August 4, 2024 • 37 mins
Welcome to "Making Different Happen," hosted by ReMotive. In this series, we delve into the reasons why individuals and businesses strive to create change, what innovative strategies they employ, and how they maintain a competitive edge in rapidly evolving environments. Our guest today is Ian Forrester, founder and CEO of David. Ian's company is renowned for its focus on understanding the emotional impact of creative advertising and content, utilizing advanced AI technology to predict outcomes based on emotional responses. Join us as we explore how David harnesses the power of emotions to drive business impact and create memorable brand experiences.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Right, Hi, everyone, welcome to a podcast Making Different Happen.
I'm your host Coonsmeat's I'm the co founder of from Motive,
and we will be leading this. I will be leading
this series of podcasts in which we explore really kind
of like three main kind of questions and themes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
First of all, I.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Kind of what we want to explore is what are
really the reasons why people and businesses are making different happen? Next,
what is really what is it that they are doing
differently and how is it driving a different outcome? And
then finally, how are they planning to keep themselves differentiated
from the competition given today's fast changing environments.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So we will kind of talking about those kind of topics.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Today we will be talking to a person whose company
is all about pink flamingos, but also about understanding the
emotions that creative advertising and content the folks, how this
really this understanding can be used to generate a different
business impact. And on top of that, at the heart
of the companies it's a wonderful AI technology, that probably is.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But I'll have to obviously Ian can talk more about it.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But I guess this I probably is the most knowledgeable
artificial brain when it comes to predicting outcomes based on
how people emotionally react to advertising. So please welcome Ian Forrester,
founder and CEO of David Ian. I hope I've done
your business justice with this a short intro. I haven't
(01:31):
really exaggerated too much.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
No, not at all. It's a great summary. Thank you
very much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Awesome, Thank you. Well.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Obviously, I mean we've picked you for a reason for
this podcast, and obviously that's first of all. You know,
our series is called Making Different Happen. And actually when
I see, first of all, when I see communication about
your business, David, it has making Different Happen written all
over it. Pink flamingos are never far away, something that
(02:01):
we definitely appreciate. But I guess we'll get to that shortly.
But also also more importantly, really about your business kind
of like you know, really when you when you guys communicate,
always get this feeling that's there's a fresh, fresh message
really around. You know, the importance of creative messaging, which
(02:21):
I think, especially in the last few years, has been
lost a little bit in the noise around media optimization.
Really media tactics a lot of the hypers being thrown
around in terms of you know, also attention, but also
lots of different topics that have kind of like taking
the spotlight. And actually we've forgotten a little bit about like,
(02:42):
you know, media and creative. Those two things need to
work together. So it's important not only we focus on
understanding media better, but also what's actually happened with creative.
So today, obviously we want to talk a little bit
more about that. But before we get into that, Ian,
what I would like to hear from you is.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
A little bit about the background to David.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So you know, when you kind of create a business
that is about making different happen, there's always usually there's
an interesting story sitting behind that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So can you tell.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Us a little bit about like what does the story
behind David and how do you kind of eventually kind
of created a business that is really about making different
happen in your specific space.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, of course. So it's been an interesting journey. Honestly,
my career started in quite a traditional way. So I
was like on the grand scheme at Loreal after university
and I went to various big corporations, so I worked
at Nesle and Sony Pictures, and I was doing kind
of insight research, you type roles for about ten years.
(03:51):
But really the genesis of David was the day that
I walked into the Nruly office in twenty twelve, and
really media back in the day when they hired me
in twenty twelve, they actually hired my co founder, Barney
on the same day, and that's how I know Barney.
So we met that fateful day in September twenty twelve.
(04:14):
And it was just a really interesting business because they
had a unique set of data. They were collecting share
data on videos, and they had a way that they
could rank videos based on the number of shares that
they were achieving, and that was a really interesting data
set just for consumers to go on and see what's
(04:35):
the most shared video this week. But then brands started
going onto the chart and seeing that either they were
at the top or their competitor was at the top,
and they started asking Unruly, so why is my competitor
at the top of this chart, why am I not?
And how can I create a viral hit? Was basically
the underlying question, and that's what I was hired to
(04:56):
try and figure out. They had all this data, but
not really much of an idea what to do with it,
so I ended up joining as the first insight research person.
We did a bunch of work with Karen Nelson Field
back in the day, dusting a bunch of hypotheses around
what was driving video sharing, and we found it came
down to like emotions and then the rational reason to
(05:19):
go on and share. A combination of those two made
content more shareable. But the work that we did at Unruly,
particularly around emotions and advertising and the drivers of advertising effectiveness,
was really why David exists today because I found, like,
(05:39):
emotions are really strongly correlated with sharing, but emotions are
really strongly correlated not only with sharing, but all brand outcomes,
Any brand outcome that the brand is looking for. The
method of action is to evoke an emotion to get there,
because emotions are what raises content up above all the
other stuff we're being bombarded with on a daily basis.
(06:00):
That's what makes creative memorable, and you need to be
creating those memories to drive the actions which to the
brand wants. And it's this learning over the course of
like seven years at Unruly, all these things that I
found out about the method of action of creative which
we're now enacting at David and supercharging with all these
(06:20):
new bits of technology which have been released over the
last four or five years, which are now enabling us
to take the work we did it unruly to the
next level. But it was really unruly in the way
that unreally we're doing things differently. They had a different
data set, they had a different approach, They work with academics,
which very few people in the advertising industry did. It
(06:43):
was a super cool brand, amazing culture, all these all
these different things, like versus where I'd been in the
corporate world. I was dropped into this amazing business with
all these amazing people doing things very differently, which we're
now taking on, like we're we're focused on developing an
incredible culture and having a brilliant brand hence the flamingos,
(07:04):
and doing stuff which has not been done before. All
of that was seeded during the end really days.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Okay, So so yeah, because I remember and really as
well from back in the days obviously, because you know,
it's one of these brands, as you say, or one
of these companies which stood out.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
You know, on the one hand, it was kind of yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
We are a video video company and Obviously this was
the era when viral was still a big thing, right,
just kind of like everyone was looking for the next
viral and it was like how can we create it?
It was like, well, and really has got part of
the answer, not the entire answer, but it's got partons.
But it was kind of really different because the research
was done, as you said, around emotions. Well until then,
(07:44):
media was all very rational and like you know, the
research was being done about like yeah, all right, with
the brand stands for this or what stands for that
and therefore will work better. This was very much It
was a completely different approach and it was very exciting.
But I guess nowadays is not about virals. It's more
about like I'm in all of those different channels, where
(08:06):
how can I create cut through? As you say, how
can I kind of lift my brand above all of
these things? So it makes sense to kind of so
in a way, it's like the really solution updated for
the world we're living today, which is, you know, more
channels and not about viral so much, but more about
like you know, when you're out there, you're communicating something
(08:28):
that's that's more relevant.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
I guess, so, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So, Ian kind of like kind of that's the background
to David. So David today, what actually what does it
stand for? What does it actually do and and how
is it actually you know, making different happen and therefore
so generating different outcomes.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Can you talk a little bit around that.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yes, So we're focused on creative effectiveness at scale and
what that means is we are generating this unique set
of data to help our clients understand why their creative
is working or not right. So we've built a creative
effectiveness process which is off the back of a meta
(09:11):
analysis which we performed on creative effectiveness studies both from
academia and industry. So that was the basis of the
business was to understand the creative effectiveness process, why is
some creative working versus others not and essentially the drivers
of creativity and the effectiveness of creativity. Three things. First
of all, you've got to be capturing attention, and within
(09:35):
today's world, that means within the first second and the
first three seconds, you've got to be capturing attention with
your creative because otherwise someone's just scrolled away. You've literally
have that little time to capture that attention. So how
you open the creative is super super important. Once you've
captured attention, you then need to do something with it.
And that's something is evoken intense positive emotion because that
(09:57):
the emotion which creates the cut through versus all the
other stuff we're being pomparded with on a daily basis. Right,
As humans, we are programmed to remember to remember stuff
which either makes us feel really good or makes us
feel really bad. Right, so, if you think about four
wednesdays ago what you were doing, you got no idea
(10:18):
because nothing really bad or really good happened. It was
just kind of a regular day. Yeah, you felt emotions,
but anywhere between like a four or six out of ten,
kind of middling, and so that gets forgotten immediately. But
you know, if I'm walking along and I get bitten
by a snake, I'm gonna remember that day for the
rest of my life. I'm going to stay away from
snakes as a result, because that's how we're programmed as
humans to remember that stuff which makes us feel really bad.
(10:41):
That's why the often people's first memories as a toddler
is like that traumatic incident where you got you got
separated from your mum, or you know, you fell out
of a tree or something that's like the first thing
that you can remember because you're like, shit, okay, I
need to not do that thing again. Equally, on the
positive side, you know you'll always remember the day your
first child was because of that huge flood of oxytocin
(11:02):
which you know that incredible experience that you had. Right,
And so, emotions, yes, they are a driver of sharing
back in the day, and they are key to virality.
But emotions aren't just key to reality. They're key to
every outcome that the brand wants because it creates the
memory that the brand wants. And when you're creating a
positive memory, you're attaching a positive emotion to that brand.
(11:25):
It's that memory which is going to nudge you to
do something at a later day it was that brand.
It also nudges you to do something immediately from a
performance point of view as well. So this stuff isn't
just relevant for brand building, it's relevant for lower funnel
as well. So if that is the base understanding, right,
this is the method of action. In order to understand
our creative we need to be gathering this data. And
(11:48):
there are ways to gather that data. More traditional ways
like facial coding and eye tracking and asking consumers questions.
You know, likes of system On and Realize and so
have been around for years, and it's possible to gather
that data. But what has not been possible to do
up to now is to gather that data at huge scale.
(12:09):
And that's really important now because, as you've alluded to,
the amount of creative which is being pumped out into
the world now has just exploded exponentially over the last
four or five years. You've got all these new channels,
You've got tech tuk and Snapchat and retail media and
Connective TV, and every brand under the sun is pumping
out stuff across all their socials and they're all swimming
(12:33):
in data. They're all swimming and engagement rate data and
view through data. Yeah, exactly, which I'm not suggesting we
stop collecting that data like it's not a bad thing.
But none of these data points, even brand left data
or sales data, none of those data points are telling
them the brand. Why they're telling the brand what people
(12:54):
view to the end, or they clicked or they purchased.
And this is all really important stuff to know, but
none of that tells you why the way comes down
to attention and emotion and memory. So this is what
we've built, is this system. It's AI system which can
ingest a piece of creative, understand what's happening in that
creative and then predict is this going to capture attention
(13:16):
in the first second or not? Which emotions where they
both positive and negative, are people going to remember the
brand or not? Because then you can stick all of
your social content through the model and produce this data
at a huge scale. And when you're doing that, you're
then learning from that body of work which you're putting
out into the world, and brands that doing that regularly,
(13:37):
they're learning, testing, learning and iterating and improving, and there's
a virtuous cycle comes into play with it. The creator
just gets better and better in the nut shal what
we're doing.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, yeah, very interesting because yeah, as you say, I
think it goes back to what we said earlier, right,
there's that emotion really that kind of usually is missing, right,
because it's very like testing traditional as you say, is
very much like okay, what is you know, does it
take this box, this box or this box? But it's
not like why does it take this box?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And why not?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
And and so with the AI, as you said, kind
of like does that scale? But also obviously it kind
of allows you to keep improving, right, so you kind
of you can you can figure out which kind of
pieces are working better than others, and then kind of
like because you understand why, you can kind of see, okay,
the ones that are not performing well, maybe we need
(14:30):
to adjust this or that and then see if it
performs beat.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So there's a whole iteration kind of program.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
There that can you know, can allow you to kind
of make things better over time.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So that's really interesting. Cool cool, So that's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And so obviously I've got to go back to something
I mentioned earlier, So what is what is the pink
pink flamingos all about?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So honestly, there's no rational reason why we've we've got
the It's just a distinctive asset, you know, to use
the words of Edinburgh Bass like it's it just stands
out we wanted I mean we we are, you know,
drinking our own call aid right like we and that's
that's what you see all over LinkedIn with all of
(15:15):
our posts. It's like, you know, it's deliberately everything we
do is deliberately a motive stand out. It's you know,
we're not boring people because obviously we're swimming in absolutely
tons of data. But and we could tell a very
rational data story, but you know, that's just that's not
going to get cut through. So we're very deliberate about
(15:38):
evoking emotions standing out, and the flamingo as part of that,
we can you know, use it in all kinds of
different ways. It stands out. It's pink. We call like
a group of flamingos. It's called a flamboyance. That's the
collective noun for flamingos, which we loved. So when people
join us, like they join the team or we sign
a new client, they're like, like, you're joining the flamboyance,
(16:00):
and it's just yeah, just a way to get waiting
to get and cut through.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Honestly, Yeah, totally, no, I know, it's really nice.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
So kind of like based on obviously all the work
that you've done so far, I guess there's a lot
of learnings that you have already from David in terms
of like certain brands or certain messages or whatever, certain
I don't know, certain Yeah, kind of like you know,
distinctive acids or whatever work really well. Certain learnings that
(16:29):
you can share that you see overall kind of like, well,
things that we see is like these kind of things
just are you know, almost always work or kind of
like really are are making a bigger impact art and
things like that you can you can share with the world.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, ultimately like the beyond opening the creative in the
right way, right, which means so in terms of attention
right in the first second, in the first or three seconds.
General learnings are, first of all, don't start with your brand.
Don't start with the logo. Quite often people are reend
(17:06):
recommending open with the logo because at least if someone
scrolls away, you're going to drive an impression of the logo.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
I'm sure you've heard that like a million times, and
that's true. You do drive an impression of the logo,
but not all impressions are created equal. And if you're
interrupting someone's experience by showing them an ADS and your
logo is there, then they're irritated and they could well
be attaching that frustration, that anger in terms of the
emotions that we would call it like fair enough, it
(17:32):
might be mild, but they may attach that anger to
your brand and be less likely to purchase in the
future they don't open with your logo, and quite apart
from that, they're going to be much more likely to
scroll past because they know it's an ad like no
not for me. So open with intense positive emotions like bring,
(17:53):
bring that person into the story, and then develop the
storyline and then introduce the brand. So it just makes
it more likely that someone's going to give that piece
of creative a chance in the real world if you
open in an intensely positive way and then generally speaking,
intense positive emotions of the drivers of the memory, which
which are the key drivers of the outcomes that the
(18:14):
brand wants. Brands often ask us, okay, cool, which emotions like?
Because of the thirty nine emotions that we test for
twenty seven are positive and they're like so is warmth
best or inspiration best at driving sales? Or and honestly no,
All of those positive emotions can be used effectively to
(18:34):
create positive memories for a brand. A more interesting question
to ask is which emotions are right for my brand?
Like which emotions? Because not every brand can be funny
well right like. It often takes a quite extreme brand
to be able to push the boundaries with humor to
get to an eight or nine out of ten, because
(18:56):
often that's polarizing and some people don't like where they've
gone and from most like corporations, their brands are too
middle of the road to go to that really extreme
place to be able to reach those heights, which is
which is needed for humor. So think about which emotions
are right for your brand, like in terms of your
usp and your story and your your tone of voice
(19:18):
and your values, but also which emotions your competitors are voking,
like which within a within a category. We often do
these category analyses where we look at all the different
competitors within a category, and often they conform to these
tropes around creative for autos needs to be needs to
(19:39):
show some guy driving around like Lake Como in a
car or a city scape. You know, it's just super
super dull, and everyone's conforming to the same kind of
creative ideas and they're therefore evoking the same emotions. But
if a brand can evoke an unusual emotion versus its competitors,
then just by being different, it's going to stand out
(20:00):
being more memorable. It's like like said right Zig in
the World's Acts you didn't actually say why that's powerful.
The reason it's powerful is that you evoke an unusual
emotion which gains cut through, is much more memorable, and
then you add intensity to that difference. That's when you
get the double amy effect. So yeah, I mean there's
(20:22):
there's tons. One more thing I will say, actually, recent
piece of work that we've done, piece of research looking
at TikTok. We just looked at five brands and we
took their ten most recent tiktoks, so broad range of brands.
We have Mercedes, Gucci, Duolingo, Persal, Sam Sam, the global
(20:45):
pages looked at the last ten assets, so it was
completely random sample, which is the last ten things that
they posted right and pull those through the model. The
vast majority of that creative sixty percent was just a
bit met There's like not really a strong positive emotion,
not really a strong negative emotion, a bit of boredom
(21:08):
and confusion in there, just forgettable, like there's no point
in posting that because people have forgotten literally ten seconds later,
it's kind of a nothing video. A small proportion sixteen
percent were doing a really good job for the brand,
and each brand had its own example of like really
strong content, decent positive emotions, decent brand recall, telling a
(21:33):
really nice story, doing a good job for the brand.
But twenty four percent, like almost a quarter, were evoking
intense negative emotions like shame and horror and discussed and
all these things which commercial brands don't want to be
playing in that space. That's going to turn people off.
And you know the problem is brands are pumping this
(21:56):
stuff out into the world without understanding the impact that
it's having. They're getting engagement rates and view through rates
back from the platforms are like, well, this is a
good one engaging rate and this one didn't have a
good engageent rate. But that's a very broad brush metric
to base these decisions on when you know, we live
in a world where the wrong piece of creative can
(22:16):
knot percentage points off a share price if you get
it really badly wrong, right, Yeah, I mean like a
blood light, like you know, you need to be thinking
about this before moving out there. So yeah, I mean
this and this is what we're doing, like being able
to give our clients the ability to understand this stuff
at scale. It's just the ones that are really leaning
(22:39):
in it's giving them a huge competitive advantage.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, no, I guess, like you know, there's any company
that kind of lives according to the making different Happen
live philosophy. Well, no, it's kind of obviously what you're
telling makes total sense, and probably most people will agree
with what what you just told what you just told us.
(23:02):
But then if you tell this too, when you tell
this to a brand, all of a sudden, I can
imagine there's a lot of resistance to what you actually
are saying because and I think you just mentioned it
just before as actually you know, brands nowadays are saying like, yeah,
you can tell me that this piece of content might
evoke negative feelings, but look at the click through rate
(23:26):
that we got, and actually that's what I'm interested in.
So I can imagine I don't know if it's true,
but I can imagine that you get a lot of
resistance to say, actually looking at at the way that
you guys are doing it with focusing on emotions and
the feelings that consumers have when they look at a
piece of content, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Not the right way.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
You should look at the heart metrics because that's really
what matters and that's going to drive business results.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Is that something that you come across.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So is that is it hard to kind of get
your message across and get people to believe it and
you know, not even believe it, but obviously act upon
it as well, because that's the most important part.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
No, that's a great question. And I mean it has
been in the past when marketers have been targeted with
driving engagement rates and with just pure vanity metrics like
reaching impressions and just number of likes. You know, they
don't need to think about the emotions that are being
(24:25):
about because they've been targeted on these metrics and they've
hit their numbers, and you know, everyone goes home and
pats with each other on the back and goes home.
But what we're finding increasingly, there's been particularly in the
like say in the last nine months, there's been this
sea change. Yeah, the most forward thinking brands right now
(24:47):
are in the vanguard of this. But you've got CFOs
asking quite pointy questions around like, Okay, we're spending a
shitload of money on this social stuff. Now, this isn't
like a a joke or a little kind of like
niche part of our marketing spend. It's you know, millions,
if not tens of millions of dollars that we're spending
(25:08):
on this stuff. And frankly, obviously we've got reached impression numbers.
Like you, we wouldn't spend anything without getting those numbers. Frankly,
these engagement rates, like what do they mean?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Like?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Are they because people will engage with creative if they
hate it? Like those negative emotions could easily be drawing
those engagements because people are moved, but they're moved for
entirely the wrong reason, and it's doing a bad job
for the brand. So the most savvy brands are beginning
to understand, actually, we need to go much deeper with
(25:43):
this creative and we need to understand the impact that
it's having on the brand, not just racking up these
fairly meaningless numbers, but in understanding the impact that it's
having on the bottom line. I mean, the most forward
thinking brands are starting to want to try and put
our data into their mmms, their mixed marketing models to
(26:06):
understand the impact of creativity on the bottom line. Right,
because in the past it's not been possible to quantify
creativity and to measure all your creative at this goal
requires to add it as a variable within an MMM.
But now we can, we can measure all their creative
and it becomes a variable. And so most of all
(26:29):
thinking brands are putting that data into their mmms and
understanding the impact that the creative quality is having on
the bottom line. And cmos absolutely love that because for ages,
the CFO is like, well, you're doing a great job.
You've got all these engagement rates. Do it with half
the amount of money, reducing their budgets, And the CMO
is like, well, it doesn't really work that way, but
(26:50):
now there's a way to prove it. Give me more money,
I'll create better stuff and my creativity that the output
of my team is contributing to fifty or whatever it
might be of the ROI. So we're very much proving
that value of creativity and which is what CFOs are
asking for and cmos as well. So there's definitely been
(27:14):
this shift towards this space and generating this kind of
data at scale in a way where you know, five
or six years ago, engagement rates and reached and impressions
were fine, but they're not fine anymore. They're not enough.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
So that last thing, the last commony you made in
terms of like companies now using your data to give
more context to example, clicks and whatever kind of heart metrics.
Is that something that you guys picked up on and
have moved into your conversation to help with your convincing
(27:54):
and to make your argument more convincing, or is that
something that brands themselves kind of like it's figured out,
are kind of you know, asking more of than like
we've got this data already, we understand that generating clicks.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Whatever we want now the next level?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Or is there something that you guys picked up on
said hanging I'm going to this could work for those
companies that are still too focused on hard data.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
We can kind of change a little bit of the.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Argument and bring it like that to them and that
might generate more interest.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Well, so we've been saying, we've been banging this drum
for a long time, the need to move beyond these
fairly simplistic metrics and building in a way that we're
able to generate those metrics. So there's been like I
would say, a confluence of three things. One our methodology
(28:45):
and our views around what should be measured. Two is
our ability to measure those things at scale. So we
launched a fully AI powered solution back in October, and
that's just taking us to the next level in terms
of being able to deliver on that drum banging that
we've been doing. But also clients have also now started
(29:06):
to come to us. They've realized that this stuff matters,
and they're starting to ask us as well. So it's
like the classic product market fit. Right, we've had this
product and then we're like, okay, iterating changing changing in
the changing how we go to market and changing our
comms around how we present ourselves. It's like change, change, change,
(29:27):
chang change. But then also clients are like, oh, actually
we need to change now as well. And now that's
when you hear product market fits. When those two things
come together and it feels like in the last six
six to nine months that's really happened. It's really sparking now, fantastic.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It was great to hear.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
And so obviously, yeah, as you said, you're getting now
to this market fit as in, you know, client start
to understand how better you're getting I'm sure more demand
from different brands. So looking towards the future because I
can imagine you know, there's alreadys, some confidence look looking
at what you're doing and thinking maybe we can construct
something like that as well, or maybe we need to
(30:05):
move into this kind of more emotional metrics as well.
So looking towards the future, so I think two things.
So one is like, how do you see the market evolving,
especially obviously in your sector, but also obviously the advertising
market in general. And then how do you see David
kind of adapting itself to kind of stay ahead of
(30:26):
the competition and obviously also kind of keeping making different
happen kind of happening for your brand.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, look, great question. The market's moving this way, Like
I just said, right, the need to generate this wide
data scale is only going one way, so there can
be more and more clients are looking for this, and
so what we're offering. We're in a good place because
we're we've been in this space for a while. But
(31:01):
like you say, we've got competitors who are are moving
into this space. A lot of focus focused on attention
right now, because attention has been the big thing of
the advertising industry for the last four or five years.
So you've got a couple of companies doing like automated
attention metrics, which is great. We definitely need that as
(31:21):
an industry, but it does feel like I'm not sure
if you're I'm not sure if you went to Madfest
this year in London, just a couple of weeks ago,
but the whole talk around the attention stage at Madfest
was like, Okay, cool attention sort what next? Well next
his emotions honestly, and you know, I welcome people moving
(31:46):
into that space. It's like System one for instance. System one,
great business. I've known those guys for years and they
were pioneers in this space. They were looking at emotions
when we were I can really days and did a
brilliant job. But you know they've not they haven't evolved
in the last time. They use the same way of
(32:07):
testing it for the last the last twelve years. And yeah,
they've got a nice story now and you know they're
pumping out all this research across LinkedIn. Well, that's great
for us because that's strengthening this story around emotions are important,
but you've got to have the product know how to
back it up because you know, their methodology is not
really fit for purpose these days because the amount of
(32:30):
creative which is just exploded exponentially. So where I back
us is in a unique experience around emotions I'm very
lucky to have worked and really and with Karen back
in the day and with all these academics, and just
to have been able to build this quite unique experience
(32:50):
around this particular space, to be able to create our
own emotional categorization. You know, people could do a similar
kind of thing, but I don't. I think we'll take
them quite a while to build what we've built with
all the learnings that we've had over the years and
everything that we've learned around like how to collect our
(33:12):
training data and what it takes to curate the content,
which then goes into the building of the training data
in each country. But the more we learn and the
more we build, the more of a data moat that
we have around us, and all the while we're not
just focusing. So that's one of our pillars of success,
(33:34):
right It is the actual technology and the data upon
which it's built. But the other two pillars we're taking
straight out of the Unruly playbook, which is build an
amazing brand which stands out that's huge intangible point of difference,
which we put a lot of effort into, and also
build an incredible culture that was one really was so
(33:57):
good at it was just such a brilliant place to be,
which is a real meritocracy where we absolutely lived and
died by our values, and we hired based on those
values as well, and we ended up being able to
hire incredible people who would stay there for I was
there for seven years, and that wasn't unusual where in
an industry, most like average ten years, like you know,
(34:20):
maybe two two and a half years, when you can
get incredible people working, all pulling together in the same direction,
working with pure a players loving it and just in
a really good psychological place, a good emotional place to
deliver their best doing amazing work. And then that means
(34:43):
you can hire better people as well. You know that
again is this huge and tangible point of difference, which
you know, I think it's quite hard for people to replicate.
So those three things as well, I think we'll continue
to carry yes for it.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
No, I guess, I guess there's the benefit of making
different happen, right, Like you create your own space and
you make it super appealing to other to people who
want to make different happen as well. And obviously that
there's a certain talent that you're attract with that, So
that makes total sense. Ian, I think we were going
(35:21):
to wrap up because we can talk probably for not
an hour or two about about your business and about
you know, the emotions of advertising. But obviously you know
we want to we want to keep listeners engaged. We
don't want to kind of like get on board with
with with with our personal conversations around this topic. So
(35:42):
thank you very much, Ian for for your time. Thanks
thanks a lot for talking you through, David. What you're
doing where you see the future is in terms of,
you know the importance of creative, the importance of the
emotions that that creative evoke. Certainly I can I can see.
(36:03):
I mean, obviously we are we as a as a promotive,
we're big supporters of this, of this philosophy, and obviously,
as you said, now everything is coming together.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
So I'm sure we're going to.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
See lots more of David's obviously looking forward to see
a lot more flamingos appearing in LinkedIn and in other places,
because it makes makes the world a better place and
a happier place.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
So thank you very much. Ian.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Just one more question I have Before we were close off,
we obviously had the podcasters around making different happen, so
We're always looking for people that we that are living
this philosophy. Have you got any businesses or names that
you think should be featured on our podcast as well?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah, I would speature chap called Michael Brown that you Okay,
he's the head of head of research, but he's doing really,
really great work in the lgbt Q I A plus space,
particularly within the appetity industry and within research list in
(37:10):
terms of representation and and yeah, making those voices heard
in a cool way, and it's absolutely I think totally
aligned with Making Different Happen.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Fantastic as a concept. Yeah, sounds like it. So, yeah,
we'll get in touch with Michael. So, Michael, if you're listening,
we'll be in touch.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
But yeah, thank you. I thank you very much for
your time, and thanks everyone for listening.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
And we'll be back soon with another episode of Making
Different Happen.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Thank you,
Right, Hi, everyone, welcome to a podcast Making Different Happen.
I'm your host Coonsmeat's I'm the co founder of from Motive,
and we will be leading this. I will be leading
this series of podcasts in which we explore really kind
of like three main kind of questions and themes.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
First of all, I.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Kind of what we want to explore is what are
really the reasons why people and businesses are making different happen? Next,
what is really what is it that they are doing
differently and how is it driving a different outcome? And
then finally, how are they planning to keep themselves differentiated
from the competition given today's fast changing environments.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So we will kind of talking about those kind of topics.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Today we will be talking to a person whose company
is all about pink flamingos, but also about understanding the
emotions that creative advertising and content the folks, how this
really this understanding can be used to generate a different
business impact. And on top of that, at the heart
of the companies it's a wonderful AI technology, that probably is.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
But I'll have to obviously Ian can talk more about it.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
But I guess this I probably is the most knowledgeable
artificial brain when it comes to predicting outcomes based on
how people emotionally react to advertising. So please welcome Ian Forrester,
founder and CEO of David Ian. I hope I've done
your business justice with this a short intro. I haven't
(01:31):
really exaggerated too much.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
No, not at all. It's a great summary. Thank you
very much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Awesome, Thank you. Well.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Obviously, I mean we've picked you for a reason for
this podcast, and obviously that's first of all. You know,
our series is called Making Different Happen. And actually when
I see, first of all, when I see communication about
your business, David, it has making Different Happen written all
over it. Pink flamingos are never far away, something that
(02:01):
we definitely appreciate. But I guess we'll get to that shortly.
But also also more importantly, really about your business kind
of like you know, really when you when you guys communicate,
always get this feeling that's there's a fresh, fresh message
really around. You know, the importance of creative messaging, which
(02:21):
I think, especially in the last few years, has been
lost a little bit in the noise around media optimization.
Really media tactics a lot of the hypers being thrown
around in terms of you know, also attention, but also
lots of different topics that have kind of like taking
the spotlight. And actually we've forgotten a little bit about like,
(02:42):
you know, media and creative. Those two things need to
work together. So it's important not only we focus on
understanding media better, but also what's actually happened with creative.
So today, obviously we want to talk a little bit
more about that. But before we get into that, Ian,
what I would like to hear from you is.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
A little bit about the background to David.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So you know, when you kind of create a business
that is about making different happen, there's always usually there's
an interesting story sitting behind that.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
So can you tell.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Us a little bit about like what does the story
behind David and how do you kind of eventually kind
of created a business that is really about making different
happen in your specific space.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
Yeah, of course. So it's been an interesting journey. Honestly,
my career started in quite a traditional way. So I
was like on the grand scheme at Loreal after university
and I went to various big corporations, so I worked
at Nesle and Sony Pictures, and I was doing kind
of insight research, you type roles for about ten years.
(03:51):
But really the genesis of David was the day that
I walked into the Nruly office in twenty twelve, and
really media back in the day when they hired me
in twenty twelve, they actually hired my co founder, Barney
on the same day, and that's how I know Barney.
So we met that fateful day in September twenty twelve.
(04:14):
And it was just a really interesting business because they
had a unique set of data. They were collecting share
data on videos, and they had a way that they
could rank videos based on the number of shares that
they were achieving, and that was a really interesting data
set just for consumers to go on and see what's
(04:35):
the most shared video this week. But then brands started
going onto the chart and seeing that either they were
at the top or their competitor was at the top,
and they started asking Unruly, so why is my competitor
at the top of this chart, why am I not?
And how can I create a viral hit? Was basically
the underlying question, and that's what I was hired to
(04:56):
try and figure out. They had all this data, but
not really much of an idea what to do with it,
so I ended up joining as the first insight research person.
We did a bunch of work with Karen Nelson Field
back in the day, dusting a bunch of hypotheses around
what was driving video sharing, and we found it came
down to like emotions and then the rational reason to
(05:19):
go on and share. A combination of those two made
content more shareable. But the work that we did at Unruly,
particularly around emotions and advertising and the drivers of advertising effectiveness,
was really why David exists today because I found, like,
(05:39):
emotions are really strongly correlated with sharing, but emotions are
really strongly correlated not only with sharing, but all brand outcomes,
Any brand outcome that the brand is looking for. The
method of action is to evoke an emotion to get there,
because emotions are what raises content up above all the
other stuff we're being bombarded with on a daily basis.
(06:00):
That's what makes creative memorable, and you need to be
creating those memories to drive the actions which to the
brand wants. And it's this learning over the course of
like seven years at Unruly, all these things that I
found out about the method of action of creative which
we're now enacting at David and supercharging with all these
(06:20):
new bits of technology which have been released over the
last four or five years, which are now enabling us
to take the work we did it unruly to the
next level. But it was really unruly in the way
that unreally we're doing things differently. They had a different
data set, they had a different approach, They work with academics,
which very few people in the advertising industry did. It
(06:43):
was a super cool brand, amazing culture, all these all
these different things, like versus where I'd been in the
corporate world. I was dropped into this amazing business with
all these amazing people doing things very differently, which we're
now taking on, like we're we're focused on developing an
incredible culture and having a brilliant brand hence the flamingos,
(07:04):
and doing stuff which has not been done before. All
of that was seeded during the end really days.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Okay, So so yeah, because I remember and really as
well from back in the days obviously, because you know,
it's one of these brands, as you say, or one
of these companies which stood out.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
You know, on the one hand, it was kind of yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
We are a video video company and Obviously this was
the era when viral was still a big thing, right,
just kind of like everyone was looking for the next
viral and it was like how can we create it?
It was like, well, and really has got part of
the answer, not the entire answer, but it's got partons.
But it was kind of really different because the research
was done, as you said, around emotions. Well until then,
(07:44):
media was all very rational and like you know, the
research was being done about like yeah, all right, with
the brand stands for this or what stands for that
and therefore will work better. This was very much It
was a completely different approach and it was very exciting.
But I guess nowadays is not about virals. It's more
about like I'm in all of those different channels, where
(08:06):
how can I create cut through? As you say, how
can I kind of lift my brand above all of
these things? So it makes sense to kind of so
in a way, it's like the really solution updated for
the world we're living today, which is, you know, more
channels and not about viral so much, but more about
like you know, when you're out there, you're communicating something
(08:28):
that's that's more relevant.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
I guess, so, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
So, Ian kind of like kind of that's the background
to David. So David today, what actually what does it
stand for? What does it actually do and and how
is it actually you know, making different happen and therefore
so generating different outcomes.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Can you talk a little bit around that.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yes, So we're focused on creative effectiveness at scale and
what that means is we are generating this unique set
of data to help our clients understand why their creative
is working or not right. So we've built a creative
effectiveness process which is off the back of a meta
(09:11):
analysis which we performed on creative effectiveness studies both from
academia and industry. So that was the basis of the
business was to understand the creative effectiveness process, why is
some creative working versus others not and essentially the drivers
of creativity and the effectiveness of creativity. Three things. First
of all, you've got to be capturing attention, and within
(09:35):
today's world, that means within the first second and the
first three seconds, you've got to be capturing attention with
your creative because otherwise someone's just scrolled away. You've literally
have that little time to capture that attention. So how
you open the creative is super super important. Once you've
captured attention, you then need to do something with it.
And that's something is evoken intense positive emotion because that
(09:57):
the emotion which creates the cut through versus all the
other stuff we're being pomparded with on a daily basis. Right,
As humans, we are programmed to remember to remember stuff
which either makes us feel really good or makes us
feel really bad. Right, so, if you think about four
wednesdays ago what you were doing, you got no idea
(10:18):
because nothing really bad or really good happened. It was
just kind of a regular day. Yeah, you felt emotions,
but anywhere between like a four or six out of ten,
kind of middling, and so that gets forgotten immediately. But
you know, if I'm walking along and I get bitten
by a snake, I'm gonna remember that day for the
rest of my life. I'm going to stay away from
snakes as a result, because that's how we're programmed as
humans to remember that stuff which makes us feel really bad.
(10:41):
That's why the often people's first memories as a toddler
is like that traumatic incident where you got you got
separated from your mum, or you know, you fell out
of a tree or something that's like the first thing
that you can remember because you're like, shit, okay, I
need to not do that thing again. Equally, on the
positive side, you know you'll always remember the day your
first child was because of that huge flood of oxytocin
(11:02):
which you know that incredible experience that you had. Right,
And so, emotions, yes, they are a driver of sharing
back in the day, and they are key to virality.
But emotions aren't just key to reality. They're key to
every outcome that the brand wants because it creates the
memory that the brand wants. And when you're creating a
positive memory, you're attaching a positive emotion to that brand.
(11:25):
It's that memory which is going to nudge you to
do something at a later day it was that brand.
It also nudges you to do something immediately from a
performance point of view as well. So this stuff isn't
just relevant for brand building, it's relevant for lower funnel
as well. So if that is the base understanding, right,
this is the method of action. In order to understand
our creative we need to be gathering this data. And
(11:48):
there are ways to gather that data. More traditional ways
like facial coding and eye tracking and asking consumers questions.
You know, likes of system On and Realize and so
have been around for years, and it's possible to gather
that data. But what has not been possible to do
up to now is to gather that data at huge scale.
(12:09):
And that's really important now because, as you've alluded to,
the amount of creative which is being pumped out into
the world now has just exploded exponentially over the last
four or five years. You've got all these new channels,
You've got tech tuk and Snapchat and retail media and
Connective TV, and every brand under the sun is pumping
out stuff across all their socials and they're all swimming
(12:33):
in data. They're all swimming and engagement rate data and
view through data. Yeah, exactly, which I'm not suggesting we
stop collecting that data like it's not a bad thing.
But none of these data points, even brand left data
or sales data, none of those data points are telling
them the brand. Why they're telling the brand what people
(12:54):
view to the end, or they clicked or they purchased.
And this is all really important stuff to know, but
none of that tells you why the way comes down
to attention and emotion and memory. So this is what
we've built, is this system. It's AI system which can
ingest a piece of creative, understand what's happening in that
creative and then predict is this going to capture attention
(13:16):
in the first second or not? Which emotions where they
both positive and negative, are people going to remember the
brand or not? Because then you can stick all of
your social content through the model and produce this data
at a huge scale. And when you're doing that, you're
then learning from that body of work which you're putting
out into the world, and brands that doing that regularly,
(13:37):
they're learning, testing, learning and iterating and improving, and there's
a virtuous cycle comes into play with it. The creator
just gets better and better in the nut shal what
we're doing.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Yeah, yeah, very interesting because yeah, as you say, I
think it goes back to what we said earlier, right,
there's that emotion really that kind of usually is missing, right,
because it's very like testing traditional as you say, is
very much like okay, what is you know, does it
take this box, this box or this box? But it's
not like why does it take this box?
Speaker 2 (14:09):
And why not?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
And and so with the AI, as you said, kind
of like does that scale? But also obviously it kind
of allows you to keep improving, right, so you kind
of you can you can figure out which kind of
pieces are working better than others, and then kind of
like because you understand why, you can kind of see, okay,
the ones that are not performing well, maybe we need
(14:30):
to adjust this or that and then see if it
performs beat.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
So there's a whole iteration kind of program.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
There that can you know, can allow you to kind
of make things better over time.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
So that's really interesting. Cool cool, So that's very interesting.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
And so obviously I've got to go back to something
I mentioned earlier, So what is what is the pink
pink flamingos all about?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
So honestly, there's no rational reason why we've we've got
the It's just a distinctive asset, you know, to use
the words of Edinburgh Bass like it's it just stands
out we wanted I mean we we are, you know,
drinking our own call aid right like we and that's
that's what you see all over LinkedIn with all of
(15:15):
our posts. It's like, you know, it's deliberately everything we
do is deliberately a motive stand out. It's you know,
we're not boring people because obviously we're swimming in absolutely
tons of data. But and we could tell a very
rational data story, but you know, that's just that's not
going to get cut through. So we're very deliberate about
(15:38):
evoking emotions standing out, and the flamingo as part of that,
we can you know, use it in all kinds of
different ways. It stands out. It's pink. We call like
a group of flamingos. It's called a flamboyance. That's the
collective noun for flamingos, which we loved. So when people
join us, like they join the team or we sign
a new client, they're like, like, you're joining the flamboyance,
(16:00):
and it's just yeah, just a way to get waiting
to get and cut through.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Honestly, Yeah, totally, no, I know, it's really nice.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
So kind of like based on obviously all the work
that you've done so far, I guess there's a lot
of learnings that you have already from David in terms
of like certain brands or certain messages or whatever, certain
I don't know, certain Yeah, kind of like you know,
distinctive acids or whatever work really well. Certain learnings that
(16:29):
you can share that you see overall kind of like, well,
things that we see is like these kind of things
just are you know, almost always work or kind of
like really are are making a bigger impact art and
things like that you can you can share with the world.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, ultimately like the beyond opening the creative in the
right way, right, which means so in terms of attention
right in the first second, in the first or three seconds.
General learnings are, first of all, don't start with your brand.
Don't start with the logo. Quite often people are reend
(17:06):
recommending open with the logo because at least if someone
scrolls away, you're going to drive an impression of the logo.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:12):
I'm sure you've heard that like a million times, and
that's true. You do drive an impression of the logo,
but not all impressions are created equal. And if you're
interrupting someone's experience by showing them an ADS and your
logo is there, then they're irritated and they could well
be attaching that frustration, that anger in terms of the
emotions that we would call it like fair enough, it
(17:32):
might be mild, but they may attach that anger to
your brand and be less likely to purchase in the
future they don't open with your logo, and quite apart
from that, they're going to be much more likely to
scroll past because they know it's an ad like no
not for me. So open with intense positive emotions like bring,
(17:53):
bring that person into the story, and then develop the
storyline and then introduce the brand. So it just makes
it more likely that someone's going to give that piece
of creative a chance in the real world if you
open in an intensely positive way and then generally speaking,
intense positive emotions of the drivers of the memory, which
which are the key drivers of the outcomes that the
(18:14):
brand wants. Brands often ask us, okay, cool, which emotions like?
Because of the thirty nine emotions that we test for
twenty seven are positive and they're like so is warmth
best or inspiration best at driving sales? Or and honestly no,
All of those positive emotions can be used effectively to
(18:34):
create positive memories for a brand. A more interesting question
to ask is which emotions are right for my brand?
Like which emotions? Because not every brand can be funny
well right like. It often takes a quite extreme brand
to be able to push the boundaries with humor to
get to an eight or nine out of ten, because
(18:56):
often that's polarizing and some people don't like where they've
gone and from most like corporations, their brands are too
middle of the road to go to that really extreme
place to be able to reach those heights, which is
which is needed for humor. So think about which emotions
are right for your brand, like in terms of your
usp and your story and your your tone of voice
(19:18):
and your values, but also which emotions your competitors are voking,
like which within a within a category. We often do
these category analyses where we look at all the different
competitors within a category, and often they conform to these
tropes around creative for autos needs to be needs to
(19:39):
show some guy driving around like Lake Como in a
car or a city scape. You know, it's just super
super dull, and everyone's conforming to the same kind of
creative ideas and they're therefore evoking the same emotions. But
if a brand can evoke an unusual emotion versus its competitors,
then just by being different, it's going to stand out
(20:00):
being more memorable. It's like like said right Zig in
the World's Acts you didn't actually say why that's powerful.
The reason it's powerful is that you evoke an unusual
emotion which gains cut through, is much more memorable, and
then you add intensity to that difference. That's when you
get the double amy effect. So yeah, I mean there's
(20:22):
there's tons. One more thing I will say, actually, recent
piece of work that we've done, piece of research looking
at TikTok. We just looked at five brands and we
took their ten most recent tiktoks, so broad range of brands.
We have Mercedes, Gucci, Duolingo, Persal, Sam Sam, the global
(20:45):
pages looked at the last ten assets, so it was
completely random sample, which is the last ten things that
they posted right and pull those through the model. The
vast majority of that creative sixty percent was just a
bit met There's like not really a strong positive emotion,
not really a strong negative emotion, a bit of boredom
(21:08):
and confusion in there, just forgettable, like there's no point
in posting that because people have forgotten literally ten seconds later,
it's kind of a nothing video. A small proportion sixteen
percent were doing a really good job for the brand,
and each brand had its own example of like really
strong content, decent positive emotions, decent brand recall, telling a
(21:33):
really nice story, doing a good job for the brand.
But twenty four percent, like almost a quarter, were evoking
intense negative emotions like shame and horror and discussed and
all these things which commercial brands don't want to be
playing in that space. That's going to turn people off.
And you know the problem is brands are pumping this
(21:56):
stuff out into the world without understanding the impact that
it's having. They're getting engagement rates and view through rates
back from the platforms are like, well, this is a
good one engaging rate and this one didn't have a
good engageent rate. But that's a very broad brush metric
to base these decisions on when you know, we live
in a world where the wrong piece of creative can
(22:16):
knot percentage points off a share price if you get
it really badly wrong, right, Yeah, I mean like a
blood light, like you know, you need to be thinking
about this before moving out there. So yeah, I mean
this and this is what we're doing, like being able
to give our clients the ability to understand this stuff
at scale. It's just the ones that are really leaning
(22:39):
in it's giving them a huge competitive advantage.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, no, I guess, like you know, there's any company
that kind of lives according to the making different Happen
live philosophy. Well, no, it's kind of obviously what you're
telling makes total sense, and probably most people will agree
with what what you just told what you just told us.
(23:02):
But then if you tell this too, when you tell
this to a brand, all of a sudden, I can
imagine there's a lot of resistance to what you actually
are saying because and I think you just mentioned it
just before as actually you know, brands nowadays are saying like, yeah,
you can tell me that this piece of content might
evoke negative feelings, but look at the click through rate
(23:26):
that we got, and actually that's what I'm interested in.
So I can imagine I don't know if it's true,
but I can imagine that you get a lot of
resistance to say, actually looking at at the way that
you guys are doing it with focusing on emotions and
the feelings that consumers have when they look at a
piece of content, it's.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Not the right way.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
You should look at the heart metrics because that's really
what matters and that's going to drive business results.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Is that something that you come across.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
So is that is it hard to kind of get
your message across and get people to believe it and
you know, not even believe it, but obviously act upon
it as well, because that's the most important part.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
No, that's a great question. And I mean it has
been in the past when marketers have been targeted with
driving engagement rates and with just pure vanity metrics like
reaching impressions and just number of likes. You know, they
don't need to think about the emotions that are being
(24:25):
about because they've been targeted on these metrics and they've
hit their numbers, and you know, everyone goes home and
pats with each other on the back and goes home.
But what we're finding increasingly, there's been particularly in the
like say in the last nine months, there's been this
sea change. Yeah, the most forward thinking brands right now
(24:47):
are in the vanguard of this. But you've got CFOs
asking quite pointy questions around like, Okay, we're spending a
shitload of money on this social stuff. Now, this isn't
like a a joke or a little kind of like
niche part of our marketing spend. It's you know, millions,
if not tens of millions of dollars that we're spending
(25:08):
on this stuff. And frankly, obviously we've got reached impression numbers.
Like you, we wouldn't spend anything without getting those numbers. Frankly,
these engagement rates, like what do they mean?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
Like?
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Are they because people will engage with creative if they
hate it? Like those negative emotions could easily be drawing
those engagements because people are moved, but they're moved for
entirely the wrong reason, and it's doing a bad job
for the brand. So the most savvy brands are beginning
to understand, actually, we need to go much deeper with
(25:43):
this creative and we need to understand the impact that
it's having on the brand, not just racking up these
fairly meaningless numbers, but in understanding the impact that it's
having on the bottom line. I mean, the most forward
thinking brands are starting to want to try and put
our data into their mmms, their mixed marketing models to
(26:06):
understand the impact of creativity on the bottom line. Right,
because in the past it's not been possible to quantify
creativity and to measure all your creative at this goal
requires to add it as a variable within an MMM.
But now we can, we can measure all their creative
and it becomes a variable. And so most of all
(26:29):
thinking brands are putting that data into their mmms and
understanding the impact that the creative quality is having on
the bottom line. And cmos absolutely love that because for ages,
the CFO is like, well, you're doing a great job.
You've got all these engagement rates. Do it with half
the amount of money, reducing their budgets, And the CMO
is like, well, it doesn't really work that way, but
(26:50):
now there's a way to prove it. Give me more money,
I'll create better stuff and my creativity that the output
of my team is contributing to fifty or whatever it
might be of the ROI. So we're very much proving
that value of creativity and which is what CFOs are
asking for and cmos as well. So there's definitely been
(27:14):
this shift towards this space and generating this kind of
data at scale in a way where you know, five
or six years ago, engagement rates and reached and impressions
were fine, but they're not fine anymore. They're not enough.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
So that last thing, the last commony you made in
terms of like companies now using your data to give
more context to example, clicks and whatever kind of heart metrics.
Is that something that you guys picked up on and
have moved into your conversation to help with your convincing
(27:54):
and to make your argument more convincing, or is that
something that brands themselves kind of like it's figured out,
are kind of you know, asking more of than like
we've got this data already, we understand that generating clicks.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Whatever we want now the next level?
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Or is there something that you guys picked up on
said hanging I'm going to this could work for those
companies that are still too focused on hard data.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
We can kind of change a little bit of the.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Argument and bring it like that to them and that
might generate more interest.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Well, so we've been saying, we've been banging this drum
for a long time, the need to move beyond these
fairly simplistic metrics and building in a way that we're
able to generate those metrics. So there's been like I
would say, a confluence of three things. One our methodology
(28:45):
and our views around what should be measured. Two is
our ability to measure those things at scale. So we
launched a fully AI powered solution back in October, and
that's just taking us to the next level in terms
of being able to deliver on that drum banging that
we've been doing. But also clients have also now started
(29:06):
to come to us. They've realized that this stuff matters,
and they're starting to ask us as well. So it's
like the classic product market fit. Right, we've had this
product and then we're like, okay, iterating changing changing in
the changing how we go to market and changing our
comms around how we present ourselves. It's like change, change, change,
(29:27):
chang change. But then also clients are like, oh, actually
we need to change now as well. And now that's
when you hear product market fits. When those two things
come together and it feels like in the last six
six to nine months that's really happened. It's really sparking now, fantastic.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
It was great to hear.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
And so obviously, yeah, as you said, you're getting now
to this market fit as in, you know, client start
to understand how better you're getting I'm sure more demand
from different brands. So looking towards the future because I
can imagine you know, there's alreadys, some confidence look looking
at what you're doing and thinking maybe we can construct
something like that as well, or maybe we need to
(30:05):
move into this kind of more emotional metrics as well.
So looking towards the future, so I think two things.
So one is like, how do you see the market evolving,
especially obviously in your sector, but also obviously the advertising
market in general. And then how do you see David
kind of adapting itself to kind of stay ahead of
(30:26):
the competition and obviously also kind of keeping making different
happen kind of happening for your brand.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Yeah, look, great question. The market's moving this way, Like
I just said, right, the need to generate this wide
data scale is only going one way, so there can
be more and more clients are looking for this, and
so what we're offering. We're in a good place because
we're we've been in this space for a while. But
(31:01):
like you say, we've got competitors who are are moving
into this space. A lot of focus focused on attention
right now, because attention has been the big thing of
the advertising industry for the last four or five years.
So you've got a couple of companies doing like automated
attention metrics, which is great. We definitely need that as
(31:21):
an industry, but it does feel like I'm not sure
if you're I'm not sure if you went to Madfest
this year in London, just a couple of weeks ago,
but the whole talk around the attention stage at Madfest
was like, Okay, cool attention sort what next? Well next
his emotions honestly, and you know, I welcome people moving
(31:46):
into that space. It's like System one for instance. System one,
great business. I've known those guys for years and they
were pioneers in this space. They were looking at emotions
when we were I can really days and did a
brilliant job. But you know they've not they haven't evolved
in the last time. They use the same way of
(32:07):
testing it for the last the last twelve years. And yeah,
they've got a nice story now and you know they're
pumping out all this research across LinkedIn. Well, that's great
for us because that's strengthening this story around emotions are important,
but you've got to have the product know how to
back it up because you know, their methodology is not
really fit for purpose these days because the amount of
(32:30):
creative which is just exploded exponentially. So where I back
us is in a unique experience around emotions I'm very
lucky to have worked and really and with Karen back
in the day and with all these academics, and just
to have been able to build this quite unique experience
(32:50):
around this particular space, to be able to create our
own emotional categorization. You know, people could do a similar
kind of thing, but I don't. I think we'll take
them quite a while to build what we've built with
all the learnings that we've had over the years and
everything that we've learned around like how to collect our
(33:12):
training data and what it takes to curate the content,
which then goes into the building of the training data
in each country. But the more we learn and the
more we build, the more of a data moat that
we have around us, and all the while we're not
just focusing. So that's one of our pillars of success,
(33:34):
right It is the actual technology and the data upon
which it's built. But the other two pillars we're taking
straight out of the Unruly playbook, which is build an
amazing brand which stands out that's huge intangible point of difference,
which we put a lot of effort into, and also
build an incredible culture that was one really was so
(33:57):
good at it was just such a brilliant place to be,
which is a real meritocracy where we absolutely lived and
died by our values, and we hired based on those
values as well, and we ended up being able to
hire incredible people who would stay there for I was
there for seven years, and that wasn't unusual where in
an industry, most like average ten years, like you know,
(34:20):
maybe two two and a half years, when you can
get incredible people working, all pulling together in the same direction,
working with pure a players loving it and just in
a really good psychological place, a good emotional place to
deliver their best doing amazing work. And then that means
(34:43):
you can hire better people as well. You know that
again is this huge and tangible point of difference, which
you know, I think it's quite hard for people to replicate.
So those three things as well, I think we'll continue
to carry yes for it.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
No, I guess, I guess there's the benefit of making
different happen, right, Like you create your own space and
you make it super appealing to other to people who
want to make different happen as well. And obviously that
there's a certain talent that you're attract with that, So
that makes total sense. Ian, I think we were going
(35:21):
to wrap up because we can talk probably for not
an hour or two about about your business and about
you know, the emotions of advertising. But obviously you know
we want to we want to keep listeners engaged. We
don't want to kind of like get on board with
with with with our personal conversations around this topic. So
(35:42):
thank you very much, Ian for for your time. Thanks
thanks a lot for talking you through, David. What you're
doing where you see the future is in terms of,
you know the importance of creative, the importance of the
emotions that that creative evoke. Certainly I can I can see.
(36:03):
I mean, obviously we are we as a as a promotive,
we're big supporters of this, of this philosophy, and obviously,
as you said, now everything is coming together.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
So I'm sure we're going to.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
See lots more of David's obviously looking forward to see
a lot more flamingos appearing in LinkedIn and in other places,
because it makes makes the world a better place and
a happier place.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
So thank you very much. Ian.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Just one more question I have Before we were close off,
we obviously had the podcasters around making different happen, so
We're always looking for people that we that are living
this philosophy. Have you got any businesses or names that
you think should be featured on our podcast as well?
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Yeah, I would speature chap called Michael Brown that you Okay,
he's the head of head of research, but he's doing really,
really great work in the lgbt Q I A plus space,
particularly within the appetity industry and within research list in
(37:10):
terms of representation and and yeah, making those voices heard
in a cool way, and it's absolutely I think totally
aligned with Making Different Happen.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Fantastic as a concept. Yeah, sounds like it. So, yeah,
we'll get in touch with Michael. So, Michael, if you're listening,
we'll be in touch.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
But yeah, thank you. I thank you very much for
your time, and thanks everyone for listening.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
And we'll be back soon with another episode of Making
Different Happen.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Thank you,
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