Andrew Tindall - System1 - transcript

Rory

One of the great things with market research companies. Is they get to see work in all categories for all brands. And unsurprisingly, they suddenly realise things, general common patterns. Which often are denied to the rest of us. So that's why it’s particular privilege to be joined today by Andrew Tindall, who's the Senior Vice President at System One.

System One is one of the most sort of respected and most interesting and innovative research companies. I think it's fair to say. Now, System One is a research company. I think I can hand over to Andrew now and say. The origins of the name and what makes you different as a company doing research?

Andrew

I mean, it was founded by John Kieran, who I think you know. It was originally called ‚Brain Juicer.

Rory

That's right.

Andrew

Which I only joined because of the name System One. I thought it’s absolutely genius. And I'm a big fan of brand consistency. But I think this is one of the rare examples where changing System One makes complete sense. But yeah, John Kieran literally pioneered, emotion first, the measurement in terms of creativity, and kind of marketing.

Rory

Now interestingly, your background is in effectively in medicine.

Andrew

Yeah.

Rory

And I guess biochemistry, is that right?

Andrew

Yes. I studied medicine at UCL. Great uni.

Rory

So one of the most annoying things about working in marketing is that there are too few people. With, I think. One of the best people I ever worked with, Darryl Fielding. I think is a biochemist by background. And what you might call the complex sciences or the medical sciences. Annoyingly, people who study those things. Tend to go into bloody things like medicine rather than marketing.

Andrew

Yeah.

Rory

Terrible isn't it? So I've always believed that, you know, study of, it could be another brilliant person. I worked with Brian Sassoon. I think was a, I think it was a geneticist. But the study of the science of complex interdependent systems. Which obviously a human body and a human brain. Yeah. Inarguably are. Seems to me to be an absolutely brilliant, gateway drug to being a good marketer. It's very interesting. Because also, everybody who understands medicine, okay. Automatically understands that small interventions can have huge effects. Yeah. Okay. Which is one of the things I, you know. And actually the neglect of the creative side of the business relative to the media side of the business. Which I think is a complete misdirection of effort engineered by tech firms.

Andrew

Yeah.

Rory

For their own self-interest.

Andrew

This is my personal mission. So people are kind of obsessed at the moment with attention and stuff like this. But, a great example is, is it fluent attention? You know, is that attention bringing your brand to mind? But you know, these two things, creative media have to start talking to each other.

Rory

And so the fact that these things are actually determined independently in silos is a kind of absurdity in many ways. Because the nature of the message you need to convey will affect your media choice. And your media choice will have a fairly major bearing, I think, on the efficacy of that message.

Andrew

Completely.

Rory

In other words, the same information. Okay, that arrives in an email. So it can be absolutely textually identical and visually identical.

Andrew

Okay.

Rory

And a piece that arrives, say, in a piece of physical mail. Will not prompt the same emotional response. And you've got reliable research data I guess. That shows that time and time again.

Andrew

I mean. I've got a slight issue. Well, actually effectiveness and mystery on this. Because you know, we're talking about mail in your massive red living room. Rory. And if you often look at, media research globally. You know, there’s great charts isn't there. Looking at kind of the long term impact versus short term impacts. And the branding impacts of different touchpoints, media channels. But mails often left out of these charts. it’s often not included in these studies. And you have to really go rooting around for effectiveness data. But when you actually go and find it, you actually see that. Yeah, it makes complete sense. Mail is a medium that surprises and delights, right? So, yeah, there’s a costly signalling piece. And the effort, you know, that transaction. But there’s also. What you struggle finding, in all the attention research. But JICMAIL have just done some research on this looking at the attention of mail. Is that, this thing lives in your home with you, doesn't it? For multiple days.

Rory

I think seven days. That's an average, by the way. So we talked on some of the earlier episodes about the Toast Rack effect.

Andrew

What’s this?

Rory

You know, if you've got a piece of mail. And one of the crucial things, by the way. To any kind of persuasive communication is simply timing. Now, most things, the timing is determined very largely by the advertiser. They put out the message you either see it or you don’t.

Now obviously there's an argument with press advertising. That you're reading press ads at a time when you've chosen to read things. Yeah, okay. You're in reading mode. Yeah. But mail has an additional level of that. Which is, you will put it aside for a moment in which it is then. You will effectively. I suppose you can do that with email with the snooze function. But you will actually keep it for a period when you feel it is appropriate and desirable for you to actually deal with it.

Andrew

Yeah. I found this recently, so I've been doing some research with the ‚Effie Worldwide Database. Well case library that we've been working at System One. To turn it into this, a wonderful database. Because as I said, I was quite frustrated at the sense that a lot of media research has, like, you know. Eight media channels in it, and it often leaves out

little of a touchpoints, like brand partnerships, direct mail.

Rory

Sonic branding, possibly. Direct mail is always overlooked.

Andrew

Yeah, another example. I mean so we found this in this research of ‚Effie where you can actually look at. I think some of the, you know, Richard is talking about. Overlooked things in marketing and advertising. And I think one of the smartest things that someone recently. I think it was Ian Gibbs who works at the DMA and, is part of ‚JICMAIL. This concept of a super touchpoint. Which essentially what we're talking about.

Rory

Perfect.

Andrew

So, I love this idea. And I’m trying to try to kind of prove it with the ‚Effie Data.

Rory

It’s amusing that digital media people use the word touchpoint. To describe a medium where touch is not involved.

Andrew

Yeah, exactly.

Andrew

So touch. Ironic.

Rory

It's actually an eyeball point. You know, it might be an optic point, but it's not a touch point.

Andrew

Again, which kind of makes the thinking even smarter. This idea of a super touchpoint. Which is essentially kind of like a luxurious touchpoint with a consumer. That rationally might be almost hard to explain. It costs a little bit more than, you know, a digital banner ad or something. But it does a lot more in terms of the effects of this point of view.

Rory

And one of the things I mean. Tell me a bit more about this research because it intrigues me because it's really, really useful.

Andrew

With JICMAIL kind of started this off event with a roundtable Talking about the concept of super touch. But, you know, it's more emotional than other media channels. It's got higher attention, perhaps physical. So it literally speaks really well to direct mail, you know. More emotion, more attention, physical, Has a high costly signalling. I think I also found that somewhat in the research. Where, there's a brilliant, almost perfect negative correlation between how good a channel is. And I think this confirms a lot of marketing thinking.  Like Les Binet and Peter Field’s kind of long and short of it. But how good a touchpoint is at driving that immediate sales impact. And how good it is at driving a long term, lasting brand impact.

Rory

There's a brilliant negative correlation at the very top you’ve got, contests and promos, will always drive a sale. But will very rarely drive a long term lasting brand image. You I mean, there's a negative correlation, I understand that completely. And also because of course, if you're selling on price, it's a mark of the lack of confidence, which erodes trust.

Andrew

Yeah, exactly.

Rory

In other words, if you need to discount this thing. Yeah. Do you really have faith in your product? Yeah. Exactly. This is by the way, absolutely decisive. So effectively, normally there's a kind of short term sales effect. Actually is deleterious to long term brand. Completely.

Andrew

Again, a sale, a contest or promo is a perfect example of pure sale.  Will struggle to build any brand impact. Or like an on-pack kind of promo will do great at driving sales because it will speak to those who are in market. But will struggle building those long term brand impacts. Whereas we found.

Rory

Physical mail actually weirdly bucks the trend.

Andrew

Yeah, well, it's great at driving. I think 90% of campaigns in the ‚Effie Global Database that we've been working on. With mail in them, drive a direct sales impact within six months. But they also have this strange awareness, differentiation, trust building impact. That puts it directly into the super touchpoint arena. Whereas kind of paid social and digital display sits squarely on the opposite side of this trend. I saw. Did you see the the Hiscox ad by uncommon. Where it looked like red wine had been spilt all over the whole pack. Have you seen it?

Rory

I've seen it yeah. It's brilliant.

Andrew

The letter itself looked like someone had spilt wine on it. And once you opened it up. It actually was about accidental cover. But I think how brilliant that is. And I think one of the missed opportunities. You know, we've talked about the benefits of direct mail. And how physicality, emotion and attention kind of puts it in this super touchpoint arena. But like that is just half the story. It’s also a canvas for if you put proper creativity into it. The sky's the limit. That’s another thing we haven't really talked about how marketing lives within a context. I think we've talked about how media budgets are moving towards more skippable, more passive kind of stuff. AI is making creativity more just lackluster. If you bother to do a creative idea that's emotional in a channel like direct mail. That's kind of higher attention and physical. You get this brilliant kind of creative dividend, don't you?

Rory

And there's a sort of extraordinary value to the unexpectedness. Now, if you think about part of the potency of ‚The Economist campaign. Which was a 48 poster campaign, at least originally. It then took other formats. Yeah. Part of the efficacy of that. Aside from obviously, you know, the brilliant art direction and David Abbott's brilliant writing. Was the fact that you didn't expect a publication to advertise on 48 sheet posters. Yeah. In other words, there seems to be a sort of multiplier effect you get if you appear to someone in a channel they weren't expecting.

Andrew

That is so true. I mean, half. I think it's half of Sky's broadband business is being built via direct mail to houses. You know, Sky's not using TV. Or ‚BVOD or ‚SVOD to build that. They're reaching people via direct mail. I also think it's a great example of that. Because it's all very consistent to their other advertising across the mix. So the creative message is very similar, but they're choosing direct mail to reach the right people at the right time. So then the next obvious question is then how do you build trust? And it's not telling people they should trust you.

Rory

So it's gone from being almost a given. To being a mark of distinction or a, literally a form of differentiation.

Andrew

Completely.

Rory

Being trustworthy is now a form of.

Andrew

Yeah, it's the second most linked thing to profit in the ‚IPA data bank. It gets more and more important. And I literally do think that's because. We're seeing budgets move towards media channels that are less trust building. Like, as you said. It used to be assumed and now it's not. So then the next logical step is. How do we build trust? And you can look again at Peter Field's data where he can separate, campaigns that do have a media touchpoint and not. And then, how likely they are to actually lead to trust impacts. So I went and did the same thing in the ‚Effie data bank. And you can see mail is a driver. Including mail in your campaign. Dramatically lifts the trust building power of that campaign. Probably because of things we've talked about. Right. Everything we've talked about. Costly signalling. The physicality of it, the high attention of it. The fact you can hold it. The fact that someone has taken the effort to send it to you. Then the other part of it as well is being consistent, as you said. Consistently showing up. In the right ways, is how you build trust. Which I think is becoming more and more important in a more digital, skippable media landscape. It's actually a procurement metric, right? CPM cost per million. Or as Karen Nelson-Field calls it. Cost per useless million, cost per user thousand or something like this. It's a procurement metric because it's a measure of something that you've ordered. It doesn't necessarily mean it's been delivered anywhere Seen by anyone, done something, got any attention. But the most grotesque example now is. There's a lot of digital display ads that are actually. I don't know if you've legally streamed a movie, Rory? You seem to be doing quite well. So I presume you've got. You don't need to.

Rory

There was a time.

Andrew

Yeah, well, there's all those pop up ads. And there's not just one pop ad on those sites. They're actually stacked with like ten of them. So someone's paying. The poor sucker is paying for. You know, loads of CPMs behind that that they're not even seeing. And I think a much smarter way of looking at it, is actually kind of, cost per attentive reach. When you look at, direct mail is a good example of how much does it cost for every second of attention you get. Then these things actually. Well you're not looking at it from an efficiency standpoint. It becomes more of an effectiveness kind of metric. Interesting. That's fantastic.

Rory

Well, Andrew, it's been absolutely fantastic talking to you. For all of you listening. If you'd like to unleash the power of direct mail. And you'd like to learn more about how to do it. Not just for immediate response, but for long term brand value, I hasten to add. Then I suggest you head over to marketreach.co.uk Andrew, once again, it's been a huge pleasure. Thank you very much indeed.

Andrew

I’ve enjoyed it, thanks Rory.

Rory

Thank you.