10 More Things// Media, Pre-testing & Mars Inc
In this edition: What media will look like in 2025, why everyone should be pre-testing and the corporate history of Mars Inc.
Squeezing in a final 10 More Things into 2024 before I wind down for the year. Big thanks to everyone that subscribed and continues to read this. Without you I’d just be emailing notes about articles to myself.
The media bit
What’s Old Is New, What’s New Is Old. A bigger picture view of the big trends in media by Rich Kirk, EssenceMediacom CSO. 2 big insights stand out to me:
The current media narrative is already out-dated, stuck in an era of low interest rates where tech companies prioritised growth over sustainable business models. That’s no longer the case. These same tech brands need cash and are turning to advertising models to make their businesses sustainable. Look around and you’ll see this is already shaking up the media landscape and birthing loads of high quality formats and opportunities.
Podcasts and content are more than the platforms you associate with them. I love The Rest Is Politics, I listen to Leading on my podcast app but I also (sometimes) watch the main podcast on YouTube or TikTok. I even went to see them live at the O2 and watched some of their US election coverage live. It’s time we stopped thinking about things as one channel and about these as rounded VISUAL opportunities. Read the article to see how Rich defines VISUAL.
The New Rules For Media. This is written from the perspective of a writer wanting to adapt to the big changes in media. It complements a lot of Rich’s article but from a different perspective. Some of the best ones:
“Each time a platform decays or fades in popularity there is a fresh chance to reset the online hierarchy. New voices go from obscurity to prominence and old brands start losing their holds on authority. Look for those moments and take advantage of them. (See the exodus from X to Threads and Bluesky.)”
“Everything is iterative. A single Instagram or Twitter account becomes a newsletter becomes a small publication with a few contributors becomes a corporation. (See The Free Press.) Thus it makes sense to build your concept in public and test its engagement at every stage. Every powerful brand starts with a single post. As with restaurants, new publications or writerly personas will pop up in established spaces and then go independent when they can survive alone”.
“Broadcast on every channel, at least if you want to intensify your personality cult: text, livestream, video, audio. Jamelle Bouie broadcasts his ideas (and persona) on every platform at once. His TikTok commenters mostly ask him where he buys his very fashionable jackets. Now we’re watching Ezra Klein talk on the NYT site as well as listening to him. You have to be better than the rando parroting your articles in a selfie video”
EssenceMediacom 2024 Predictions - Evaluation. I loved this initiative when it was produced last year. End of year trend decks are vanity projects that no one actually reads. Instead we put out 10 predictions with the promise we hold ourselves accountable at the end of the year. The predictions were hedges on the future that brands could use to create competitive advantage in their 2024 plans. Well, this is the evaluation. 50/80 - a very good score considering how plucky some of the predictions were. Look out for 2025 predictions dropping soon…
The advertising bit
Pre-testing Is A No-Brainer. This changed my mind on pre-testing ads. The argument against it is people don’t know what they want, ads should ladder into the strategy and the research methodology is very shonky. But pre-testing has come on a long way now you can build quick mock ups that give a much clearer indication of what the ad will look like once produced. Plus System 1 have done a good job standardising the results so it’s easy to assess. I don’t think we should be as beholden to the results as Ritson suggests (System 1 doesn’t account for strategy) but it seems like every advertiser should now pre-test.
Pick Your Audience Last. A take I’d not heard before: pick the audience last. Most people would say you should pick your audience first and then build a campaign around the audience. Audience → Insight → Strategy. That way has an obvious flaw: it’s generic. Everyone in the category probably has the same audience and follows pretty similar role for comms. Generic is the enemy of great advertising.
Comms strategy (not comms planning) is about extenuating the differences of your brand vs the category, in an entertaining way. The obsession with audience at the expense of comms strategy probably (at least partly) explains the drop in ad quality in recent years.
As planners we need to be obsessed by audiences as ultimately we’re responsible for delivering the ads to audiences. As strategists we should be obsessed by the category and the brand’s role within it.
As always the answer to which approach is better is ‘depends’ but we should at least consider this approach as an option.
Compounding Creativity. Creatively consistent companies compound effectiveness. If you switch advertising approach every few years you are losing out on the the most effective thing: compounding. Too many brands end famous campaigns because they think the public are bored of hearing the same thing. That’s almost never the case. KitKat have been running ‘Have A Break’ since 1957 and I think we can agree no one is bored of that.
Pick N Mix
The History of Mars Inc. Acquired is the best business podcast - by far. It’s not even close. It’s more The Rest Is History: Corporate than it is a business podcast. It covers history, sociology, biography, economics all wrapped in fantastic storytelling with presenters who get a huge kick out of the subjects they cover. Some of my notes:
Forrest Mars was the Steve Jobs of confectionery. If you want to understand the discipline of the Mars family then you need to understand him. His dad, Frank Mars, created Mars but Forrest is the one who made Mars.
First Forrest went to Switzerland to work with Lindt and Toblerone in the factory, anonymously. Who goes from running a successful company to working in a competitor's factory?? The Steve Jobs of confectionary does that.
Snickers was named after the Mars’ family favourite horse.
Forrest Mars conceived M&Ms (a copy of Smarties) while locked outside his dad’s business once he had moved to the US. M&Ms was a genius business move: a joint partnership between Forrest Mars and Bruce Murray (M&Ms) - the son of William Murray who ran Hersheys. Mars somehow convinced Hersheys to provide the chocolate and production in exchange for only 20% of the company. It became so popular that it eventually allowed him to merge with his dad’s Mars US company creating the Mars we know today.
Another reason the M&Ms partnership was genius is because this was at a time when Hersheys supplied Mars with chocolate. The M&Ms deal was made just before the US entered WW2. Just before chocolate was going to be rationed. Hersheys cut chocolate supply to Mars US but not M&Ms. William Murray was hardly going to cut chocolate supply to his son’s company, was he?
This blew my mind: Mars is now a $50bn per year business. Only $18bn is snacking. The rest is pet care. 59% of their business. 100k out of 140k Mars employees work in pet care. Their new CEO came from pet food. They are now a pet care company that makes chocolate.
Synonym Circuit. Another golden mini-game that’s worth wasting 30 seconds of your time on.
Contagious 2024 IQ Report. Always a reliable guide to the best campaigns of the year.
Technically that’s only 9 things but as I’m contractually obliged by the format to provide 10 things, I will use my power to make the 10th thing a simple Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hope you all have a relaxing break and…
….See you in 2025 ✌️
Alex