The Science of Advertising Show

A Hollywood actress, a betting app almost nobody had heard of, and an ad that broke the internet. Sydney Sweeney, reportedly with equity in the business, fronted a campaign so controversial that fifteen sportswomen publicly came out against it, and it worked. The app shot up the download charts and the whole internet argued about it for a week. We break down why the outrage was the strategy, with a CMO who has spent 30 years behind...

Most brands spend 90% of their budget on what people say, then wonder why nobody remembers them. Here is the uncomfortable truth. Ipsos tested every distinctive asset you can put in an ad, characters, logos, colours, celebrities, and the single biggest driver of recall was none of them. It was sound. This episode, three ads prove it.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of The Science of Advertising. The s...

Every category runs the same way. The brand that plants a shortcut in your head, a comparison, a character, a phrase or a sound, wins before you even decide. Once that shortcut takes root, the buying decision is basically over. This episode, three brands take three different bets on it, and one Australian campaign that ran 20 years and rewrote its entire category.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of Th...

Ads don't work on people. They work on people's brains. And one rule runs through all of it: nothing is ever judged on its own, everything is judged against a comparison, and the brand that chooses the comparison first wins. This episode, three brands make three very different bets on it.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of The Science of Advertising. The show is produced with Undivided, an independent...

Audio is the first channel your brain opens, and the last one it ever closes. From newborns recognising a sound they only heard in the womb, to the brain still reacting in its final hours, sound reaches us when nothing else can. So why do most brands treat it as an afterthought? This episode we fix that.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of The Science of Advertising. The show is produced with Undivided...

Nothing is judged on its own, everything is judged against a comparison, and the smartest brands break the pattern their category is stuck in. This episode, one brand shatters a 50 year convention, and three others crash straight into each other. And for once, the agency behind one of the ads is in the room to defend its own work.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of The Science of Advertising. The show...

Brilliant strategy. Millions in budget. And a tiny execution detail your brain hates that no survey could ever catch. This episode, Peter Pynta reads real brain activity second by second and shows why some of the most beautifully made ads secretly fail, and why one bank quietly wins by promising less.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of The Science of Advertising. The show is produced with Undivided, a...

Three Australian banks are running three completely different experiments on your brain. One built its entire brand out of AI-generated animals. One makes saving feel desirable. One goes on the attack against a rival's fine print. But every one of them has the same weakness: they make claims, and claims are cheap. So we finish on the one thing advertising can do that no claim can touch, proof.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, C...

Your brain cannot feel a number, but it can never forget a wave. That one flaw in how we think runs through everything this episode. We autopsy the craft behind a political ad that turned a debt figure into a tsunami of red ink, look at a bold US political stunt, referee a war between two vitamin giants fighting over your feelings, and break down the celebrity playbook that built an empire. Not the politics, the craft.

HOSTE...

Most ads today are a waste of money, and not because the work is bad. Some of it is brilliant. The problem is that good was never the job. Being remembered was. In this episode, we get inside how that actually happens, with the rare treat of a CMO breaking down his own campaign.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of The Science of Advertising. The show is produced with Undivided, an independent media age...

Google has a problem, and it might be your biggest opportunity.

When AI answers the question before anyone clicks, how does your brand survive? In this special feature, Jonathan Rolley sits down with Josh from Studio Hawk, Australia's largest pure play SEO agency, to break down the zero click world: AI search, GEO, and what every CMO should be losing sleep over right now.

They get into why traffic is dropping while conversions are cl...

The guest called it possibly the worst ad he has seen since before COVID. We also break down an ad that sold out in 45 minutes on zero paid spend. This week is all about brand partnerships, the ones that make you love both brands, and the ones that make you question both.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided and host of The Science of Advertising.
The show is produced with Undivided, an independent media agency...

AI is now writing, casting and even acting in the ads you watch. The real question is whether any of it actually works.

HOSTED BY
Jonathan Rolley, CEO of Undivided & host of The Science of Advertising Show.

THIS EPISODE’S GUESTS:

Peter Pynta, Neuro Insights, one of the sharpest voices on how advertising actually works in the brain.

Kristian Curcio, founder of Corsa Group, who launched a nati...

The Australian Retirement Trust Blue Monster won the awards, won the attention, and got a whole category talking. So we asked the question nobody in the room wanted to: did any of it actually move members?

In this episode we break down the attention trap, why winning
attention is not the same as winning the customer.

This Episodes Guest:
Peter Pynta, a 28 year veteran of the media, advertising and research worl...