The Data Moat

Speaker 1: Welcome to Business Marketing. My name's John Horsley, I'm the host of the show today. Um, today I have the absolute pleasure of being joined by Alex Collmer, who is the founder and, uh, executive chairman of Vidmob. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: John, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Super excited that you're, you're here today and j- and joining us. What'd be great as a kind of a opening question or a, a bit of a starter for 10 is, what was it in the first place that got you interested in this particular industry and kind of grabbed you and caught your attention and, and drew you in?

Speaker 2: Well, I think in a lot of ways, probably just opportunity. Um, so I had previously been running a, a video game business that I'd built with two other, two other folks, and, you know, like every company, we advertised. Uh, and, and as the nature of how we advertised transitioned from sort of more television, you know, single piece of creative to more and more on digital channels, you know, Facebook and places like that, it, it just became really apparent to me that sort of the nature of advertising was changing. You know, the web itself was transitioning from effectively a static medium, text and images, to ob- obviously, uh, video. And it was pretty clear that that was gonna come with an enormous amount of friction. And when I looked at it, you know, there were sort of two things about that that were compelling to me. One was, if everyone's gonna struggle to make the content that's necessary for the medium, that sounds like a business opportunity. And the other was I had just become sort of disillusioned with the idea of, like, spending all of my time trying to entertain 14-year-olds, and was looking for something that felt like it was gonna be sort of more meaningful and, you know, beneficial to the world. And I felt like, you know, as, you know, globalization and technology and all these things sort of put pressure on labor, that creativity was gonna be one of the areas that was sort of somewhat protected.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: Uh, and I felt like if I could build a marketplace that matched up people who had skills and knew how to, you know, make compelling content with businesses that needed that, that that was an area where I could help create a ton of jobs.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Uh, and so it was those two things and obviously now it's pretty funny 'cause AI impact, you know, ground zero is basically creativity.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: But at the time, I felt like that was the area that was gonna be protected.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So back then I'm guess- like me, I, I did something similar.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Sat there at home typing in binary knots and ones or whatever and kind of getting a computer game spat out at the end. Um, but you learn through that process as well in terms of, well, g- uh, it's not working, how do I fix this, and so on. But I love the idea of sort of art and science coming together.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, like, in a sense, like, that's been sort of like my whole, you know, career, um, is that sort of intersection of technology risk and art risk. Um, and so, you know, i- in a lot of ways, that's exactly where we are today. Even as Vidmob has matured and developed and, and evolved, it's always kind of the same. It's like, how do we use technology to, you know, benefit and, and enhance creativity and help it be a force for business growth?

Speaker 1: Yeah. So I mean, it's, it's widely recognized clearly that creativity, great creative is a huge lever when it comes to advertising, of course. But why is it not necessarily measured properly? What are people getting wrong? How should they be looking at it?

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I think that, uh, there, there's so many, uh, things to discuss here, but, yeah, I think the first is that it was very difficult to measure it, you know, in the past, right? Um, you know, the idea of being able to understand everything that's happening creatively inside of a piece of content-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... um, was something that was not possible with technology, you know, even sort of, you know, five, six years ago. And so as a result, we would sort of classify things in, in much more higher level, like, you know, this is a, you know, comic approach. This is a, you know, promotional benefit. This is, you know, a- and, and look at it like that, and that led to, you know, a, a couple things. One is we, we sort of did measure creative in the sense that we would measure how well it works. This ad worked, this ad, you know, didn't. Um, and we did measure creative in the sense of, um, you know, like how well individual ones did. But what we were unable to measure was why. Uh, and I think that's been sort of the big, the big transition now is as technology enables us to get into not the sort of two or three characteristics of a piece of content, but the tens of thousands, uh, it just enables us to do much more interesting things.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So we're talking AI.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Exactly.

Speaker 1: Um, and how's that helping you understand more about the why?

Speaker 2: Well, it's, uh, I mean, I think the first is just sort of building a structured understanding, right? So, so like, uh, under- having a, a sort of a consistent, repeatable taxonomy to get to sort of a, a true data-driven understanding of creativity. So if you just imagine sort of, you know, a standard, you know, ten-second, you know, Instagram ad, that's obviously gonna be a collection of sort of effectively static frames, and in each of those frames there are things that are happening or not happening. You know, there's, you know, a logo here or there. There's, you know, some type of, you know, messaging on screen. There's, you know, audio messaging. You know, there's a narrative arc, there's pacing. You know, like, on and on and on. And as you're able to sort of tabulate and, and, you know, sort of turn all of those creative decisions into data, then we can take that and compare it to kind of the similarly robust amount of performance information, the, you know, view through and, you know, engagement curves, uh, you know, you know, uh, like we'll talk about with Kroger.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: The, you know, conversion rates, you know, uh, et cetera. And when we bring those things together, then, you know, sort of first human data science and, and, uh, and then machine learning and, and now AI is able to really kind of piece, parse in there and get to kind of what are the actual drivers of the behaviors that you care about.

Speaker 1: Is there commonality in terms of, you know, a, a high-performing ad versus one that, you know, you might look at and go, "Actually, that's not gonna do so well"? Is there something that they have in common with one another and you're looking at, "Yeah, that's gonna fly"?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think there, there are- High level guidelines and, y- y- you know, like Google has published their ABCDs and Meta has their Brilliant Basics. And so at the, at the highest level, there are sort of generic best practices that are just, um, you know, good to follow.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: They tend to be pretty obvious, though. You know, it's like if you're trying to communicate, uh, about your brand, it helps to have your brand.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: You know, things like that that like, uh, seem very like, "Duh." Um, but, uh, the reality is that when, you know, people sort of are making content, there's just so many times where folks just kind of like forget or, you know, skim around those best practices.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2: But then and when it... where it gets interesting is, you know, how things get sort of customized for a particular category, say like, you know, pharmaceuticals or, or, you know, more, more... you know, in best case, like for an actual brand itself.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. In, in terms of the, the spread of clients you work with and the outcomes that they're looking for, have those outcomes shifted in more recent years?

Speaker 2: Um, I think that they've shifted in the sense that we're able to, um, correlate to a broader array of outcomes than-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... we were in the past. So in the sort of earlier days, it, it, it was really just the, like, media behaviors, you know, the thing, the fast metrics coming back via the platform ads APIs. So think like view-through rates, you know, click-through-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... you know, y- you know, all, all of those. Now, increasingly, we're able to tie out to, you know, m- sales behaviors, uh-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... and, uh, brand behaviors. And so I think those were always there-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... it's just that we weren't really able to look at it until, you know, within the last couple years.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's what I was wondering. I didn't... Well, I'm gonna call it, um, vanity metrics-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... of the past and shifting something that's, you know, more tangible-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... um, and much more outcome-focused now. And I'm looking at AI as one of those, uh, enablers, for sure.

Speaker 2: Yep. You know, you're, you're exactly right. And I think in a sense, some of those kind of media metrics are actually still useful because, because of the speed of them.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: If you can get some, you know, a, a measurement back w- within seconds, uh, of, you know, or minutes or hours of a campaign launch, that does enable a behavior, uh, in terms of optimization that is more difficult to do when you're talking about weeks or months in terms of data return.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So I think what we see a lot of times is people saying, "Hey, I actually wanna drive this against my MMM, but my MMM readout is, is monthly or, or slower than that."

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: "And so we're gonna find this, like, proxy metric that correlates to that, and then continuously test that."

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: "But we optimize against the proxy so that we can..." You know. So it's, uh, you know, I think, like, there definitely are, you know, some vanity metrics in terms-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... of, like, click-through rate and things like that, but th- there, there's utility in all of them.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And I'm, I'm also wondering if it's changed the expectations on the buy side as well, because people expect more immediacy, I think now.

Speaker 2: Yeah. No, i- i- it absolutely. And, and, you know, there's sort of a, uh, you know, never-ending raging debate between sort of brand, uh, versus performance and, um, you know, I think for a, a while now, performance has been the, the winner of that-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... you know, argument. Um, and I'm not sure that that's necessarily the way to go.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um, but it's driven by immediacy. You know, obviously everyone's got, you know, quarterly results that they need to hit.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: And so if you know that, you know, one is actually really useful but it's not gonna have a m- m- material impact until next quarter or thereafter-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... it's hard to invest properly in that.

Speaker 1: That's, that's really interesting, and that was the recurring theme, uh, probably over the, the course of the year, started getting stronger.

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... probably be a, a better way of describing it, rather than performance or cost. Um, and during Cannes, that conversation kept coming up time and time again. I very much got the impression that there was a, a resurgence or a renaissance or a groundswell, frankly, happening-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... um, in terms of moving back to building brand. Um, and the, the reason started emerging that it was really around, um, LLMs, the fact that storytelling obviously needs to be important, that you have to invest in brand because people will obviously be using the LLMs to, to shortlist. Um, whereas if you've got a strong brand, you're already gonna be there on the shortlist.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, listen, I think there's still more to go, to be honest. Uh, yeah, like, you know, to me it's, it's sort of multifold. Like, you know, one is, uh, and, and I think the, the, the, the big one is as we're able to create more and more content, I think more and more content becomes unmemorable.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And if you're not building your brand in some meaningful, purposeful way that he- helps you, like, stand out and, and, and is memorable, I, I just think that performance, like, noise is gonna increasingly become kind of invisible-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... to the, to the, you know, sort of human eye. Um, so it, like, to me it just, it, it also just makes, there's a, there's a logical component to it.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: Uh, and then, and then on the, on the same time, I think there's more and more research coming out showing that brand is actually really important. You know, like, I'm, I'm on the, the media and data board of the MMA.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: And, you know, they've done research showing very clearly that today's brand investments have, you know, an, an impact on performance, uh, in the future o- on the order of multiples, you know?

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: So, like, you know, a- actually doing brand investment today is gonna massively impact your performance results, you know, two, three, and four quarters down the line.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's also a hard one, though, for a CMO to sell in-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... to a, a, you know, finance director or CFO or other, other members of the board as well.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think this is why you have good CMOs and bad CMOs.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: You know, i- i- that, that, that good CMO is gonna, you know, be able to, um, either through sheer force of will or, you know, their ability to communicate or whatever-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... they're gonna be able to, you know, win that argument in, in the boardroom, you know, with the CFO. Um, and he or she is gonna end up getting what she needs to, to be, to operate in the long-term benefit of the business.

Speaker 1: Sure. And what about innovation? So, you know- On one end, people are hype coding, clearly. I've, I've been doing it consistently and, and making fixes and building new stuff and workflows and improvements that, you know, sit behind the back end of our site, and other pieces of tech that I've been building as well. Uh, but then you also have, you know, engineering teams obviously within an enterprise business, which is obviously a different thing enabled by AI. So I'm, I'm thinking in terms of the pace of innovation client side, how's that changed and, and what kinds of things are, are people looking to do? Are they building, um, technologies to perhaps integrate with you, to orchestrate, perhaps something else?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I think one of the most exciting, um, you know, sort of innovations or product launches for us in our... And, but, uh, it really, as far as I can remember, was the launch of our MCP in, in, you know, June. Um, and, and the, and the reason is, um, exactly what you say. You know, there are... You know, every one of our clients now has either dev teams or, or just frankly, like, individuals who are playing around with AI who, uh, when you give that sort of framework or, you know, apparatus, they're building access to properly structured data, it just makes it, you know, multiples better instantly.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: And I think that's been, uh, you know, a, a, a real big focus of ours, you know, and, and is, is the move away from trying to, you know, get people to align and experience everything within sort of like vidmob.com and the, the very, like, static UI that we've built, and instead saying, "Hey, this is about helping you build a unique data asset that's gonna take any agentic tool you're building or any sort of, you know, AI-enabled tool you're building and instantly make it better," whether it's focused on i-improving planning or briefing or, you know, asset creation or media decisioning or measurement, like, like, literally across the whole workflow. Um, and so we'll, like, we've turned to being much more of an enabler versus the actual, um, end product, in a sense.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I'm, I'm looking a little bit further in the future and I'm, I'm thinking, you know, websites become less important in, in terms of the world of AI 'cause of, at the moment it's, you know, it's obviously, you know, on one side business to business or business to consumer, uh, then business to agent, we'll move to a world of agent to agent.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Um, and actually maybe I'm wrong, so, you know, I said slightly less important, perhaps the purpose of the website changes.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's sort of unclear what will happen, but it, but you, but you're right though. It like... Certainly the purpose of it's gonna change-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... right? And, and, you know, sitting here today is probably as, as freshly impacted as ever, where I think all of a sudden now we have a pretty real consumer use case-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... you know, with, with Meta Muse coming out, you know, a few weeks ago. All signs kind of point to that being, uh, you know, a successful launch-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... and a great product, and then probably like the first true, like, large scale, you know, agent that, that's actually impacting people's lives.

Speaker 1: Mm. Mm.

Speaker 2: So that's gonna continue. I'm sure we're gonna see agentic launches from basically everyone.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um, and whoever ends up sort of winning that and being the, the one who has the, the trust to get everyone to connect things, uh, it's gonna do a lot, right? And so, you know, I think at some level it's like that's gonna end up freeing us up to spend more time on, uh, other, like, entertainment products and things, which are obviously all vehicles for advertising. Uh, but, but I think, like, the, the nature of the way we sort of, um, at least go about, you know, sort of researching and purchasing is gonna change substantially.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: I'm not sure necessarily about how, what, you know, desire changes, that that may end up being kind of similar.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: But, um, it's, uh, it's all, like, in flux, like-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... as we speak.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, surely someone at, at this point in time who's, you know, using an LLM and they're trying to discover a product or research a product, by the time they, you know, they, they go land on the site or perhaps they, they might use another form of search, they've clearly got a much higher level of intent as well.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm sure we all have experiences of this. Like, like I'm, I'm getting ready to run some sort of big, like, adventure run next weekend, and so I've been doing a lot of research on, like, trail running shoes and headlamps and-

Speaker 1: Sure

Speaker 2: ... you know, things like that. I'm not at a point where I'm letting it go all the way through to purchasing to-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... you know, it's still basically giving me, like, information about some array of products, and then I'm probably making brand-driven decisions and obviously reviews and all that.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um, but, but the sort of final decision I still haven't turned over to the agent.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: I, I think that'll change. That, that'll be different for things like trash, trash bags and stuff like that, that you just-

Speaker 1: Of course

Speaker 2: ... you know. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Just a repeat purchase.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: That just comes down to price and-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... uh, timing of delivery, right? And that's, that's about it.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Um, on your side, how are, how are you guys innovating? What have, what have you been working on that's particularly neat or, or new recently?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think, like, it, it, it... A lot of it is what I was sort of touching on earlier, but it, it, it is a, a, a pretty substantial transition, right? Where, you know, as a product company, when your focus is on sort of the, the experiences that you build and the, and the end, end product and the way that it's experienced, like, that, that's, that's obviously like, you know, one world, and now in effect, we've kind of taken in all of Vidmob and turned it inside out, right? So, so we have this, like, kind of holistic framework called Vidmob 360, and that's the sort of unifying, like, name for our MCPs and APIs and, you know, recommendation engines and all of the sort of like, you know, AI-driven tooling that we have there.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So I definitely have been, like, very focused on what does Vidmob look like in that world where, you know, Vidmob is just something that makes your thing better versus, you know, Vidmob is the thing itself.

Speaker 1: Got it.

Speaker 2: Uh, and uh, it's been a really exciting, you know, last, you know, 12 months-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... as, like, the whole company is focused on this, and, you know, the, the signal and kind of pull from our consumer and partner base-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... is incredible.

Speaker 1: Yeah. How do you communicate that to your, um, customer base and partner base?

Speaker 2: Well, it's, I think it's a mix of, uh, you know, sort of normal, you know, product marketing, you know, sort of, you know, public communications, um, you know, doing like, you know, road shows and things with clients. But, uh, frankly, a lot of it has just been like setting up time with kind of like, you know, a group of like AI-curious people within, within a, a client-

Speaker 1: Mm. Mm

Speaker 2: ... showing them what's possible, and then just almost like, you know, workshopping, "Hey, what do you, what do you think? What's, what's, like what are you curious in? Like how would your life be better if, if you got some automated email every Monday that showed XYZ report?"

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And, um, just helping people have that initial like discovery experience, then they take it from there.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Which is, you know, kind of like vibe coding, right? Like if you like-

Speaker 1: Absolutely

Speaker 2: ... you know, people usually sort of like, they know about it, they don't do anything, and then eventually they have something in their life where they're like, "Oh, if only I could just like build like a real-time way to, you know, set up like soccer lineups for the team I'm coaching-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... or whatever."

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then you go into Claude and say, "Hey, could you do this?" And it says, "Yes," and you build it, then obviously like the whole world opens up like instantly.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Uh, I mean, it's, it's, it's incredible. And it, it's only limited to the boundary of your imagination, frankly.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 1: Um, although, you know, you look at technologies out there, and I mean, they, they've become fun- fungible really, you know. They... Easy to replicate, easy to build.

Speaker 2: That's-

Speaker 1: Have Claude build me a Calendly, how long will that take? Maybe a day, two days.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Great.

Speaker 2: No, I mean, that, that I think is, in a sense, that has become one of the central driving thoughts behind Vidmob, which is that as amazing as these sort of AI tools are, they are ultimately commodities. And, you know, it, it's not gonna make a difference whether you're using Claude or Gemini or OpenAI. It's not gonna make any difference whether on the Gen AI side you're using V03 or, you know, one of the Higgsfield models or Kling or whatever. But what makes a huge difference is knowing what to make-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... uh, and sort of like the input that you put into those systems.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So like we, we basically have kind of gone all in on this, this thought that in a sense like the world's kind of misfocused now. Uh, we're all focused on chips and algorithms, but I think the data's gonna be where, where one business beats another.

Speaker 1: Mm. Yeah. And it's, it's also making me think that, okay, great, it's easy enough to replicate pieces of software, but it's not so easy to replicate great creative.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: You know, that comes from the human, that comes from somebody having a, a brilliant breakthrough, an idea, and so on. Perhaps that's, you know, AI-assisted. They might have done a bit of a jam or, or, or whatever. Um, you clearly sit on Meta's, um, Global Creative Council-

Speaker 2: Mm-hmm

Speaker 1: ... which is pretty amazing. And, um, what I'm wondering is, is what platforms are seeing about, uh, creative that perhaps brands haven't caught up with yet at this point in time?

Speaker 2: Yeah. That, the Meta Global Creative Council has been one of the more, um, rewarding groups I've been a part of for, in a long time. They, they do an incredible job of sort of, you know, structuring that, and I've made some kind of lifelong friends through that.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um, it, it, it's... So one of the leaders of that group is, um, the, the gentleman who runs their, uh, glo- uh, creative shop, a guy named Jimmy Stone, and he's been sort of speaking for the last few years on this idea of kind of like compound branding.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: And I think what the platforms are, um, all sort of, you know, recognizing is that it's become easy for everyone to create, in a sense.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: It doesn't, it doesn't mean it's easy to create good things, but it's easy to create. And, and, and I think that's actually being driven by sort of two forces. One is obviously Gen AI. We, we know that. But I kind of put, uh, influencer and creator content in the same bucket.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: Um, it's just a human Gen AI business-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... actually. Like, I mean, it's, it's another way to, you know, get, you know, thousands of pieces of content, you know, rapidly when you previously would have had a couple.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: So those things together are leading to a loss of control, a loss of under- awareness of even like how your brand is represented.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: And one of the things that, that the, that the Meta folks have been talking a lot about is this idea of kind of like compound branding. You know, like if you have now 10,000 or 50,000 pieces of content in market that are the sort of the, the, the vanguard of your brand, how do you make sure that they're operating in concert, that they're telling some unifying narrative that, um, is building, you know, o- on the purpose of your business versus just like a bunch of people in their bathroom saying, "Put on this lipstick, I love it"?

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: Um, you know, like that, one of those will work as a strategy, and the other may drive near-term performance, but I don't think it's actually helping your business in the long term. So, so like that, that, that's been a big, you know, big focus, uh, like on, on the Meta side.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And I think on, on, you know, Google similarly where, where it's just a lot of discussion around how you build sort of creative diversity. Um, and, and it's not just about having a bunch of versions of the same effective piece of creative, but actually like a kind of a wide canvas, but do so in a way that actually is, um, you know, consistent-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... um, and, and leading towards some, you know, sort of memorable, um, you know, embodiment of the brand.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Are there any good examples that you could reference in terms of, um, brands that who've been getting this right in terms of the, the idea of compound branding?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, U- Unilever, uh, it, it, what it comes down to is, you know-

Speaker 1: I was thinking of Unilever

Speaker 2: ... structuring, um, like unifying campaigns-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... that, um, are easy for an individual to kind of tie into. Uh, Unilever's done some great work with this, um, you know, sort of extensions of their like Real Beauty campaign and things.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: Um, but, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, I, I think the idea there is like coming up with something that actually connects to the purpose of the brand-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... uh, but is an easy plug-in then for anyone. And then they can go off on their individual tangents, uh, but it all kind of builds the same thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Um, but- I'm thinking about the CMO again. So, you know, what advice would you provide to a CMO in terms of how to sell in something like compound branding into, into their business? You know, they're in a board discussion, they've got the CFO there . How do they sell this in?

Speaker 2: Well, I think at some level it should be fairly obvious, right?

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: Like, like if, if there isn't some m- m- memorable takeaway from a campaign-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... then it's just noise, right? And, and like I, I, I think about like may- maybe the one way that they could, they, that they could talk about it would be just like referencing what happened in the games industry. So my previous, you know, business, uh, I was sort of, you know, there during the, the rise of like, you know, game m- game marketing on, on Facebook and we, we watched, you know, sort of, you know, all the various, you know, game publishers, you know, particularly mobile, put, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars into like app install campaigns.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: And they were creating huge amounts of content and, you know, I sort of called them like shit throwers. You know, basically just like making anything, didn't matter what it was about, and just throwing that shit at the al- at the algorithm.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And for a while, that was kind of like the idea of like what a sophisticated game, you know, like, you know, marketing team was, was just like a, a high volume shit thrower. And what happened is it actually did drive an enormous number of app installs, but nothing else. And so once the money stopped and, and, you know, you could no longer drive app installs, there was nothing left.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: There's no, there's no brand that was built.

Speaker 1: Like a plateau.

Speaker 2: And so that, you know, that like so many of those businesses now either don't exist or have, you know, sort of fallen, you know, dramatically off and-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... so I think we have that experience and we're actually kinda like in a sense repeating it now with like, you know, so many influencer campaigns where you're just like, I can't tell if that's L'Oréal or Estée Lauder or, you know, L'Oréal.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: If you can't tell and it's not tied towards some sort of like l- you know, longer term brand building, I'm not sure that's gonna be doing much for your business.

Speaker 1: Mm. And then on the flip side, someone who's perhaps at the start of their career, what advice would you give them at this point in time? So I'm looking at it from point of view of employment rates in the UK as an example.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Younger people are struggling to get into a number of industries, including our own. Um, how do they need to maybe position themselves? What skills should they be learning, um, so that they're sharp and, yeah, and, and so they're standing out versus the- their competition, which obviously got tougher.

Speaker 2: On the creative side?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know, in, in, in a lot of ways, it's probably no different than it was in the past. You know, like I think you still have to be great and creative and do things that are like striking and, and, you know, and differentiated. Um, I don't think that's changed at all, right? So, so like AI's enabled us to do things more rapidly, um, you know, sort of like the printing press enabled us to like print more, you know, written word more rapidly.

Speaker 1: Sure.

Speaker 2: It didn't make anyone a better writer. Um, it enabled more people to write, and then through that now we have more, you know, discovery and you find your Dostoevsky or something.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um, so I, like I think to me, what it, what it comes down to is like if someone wants to, you know, stand out and get ahead, they need to use these commonly available tools in uncommon ways. Uh, and, and I know that's possible. I've seen incredible examples of people u- using AI to get to, you know, just beautiful and, and highly creative, you know, end product.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then you see the things where someone just says, you know, "Make me an ad to do this," and you get what you deserve.

Speaker 1: That's the problem, isn't it? Um, I think we coined a term in Cannes, sameism.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: You know, create an ad to do this or write me a white paper, and you end up with the same as everybody else who's asked that same question.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's, that I think is the, the sort of second risk, right? Is that like when we have that, you know, make me a white paper, you know, write my email for me, you know, like th- that's a really slippery path where I think those people can end up a month in and be like, "Oh shit, I don't actually remember how to write an email. I don't remember how to do these things."

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And uh, I think there's all sorts of like studies starting to come out now about the impact on students of like AI utilization. So, uh, you know, this is gonna be a period where like we really all have to learn, like how do I maintain m- my skills, my sort of humanity without basically saying, "No, I'm not gonna touch those things"? 'Cause that- that's not the answer either.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I think also you adapt to the way that it's, on one side, the way that you wanna digest media, so whether that's audio, whether it's visual, whether it's something else, or long form or short form content and so on, but also the way that you wish to produce it as well. Um, so you, you know, you talk about email there. I'm not sure that I wanna type too many more emails going forwards. I'd rather... Frankly, I'd rather be talking to my AI-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... and uh, saying, "Okay, now, you know, I wanna proof this now. Actually adjust that, change this. That's fine. Send it." Um, I just find that, well, actually I've been doing a lot recently. I find that, uh, a much better method for myself, certainly when I'm flooded and there's a, uh, you know, a lot going on in my world. Um, but it doesn't devalue the communication that I'm having with people and certainly makes sure it's not slop at the end of the day.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing, is just gotta make sure that it- it's not that slop and, uh, um... Because at the end of the, at, at the, on the other side, the person's gonna have to receive that communication and probably feel like it came from you.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: 'Cause I don't know if you're, uh, if, if you're the same as me, but when I get, you know, a brief or some sort of document or something and I can sort of tell that it was written entirely by, you know, Claude-

Speaker 1: Oh, I'll, I'll give up on the first paragraph.

Speaker 2: Yeah. My, my willingness to read it goes really quickly to zero.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Um, and it, it might actually still be great content.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: But I'm just kinda like, if you couldn't have been bothered to write it, like why should I be bothered to read it?

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I'd, I'd, I 100% agree with that. Um, we also own a research business, so, uh-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... you know, we write reports for people like Adobe and-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... various other, um, tech companies, Trust Pilots, et cetera, and they're all, they're all human written-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... and extremely well-produced. Where we might use AI though is, uh, I guess a research assistant-

Speaker 2: Sure

Speaker 1: ... is probably a good way of describing it.

Speaker 2: Absolutely.

Speaker 1: Um, or to help us do some very complicated analysis that in the past would have maybe cost us 10 grand plus with a statistician. Um, but, but then still take it to the statistician to get it reviewed and make sure-

Speaker 2: Yeah

Speaker 1: ... you know, it, it passes all the tests.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that, like figuring out the workflow that works for, you know, each individual or, or corporation, like that, that is the right thing.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Because, you know, like this, the same on my end where like I'll, I'll go through and have something, you know, create like a draft or something, but then I, I usually end up doing like pretty heavy like editing to make sure that it's sort of me communicating the way I want it to be communicated, you know-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... read the way I want it to be read.

Speaker 1: And in terms of yourself, how do you stay sharp? I mean, where do you go to for, you know, what are your go-to resources? Yeah.

Speaker 2: I, you know, I, I, I'm sort of, I think, of the belief that the broader one is, the more useful they are. So, um, I, um, I, I guess like podcasts are-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... you know, incredibly useful for me. Um, I, I, I, I run a fair amount, so that gives me like good alone time every week.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And I listen to a pretty wide array of, you know, business podcasts, uh, history. I love The Rest is History. Um, yeah, I listen to like psychology podc- like I'm really, like I try to have like a very wide input.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then, you know, what I've found is that hopefully that, you know, wide array of input is gonna help me be, um, more human-

Speaker 1: Sure

Speaker 2: ... uh, in, in, in the way I like think about and ... 'Cause a big part of my job is sort of trying to figure out like where the world's going.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: Uh, and how do we make sure that, you know, that the Vidmob is positioned better 12 months from now than it is today. Uh, and I think the only way you get there is by not having like a really narrow focus, but instead like a pretty broad one.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I, I love the idea of input. Um, you know, whether it's, whether you've gone to gallery and you're observing stuff, whether you're just out speaking to a whole load of people, or if you're listening to loads of shows, so on and so forth. And I-

Speaker 2: Yeah, you never know where it's gonna come from.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And, and a lot of times it'll come when I'm not even thinking about-

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 2: ... yeah, like, you know, the task at hand.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And I've always believed that, you know, people say, um, what do they say? Seeking inspiration. I don't believe that you can seek inspiration. I think inspiration kind of finds you.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Um, and by doing these inputs, you then have that kind of in the shower moment.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And you come unstuck and actually, it's ... And, and you get a bit of a flow in terms of, um, answers and solutions and, and so on.

Speaker 2: Agreed. Agreed.

Speaker 1: Um, in terms of brands out there that, you know, are doing something particularly in- interesting at this point in time that have caught your attention, uh, is there any that, uh, particularly sort of stand out, as it were?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think like, it, there, there are brands that are doing things sort of interestingly from, you know, kind of a, um, you know, mission and purpose perspective, and then there are brands that I think are using sort of technology in interesting ways. Um, we work a lot with Coca-Cola. They, they've been one of the most like leaned in and, and, you know, um, kind of earliest adopters of sort of like creative data writ large.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: Um, and so I think like I'm, I'm very impressed by the way that they're looking at the like whole scale understanding of their, you know, sort of brand embodiment. Um, I think they're sort of almost in a, in a world of their, their own in that regard.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And then, uh, kind of in terms of sort of, you know, starting to wrap things up a little bit, but is there advice that you would give to a marketer in terms of things that they should be looking at and measuring, perhaps stuff that they're not considering at this point in time?

Speaker 2: Listen, I think that, uh, this is all still fairly n- new, right? Like, like, there are a bunch of things that sound really obvious, but the market hasn't evolved there. So-

Speaker 1: Mm

Speaker 2: ... You know, that's almost kind of like conventional wisdom at this point in the industry. But then when you look at how the industry operates, it doesn't behave like any of that is true.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: Right? So if, if creative was 50 to 70% of results, then it would be logically ridiculous to call creative investment non-working. But the industry labels all creative investment as non-working and only media investment is working.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: You know, so that, that, that, that's one piece.

Speaker 1: Mm.

Speaker 2: Second, if, you know, creative was 50 to 70% of results, then when you look at like how, you know, bids and are like operated through any of the exchanges or platforms where it factors in enormous numbers of media side, you know, you know, context, you know, consideration, um, the time of day, the weather, you know, all these kind of media side inputs, and then effectively zero input for the quality or likely performance of the creative, again, that makes no sense. And, and same on like MMM. You know, every one of our customers is using their MMM to guide, you know, l- literally hundreds of millions of dollars of like investment, and yet when you ask them if their MMM factors in creative quality in any way, they're like, "No, not at all." And so like there's just basically all of this that, um, has to change and is gonna change quickly. So when we talk to customers, I think our, our viewpoint is, is basically just, first of all, look at that statement, the 50 to 70% of performance, and decide whether or not you actually believe that. And if you actually believe that, then there are a whole bunch of ways that you operate that don't make any sense. And then that kind of leads to the beginning of the building of this creative data asset, and then we start to think about like, okay, how do we use that to impact better planning? How do we use it to impact better briefing? How do we use it to impact better creative? Like, you know, on and on and on. And, you know, that's a, that's a journey, uh, but it's one that can have impact in the multiples, not the, you know, percentages.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. No, fantastic advice, and I think that's, that's great in terms of what people should be thinking about and why.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Um, look, Alex, you've been a, a fantastic guest on the show today, and I've enjoyed the conversation with you. And thanks so, so much for your time.

Speaker 2: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Speaker 1: You're welcome.