EVP Strategy at WPP Media: Why brand marketing needs a rebrand

Speaker A: Foreign. My name is Kate Tovey and ah, I'm guest hosting today's JCDecode Digital Changemakers podcast. Today I'm delighted to welcome David Wilding, EVP of Strategy at WPP. With 25 years experience across agencies and brands, David has watched marketing shift towards short term performance and he thinks it's time we reset the balance. In an article for the Media Leader, he argues that brands need to stop focusing on short term sales and start thinking in terms of near future sales, company value and circular value, the outcomes that really grow a brand and a business. David joins me to unpack how performance became the sensible default, why brand still sounds fluffy in too many boardrooms, and how channels like out of Home can signal value and payback well beyond the last click.

Speaker B: David, thank you so much for joining us today. Um, I thought we could maybe start with a little introduction, uh, your career journey and how you've arrived at your most recent role at wpp.

Speaker C: Yes, so I've always worked in media agencies. I actually started a media buyer, then became a media planner and then became a media strategist. Uh, but actually all the time I was in media agencies, I was spending uh, quite a lot of time on this new website thing called Twitter, uh, or certainly when it is, you know, when it was launched and it had quite a big impact on me. So I used to love like small Twitter, uh, the kind of weird chats that you used to have. And then in 2014 I got the chance to go and work at Twitter and uh, I worked there for eight years as uh, the first kind of UK planning director. And it was fabulous, had a great time. It was a, you know, products and a platform that I loved. And then in 2022 it was in the news, you may have noticed there was quite a high profile takeover of Twitter. Yeah, you might notice. And I kind of thought, I don't really want to work here anymore. Um, and so, um, for the first time in my career I thought, I'm not quite sure what I want to do, but it's not this. And I was lucky enough to do a bit of consulting for a couple of fabulous clients. And then I thought, well, I'll go back into agencies because I've always loved agency life, uh, you know, the variety and the people and the challenges. And I'll go and have a look and see what's happening in a media agency. And so I joined what was then ESSENCE Mediacom X. And then after a couple of simplifications, it's now sort of WPP Media So I work as an EVP of strategy at WPP Media across a whole range of clients with a sort of center of gravity towards uh, wavemaker clients.

Speaker B: Amazing. And so you've worked buying, planning strategy and been on the media partner side. So yes, yeah. Unique potted history so thank you for that. Um, so you've recently written an article that we thought was uh, really interesting. Thank you and yeah, pleasure. Um, and I think that it points a lot to the role that more performance led sort of bottom of funnel marketing um, is sort of having in today's society. Um and I think we've seen quite a seismic M change over the last decade or um, with people sort of being very wedded to short termist marketing strategies. Um, a real bias I think towards things like click through rates. Um and so I wondered really what your point of view on that is and, and sort of how you've seen things evolve during your time in M

Speaker C: marketing and I had noticed a significant difference in that sort of 10 years I was away from agencies to coming back. That sort of lower funnel focus really is quite striking. I think there's a few reasons for it and I do understand all of the reasons. Uh yeah, quarterly reporting, uh, annual planning annually. People are sort of incentivized on an annual basis. Makes it really hard to kind of see beyond the immediate short term and sort of lower funnel performance media tends to sort of go green when you add in uh, economic instability and just world volatility which we've had pretty much seemingly now forever and we're sort of getting used to that. That short term bias you speak of naturally sinks in but I think it comes at a ah, cost and we are basically mistaking what is effective with what is efficient. So for each quarter it's very easy to optimize for efficiency and lower funnel metrics and it's very attractive to get a dashboard that goes green and shows that what you're doing is having this some impact on whatever the dashboard is measuring. But I think it's a really important distinction. I remember Rory Sutherland once saying that actually the biggest um, uh, trick or for a better word that uh, the big platforms uh, play is convincing us that their genius is convincing marketers and media people that the thing that they deliver and measure are the most important things in marketing rather than things like you know, having a differentiated brand and emotion and everything else that goes with it. And I think I reflect on that comment. You can see it playing out in the data because there's been a significant decline in brand Differentiation over the last 15 years. And it's, you know, seismic at the same time as all of our money is going more and more into digital platforms. So this short term investment really is coming at a cost in terms of, uh, brand building.

Speaker B: I completely agree. And I think, you know, in a channel out of home, we know that it does that brand building activity so much so we've definitely sort of seen and felt, I think that shift.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, in your article you sort of propose re branding, almost brand marketing, which I thought was a really nice articulation.

Speaker C: Yeah. Ah.

Speaker B: Of a sort of more tangible outcome.

Speaker A: You can link to brand marketing.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so for those that haven't read the article, I wondered if you could explain a little about what you meant by that. And importantly, whether or not you're starting to see brands actually behave and think in that way.

Speaker C: Well, I think it's one of those things where as you say, branding has a brand problem, which is somewhat ironic. Um, and the truth is, and you know, the facts, uh, are that brands are built over years, but they're managed over quarters. So it's like, well, we've got a problem here because that doesn't seem to, you know, be how brands genuinely work. And so I just got thinking, maybe the issue is that performance marketing is seen to be the sensible thing to do because you can get an immediate response, you can measure and in challenging times when you know, it's good to have that. And so you almost get points for being logical and sensible. Whereas I think we've allowed ourselves to get into a position where brand is seen as something that you do in the good times, uh, it might be, it's a nice feeling or something. And I'm being making the extreme case, trying to prove the point. It's not quite as binary as that, but actually when you stop and think, well, what is this brand investment intended to do? It's there to increase the, you know, the volume and the value of sales for a brand. It's also there to ensure that the overall value of the business is increased. And when you stop and come away from those quarterly things and actually think, what is it there to do? It struck me that we've probably got a branding problem with the word brand. And so what if we were to instead refer to it as near future sales? So rather than sales and brand or uh, performance and brand, what if we go, it's short term sales, immediate sales and near future sales. Mhm. Because I don't think near future sales is something that any CEO, uh, or CFO wants to jettison and it's just that sort of subtle change in what uh, it is there to do has I think actually changed potentially quite a lot of conversations. Certainly internally we're having some quite different conversations. Not because of my brilliant rebranding of it, far from it. But I think it just spoke to uh, where a lot of people are starting to think about in this space. For sure.

Speaker B: It is interesting and I know that um, some of the thinking around the inputs and the data that goes into some of those models has come on leaps and bounds and I think it's probably fair to say that, you know, from an out of home perspective, yeah, we haven't really been fairly represented in some of those models I think. Um, but that is starting to change. And so I love the idea of having this sort of near sales effect, um, because it just more accurately I think reflects the way that consumers behave in different categories.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: It's not all as immediate as you'd like it to be. No, that's right.

Speaker C: And actually when you spend money on near future sales, you also have an immediate sales effect as well. You know, it's not like kind of a binary. You either have them now or you have them in MHM 3 years time in a period you don't really care about or can't really think about because you just get through the week. M There is an immediate sales effect as well, but actually it's extrapolated in the near future so you kind of get the best of both really.

Speaker B: And in the article you also talk about um, sales value, company value, um, and circular value which is really interesting, um, as sort of different outcomes that really should be considered. Um, are you seeing brands start to prioritize different types of outcomes than we would have maybe anticipated even probably two, three years ago?

Speaker C: I think we're definitely having that conversation more about things like profit margin and the actual profitability of advertising. Actually WPP Media have done with a lot of uh, partners a lot of work into the overall profitability of marketing. And I think yes, it's a case of, you know, volume is one thing, but value is something actually that really tends to drive overall business profitability. Um, so I think thinking about that is something that we don't always capture in economic models because they're there to measure, ah, you know, even though they do great things, they're there to m. To measure volume of sales. And actually thinking about the value of what you're sending as well really brings an extra dimension to it which I think does Sort of reframe what we're doing. And that's because different, you know, one exposure in one media is not like one exposure in another.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And so there's this kind of signaling effect of media whereby people are just intuitively quite good media planners. So they sort of know that if you're um, appearing in a medium like out of home, uh, you're doing so in public, you're doing so. It feels like you spent quite a lot of money on it. And those two things, the public nature of it and the fact that you're prepared to invest in it, essentially means that people sort of know, you know, they can trust you, they can take you seriously, you're not going to go anywhere. And that has a real intangible value that makes people think, well, actually this brand must be, uh, you know, sticking around and of value to me and perhaps worth paying more for. But that kind of worth paying more for is I think, the holy grail for a lot of marketers.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and it does sort of, when you, you've articulated it very sort of clearly and simply, it's a sort of a really nice, I think, concept to, to get behind. Um, I'm sort of as to whether you are seeing brands sort of getting truly brand building rights. I think when we first launched, um, our podcast, ah, we had um, the Economist come on.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: And they were talking about a sort of brand first approach that they took over 20 years ago that was still paying dividends today. And I'm thankful to say that quite a lot of that, uh, great work included, you know, those really iconic posters.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so from your point of view within the agency, um, and I think that you also mentioned, um, McCain.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, in your article about how they've sort of really invested and are doing brand well, um, do you have any sort of examples of people that are doing it successfully and are really able to prove those tangible business impacts, consistently

Speaker C: showing there's no doubt that the strongest brands are less reliant on having to compete in lower funnel in a sort of undifferentiated space. So the brand acts as a, as a moat effectively, which is a really sort of powerful thing. And I think in terms of again our conversation with CFOs and CEOs, we need to be mindful of the fact that actually brands are there to reduce risk. You know, the risk of losing customers to competition, the risk of a new entry coming in, the risk of a competitor suddenly reducing their prices, even unknown risks. And a strong brand is your Moat and it can effectively do that. Um, my favorite case study is uh, McCain, which you referenced and it won the IPA, uh, effectiveness award Grand Prix. And honestly, everyone should sort of watch the, the video of it where they sort of explain what they did. And they, going back to 2008, they had a real challenge around, you know, own label coming in. Again, it was another financial crisis, uh, own label coming in. And actually how could they um, you know, maintain their sales volume M But also more importantly maintain the, the value of it, maintain the margin. They're able to um, they're able to charge because you know, frankly, why would you pay a little bit extra for this brand if it's a commoditized category? So they went big and they invested in the brand and they did it consistently. Investment was uh, huge. Uh, they tested promotions and saw that, okay, you can keep the volume up, but the margin goes down. And I thought the only really way to do this is to drive some emotional value in the brand.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: So they did it consistently. They had a strong point of view. They had what I think in their own language is like consistent handwriting, which uh, is a lovely term, isn't it? That sort of consistency, that kind of compound creativity effect. Um, and the results were enormous. So they were able to um, reduce uh, you know, price elasticity, use the term for it, by 47%. So you know, significant. Massive. Absolutely massive. Because all the, all of the margin is in, is in margin, not in volume necessarily. And volume of course matters. But it's thinking holistically about those two things M that leads to success. And I think when we're at our, um, when we think we're being as kind of business minded as we can, we often talk about econometrics and measuring volume. Mhm. But the missing piece is very, very often value. And when it comes to value, it's actually, it's a feeling for consumers as much as anything else. How much do I feel this, this brand is worth? And feelings are hard things to have conversations with CFOs about. But the actual evidence is that it, this works. So yeah, I think it's, it's a much more holistic conversation that we're having.

Speaker B: And are there other sort of brands that you're working on that you've got visibility even across sort of wpp?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: You think are really starting to rethink their approach to, to brand?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's happening more and more. I think it's um, it's something that, as I say earlier on the external Circumstances aren't really going to change. I don't think any of us are suddenly saying in 2030 they'll be suddenly upland to look at the kind of overall trends. So we are where we are and it's a case of let's sort of try to think holistically about what's going to drive the overall effectiveness of this business. But you need to be able to think outside of that immediate quarter. Uh, and that is hard to do. I do get that. But all the evidence shows that the brands who have a three year vision, five year vision of what they're doing are the ones that are more.

Speaker B: And I want to come back to that sort of term circular value because I do think that's really interesting. And you know the channel like out of Home, we talk about sort of the power of giving back and the value that that has and it's something that we're really, really proud of.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, as an industry. But I know that not every channel can sort of um, necessarily say the same. So I wonder what your sort of view on that is.

Speaker C: Yeah, I was, I read, I think it's over 50 of. Is it 54.

Speaker B: Just under 50. Just under 50.

Speaker C: Under 50 of um, money invested into out of Home goes back into community.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: And I remember reading, thinking, oh, uh, you know I do genuinely think the out of home industry should, should and could do more to talk about that. I think it's a really great piece of news. It's not the only reason to invest in out of Home. Far from it. But it's a really positive thing in terms of a circular value back to communities and society.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: And it was this point that actually, and I was talking to a friend about this who's worked in the industry for a long time, she was saying, you know, the money used to sort of go back, used to fund effectively, you know, the UK media industry and it would come back to us now. You know, it's still the case. If you're funding publishers, you're funding their journalism. If you're funding out of Home, you're funding sort of community, um, spirit. If you're funding, you know, advertising on tfl, all that money goes back into running the service because.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: TFL to make a profit funding commercial TV again you get the idea that when you're putting your money into, you know, large tech companies, I'm not quite sure that money's coming back to us in the same way. In fact, I know it's not because it's not coming back into um, the UK economy in anything like the same, um, volume as the other examples that I cited. But also it's going on to uh, a quarterly sales target which is a drop in the ocean.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: That seems to be becoming increasingly separate from the overall value and the share prices of these companies due to their investment in AI.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: And we've got to a stage where something like exactly around 80% of money, uh, in global advertising is going to nine platforms.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I don't think that's a healthy ecosystem. So I think this sense of circular value is a, ah, it's something that people should be mindful of. And I'm realistic. It's not the only reason we're not a fluffy, touchy feedy world where, you know, let's kind of do the right thing, guys. There has to be an effectiveness argument as well. But I think there is and this is yet the best of both worlds. So you get the effectiveness of knowing you're building near future sales, you're increasing your margin, you're protecting yourself against price elasticity. Plus that sense of, well, actually there's a circular value in kind of protecting our brand if you want to be selfish about it for the future as well as the societal value, which I also quite like as well.

Speaker B: Absolutely. That sort of purposeful intention behind, uh, media investment. I think everything that you was talking about, it just makes sense. It kind of feels like it makes a lot of sense. Um, but I realized that when you are maybe trying to, I don't know, have a conversation with your cfo, it's possibly a very different conversation. As you said, you know, living in quarters versus kind of annual. So do you have any practical tips, any sort of advice really about how marketers can approach those conversations?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, I mean fundamentally CFOs are people too. Uh, and I think understanding what, you know, what's on their minds and what um, matters for, um, him or for her is really, really important. To try to build that personal relationship can really, really help. I think curiosity about how the company makes money and how the business works is absolutely essential. So again, that sounds pretty basic, but I think my experience in agencies is that we tend to be very interested in the brand aspect and not so interested in the business aspect. Um, and it's relatively easy to become very interested and once you become interested it becomes fascinating because how people make money is just so interesting. So. Oh, wow. Um, but we refer to like impolites as British people to ask, okay, um, so take an interest in that um, try to think about how you differentiate, how you genuinely differentiate your brand.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: In a commoditized media space. Because that being no doubt that is in the CFO's interest as well.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: They do understand that the, you know, a brand is an investment and it is there to um, protect the business, uh, from risk, but also to grow uh, volume and margin too.

Speaker B: So we hope that the power of brands is going to be something that is sort of firmly back on the agenda and longer term brand health, brand building, and how that can be better linked to more measurable, tangible business outcomes. It has to sort of be part of that conversation.

Speaker C: I think it has to be. But it's uh, it's almost like a two speed conversation.

Speaker B: Right, okay.

Speaker C: Because the immediate sort of quarter sales can be so sort of dominan in people's minds that you have to be able to have that sort of slightly different speed conversation as well. Um, and it's a challenge for people, we're all busy. But for me it's a lot more interesting than putting this money in the same old places and seeing the same sort of outcomes as your competitors get. Uh, which is kind of really what happens in this algorithmic, over optimized sort of platform world. Actually I kind of sometimes think, if you think about it, I used to work on um, Nike years ago and often we, if we were trying to sell an idea to a client, we would go, we almost ask ourselves, if Adidas did this, would we be bothered? And this is quite a nice little test, isn't it? Actually if I would, there must be something in that idea that is quite powerful and I think about that in terms of investing in a brand as well. So if our competitor was to suddenly stop investing in their brand or it was suddenly increased their investment in their brand by then, would we be bothered? And intuitively you would be, wouldn't you? Yeah, for sure. Because you go, uh, you know, they're getting, you know, all the sense of emotional value, but actually what they're really doing is building their business.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: Uh, and yeah, they're building sales in the short term, they're being the sales in the future, they're increasing their price elasticity, improving their price, um, margin, opportunity. And so you would naturally go, well, we should do that as well. No, think about that the other way around. If you're cutting your marketing budget or if you're putting it in the lower funnel disproportionately.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: You're actually helping your competition and nobody wants to do that. So Whether it's future, near future, long term, short term. I think it's probably the wrong conversation. I think it's about what are we actually, how are we building this business? Um, and how do we outmaneuver our competition? And that for me takes you to places very different to. We're putting it into an algorithmic feedback.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that that's going to become an even more important conversation, isn't it? As we sort of look into the future, look ahead and differentiation is definitely going to be, you know, make or break. I'd argue some brands and some categories.

Speaker C: Uh, well, absolutely. With Agentix Search and everything else that comes with it. People are brands and our clients and internally we're so fascinated by that, you know, the future of discovery. Yeah, there's so. And we're only really scratching the surface in terms of I still think ultimately the client will be a human. I know people have said that, you know, the agent will be the customer. I think in most categories most of the time the human will might have a recommendation from an agent and have to approve it. But I still think, yeah, we're thinking about those, that duality. But the human is the main customer.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker C: And I think more than ever the evidence is that humans, uh, you know, rely on brands. In fact we know that's true because we did some research called How Humans Decide, uh, from WPP Media, which I love it. It sounds like the sort of thing that a robot would say as a title, but it was written by humans. And actually the interesting thing is that um, 84% of uh, the times that people buy a brand, it's a brand where they've already had what we call a priming bias going into it. So they've already got a preference for that band before they get into the active stage when they're choosing 1 84. So that's huge evidence that brand priming really, really matters. So yeah, I think the evidence is kind of overwhelming, um, in favor of investing in all the things we've talked about today.

Speaker B: And that makes me feel sort of quite good about really the future of out of Home because I think it does have that fundamental priming effect on other channels. Absolutely. And as you rightly said at the beginning, because it is in the public domain and it has that trust. I think there's something really powerful about that sort of hand in hand. Yeah.

Speaker C: Can you imagine if we'd built if you invented out of Home last year because imagine a scenario where we had all our algorithmic feeds for sort of a few years and we had all these screens and suddenly somebody went, I've just invented this medium which, uh, has a significant reach, which basically is overseen. So you're not just limited to the person in their feed. You actually, other people can see it as well, and it's big and impactful and, uh, it allows you to kind of really target specific contexts or areas and everything like that. I think we'd lose our minds with excitement.

Speaker B: Uh-huh.

Speaker C: Uh, and so, yeah, I think the future is really, really bright for out, especially when you factor in all of the other technological opportunities and data opportunities. But it's, uh, because it's been around for a long time, we can sort of forget the miracle that is there in front of us.

Speaker B: So. What a wonderful conversation. Um, I'm hoping that some listeners are feeling a bit inspired by what we've spoken about. Um, so is there one thing that you think would be a good takeaway for people who are maybe thinking about how to make that next step?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think be curious, um, because curiosity, uh, is a really wonderful thing in human nature, but also in terms of thinking about growing brands and growing businesses, there's so much that we can be noodle about in, in our world, which is what makes working in an agency so great. And just being curious about the stuff that you might think is boring is actually, uh, incredibly powerful.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Don't. Don't sort of assume that, you know, everything. Sort of go back and be curious about it.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Brilliant.

Speaker C: And ask the silly question. Always.

Speaker B: There's never a silly question.

Speaker C: Never a silly question.

Speaker B: I think that that is wonderful. What a lovely way to finish. Thank you so much, David.

Speaker C: We enjoyed it.

Speaker B: Thank you, David, for such a sharp

Speaker A: challenge to how advertisers think about brand building and the wider value that media choices can create. If there's anything you would like to ask us or hear more about, you can visit the jcdeco Marketing Hub online. We hope you enjoyed listening. And wherever you get your podcasts, don't forget to subscribe, like and, um, share.