Lindsay Barrett

Attended a great session with BetterBriefs and The Marketing Academy yesterday. Great reminder on how rubbish we can all be at writing briefs with some really actionable tips on how to make them better. My key takeaways of stuff we think we know but all too easily forget: 1. A brief is a summary of the thinking you’ve been doing as a business and the choices/decisions you're making. 2. So you have to have done that thinking before writing the brief. Get your brand problems up on the wall and work out if they form a coherent brief puzzle, or if you need to focus. You probably need to focus. Same goes for target audience.  3. Rather than trying to craft the perfect insight, make the brief insightful throughout. 4. Keep it short. 1-2 pages max, with an appendix of other relevant, well indexed info. 5. Get visibility of the creative brief that the agency then writes to make sure you’re all really aligned on what they’ve understood and are focusing on. Useful to know: they have a course and an IPA paper on briefing better that might be helpful to people. Available on their website https://lnkd.in/gPc2QsqU

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We’ve scaled 22 brands to £10 million (and counting!) and 3 to over £100 million. We’re all about turning big spends into even bigger wins. 💰 Our 360° Growth Matrix allows us to achieve maximum results consistently. We consult across these key areas to maximise results: 🏆 Market Leader Positioning Brands often lack clear market leader positioning. It’s a BIG part of the reason that most e-commerce brands don’t scale and it’s massively overlooked by founders. Positioning is everything, especially for success in saturated niches 🚀 💰 Financial Forecasting You need to know your figures inside and out. Cashflow management in e-commerce is hard, so planning and forecasting is everything. We get to know your operating economics using our tools, then our team is able to forecast all the important figures: NCPA, monthly ad spend, ROAS, MER - the lot. 🌱 Organic Marketing So many brands are too reliant on paid ads. We constantly see brands come to us with engagement rates on the floor, barely any organic revenue and full reliance on paid ads as a result. Our team consult across core platforms to drive conversions, with 20m+ followers on TikTok across our agency clients, we have a trick or two up our sleeve 👀 🔍 CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) Massively overlooked by 9/10 agencies and in-house teams, yet one of the most important aspects of e-com. We have an in-house CRO expert constantly auditing our brands websites to maximise conversion rate, you’d normally expect to pay $1000+ per audit - but it’s completely FREE with our services. 👩‍💼 Influencer Marketing Our formula for influencer marketing drives sales like no tomorrow. Our brands have had deals with Alix Earle, Vanessa Hudgins and SO many more using the strategies our team developed. This is really just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much we cover in order to provide maximum value to our clients - we’re so far from being ‘just an ads agency’ it’s insane. Make sure to follow me learn more.

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We’ve scaled 22 brands to £10 million (and counting!) and 3 to over £100 million. We’re all about turning big spends into even bigger wins. 💰 Our 360° Growth Matrix allows us to achieve maximum results consistently. We consult across these key areas to maximise results: 🏆 Market Leader Positioning Brands often lack clear market leader positioning. It’s a BIG part of the reason that most e-commerce brands don’t scale and it’s massively overlooked by founders. Positioning is everything, especially for success in saturated niches 🚀 💰 Financial Forecasting You need to know your figures inside and out. Cashflow management in e-commerce is hard, so planning and forecasting is everything. We get to know your operating economics using our tools, then our team is able to forecast all the important figures: NCPA, monthly ad spend, ROAS, MER - the lot. 🌱 Organic Marketing So many brands are too reliant on paid ads. We constantly see brands come to us with engagement rates on the floor, barely any organic revenue and full reliance on paid ads as a result. Our team consult across core platforms to drive conversions, with 20m+ followers on TikTok across our agency clients, we have a trick or two up our sleeve 👀 🔍 CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) Massively overlooked by 9/10 agencies and in-house teams, yet one of the most important aspects of e-com. We have an in-house CRO expert constantly auditing our brands websites to maximise conversion rate, you’d normally expect to pay $1000+ per audit - but it’s completely FREE with our services. 👩‍💼 Influencer Marketing Our formula for influencer marketing drives sales like no tomorrow. Our brands have had deals with Alix Earle, Vanessa Hudgins and SO many more using the strategies our team developed. This is really just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much we cover in order to provide maximum value to our clients - we’re so far from being ‘just an ads agency’ it’s insane. Make sure to follow me, Jack Oldham, to learn more 📈

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Updated article by the brilliant Tom Roach balancing the role of short AND long term marketing “…We so often miss out on maximising growth in this way because of our binary belief systems, the organisational silos we inhabit, the different job titles we have, the different channels and formats we tend to use and the different metrics we try to optimise” But the challenge is how to practically make this reality for teams, the metrics, changes to ways of working & media integration working in tandem together A great starting point is measuring share of search - this can support the connection and a great starting point in bringing brand & performance marketing teams together “One metric that’s proving useful for this is share of search….search volumes can strongly reflect how salient or famous a brand is…Google believe share of search reflects brand health and market share for brands in some categories”

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Havas has (finally, and rightly so) lost their #bcorp status over their work with Shell. Accountability matters to ensure the trust into sustainability focused labels and status, so this is the right decision from B Lab. Our impact as an industry is not limited to the energy we use in our offices nor how much we travel and how. It also encompasses the impact the products, services and behaviours we promote have on people and the planet. #bcorp #fossilfuel #advertising https://lnkd.in/ezUerfsi

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What's your favourite brand jingle....? Really interesting blog this week from David Taylor building on research by Distinctive BAT into the underrated power of a jingle to drive brand distinctiveness. My current favourite is Domino's. A great example of a business that understands the importance of sonic branding in building distinctiveness, having invested consistently over recent years to create a super catchy, instantly recognisable, highly versatile brand jingle. https://lnkd.in/eft6ScuF

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In Kantar's first ‘Diary of a CMO’ Mary Kyriakidi discusses with Prof. dr. Koen Pauwels whether attitudes drive sales? … or is it sales that drive more sales? 🌴 🌞 😎 As my thoughts are focused on my imminent holiday next week, I wanted to ground what Mary Kyriakidi and Prof. dr. Koen Pauwels discuss with evidence we’ve picked up within #Travel and #Tourism on our #Kantar #BrandDynamics trackers. -         🏆 Mary and Koen discuss how BOTH attitudes and sales are important - and we find a very close correlation between behaviour and predisposition in Travel sectors. In fact, the correlation sits within the top 20 of all categories on #Brandz -         🏆 We know situational factors like routes and availability drive behaviours for many brands, Ryanair - Europe's Favourite Airline is a great example where Presence unlocks sales -         🏆 Perceived Difference helps creates penetration – look at Emirates, Airbnb and Booking.com – all exhibiting a strong differentiational-pull! And not only does Difference make your brand stand apart and drive sales but it also makes your brand worth paying more for and reduces price elasticity  -         🏆 And the importance of both long-term planning as well as short-term executional wins - having strategies that build predisposition longer-term as well as driving immediate behaviours – I could site so many Travel Brands here but let me pick a few I haven’t mentioned TUI, Jet2.com and Jet2holidays.com, British Airways Please catch Mary’s video here… Piers Lindsay-Taylor Suzannah Rowland Debbie Lawson Ben Krzysica Jamie Donovan

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I spoke briefly with Claire from Mamamia’s The Quicky podcast on sales and pricing. Price and sales is a fascinating area of psychology and marketing, it’s far more about heuristics and feeling than calculations and reason. There’s a lot of untapped research out there on how to get a handle on pricing (some of it is a bit shit though 😬 so be careful) #marketingscience #behaviouralsciences #pricingstrategy https://lnkd.in/g42u24FN

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A great summary of what trends might lie ahead for #MarketingProcureemnt over the next year. There's a focus on core Procurement issues in Tina Fegent (FCIPS)'s list and I'm seeing a lot more attention on retail media and transparency. In-housing has been around a long time and is big in the USA. it will be very interesting to see if the increased adoption of AI shifts brands to move more creative and production work in house due to the time and cost savings offered.

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🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🫶🏼To all the LGBTQ2S+ allies who, when asked by their clients to create a #Pride post, responded with, “Absolutely, can you tell me what the brand does to support the community?”—thank you. Challenging clients and rejecting showmanship and pink washing is crucial. I love seeing all the rainbows 🌈 and Pride posts, but what truly matters is a brand standing up and showing genuine support for their employees and customers. However, these days - Real support is what makes a difference. As for this new wave of “fear of bigoted backlash” let’s do what strategists do best, look at the numbers! 📈👨🏼‍💻- Take Marlon Wayans, for example. He caused an “uproar” after posting a happy Pride message to support his trans child. The headline read, “Marlon loses thousands of fans due to Pride post,” but in reality, he lost just 10,000 out of his 7 million followers—only 0.14%. That’s negligible compared to the support and love he garnered, deepening his public persona as a great, supportive father. So, if you’re brave enough 💪🏽 to say something, ensure there’s real effort behind it. And if you fear losing share or followers, remember that those small-minded individuals aren’t paying your bills. “And honey, if they ain’t paying yo bills, pay them no mind!” Real courage and genuine support always win. Shout out to a few great brands that do real work with the community: IKEA, Starbucks, adidas - to read what they do check out this link: https://lnkd.in/g9UYQ_db Happy pride from my chosen and real family to you and your loved ones 🏳️‍⚧️❤️🏳️‍🌈 #Pinkwashing #lgbtq #Pride #DEI #Marketing #Advertising #PR #SocialMedia #media #brand #strategy #SlayMama #BootsTheHouseDown

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An interesting article via The Drum about how smaller, sustainably driven brands have to battle the often unsubstantiated claims of big brands about the genuine environmental benefits of their respective products. It also includes a few handy tips on how to stand up to greenwashers... https://lnkd.in/e-HrfJWx #greenwashing #sustainability

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One of the strongest themes coming through from the Brand Safety Summit Series event in London, is about how #brandsafety has to evolve from de-risking, to actively improving media plans. And connecting that investment with wider brand values. There's a real appetite to move on from broad brush tactics that pull budgets away from quality content, and diverse publishers, and to look at how advertisers have the opportunity to ensure they are funding a better world. Next step is to turn intent into action, and for advertisers and agencies to see the value in the margins, to fund diverse media, to spend with positive players, and to view transparency in the media supply chain as just as important as any other part of the business. Thanks for the inspo Jerry Daykin Phil Sumner.

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Some great insight here from Abi Dempsey 💥

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It's been a busy week! What started as a bit of personal curiosity turned into a full blown analysis of voter and party search interest, culminating in a geo-mapped constituency-level prediction of today's results. So many interesting points. From the breadth of reach across economically disenfranchised audiences for Reform (it's the economy, stupid - not immigration!), through to the 1200% uplift in tactical voting search as Best For Britain released their guide to getting the Tories out (and blocking Reform). Not everything made the final edit, but hopefully you find the below as interesting to read as I did to research. So. 217 seat Labour majority is my prediction. Let's see how far off we end up!

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Today's all-new Cog Blog is unusual. First it comes from two of us, myself and Nick Manning (ex Manning Gottlieb, OMD and Ebiquity). Second it's got a point to it. We are seriously worried about the threat from various quarters to the craft of advertising (creative and media) and the failure of our industry's biggest players to face up to the challenges we all face. Indeed, we suggest many are part of the problem. We've decided to do something about it and we would like as many who share our concern to join us. At the moment we are at a planning stage (as we explain in the post); how far we take this does depend on the level of support our ideas generate. We urge you to read the post; and if what we're suggesting resonates with you then let us know. Talk about it, comment, share as widely as you can. We hope this will be the start of something.

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Brian Jacobs and I tend to write and talk about the same themes, so we thought it might be good to convene like-minded people to share ideas about how we Make Advertising Great Again (without the red baseball caps). We all know what the issues are so we don't need to elaborate, but we would like to discuss practical solutions. Read Brian's blog and if you're interested in being part of the discussion, our contact details are therein.

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It could be your lucky day. A big project has just been pushed back into Q3, meaning that I have block capacity in May - June. 'Fun' me wants to just fill this time with adventure and travel, but 'realistic' me knows I should spread the word, and fill the diary (a little) .. we all know the most valuable entries in your calendar are the blank spaces. So in short, I am in a position to welcome and discuss Consultancy work in the form of dailies, multiple days, project based, or block booked. This doesn't often happen, and I mean that genuinely, this is not a marketing plan. I have clients with weekly commitments, plus I am dedicated to my 1:1 coachees, so its rare that I have capacity. If you need a new thinker, a thoughtful and engaged leader, an inspiring motivator, a strategic conversationalist, an ideas person, an agile emotionally aware creative, or a kind but assertive decision maker, I can support you and your business. I am your Creative Director for Hire, your injection of ideas, the de-tangler of confusion, and the thinking partner you wish you had sooner. My diary is open, and I'm looking forward to talking though what your current situation is. And where I can support. Perhaps a short zoom to talk it through ...? 📸 Marie Palbom Bøgedal Brown

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Another month, another batch of rich, culturally relevant insights for brands from DRUM. This time from our Strategy Director Adam Wyatt on all things AI, entertainment and a renaissance in analogue formats... 👇👇👇 #brandsinculture #brandpartnerships #media #advertising #genai #music #brandedcontent #entertainment #culturalinsights #brandstrategy

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