Mi3's top podcasts of 2020: Preparing for the cookie apocalypse; the cheat's guide to marketing science; and Mark Ritson calling out the muppets
Mark Ritson: We needed marketers, we got comms muppets.
After a somewhat challenging 2020, next year brings us closer to the cookie apocalypse, which industry warns could render 85% of digital marketing redundant. Something to look forward to. Elsewhere Mi3's podcasts gained the inside track on marketers' strategies to stop budgets being slashed; how to digest and effect the key tenets of marketing science in hours rather than weeks or months; the huge, untapped opportunities in B2B marketing; plus the future of out of home and TV. We've compiled the top ten by streams below, but there are many, many more nuggets of gold at our dedicated podcast page.
1.
“People who have hung their hat on hyper-targeting are going to have to change their business models.”
Google's 2022 cookie apocalypse: Why it will hit first party data, hyper-targeting and a solution from Westpac's former digital media and tech boss
From 2022, Google's ban on the use of third party cookies will render up to 85% of current digital marketing useless, says Westpac's former digital and media technology director Nick Barnett. That's when Google Chrome joins Apple and others in voiding the digital marketing industry's most widespread currency. It's going to break things as new pressure builds on first party data, retargeting, behavioural targeting, hypertargeting... and usher the return of research panels and contextual content environments. This podcast, with insight from SynergyStack's Chris Brinkworth; Anna Samkova, Group GM, Digital at 250-store retailer The PAS Group; and Venntifact co-founder, Joey Nguyen, covers everything you need to know.
2.
“What we need during the crisis are marketers that can think on their feet and do proper pricing, product innovation and distribution work. The problem is, there aren't many of those men and women around. They're outnumbered by communications muppets ... Put down the communication tool box and pick up the other tactics, because that's what we need.”
Mark Ritson v Suncorp CMO Mim Haysom on marketers as 'communications muppets'; Suncorp declares no Covid marketing cuts
An 18-month effort by CMO Mim Haysom to convince Suncorp's leadership and board to view long-term investment in brand and marketing as a growth driver has paid off. Mark Ritson says Haysom is "a 1-in-100 marketer" as he joins up with ADMA to launch a 12-week work-from-home "Marketing Masterclass" series. But… Ritson and Haysom do don the gloves for a light stoush over marketing’s obsession with communications.
3.
“This excess share of voice [ESOV] calculation is phenomenally interesting. I’m not a big believer in science and laws in marketing. I think we oversell it a bit. But this is one that actually does hold up incredibly well.”
Marketing and media's troubled future: Mark Ritson, LinkedIn-backed global think tank and IPA UK's Fran Cassidy have a solution
Short-term tactics have trapped marketers into just one ‘P’ – promotion – in marketing's “4P’s” lexicon of Price, Product, Place (distribution) and Promotion (communication). But even “Promotion" is in credibility decline with senior business management. In a tour de force for B2C and B2B professionals, Mark Ritson, Jann Schwarz, global director of the New York-based B2B Institute, and IPA advisor, Fran Cassidy, nail what needs to happen - now.
4.
“Businesses need to be thinking about how they are going to come out of this because they possibly will come out in a different world. After months of social isolation, consumer tastes and expectations will change. Equally, how do we think about our businesses and our workforce and about re-skilling in a digital age so that we can be more flexible?”
Telstra CMO: 'We haven’t paused anything’ as marketing and media sectors brace for 40% contraction, preserving jobs
Telstra CMO Jeremy Nicholas joins PwC Chief Economist Jeremy Thorpe, Omnicom Media Group CEO Peter Horgan, and Executive Channel Holdings CEO and Outdoor Media Association chairman, Charles Parry-Okeden, in a critical discussion on managing through Covid-19 and how it may rewire the future of industry and jobs.
5.
“To grow, you need new customers. To get them, you need to do more than have one-to-one conversations.”
oOh! Media’s CEO Brendon Cook on why he’s exiting as the $100bn global programmatic sector circles out-of-home
oOh! Media CEO Brendon Cook opens up on why he’s leaving the company he started as a “one man band” in 1989; what the skills and style of the new CEO will need; why the market is still missing the critical role for creative in media effectiveness and what the out-of-home industry will look like in 2021 as programmatic operatives eye-off a $100bn trading boom globally in digital screens.
6.
“The important thing for us right now is just survival. We are in survival mode.”
Hoyts CEO Damian Keogh on what next for Hollywood media and ad market after cinema shutdown
For the first time in 111 years, Covid forced Hoyts to shut cinemas nationwide. It stood down close to 3000 staff. Hoyts CEO Damian Keogh was supposed to be in Wuhan in January for the company’s annual conference, which was shifted to Guangzhou just days out. As the crisis hit, here’s how Keogh saw it playing out for the cinema sector.
7.
“[Ensure that] right across the marketing department, you have this understanding of how human beings make decisions and test everything you do against that 95 per cent to five per cent test: Am I really talking to the lizard brain or not?”
Cheat Sheet - Part One: Volvo, KPMG, AANA reveal world-leading marketing and media effectiveness science shaping brands for 2020
The collected works of arguably the sharpest minds in marketing, consumer and media science require a shedload of reading time. For those too busy trying to keep their jobs to read the instruction manuals, this podcast is for you. Volvo GM marketing Julie Hutchinson, KPMG partner Sudeep Gohil, AANA chief John Broome and Brand Traction's Jon Bradshaw get their geek on for an important - and fast - update on the leading global thinkers and thinking in marketing science and effectiveness and why it really matters.
8.
“When I look at our programmatic business, the share of open auction deals is zero. We only focus on private deals and programmatic guaranteed structures. That is strategically the right thing for advertisers, because the biggest topics at the moment in the online world are brand safety, fraud and visibility.”
CEOs at world’s leading Out Of Home companies say the turnaround has started despite volatility; why WFH's a bubble and programmatic OOH to surge
They’ve arguably been the hardest hit media companies through Covid-19 but the bosses of some of the world’s leading OOH companies - with iconic sites like NY’s Times Square, London’s Piccadilly Circus and Sydney’s Glebe Island Silos in their portfolios - come out swinging on this Mi3 podcast. Existential threats from Covid and changes to public mobility and WFH are overcooked, they claim. And they’ve learnt the lessons from publishing - programmatic trading is set to surge but not through intermediaries and open exchanges like Google's. They’re not so united, however, on industry-wide trading platforms to tackle Big Tech. Sound familiar? This one’s a cracker.
9.
“Today, more than 70% of Hulu customers are taking the ad-supported tier. For which they also pay a subscription – but it is lower – and a slightly lower adload.”
It’s a bit late but brands the world over are realising linear TV was their Golden Goose for impact - and they don’t see a real replacement. But there is some light. Three international TV analysts talk to Mi3’s Paul McIntyre about fear, fury and fatigue - and an avalanche of ad-funded streaming services (AVOD) in the next five years. The “ads are dead” crowd may have to temper their joy - consumers are piling into hybrid ad-subscription streaming services where they pay less for taking ads.
10.
“The really great inventors, if you look at Jobs or Edison, they're not inventors, they're hucksters. Salesmanship, which is much less fashionable than science, is actually more important than the science in terms of economic growth and the development of civilised society.“
"The myth of rationality": Why Boeing’s return to supersonic travel, FedEx and investment bankers prove B2B (and B2C) marketers need to rethink behavioural economics and psychology
Behavioural science is the trojan horse marketers need to get psychology back into business and the boardroom. Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy UK and a founder of its behavioural science practice, suggests B2B marketers (and B2C marketers for that matter) must explode the myth that businesses and their people only make logical decisions, or they'll keep making the same mistakes... until their tenure is brought to an end.
