Reconnected

Introducing the first chapter of the Chicken Shop Sessions with Nando's Australia & New Zealand. Launched in Aus, over what would have been Splendour Weekend, Nandos is doing its little bit to foster the underground and local music scenes. On Saturday night, Coterie, Chaii, Nina Las Vegas and Ishan took over Nando’s in Fitzroy for 100 lucky attendees. Led by Tom Blackburn and Duncan Bell, we have worked to use Nando's global music legacy to localise and build a localised program that drives consideration for the next generation of Nando’s customers. Massive well done to our team Patrick Marrinan, Nicole Watson, Steve McLennan, Giovanni Napoli and our partners at UNIFIED Music Group. And where to next?

I am counting down the top 5 🖐 marketing findings from '24, that you need at the top of your mind in '25. #2 Felipe Thomaz SXSW Sydney speech signposts the findings of only 1% of campaigns following EB Bass get exceptional results. Most of marketing has gone to sleep with 'How Brands Grow' under their pillow for the past 15 years. Now, Feilpe and the team at the University of Oxford have gone toe-for-toe, pushing for a far more nuanced approach. The full report is being peer-reviewed and will be available this year. My favourite quote was 'If you want to be simple, enjoy your 2 per cent ROI. If you want to think about things with more concrete detail and that are more specific, and you want to exploit arbitrage opportunities in media, enjoy your 15 to 18 per cent.' This seems to connect nicely to Karen Nelson-Field PhD at Amplified Intelligence perspective around the contextually differing values of attention. This sets up a nice cross-town marketing science off in Adelaide in 2025.

Top 5 🖐 Marketing Effectiveness findings from 2024 you need for 2025. #3 System1's Creative Consistency report found consistent brands had a +27% impact on very large business effects (Profit, Market share, Revenue). Led by Andrew Tindall and using the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) data bank, this has multiple immediately actionable steps that the team takes in their keynote (see the comments). For mine, the marquee takeaway is taking time and investment to get the message correct initially key. You can then sweat the asset for a loooooong time as creative wear out on great creative is a myth. See Mark Ritson's latest marketing week column on this, and Jon Evans's latest testing of the Cadbury Gorilla ad. Yorkshire Tea is the gold standard in this space - showing how you can be endlessly entertaining and creative while incredibly disciplined and consistent. Dom Dwight 🤌 Kudos.

Top Five 🖐 Marketing Effectiveness reports and findings from 2024 that you need to refresh on coming into 2025. #5 Profitability 2 report by Thinkbox Key Finding: 58% of a campaign's profitability comes after week 14 of the campaign. This is our annual reminder that that we shouldn't need to run campaigns longer, and it builds on a tremendous amount of research in 2021&2 about the lack of ad burn-out. Why should you care? It's expensive to build campaigns that run for longer than 14 weeks. Instead of considering campaign windows, think of more frequent brand pulses like AJ Coyne's Monzo Bank plan released last week. Also, test your assets to have confidence they can go the journey.

Top 5 🖐 Marketing Effectiveness findings from 2024 you need for 2025. #4 Grocery TV's report found equivalent reach from retail media with stronger attention metrics than broadcast TV. This report was emblematic of the golden year of retail media being touted as growing to <enter stupid amount of billion of dollars here> value. Although it is outlandish to claim that retail media can deliver the same outcomes as TV, the bigger picture is that retailers can make significant revenue with outrageous margins (up to 90%). In markets with grocery duopolies ( 🇦🇺 ), investment for pay-to-play on the shelf will increase - and thus, we need to find ways to get sales and brand outcomes from retail media spend. At worst, this risks being the equivalent of the Tech / B2B over-spend into performance addiction. Brand beware. WARC article with Marlow Nickell & Andrew Lipsman who did a great job bringing this report to life.

Last week of the year Chris Birtchnell took the reigns of our social team. Here is his first week - documentary style. Shout out to Patrick Marrinan on the tools for this one.

A marquee of our employee experience is everyone getting 1:1 coaching. This is the backbone of our commitment to continuous development as an organisation. Today our leadership team set off 2025 working with our executive coach Adam Kurdas from Progressional. Our leadership collectively covered themes around personal leadership styles, identifying where we get in our own way and the flexibility required to continuously adapt and calibrate to the needs of a scaling-up business.

🧸❤️

💡 🎥 🎬 Shooting with Playgro today. Something very fun first, very Indigro coming up. Ft. Michaela De Santis, Giovanni Napoli, Jess Lucas, Steve McLennan, Geordan Trakman, Jennifer Higgins.

💡 🎥 🎬 Shooting with Playgro today. Something very fun first, very Indigro coming up. Ft. Michaela De Santis, Giovanni Napoli, Jess Lucas, Steve McLennan, Geordan Trakman, Jennifer Higgins.