Marketing measurement is BROKEN - And how to fix it

Speaker A: Guys, I have got a treat for you today. If you are interested in commercial performance based marketing, I am chatting too. I'm gonna get his job title wrong now, so I'm actually gonna get him to say it. Jamie Irving from Pentland Brands.

Speaker B: His job title is SVP of Media insight and Effectiveness.

Speaker A: There you go.

Speaker B: Which is an absolute mouthful.

Speaker A: I love that. So if you're interested in media insight and effectiveness. We share so much. Some really, really cool campaigns. Pentland, if you don't know, own brands like Speedo, which I used to call Speedos until just a, uh, other brands, Canterbury, Berghaus, Mitre, Loads. So you're gonna love this episode. Without further ado, you're gonna go and meet Jamie and me again as we actually start the podcast. Jamie Irving from Pentland Brands.

Speaker B: Hello.

Speaker A: I know, I knew we were gonna do that. We've done four or five goes at this guys, but I'm gonna just leave it in this time. Um, welcome to marketing the madness. I am, um, incredibly excited to speak to you because Jamie has let me guys be totally open. Reign, uh, free. We're like, we've got no real. Well, we have got a bit of structure, but we're gonna talk about the things that are important to you in your role right now and your view on the world. And we're trying not to have a brief. And I love these podcasts, they're actually always the best ones. So I can't wait.

Speaker B: We'll talk about stuff and things with

Speaker A: stuff, things brand, retail, technology, marketing, see what comes up. Let's see where we go. So let's start with, with the Jamie story. Um, give me a bit of the potted history, your career and of course about your role at Pentland now.

Speaker B: Cool, sounds good. So I'm more ex agency than I am brand side actually. So I was agency for what I want to say like two thirds of my career. Although I feel like I'm on my second career now. But two thirds of my career, uh, which was really interesting. I think it's the best place anyone can learn, right? You just get your hands on so much at an agency. You get responsibility early. You learn what a PNL is when you're about 24, which is amazing. Um, and then decided to make the move after being a load of independents and the likes of OMD as well, moved over to brand side, so then went to Bowdoin, uh, UK brand, which was really interesting and I loved being client side because you get to see everything end to end and actually understand how to make money. Um, obviously agency, you're selling people. That sounds bad, but you're saying you are, you're selling people, you're selling a service. Whereas when you go client side, you actually sell a thing. Um, and you get to understand the margin that comes along with that, uh, how to sell that thing. And ultimately, if marketing is all about sales, shifting behavior and all that kind of good stuff, you need to understand that. And to be a commercial marketer, you really need to understand it. Um, and then I went from Bowdoin over to Pentland where I'm SVP of media insight and effectiveness. So all things media, whether it be performance or brand, looking at, ah, how consumer data powers everything that we do. So not just the marketing, but if it's not inherently within your product as well at inception, then you're going to have a flop on your hands. Um, and then effectiveness, which is the hot topic everywhere at the moment. And how do you actually measure properly when what we're trying to do is convince people to buy things they may not need at that moment in time?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, isn't it? And also you don't want to feel like you're getting people to buy something that they don't need. But effectively marketing is, well, hopefully servicing a need a lot of the time. And you guys have got some pretty cool brands at Pentland. Yeah, I was going to say for those that don't know. Well, you did promise me you're going to wear your outfit today.

Speaker B: I just can't pull off a Speedo as much as I would want to. I just can't do it.

Speaker A: But can you imagine if we'd done the podcast in Speedos? That would have been quite cool.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean it would have been something.

Speaker A: It would have been better for me probably than you because it kind of just looks like a, like a tight little top would have been maybe slightly more showing for you. Slightly more showing. So you've got Speedos. Um, Speedo or Speedos.

Speaker B: Speedo.

Speaker A: See I always think of Speedos.

Speaker B: Depends how many you want, I guess.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I've actually got quite a few. I wear Speedo, uh, swimming costumes quite a lot at the gym. I love them.

Speaker B: Ah, there you go.

Speaker A: Really, really good. Like the best fitting, the best. If you actually want to go swim. Yeah, um, I love them.

Speaker B: Swimmer's choice. Yeah, we've got Speedo, Berghaus, Canterbury, Mitre, uh, which is my favorite. It's not the biggest, but it's such a good brand. Kickers, uh, which is really cool. And like tapping back into that 90s nostalgia. You got a less A and Endura in the. Really cool.

Speaker A: Yeah, really cool.

Speaker B: And a lot of heritage brands. Yeah, in there. Uh, so they've all got this pedigree as a brand and as the decades have kind of flowed, it's positioning from being I guess a small brand in some cases to a proper challenger brand and doing things a little bit differently. So you see that in like Berghaus work with Liam Gallagher and all of that kind of good stuff. So yeah, lot of good stuff out there.

Speaker A: Well, I want to dig into that because I am um, I would say like as a 90s girl, kickers were quite a big part of my shoe. I mean they were the shoes like you weren't cool at school if you weren't wearing pairings. Wearing.

Speaker B: We have to pair them. I guess you have to pair.

Speaker A: That's a very good. See look, my brain is. There you go. It is there. If you weren't wearing kickers and pairing them correctly. I'm sure I probably did wear them on the wrong feet some days. Cause I didn't have any clue what I was doing at school. Um, but kickers were such a big part of my childhood and they have got this whole nostalgia piece. Um, talk to me about marketing that brand today because it will be very different from when I was a teenager. And legacy brands sometimes have. Have a hard rap, you know, they don't. They become uncle. But a lot of these brands are having a bit of a revival. So talk to me about the kind of stuff that you've been working on for kickers. Because I'm a big fan so I'm

Speaker B: fortunate enough to sit across all the brands and then the brand teams. You'll have amazing brand directors, heads of brands who look at uh, okay, what's the creative vision, what's the right product and what the campaigns that we should be going after. And uh, on kickers, they've done a fantastic job of going well. You've got multiple audiences that you have to dial into and some of them are going to be more focused on that 90s kind of era. So leaning more into music and you might have the kick highs that people want. And actually what goes on in that kind of scene then influences what happens on the school ground and influences the bat school period. So they've been really, really, I guess well thought out strategies from that team in terms of who you go after and when and the multiple different looks and shop fronts that a brand can have. But it's really about them dialing into the key moments. So they've been doing a lot of work with kind of the underground music scene as well and just going back to their roots in that kind of space. They did a really good campaign. My years are blurring. I can't remember if it was last year or this year. I think this year. And it was like it was the 50th anniversary of the Kit Kai and so it was all these stories about what Kick has means to people, the amount of ravers that they got and like people like Professor Green and footballers who were just like coming in and wanting to do these pieces because they love the brand so much. So that's what's unique is across all these brands, you have a high fan base but also a load of advocates who want to talk to it and tell their story with the brand. Yeah, that's the unique piece. I, uh, don't think all brands have that at all.

Speaker A: And what does that mean for you then, when it comes to the, like, you know, your, your role overarching across all of these brands? Are you having to treat them all qu differently or are you using the same kind of like performance marketing tactics across the board? I'm keen to understand what, you know, how that works. I mean, I love, by the way, that you work on multiple brands because that works very well for me.

Speaker B: It works well with my adhd.

Speaker A: I was about to say the same because I've just been diagnosed with adhd.

Speaker B: I'm not going through that, uh, yet, but I don't think I need to.

Speaker A: But I don't think I could ever. And when I've worked client side similar to you, I've always worked with multiple brands. I couldn't work somewhere where I was just working on one thing because my brain doesn't work like that.

Speaker B: Yeah, it needs to be all over the place.

Speaker A: Yeah. So talk to me. Well, obviously, clearly ADHD is helping you with this, but tell me how that plays out day to day.

Speaker B: So I mean, part of it is look for the similarities, not the differences. So there'll be some areas where actually you can take learnings from one to another. And there's also multi market, so you may have certain learnings within a market that are transferable, if not transferable between brands. So if you look at performance marketing, obviously all our, uh, brands are present when it comes to performance marketing. If you go into our structures of our campaigns, they're all largely similar. It's just how we then utilize that structure will differ between them and they obviously have different budgets, so that means you're leaning into different tactics and with some you're being scrappy with others. It's all about protection. We're sold across so many different retailers as well, that just from a pure performance marketing standpoint, our biggest competitor is ourselves in that sense, because we can be found anywhere, which is fantastic. But that has an impact on how you advertise across performance. So we have that similar structure. We'll just flex within it. And then when we're looking at the brand space, I think all of our brands could be classed as challenger brands. They're not going out there and spending the same as a Nike. So we have to act in a slightly different way. So from a media standpoint, that's where you do something slightly different. And it could be. We done loads of murals now because that works for us and actually that gritty nature of them is perfect for the likes of Berghaus. Um, we've looked at how we can measure better because we're sold in so many different locations. How do we use footfall location, even if it's not, you know, a digital out of home campaign or whatever? How do you use footfall in order to help drive a level of effectiveness? But it is, it's those scrappier bits. How do we get as much value as possible from what we do? Last year we did our first, uh, portfolio buy, which was with tnt. So that was a sponsorship and we got that well below market rates because we were first to move on it. And I think we turned it round. So eight brands, all uk, Sorry, seven brands all uk. But we turn around a multichannel sponsorship in two weeks just to get it done, um, and act as nimble as possible to make sure that we're getting as much value. And then this year we've done something similar with business which allows us to appear in sports locations up and down the country. So the level of eyeballs that we've got on the brands right now is higher than it's ever been. The cost of that is phenomenal because we've been opportunistic and managed to lean into it. So there's two sides. One is really, really well thought out. You have structures which are consistent, you're leveraging as much data as you can. Uh, the other is we're trying to convince people, we're trying to shift behaviors. How do you cut through all the noise which people experience now? And, uh, that is just be scrappy, be open, try and get as much reach and, um, frequency as possible without just Doing the same old thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's so hard, isn't it? Because there's so many channels, there's social, there's all the different social channels. There's in real life, there's billboards, there's so many marketing opportunities. It's really blooming hard to actually, you know, one, one pick the right ones and then to measure the right ones that ah, are actually helping you move the needle completely.

Speaker B: And when you consider then, you know, social channels, now you've got TikTok shop. That's been phenomenal for us because we were a first mover on that and we gained loads of traction. It's now getting to the point on TikTok where it feels like you're getting an affiliate ad every two seconds. So what that then means to the platform, the entertainment value will see over time and then you've got the shift in search when it comes to AI. And if we think about what we're trying to do is sell, we're trying to position our products in the best way possible to sell. AI is a massive advantage in that. Uh, and particularly AI search. It's like having a shop assistant every time someone searches. So as long as you're doing the basics actually you're in a really, really strong position. But it's exciting, right? We've not had this many channels. It's more difficult than it's ever been, but it's actually more interesting than it's ever been. Like the Internet, once we cracked it, once we learned out things like multitouch attribution were all crap, we then got to a position where it's like okay, this is about logic. We need to do the logical things, shift behavior, sell some product. How do we do that at scale in the most cost effective way. And AI is massive leap forward in uh, that particularly in the search space.

Speaker A: Like I say, well there we go, that's next then. You've just taken me on to my next topic.

Speaker B: Have I?

Speaker A: I can't not talk about AI and search. I was actually luck enough to interview Google, PayPal, uh, EPAM and commerce in America about the new I know, Go me. Hey podcast taking me places these days. Um, but I was able to interview them about the new uh, UPC. Is that. Am I saying that? No. UCP Universal Commerce Protocol. UCP. The new UCP that they've set up with about 20 brands like huge American brands like Target that are kind of helping set the standard. Yeah for um, I guess agentic search and what that means and so many really basic Things. Now, I've probably spoken about this a lot on the podcast, but I'm gonna talk about it again. But that you just. People hadn't thought about before that are gonna be so different. Because when we're humans, we're searching for things that we like. Right. And there's quite a lot of emotion built into that. The future is gonna be agents buying and searching on our behalf based on the things that we like. But all they're doing is matching. So they're matching. This is what my customer, you know, person, the person I'm an agent for or my household that I'm an agent for. Likes and needs. And these are the things I need to match against in order to buy them, find them, the right products. So if you haven't got your data, like, you know, I guess your data really, really data y. Like if you haven't listed all the different things that you need to know, then they're not going to be able to match you. So therefore your products won't get found. And this was like a huge, uh, it's an obvious realization, but a huge realization for me. And the same with. I've actually done this like searching for products using images that then you're using a lot that's then obviously got the brand's logo or a logo or a brand mark that I didn't know and it's matched it to the wrong brand because the hasn't explained or uploaded their uh, logo in a way that's findable by the AI agents. So everything is about, well, not everything's about to change. It has already changed. But therefore brands have got quite a lot of work to do.

Speaker B: Loads.

Speaker A: Yeah. So tell me, what does that mean for you guys? Like what, what things are you doing because of AI?

Speaker B: I think it's just the basics. Right. That's the positive, is everyone's getting really scared.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, maybe unnecessarily so. Because I don't know, to my mind, right, I'm simplistic. So I go, if we go back to the good old days of SEO, what's different now? Right. You are focused on having the best product data, making sure that it's got as much consumer led detail in there as possible. Because someone doesn't search for, I don't know if you've got a top called the Julia, people won't search for the Julia. They're not going to ask for it, but they will search for a linen top in this color. So your product data has to go to that level of detail. Has to be consumer first has to be out there so that someone can tap into it. So if a person off the street wants to read your product feed, they'd understand it. You need content on your site to answer questions which, if you think of the majority of content on brand sites now, a lot of it isn't geared to why would you have this product? Uh, what does it. Why does it exist and what's it. Why is it better than anything else?

Speaker A: What problem is it solving? Like, I'll search for. I need things I don't need to iron because I'm really lazy and I don't have time to iron my clothes. So I want stuff that when I travel, and I do travel a lot for work, I want stuff that isn't going to crease. I mean, I don't know if I'm really doing that today. Um, but, you know, it's not that creased. It's a little bit creased, but, you

Speaker B: know, it's part of the look.

Speaker A: We're going with it, we're going with it. Um, so, you know, it means things like that, that you don't. That we traditionally didn't think of absolute.

Speaker B: And then you have those articles on site linked to the product within it. Make it easier for something that doesn't know your brand to be able to crawl it. It's like having a fresh customer come to your site and go, why the hell am I even bothering with you? So I think that's a key point. And, uh, the other side is just make sure that your site is actually readable and accessible. So it's the basics of SEO. That's all it is. And I know I'm massively oversimplifying it, but you can get hung up on having to be the first to opt into, I don't know, newfangled protocol, whatever the positive is with something like, um, ucp. Ucp. Ucp.

Speaker A: We got it. I nearly renamed it, but it's ucp.

Speaker B: It works. Yeah, you have, um, you know, Shopify are opted in as well and they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger and they're not looking like they're going to stop anytime soon. So it gives us the tools that we need. It's just then do the other basics alongside it, so we'll be in this world. Just make sure that like, something, something. It's not even someone that doesn't understand you can actually understand your brand and what you sell. And then the shop system, which is an LLM, can do its job and get you some sales um, it's really. There are some interesting bits. Right. Like if you look at Amazon overnight, they were able to have like one of the biggest streaming ad platforms around because you're not going to cancel your subscription for an ad because of the delivery proposition and everything else it brings. If you look at Google, they have the same with search, already integrated Gemini into search. So it's there, it's ready. They've already got millions of people tapping into it. So they're in the front runners to take us into this new world and they're looking at uh, how do you bring the checkout into that experience? Meta talked about it years ago where it was frictionless commerce. It's all the same stuff. We just go through a cycle and there's a better tech enablement to allow us to do it. But the basics are the basics.

Speaker A: Well, you've referenced something quite important. There is the right technologies to power you through. You guys have been moving a lot of the brands, if not all over to Shopify, is that right?

Speaker B: It's on a journey.

Speaker A: On a journey, yeah.

Speaker B: So some have moved across.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I'm guessing because, I mean Shopify kind of positioned themselves in the market as the most innovative. But I think they were known, you know, way back when Shopify was known as like, you know, the site that everyone can use.

Speaker B: It's accessible.

Speaker A: Yeah. Small to medium sized businesses. But now they're, they're supporting some of the biggest businesses in the world, like enterprise level, major big brands because they are the most innovative platform. They've been learning for years. They've now got all of these kind of best in breed elements to their technology. Is that enabling you to move faster?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean one thing that we've also done is we've brought on a CDP for the first time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we now have all our customer data. So we work with a, uh, company called Ametria. Yeah, I always say it wrong. It's either Ametria or Ametria. So I can't say the name but it's a bloody good platform. Um, and all brands are across there and it's the native plugins that you have between a Shopify and in Metria. That's what enables you to move quicker because once you're onboarded, you're onboarded, you've got access to all your data. You can easily segment, you get access to, you know, predictive segments. So, you know, we're running tests which allow us to see nothing groundbreaking, but. Right, it's a test which means that you can give away less discount depending on the segment a consumer falls in. So that is a very simplistic, you know, early test. We've only just onboarded all the brands. Gives us a big lever in how we can control margin and how the brands show up. So yeah, I mean Shopify is an amazing platform. The app suite is unbelievable. So everything that you have access to, undoubtedly, like you can move so much quicker than you used to. It's like honestly incredible how commerce works now.

Speaker A: I know, it's crazy, isn't it? Well, it's just that they're ready to go. They've already learned you don't. There's no. I think traditionally it was, you need to bespoke build this. We're trying to do something different to get ahead. They are the most innovative so they're already getting you straight ahead. So you can then work on the other things that are gonna complicate shit. Yeah, I know.

Speaker B: So like you go back to Programmatic, right? That was, you know, I used to specialize in Programmatic in the agency days and that was complicated as much as possible to try and make as much margin as possible, which I know I'm now probably upsetting quite a few people by saying that. And it has changed a lot. But when it first came out, it was just so complex, needlessly complex. When really it's just auction based buying. And it's the same. Right? You used to have a commerce platform, you had an army of developers to maintain it. You couldn't leverage your data across platforms easily, you couldn't personalize easily. You needed tech on tech on tech. It's just totally different world now. Um, and it helps with the setting up of other storefronts. So I mentioned TikTok shop before, but all of marketplaces you can start to integrate, look at a single stock pool, trade in a different way again. It makes life a little bit easier and harder at the same time because everything becomes more about the consumer, which is great, but you got so many different routes and you need to really understand them. Insight becomes more central. But we never would have had this opportunity before.

Speaker A: Yeah, make it easy. I actually posted about that yesterday and it goes to everything.

Speaker B: Like you've just dated the podcast.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Sorry guys. Yeah, had, ah, Richard Shotton on yesterday or not on yesterday, but we released the episode yesterday and I interviewed him at our last Marketing and the Madness Live, um, event and I was like, what's the one thing marketeers can do to get ahead? Like if you had to pick one Behavioral bias. And it was make it easy. Make it easy for people to buy you. You don't have to. I mean, I know we're talking about overcomplicating, like the technology and the things that we're building, but it works. It's the same principle. Like, make it easy. Like, it isn't that hard. You've just got to make it easy for people to buy you.

Speaker B: You need to reduce friction and tell them why they should be buying from you.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Product marketing is now, um, more key than ever when you think about how discovery of brands works.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Totally different world, but it's, it's the same rules.

Speaker A: How do you discover brands?

Speaker B: Largely on Instagram. Yes. Like a lot on Instagram. TikTok more and more.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I'm trying to be down. I refuse. Uh, Snapchat, but yes. Tick tock.

Speaker A: Occasionally I feel like I need to. I mean, I don't know if I want to say this, but I feel like I need to like, get into TikTok more. We use it for the podcast.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But my team, I need to. I know if I do stuff, you

Speaker B: can buy on TikTok shop.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, need to understand. And that's the thing, I think as marketeers, you know, I, uh, it's responsible of me to spend time on TikTok. I mean, I spend enough time on Instagram, but I'm the same as you. I would say most of my products when it comes to the things that I'm buying personally. So, you know, uh, there'll be brands that I love and that I go to. Like if I know if I want a new swimming costume for the gym, I'm likely to go to, to Speedos, because I know Speedo. Speedo. I just got it in my head, I've been calling the Speedos my whole life. Um, I'm likely to go to Speedo because I know they fit well, I know the quality is good, I know my size. It's easy for me to go and buy from there. It's a brand that I trust. But, you know, there might be, you know, I might then go and search for Speedo. Um, and then I might find something else. And Instagram is probably, as it's always listening, show me lots of other similar, you know, some in costumes that I could, that I could then dial into and buy. So I think the way we search is changing quite a lot. Uh, the other interesting thing is obviously how. Yeah, obviously we've talked about this a little bit already, but like, how we're using agents. I'm probably not using it as much. I am using it, not using it as much for my fashion and, like, beauty perch. Maybe more for beauty than fashion. Because I'll. Or I'll find a product and then I'll check it out on, you know, Chat or Claude or whatever, and I'll be like, this is telling me these things. These are the ingredients. Is it as good as it says it is? Kind of vibe. And then it will come back to me and tell me, yes, it is. Or actually, this other product has got very similar, uh, ingredients and is actually a lot cheaper and probably isn't, you know, worth the money. So I was comparing two brands. I don't know if I'd say this, but I'm gonna. Because why not? That's why I'm doing the podcast. Um, there was one called Allies of skin.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And Medic 8. Medicaid. I love Medicaid. Um, and Allies of Skin was, I would say, like, double the price of Medicaid, but with, like, some really great advertising on Instagram, which I was. Which is also smart, right? Like, you know, they're showing the product, they're kind of repping how brilliant it is. They do, like, this whole, like, before and after thing on the website so that you can see, like, I was like, oh, my God, I need, I need this. Like, this is clearly better, uh, than what I'm using for Medicaid. And actually, then when I put it into Claude and it reviewed all the. And chat, they came back with which. Which reassured me because I did it m. In both and it, like, they both gave me similar. They were like, actually, Medicaid is more medical grade and using it over time is probably going to be better for your skin. The Allies of Skin product might instantly make you look a bit better, but over time, it's not going as deep as the products that you're already using, which are half a price price. So I was like, boom. Because it's all about peptides now. That's the new thing, is it? Peptides. Peptides. Peptides.

Speaker B: I'm probably not getting enough.

Speaker A: Yeah. Products. Products. Any peptides. And I mean, they're. They're, uh, In America, they're apparently they're gonna. Is it. FDA approve a few of these different peptides that you can, um, inject, Manjaro, et cetera? Is.

Speaker B: Oh, is that what they.

Speaker A: Is a peptide?

Speaker B: Oh, okay.

Speaker A: But there's all these.

Speaker B: I've heard of those.

Speaker A: There's all these other ones that, like, help you look Younger or like, there's loads. Uh, they're all peptides, basically. But now you'll start to see them in skincare products. How deep it goes when it's actually in the lotion, I don't know. But clearly I'm quite obsessed with this. Spend a lot of time researching. But this is how fragmented customer journeys are. Because I've found something on Instagram that's been advertised to me because it knows I like to spend way too much money on beauty products. I'm then checking those things on Claude and ChatGPT and then I'm deciding where, where I go and which one I go and buy. And through Instagram or by downloading the app to get a discount and getting text messages and whatever else. The journeys are really fragmented. So my question to you, Jamie, is how on earth do you as a brand measure that and measure where to spend your pennies?

Speaker B: I mean, it's going to become even harder. I think you have this battle with consumers like head and heart, and how do you appeal to both? And in some arenas you want to win and in others you're happy just to make sure that you're doing the basics. So, you know, obviously when it comes to the heart, you want to make sure that your brand is showing up in the right way and that, uh, I would still be product led and product first because that's where you'll differentiate and hopefully you win someone over on the product so they don't go and compete. Um, but also just having really good product is key. Um, the other side, where it's more around, you know, you have a need. So you talked about agent to agent. That could be, you know, car insurance is an obvious one.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You don't want to do that, so leave that to the agent, see what comes back. Uh, skincare, healthcare, all of that sort of stuff could be agent to agent. As long as we know as consumers it comes down to the quality of data, not really too much else, then fine, take it as you will at that point and get the answer back and then make your decision. I think measurement really just comes down to cold, hard logic. And it's how do you aggregate up to a view which allows you to see, I spent in this area and it shifted sales, shifted consumer behavior by this much. And you have to look at more of an aggregate than each individual line. Now, um, geography is, to my mind, one of the best ways of doing it and looking at that effectiveness. Uh, I would also look at everything over a longer period of time. So have a three Year view, you know, you've got your baseline of sales, what did promotion activity do, how many emails did you send out? Did you spend more in different types of media and what was the impact of that? And you start to see that coming through on the top line. A lot of the more difficult things to measure now which are emerging. So take AI search. You're not going to not do it, right? It's all hygiene, it's all basics. So you need it in place. It's like having SEO, right? So you'll make sure that's always in place and you will be able to see over time as tracking gets better, a greater proportion of sales coming from it and then hopefully you start to see, okay, I'm ranking more in these LLMs, so I need to follow through with the investment. When we have a new product launch, we need to make sure it's AI ready as being like the most important thing first and foremost. With the other channels which are difficult, it's mainly in digital because everyone was like, okay, cookies, great, aren't they? Because they were an easy answer. It was a drug. You could get addicted to it as a marketer because you can basically make up the result now, thankfully that's died away and now we can look at uh, okay, what we're doing in hot house areas if we want to do it that way. So shift your activity. What's the impact of that? I think the best thing you can do is turn something off to have a look at what's happening, look at up waiting in certain areas, see what happens there. Uh, obviously on a campaign level you can dive in and you can see, okay, well that's not performing and you have to look at some things in moment, last click in order to see that. So you end up with this trifecta of measurement where you've got last click, which is in moment. How do we optimize? You've got incrementality which gives you a good read on not long term, but mid term. Am I doing the right things? Are we actually wasting money? And um, would these sales have come anyway? And then longer term, which could be econometrics, which has come full circle and it's now the gold standard again to see if we invest more in our brand over time. What does that mean and what are the best ways to do that? But there's no one stop shop solution, right? It's combining all these things and it's so confusing being a consumer then it makes sense. It's confusing to measure how you're Impacting consumers. But it's all logical, which is great. So it's actually, whilst there's more things you need to consider as a marketer, it's actually simpler than I think it's been for a long time. Right. We're trying to get someone to change their mind about a product, to then go and buy that product and we know what we're spending to get them to do that. So surely we can measure it. You might just not do it on a one to one, which is absolutely fine.

Speaker A: Yeah, well it's back to we were talking about this off, off air is the behavioral biases and human psychology. At the end of the day, how do you get people, you know, persuade people to buy your product? That's as simple as it is. And there's lots of different, you know, there's lots of different things that we do to do that. Um, so I'm going to delve a bit deeper on the measurement thing and push you even further. Uh, do you use any cool technologies to help you measure?

Speaker B: We use loads of cool technologies. Do we use any to measure? So for Last Touch, it's very standard. Pretty much everyone uses Google Analytics in some way, shape or form. Uh, I would say we use it quite well to get more data out of it and that's only improving as more brands move on to Shopify. Incrementality, it's no one stop shop platform. It's experiments that you're doing in each of the platforms and we work with Meta and Google in order to be able to do that. Same with TikTok. Um, but then we do take some risks at times. If you want to see the impact of affiliates and I pick on affiliates because they've got a bad rep in this space. If you want to see the incrementality of it, like I say turning it off is a great thing to do. It's the most immediate way to see a result result. Um, and you can assess the incrementality. So that one's no one stop shop. It's just we go with who we go with. On the MMM front. We're more in the discovery and investigation stage at the moment. So gathering as much data. Sorry, the econometric model.

Speaker A: Yes. Okay.

Speaker B: Media mix modeling. Yes. So we're in discovery because that comes down to how good is your data historically over a period of time? Um, for us one of the key variables is not just how we're doing through our own properties, whether that's a marketplace or dot com, it's how we impacting the overall and how we impacting retail. Because if we're going to invest in the brand, you only do that if it's going to impact everything. So how do we get our hands on the data which enables us to do that? Obviously the first interaction with some of our brands will be in retail and that's marketing that is working hard. But how do we get to see in the same way we would with the media buy what the exact placement that we're buying, how much are we spending on them? Was that location? If it's a window, is that the equivalent amount of home in a city center? And then you can start to build a model around that. So I think it's the complexity of the model which makes sense in our world, which would have promotion. It would have how you speak to your existing consumer base. We'd have how you're spending in retail, how you're spending on brand, how you're spending across performance marketing. We're in the investigation of how do you bring that to life? Because it's a very custom ask.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? Like there's so much to think about when it comes to m. Marketing. One, uh, thing that I noticed yesterday, bit kind of irrelevant, but not. But traditional marketing isn't dead. Like I think, you know, in like the, in real life stuff, I think we're so digitally focused, but brands are doing really well and I'm just going to call the one that I'm about to reference Skims.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Regent street opening their new store. They've got this huge wrap. They've got the Skims bubble logo which I love. Like that's marketing. They've got like. And it's, and it's so plain but it looks so cool that people are stood on the street just photographing it. And that just shows the strength of you know, really basic, good brand and like, you know, out, uh, they're building the store, it's not open yet. I mean there's gonna be queues down the road. I'm sure when it does. But you. It just looks cool like they've just done and it's really plain and we forget how. And it's like this bubble thing. It just looks, it's just nice to look at and people love it. And there's loads of people stood in the street on Regent street photographing it probably then putting it on social. Like there's so many. And that will go viral and it will. You know, there's just these tiny little things and it all affects it. So you've got, you know, there's a lot to think about, isn't there, as a marketer? And that's really hard to track how. I mean, I guess you could track how many, many times people are tagging it on Instagram or TikTok, whatever.

Speaker B: Earned media value becomes more important, but with rising CPMs across digital space, that becomes more important, that you're using PR to its full advantage and you're getting as much reach as possible. But we know from consumers over the past few years, particularly since COVID they care more about experience than product. So how do you turn it into an experience which enables them to buy the product works? Um, even if they're not there physically, they might have a friend that's there and that's how, you know, you can use social to bring that to them. But you need the experience in the first place. You need to have that presence. I think out of Home media is almost making a comeback. Not, um, quite sure Prince there yet. Uh, but these areas are coming back and there's more light being shed on them. Um, digital was this black box that everyone got swept away with for years, which I'm not going to talk badly about it because it's how if it wasn't potential, I'd have no career. But it's now coming again back to logic. And if you want to shift someone's perception, give them an experience, be in front of them, have reach, make sure they know about you. You have to be able to be remembered at the end of the day. So it's that product. Make sure that your product detail is all right.

Speaker A: Yeah, make them feel your brand. I love that.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, obviously you work on some very cool brands at Pentland. Are there any standout campaigns from an experience digital, any that have just performed super well that you can tell me more about?

Speaker B: So I would say the Berghaus campaign with Liam Gallagher, that one purely stars aligned on that one. Right. So timing was impeccable. The product looked great. There was a product link back to the artist as well. So, you know, we talked about the 90s. It's going back to the 90s, but it was also around the time of, you know, the Oasis reunion, which is absolutely amazing.

Speaker A: It was like the best timing. Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, that was absolutely incredible. And then the media that we bought to a company, it actually genuinely cut through. You know, Lidl had their moment off the back of it, calling it the Lidl Jacket. That's fantastic. Right. They won awards off the back of one of their Billboard Placements. Brilliant. Their reaction was um, amazing to get that out so quick. So that campaign, the actual reach, the value, all of that that we got off the back of it, you know the jacket that was featured sold out within I think 36 hours online. Um, so just that was an unbelievable campaign.

Speaker A: For those that didn't see that, can you explain what it, what, what, what it actually was?

Speaker B: What happened? Yeah, I mean it was literally a picture of Liam Gallagher. It was that simple. But he was wearing the product. It was a really simple creative, but really powerful creative. So from a media standpoint it was about how do you get the right placements. So you have crosstrack on the tube, which really stood out premium out of home, which was amazing. And we know that works really well with the Berghaus consumer. So wherever you were, you felt like you were getting that campaign coming to you. We had a couple of murals for that campaign and actually they had huge online reach as well. And the great thing there is you get the videos of them painting it and it's just again it's a bit more experiential around how do you use a classic format to create something new? So that campaign, it was the re release of an iconic jacket called the Trango and like I say, sold out online. It was an online exclusive. So it was fantastic. Other ones, you know, we worked with TNT as I mentioned earlier and um, that was a big sponsorship across their channels. You know, Mitre was featured next to the Champions League final. Final. That doesn't happen. You know, Nike have that relate. I think it's like have that relationship. So those moments were huge. And being able to deliver that not just on that brand but then you've got Enduro where I think it was the Paris Roubaix. They were featured alongside the finalists. You know, lifting his arms and that went all over social. Uh, Alessa with the Roland Garros. Like there was these moments we were able to create and we didn't have, didn't own the moment, but we were able to take part in that moment. As you would expect to challenge a brand too. And to be there and to appear. There's been loads, you know, we, I joined just as it was the previous Olympics and you had Go Full Speedo. Um, I love that one.

Speaker A: Go full Speedo. Yeah, there is, I mean that's the thing. There are so many different cool campaigns that touch consumers across these multi channel.

Speaker B: I mean I can't take responsibility for them.

Speaker A: No, of course.

Speaker B: But you're that they're amazing.

Speaker A: You have been Part of, part of it though.

Speaker B: I was in the business.

Speaker A: Yeah. Claim it. It's yours now. It's yours. So because you've worked so much on, I guess, you know, commercial marketing, like you're a very as I hope I am. You know, we're, we're in the B2B space, a very sort of lead gen focused. Um, talk to me about before I let you go and enjoy the rest of your day.

Speaker B: Working.

Speaker A: Yeah, back to work. And we had to do by the way guys, five takes of like the intro because the mic didn't like me today.

Speaker B: Um, blame the M mic.

Speaker A: Yeah, we'll blame the mic. It wasn't my fault. Um, is there anything that marketeers can go and do if they want to get more, you know, they're struggling, struggling to prove the commerciality of their marketing. It's bloody frustrating for marketing and especially when you're in B2B and you're working alongside salespeople like what could, what can we go and do today? Whether you're in B2C, B2B, whatever it might be to go and get a

Speaker B: bit more ROI focused, understand the P and L, honestly, as simple as that. You'll come across someone in your career who sees marketing as a cost base and you look at what happens in a recession. The typical thing is recessions are the best time to invest for growth. But marketing is one of the first areas that always gets cut during a recession. And I feel like we've always been in a recession now for about the past 15 years. So you know, we've not, I don't feel like we've ever come out of one properly learn the P and L. Be able to put into terms, you know, if you spend this on marketing, what does that actually mean? And I'm not talking about gross sales, I'm talking get that through to contribution like the actual roi. Understand there's a difference between a return on ad spend and the business roi. Understand what the profitability mix is, how much margin is behind the products. How do you then start to transition to things like margin based bidding? But understanding the P and L is crucial and I think that's the step which I'm fortunate. Right. Agency background means that I was given P L's uh, at a young age and relatively junior in my career. So I managed to get that hands on experience with them. It's slightly different when it's products but it's not a million miles away. Right. It's all maths. So just spending time on that and it is Quite boring at first. Now I love it. Right. Trade meetings are part of the most exciting part of my week, which sounds incredibly dull, but I love seeing the impact of. If you spend this, you get this. And to understand how we can maximize every pound that we're spending, I actually find it quite exciting because I've got more tactics that I can use than I've ever had before. So as long as you know the P and L and you don't forget about who your consumer is and how you actually want to grow and have a really solid plan, you should be fine. It's not hard. If I can do it, anyone can do it. Um, it's not brain surgery, so. Yeah, it would be that.

Speaker A: Prove it. I think that's the thing as well. It's also like speak up in the board meetings. Like, there's so much opportunity. There's a really good saying that you were referencing there around, um. You know, we've been in a recession for ages. But when some of the, you know, when. I can't remember exactly when this was, but when there were very hard times, uh, Kellogg's, out of all of the other cereal brands at the time, decided to over invest in their marketing whilst everyone else didn't. And they became, they grew exponentially. Like God, like hundreds of thousands of percentage growth. Like the stats, if I can ever find them, we'll put them up. We'll make a social clip of this and put it up. But because they dared and actually especially in a recession because everyone else isn't spending as much.

Speaker B: Completely up you go.

Speaker A: Your head's above the, the parapet when no one else's ears like you're there and no one else is showing up. So some of it's so obvious, yet people don't always, I don't know, are scared maybe to shout about it and make sure it happens.

Speaker B: I mean, with that one, the recession one's always tricky because if you've not fixed your measurement before the recession, you've not convinced people enough. But there are so many examples. Tui did it during COVID Yes. They put themselves in a position to grow out of COVID which is great. That was really ballsy. Right. They were one of the worst hit. So, uh, there's loads of examples, but it is just measurement. Understand the P and L. Don't be scared to try things.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Give it a go, Jamie. Thank you so bloody much.

Speaker B: That's all right. Sorry for being monotone. No, it's just my voice.

Speaker A: You've not been monotone. Why m do you think that? No, you really haven't. You've been amazing. You've given so much insight. I've loved it. So big. Thank you for joining me.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Nice. Thanks, darling. Well done. Bang.