ages 12 and older listened to terrestrial radio, down from 89% in 2019 and 92% in 2009, according to Nielsen Media Research data published by the Radio Advertising Bureau.

CEOs will need new skills to speak in this podcast expanding world.

For your next media training, make sure podcast training is on the agenda.

"No one cares about ads" and 10 other occasionally immutable laws of advertising

DDB's regional chief creative officer Damon Stapleton outlines his own unique laws of the advertising world.

1. Nobody cares about advertising, so check your ego.

2. If no one notices your advertising, everything else is academic.

3. You must trust that the advertising will all work. Like George Michael, have some faith.

4. Would you sit next to you at a dinner party? Make sure you have something to say for people to listen to.

5. You will never see a statue of a committee.

6. Ideas are too easy to kill. And that idea you killed before might be the best idea now. Harvest all those banished ideas.

7. Consumers can tell when you have cut corners.

8. All a good ad does for a lousy product is let more people know a lousy product exists far more quickly.

9. When people use consequential, resplendent, and splendiferous words, they are often not saying anything.

10. We spend vast amounts of time thinking about how something reaches audiences - what platform, what broadcast, what format. But do we spend as much time on what we are delivering?

11. Fun and humor unlock new ways and ideas. Fun is the one ingredient that makes creativity happen.

You can read Stapleton's full B&T guest post here.

Quote of the week

“Pressure can create diamonds or can burst pipes. You’ve got to really be careful as to what kind of pressure you put on."

-- Otmar Szafnauer @ Team Principal - Aston Martin F1

Read this book

Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Create Your Life's Work

-- Steven Pressfield

CEO Communications Intelligence is strategy and actionable how to ideas to help you succeed in today’s hyper-political business environment.