Striking Balance
Mobsta is a proud supporter of LBB. As part of its sponsorship of the ‘Brand Insight’ and 'Media' channels, we’re exploring audience and media trends, discovering what brands and media experts think makes audiences tick in 2023 and beyond.
When imagining an archetypal strategic planner, an individual with a background in English literature and aspirations of being a fiction editor is a far cry from what usually comes to mind. However, a long-held interest in the psychology of persuasion and an ultimatum made by an interviewer compelled a young Stuart Sullivan, fresh out of university and working at a Waterstone’s bookstore, to accept a media strategy job in 1994. Now 29 years removed from that fateful conversation, Stuart still loves his work and wears many hats in his current role at Wavemaker.
Stuart has a robust understanding of his work, as well as a deep and abiding passion for the strategic planning industry that is apparent from how he speaks about it. He views his work as a balancing act between psychology, technology and media, and he’s excited to see how developments in AI will be applied in his field in the future. However, Stuart also sees room for the industry to improve in terms of how data is utilised and how audiences can be better understood to improve engagement.
Here’s his conversation with LBB:
LBB> How have you seen media strategy evolve in the past decade?
Stuart> That's a massive question, isn't it? Particularly in the last 10 years, the media industry has been characterised by an obsession with the value of consistency. We're moving into a new period of the value of difference. What I mean by that is the media hasn't been the best at managing data. Data represents a tremendous opportunity for insight and intelligent execution. Yet, a lot of the players in the industry first approached data as an opportunity to build products rather than an opportunity to improve insights and quality of work. But that's evolving. From a client perspective, the last 10 years have been driven by concerns with digital transformation and making sure that their markets and operations are consistently deploying the right tools and the right processes. However, if you're not careful, that can take you in a dangerous direction of moving to average, with everyone doing the same thing equally efficiently. I think it's been two steps forward and one step back over the last decade or so. Interestingly, I think that in this post-covid era, there's a recognition that the value of growth often aligns closely with the degree of difference and how your brand operates, behaves and is perceived in the consumers' world. It's been a really interesting period. We're really coming to grips with how to use data in an intelligent way. Therefore, leveraging it for difference rather than leveraging it for consistency going forward.
LBB> What changes do you anticipate seeing in the decade to come?
Stuart> Looking at things positively, I see AI, if it's applied in a smart and empathetic way, providing us an opportunity to shortcut some tasks that can be automated and also to get us to first base with some critical thinking tasks quicker than we normally would, allowing us to spend more time on the differential thinking. We're already developing some tools to do that, and we have products that we're integrating AI into to help not only speed up the process but to do things that human brains can't. For me, that's quite exciting. I think the implication of that will be centred particularly around creativity and innovation in media. Looking forward, I anticipate we're going to be unleashing media creativity again into the world.
LBB> How do you ensure that strategies will still resonate on a human level while incorporating AI tools?
Stuart> It's all about insight and understanding audiences. I think part of the trick is using a wide range of different methods. At Wavemakers, we're making sure we use a combination of approaches, whether that be, of course, quantitative data, signal data, behavioural data, panel, research data, or more qualitative ways such as social listening and qualitative research. We're big believers in the power of qualitative research. It's not very fashionable anymore, which is a shame because you can't beat talking to people and listening to them. If it's done intelligently and with enough scale that you're getting a representative view, it can be a very powerful part of that toolkit. So, we deploy that a lot alongside the analytical and quantitative research, and on our best days, that gets us to some really nice insights.
We did some work for a chewing gum brand towards the end of COVID. One of their challenges was that they wanted to re-establish their brand with gen z audiences. When we dug into those audiences, what we came away with was a distinct understanding of the challenges COVID had put on gen z. We characterised it as a fear of the face-to-face. Covid encouraged this behind-screen kind of behaviour of a lot of younger people who are more comfortable behind their screen and articulate themselves behind their screen. They talked about how they feel uncomfortable or awkward in face-to-face conflicts and situations. That allowed us to build out this chewing gum brand's mission: to help gen z through that transition from staying in the bedroom, behind the screen, to going out and meeting friends and other people again post-covid. Simple things that we might otherwise take for granted, like face-to-face interactions in everyday life, had become associated with fear and anxiety for that audience. There are hundreds of other examples we can talk about, but I think that's the benefit of a combination of data insight and qualitative insight.
LBB> Recently, what would you say has been a surprising shift in audience behaviour or preference that you’ve noticed?
Stuart> There are some big trends and big shifts. Looking at it globally, covid accelerated some trends that were already in existence, but it sharply steepened that rise. Firstly, people are spending more time on screens like with us here. People are increasingly multitasking and dual viewing. Linear TV is under pressure as people move to streaming services and other ways of viewing content. Streaming services hit their massive rise between 2020 and 2022, and they're peaking out now with the economic recession impacting households' abilities to pay for those subscriptions. But, social media and TV streaming have significantly increased.
The other thing, and perhaps the more interesting thing, is people are spending less time with what we traditionally call paid media environments, so it's becoming a much more dynamic, messy ecosystem of content. We talk about the definition of strategy being how best to marshal your resources to the best effect. That was relatively easy 10 or 15 years ago because your resources were largely directed at paid marketing activities. Now, that task is focused on a combination of paid marketing in tandem with partnership, sponsorship and influence, as well as relationships with other brands, creators and content providers, which requires a whole integrated set of skills in the client’s marketing team and with their agency partners. Agencies focusing their skills and tools around that is where a lot of opportunity is.
LBB> How do you ensure campaigns are culturally attuned and effective across different markets?
Stuart> There are a couple of levels to that. It's partly how good your analysis of cultural sensitivity is. A good example is we did a project with a chocolate brand last year. It was a big multi-market project where they wanted us to help them work out their portfolio and how to invest effectively across different markets. This brand has very different levels of maturity and meaning across the eight or nine priority markets in which it operates. What the brand means in the UK and what it means in Australia is hugely different. So, the level of data we had to look at to draw out that understanding and for it to influence the portfolio recommendation was significant, but it allowed us to bring that cultural sensitivity and brand sensitivity into the answer in a quantitative way. That's one level of it: how good your intelligence and your data are.
The other level is how flexible you are around the brand at a local market level. I think that while your strategic direction might be the same when activating brands at a local market level, how you actually make that happen can be very different. For instance, a toothpaste brand in Australia recently activated its Sound of Smiles initiative, which is a partnership between the brand and Australian Rules Football. All of the teams have a team song that the team sings together, and the brand discovered that some players were hard of hearing and weren't able to participate in the team songs. So, they taught the teams sign language, and they enlisted TikTok creators and influencers to join the process. We helped the sports people become media influencers themselves on TikTok. It became a really big, powerful, positive movement centred around inclusivity. Conversely, in the UK, the way that same initiative was rolled out was through a partnership with a homeless charity and was focused on dental hygiene among the homeless population. Buses were converted into mobile exam centres for people to get their dental hygiene checked out. Like in Australia, it created some lovely, heartfelt content, but it was very different regarding how it was executed and what tone it produced.
LBB> What do you make of brands increasingly using purpose marketing in their campaigns?
Stuart> That's a trap that the industry has one foot in and one foot out of. I remember doing a piece recently with a client about the good, the bad and the ugly of purpose marketing. We explored some examples of where it works beautifully and benefits society, consumers and the brand, but also the bad and the ugly instances where brands virtue signal, speaking rather than acting. It's inauthentic, and it does more damage than good.
LBB> How are you integrating principles of sustainability into your strategies?
Stuart> Firstly, I think it’s consulting with clients when they're considering their approach and active communications around sustainability and their own business. The other level is finding tools and processes that exist to enable that to happen. A lot of companies have developed their own tools in this area. But Group M has a carbon calculator that’s open access, allowing us to measure up the carbon cost of different media plans for clients. It's not new, but the activation of it is still in its infancy. We've got a number of clients signed up for a charter around this area. One of the most interesting examples I've seen recently is with a car brand. Our team did a trade-off analysis showing which channel investments drive the most effectiveness based on the econometrics data and the research data we had on a quadrant chart with which channels are the most or least effective in terms of carbon emissions. That simple analysis enabled us to have a conversation with the client to determine what the trade-offs were, what channels were effective for us and were also better for the environment, what channels were ineffective and environmentally harmful and what channels fell in between. That led to changes in the plan for the following year and successful results for the brand while also providing a managed reduction of carbon emissions in the process. That's a nice practical example of that in action.
LBB> Do you have a manta that you use to guide your decisions?
Stuart> I have a couple. A general one is believing that everyone you collaborate with has good intentions, and then everything else follows from there. For me, assuming that the people you’re collaborating with have positive intentions is really important when developing a strategy.
In terms of strategic thinking, the reason I feel very lucky to be in the role I’m in now is that my job is about finding a balanced combination of psychology, technology and media. When you're able to bring together those three things, the result tends to be some powerful and successful work. However, there’s a danger that arises when one of those aspects gets tipped out of proportion. I'm a big believer that understanding consumer psychology and behaviour is a critical part of what we do. Sometimes, that's fully leveraged, and sometimes, it can be thrown a little bit off-kilter by big data or technological influences that are demanding more attention than they should. But when those three things are in balance, that's when things work well.
LBB> What’s a trend you’re tired of hearing about, and why?
Stuart> The strategist's role is to look at trends dispassionately and make balanced judgement calls on their potential value to brands, clients and businesses going forward. I think our industry is a sucker for hastily jumping aboard the latest trend. One of the most exciting things about our business is that we pivot on a dime. We want to and are able to innovate with technology and change dynamically, which is really good. However, the downside of that is there can be a rush to a soundbite that’s not necessarily informed and can lead us down a blind alley. The skill of the strategist is being able to understand the light and shade of issues and make a balanced call for the benefit of the brands you're working with.
LBB> What has been the most challenging campaign or audience segment that you’ve had to strategize for recently?
Stuart> We recently did an insight piece into gen x and how they use social media. What we uncovered was a systematic bias in how our industry thinks about social media. We found that we spend all our time thinking about young people, how gen z behaves on social media, and its role in their lives. The assumption is that if you're going to do social right, you have to play by those rules. We did a deep dive to understand how gen x uses social. It was just fascinating and a really good reminder of the behavioural differences and the roles that media play in people's lives. While gen z is living their best life on social media, gen x wants to live their real life. For gen z, social media serves as a remedy for boredom. For gen x, these networks are used in a more structured way to catch up with communities and interact in virtual town squares. Trust plays a huge part in how gen x engages with social media and what role social plays in the purchase journey. It's very different for gen x. It's rarely a complete sale because gen x feels like it wants to go and corroborate things. They might come across a product on social and look for an opportunity to go speak to someone else, check out the website or read some reviews on the product before jumping into it. So, that piece is a lovely example of why we should treat audiences differently and resist the urge to jump to generalisations.
LBB> What’s your favourite part of any given project?
Stuart> I think the exploration part. It’s the period where we try not to bring our biases to the table, be it previous experience or personal experiences and perceptions of the brand. That early stage of the process, when you get to look at the opportunity, the challenge and the goal before determining the different ways to get there, is really exciting. We have a process and tools that help us work with clients on the product brief and find out what's the brief behind the brief. Often, the question in the client's brief isn't the real question. We've got more ways than ever to get into that now, whether it be how we're looking at social data, what we're looking at with past data, what we've learned from previous campaigns and what we're understanding from talking to consumers. It's a big trough of insight to hoover up.
LBB> Is there anything you’d like to add?
Stuart> Working in planning and strategy in media can just be the best job in the world. Of course, we all have good days and bad days, but the opportunity to think about brands and how they behave in the world is a really exciting, creative and inquisitive way to make a living. It's also a career that is kind of off the map. Unless you know a lot about advertising, you wouldn't necessarily know what media agencies are and what they do. Plus, the industry is going through quite a renaissance. Over the last 10 years we've been valuing consistency. But now’s the time for difference.
