Mail Unleashed Live: the Cannes Lions conversation - Transcript
Rory Sutherland
Hi, I'm Rory Sutherland. Welcome to Cannes. I'm here with Marketreach. Here at the Empower Cafe. Let's go. Joining me on stage. In order. Next is Mr Andrew Tindall, the chief growth officer for System1. Andrew, come and join us on stage. Fantastic. Claire Sadler, CMO of the British Heart Foundation. And Kate Mackie, who is the Global Chief Marketing Strategy and Operations Officer for EY. So this is absolutely a joy to be on board. As I always say, the weird thing is. That this applies both to media selection and to creative execution. Which is, as Bill Bernbach pointed out. Fundamental human psychology doesn't actually change very much. There are lots of things where we had the benefit of 20,30, 40 years experience. Which worked extremely well 10, 15, 20 years ago. In many cases they never stopped working. What happened is people stopped talking about them. And what's actually important and what gets talked about. Are emphatically not the same thing. And so, for example, I would make the case jingles still work. Although you've got to call them sonic branding now. Long copy press advertising still works. You know. Mass TV still works. Okay. All that simply happened. Is that when these things die off, it's never for a good reason, fundamentally. So I think there's a role for media conservatism and media arbitrage. Which is simply double down on the things that everyone else is ignoring. What would you say, there's also a new creative brand lion. Which is probably many, many years overdue. Which is an award for effectively sustained work. Work over the long term. What's worth mentioning here. What role has mail played in that? I mean in terms of those sort of elements of consistency. In terms of sustained brand building.
Andrew Tindall
So I think how a brand creates lasting effects needs to focus on creating brand memories obviously. We were talking about this earlier. And I think what I've found in my research with Effie and System1 is. Over the past five years, we've seen a shift in different brand effects being more linked to profit and market share growth. Trust and fame are becoming really, really important. And I think, when you need trust and fame, leaning into these unpopular traditional media channels is really useful. Especially with mail, it's trust building. You see a massive impact on the amount of trust a campaign creates if you include mail, but alongside kind of radio and TV as well.
Rory Sutherland
Why do you think that is, that conventional media are vastly better trust builders?
Kate Mackie
I mean, I think you're spending time in someone's house. Yeah, I think that's a that's a kind of a big point. Creepy. I know creepy. Well, Andrew, definitely, if you're there with your fans. But I think if you're going through someone's letterbox rather than their inbox. The in real life versus URL piece, absolutely lasts. And it means that you as a brand are driving much more, I think trust. Because you're not a flash in the pan. You're not just pushing junk into mailboxes. You're absolutely driving post through somebody's front door.
Rory Sutherland
In the case of charities, by the way. You could argue that probably 50% of the world's charities wouldn't survive. And certainly wouldn't have been created without it. That's probably fair. I mean, you know. When we got attacked in the old days of direct mail. People always replied, yes, but it saved the whale. Which was, broadly speaking true. You wouldn't have achieved that level of regular donation without it.
Claire Sadler
Definitely. And mail still forms an important part of our overall media mix. But it does land in people's homes and it sticks in people's homes. If it's well done, i.e it's relevant, it's engaging. It cuts through the noise. A piece of direct mail will hang around for a few days or a few weeks. A lot longer than an email will or an Instagram will. So it depends. It always depends on what your objective is. What's your marketing objective? What's your communications objective? But it absolutely has a really important role to play within our mix. And certainly some pieces of activity particularly if we're trying to get sign ups for regular giving, or sign ups for legacy pledges in the future. It can contribute 6% of those signups. So it's fairly significant.
Andrew Tindall
That's a really interesting idea how long an ad hangs around for. So I did some research with the IPA called compound creativity. Looking at consistency. In that research we looked at the average time someone keeps a TV ad on air for. And some brands keep their TV ads on air for about seven days on average. Whereas, I think mail on average hangs out in someone's house for eight and a half days.
Rory Sutherland
B2B wants to take on that? Well, I think from from our perspective. We sell at an enterprise level. So it's quite hard to really target B2B. And get through the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper often of the CSO is the EA is the PA. So trying to get that cut through within DM is more difficult. So you have to differentiate. It can't just be the kind of normal letter.
Rory Sutherland
And we also, by the way, launched a defense on top of some very, very expensive direct mail. We produce something for Rolls-Royce Aero engines. Where each piece ran into four figures. But the point is a single aero engine order renders that completely irrelevant. There's also that incredible value of costly signaling, isn't there? Which is the amount you spend on the communication is inferred by the recipient as evidence, both of its importance, but also its exclusivity. Because patently you're not sending those things to 50,000 people. And so you refer to the fantastic phrase of mail as a super touchpoint, don't you? Which comes out of System1 research. Which I think is really, really interesting.
Andrew Tindall
Yes, I have stolen that phrase from JICMAIL. But they were using it kind of like, you know, flippantly. And I was like, no, I'll put some numbers to it. So sort of. So, a super touch point. I call a super touchpoint. Well, I'll explain where it comes from from a data point of view. If you look at the types of media touchpoints used in campaigns and across the Effie data set that I often research. Because US and Europe. You could actually look at the average impact on direct effects and long lasting brand building. And the ones that kind of buck the trend that do both really well. I will call a super touchpoint. They can do the long and the short unusually well.
Rory Sutherland
The other interesting thing is that there is something about a letter which even bizarrely, it's not. It's not something that just addressable mail has as a property. Because email doesn't have this problem. You feel a piece of direct mail warrants some sort of response. Now, that response may be no. But you are at least in a hot seat and you're in a position where you have to make a decision. Do you have the opportunity to do programmatic direct mail? Physical mail?
Claire Sadler
Yes. It's dependent on your data. And what data you have and behavioral signals you have. We do use it in, I suppose, a personalised way. In terms of more 1 to 1 personalisation within direct mail. Yes. But those behavioral signals in terms of lifestyle changes and what people might be searching for and how much of that you can capture. Comes back to how, you know. How effective you are in terms of data capture. And ultimately understanding your customers.
Rory Sutherland
How about B2B? Do you do anything because programmatic seems to be a big growth area both in the US.
Kate Mackie
So the way we look at it, account-based marketing. So it's much more around the account itself and how you're trying to drive the account holistically forward. So depending on who the individual is. What their kind of position is themselves. What you might be trying to sell to them might give you different generosity points. Which could be delivered through programmatic. So for instance, if we are. I'm brand side at EY. So one of the things that we do from a generosity perspective is we happily tell our story about any of the things that we do internally. As a kind of client zero. And that case study of how we do it. What we've learned, what we can do is something that CMO really value.
Rory Sutherland
And presumably you can also do it. I mean. Were you influenced by the LinkedIn research that showed that in the wider decision making unit over any appointment in B2B. Bizarrely, you know, brand saliency and recognition is disproportionately important because. It's hugely important.
Claire Sadler
We talked about this. The importance of emotion in B2B marketing, probably 15, 20 years ago Rory. It's still absolutely. Still selling to humans.
Kate Mackie
You're still selling to people. There's there's also brilliant. The toothpaste thing. You don't get fired. You don't lose your job if you buy the wrong toothpaste.
Rory Sutherland
So the idea that B2B decisions aren't emotional is obviously nonsensical. Because the downside consequences of getting it wrong are usually considerably worse. Yeah. We did something very interesting. Which I'll share with everybody else. Which I thought was a really interesting approach to the decision making unit. Which is we wrote to everybody in the decision making unit. Now, the decision making unit would have been someone from procurement, someone from engineering, someone from finance. And we explained not what they wanted to know. But what the other people wanted to know. Now they'll never forgive me, by the way, if we don't talk about door drops. Which is also part of the mail medium. It has the advantage, many of the advantages. It's not addressable. It's not so good at costly signaling. It doesn't convey exclusivity. But in other respects, it has a lot of the advantages of the mail medium and at scale. And it's physical and keepable. And you might argue also, you know. In a sense, the trust element of tangible things. Seems to me all fairly, fairly important.
Andrew Tindall
And the publicness of it. So when you really want. So you guys obviously need to be building trust in your industries. But then also like in finance as well and education, it's super important. If you're choosing a medium and you can't lie in public. Is like a really important thing.
Rory Sutherland
You must test extensively, both emotional and.
Claire Sadler
Yeah but, I'm going to upset Andrew now. Because the one thing you know. System1, everybody uses it, we use it indeed.
Andrew Tindall
Do you? Oh amazing. Thank you very much.
Claire Sadler
But, System1's framework in terms of star and spike metric, rewards positive emotion in terms of hope, happiness, fun, enjoyment, humor. Which in a charity world. Can be hard to advertise and create.
Andrew Tindall
You know, I'm not. I'm so glad you brought this up.
Claire Sadler
I've not ever seen a charity ad using humor. Because to do it would would be incredibly hard for it to land in the right way without it being insensitive.
Andrew Tindall
Completely.
Claire Sadler
So, you know, the emotions that we always try to evoke with our work. That do get rewarded in terms of System1's. And are proved to be effective. Is hope, as a positive emotion. Different mediums force creative teams to think differently.
Rory Sutherland
And actually David Ogilvy always said, not a bad place in which to end. You're not advertising to a standing army, you're advertising to a moving parade. And some of my children's behavior, as with vinyl records. Seems completely mystifying to me. Until I realised that they never grew up with them. And so to them, the idea that there's music on a round plastic thing is genuinely interesting. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much for coming. You've all marked yourself out as wonderful individualists. So thank you for coming here to discuss this. But immense thanks to the panel as well. You've been absolutely wonderful. So thank you all so much.