@tomroach

There’s a new ‘share of’ in town. ‘Share of model’. A new marketing metric for the GenAI age. Includes a bit of history on the ‘share ofs’ it follows on from: share of market, share of voice, ESOV, share of search. marketingweek.com/tom-roach-shar…

On the 10 year journey to Chubbies’ IPO, the realization that changed how we invest marketing resources was this --> Increasing ROAS * decreased * our growth. btw, I was the world’s largest ROAS (AKA Return on Ad Spend) fanboy for embarrassingly too long, but hey, my loss is your gain, so here's: 1. Three counterintuitive things I learned about ROAS 2. Two new ways to think about it 3. Three things you can do about this right now let's do it. ** Three counterintuitive things I learned about ROAS ** 1. “ROAS has been presented as a growth metric, when it’s actually anything but. In fact, ROAS is precision-engineered to keep brands small,” says Tom Roach. Chasing ROAS chases easy sales, not growth. Brand growth comes from light buyers, but focusing on high ROAS can lead to you targeting heavy buyers, therefore limiting growth. 2. ROAS is not actually a measure of *effectiveness* but how *efficiently* you achieved it. As Les Binet says: “Effectiveness first, efficiency second.” 3. Simply put, ROAS is the opposite of incrementality. ** Two new ways to think about it ** 1. It's like hiring an employee to stand just inside the entrance of your shop and tap shoppers on the back as they enter. A week later, the employee demand a raise, claiming credit for all the customers they’ve “enticed” to come in. 2. Imagine a soccer coach believing their forward is entirely responsible for every goal. As a result, in their infinite wisdom, they ditch their defense and midfield, only keeping their center forward. They end up losing every future game, but their “Goals Per Player” (the ROAS of this example) is higher than ever! ** Three things you can do about it right now ** 1. Vanity VS Value: Understand the negative externalities of the metrics we goal our teams on. For example, because many of us are seeing headwinds, brands either cut marketing spend or increase the ‘accountability’ of the dollars spent. The negative externality is that we're over-harvesting our existing customers in order to hit our numbers. ROAS and revenue from returning customers may be up (vanity metrics), but contribution dollars, share of search, and new customer revenue from unpaid sources (real business metrics) are likely down. 2. Party & Ponder: Spend half a day with your team and deeply consider the metrics you want to optimize your team’s efforts around. The whole team needs to take ownership of the metrics that matter AND have a deep understanding of the negative externalities of vanity metrics like ROAS. This is a super high-leverage use of time 3. Cultivate Creativity Completely (the 3C's of winning): Since marketing works by influencing future buyers, think about developing creative that gets noticed and gets remembered. Give your team permission to be bold, put on a show and have a little fun. As John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute says, “The brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought." Enjoy - thank you to @tomroach for the inspo - follow himmm

Keen to see ad IDEAS that have been AI-generated. NOT content that has been executed/produced with AI. MUST have a discernible IDEA. ZERO or near-zero human contribution to the ideation. It’s a spectrum, but most AI ads are human idea, AI production still. Please share!

@marketing_bloke @emollick Ok makes sense. V interested in @emollick's view given he's claiming it's no longer helpful (ie implying that it was at one point).

@tomroach @emollick I don’t think it ever really was, it was a useful framework for us to grasp what likely mattered. Context management.

A reminder that telling the AI that it is an expert in a field is no longer helpful in making the AI better at that field.

@tomfgoodwin I feel like the quantity of ‘100 best prompts’ snake oil content here has diminished a bit recently, crowded out by ‘this is how I orchestrate my army of agents to optimise my workflow’ stuff? Maybe just my bubble?

Personally, I ask all LLMs to use quantum mode, Because we know that quantum computing is much more powerful. It seems to be working from what I can tell. A super smart little hack from me. Also, put "make no mistakes", seems to work too

@shaneoleary1 Also, didn’t the FT kill off the Madmen in favour of Mathmen back in 2015?

'Fast talkin, hard drinkin, suit wearin ad men who don't know how to use a computer'

When people in other industries read about their space in the FT, is it also so cliched and trite? This reads like someone asked an LLM to generate the most basic intro to a piece about agencies that it could.

@tomfgoodwin It being B2B is probably central (ie work is less interesting than life). But mostly people are just really bad at writing LI posts. They think it’s about showing off. But they forget that’s not useful or entertaining for the audience. They forget what’s in it for others.

It's Common for a popular Tweet to have about 10,000 comments, and 50,000 likes. Same with Reddit, Facebook, YouTube, Substack. I don't think I've EVER seen a LinkedIn post with 1/10th of that. It's a site that seems to suppress things that perform well It makes no sense

How advertising works by @aandeddb's @BinetLes

@Austen Last touch attribution

I’m reminded of a story a friend told me from the early days of the dotcom boom when he got the chance to shadow the top salesperson at the hottest company in Silicon Valley. He said the guy literally just picked up the phone when it would ring and wrote down the orders.

Write a couple of posts about AI and your condemned to getting served ads like this. That headline, just wow.

PSA: that viral AI thing probably isn’t actually a movie/song/artwork/whatever, it’s a tech demo.

@tomfgoodwin @RobertFreundLaw It’s a standard trope isn’t it, that tech people always think their latest thing will replace the human brain. And then our brains turn out to be vastly more magical and incredible than we realised.

@RobertFreundLaw Very little since 2005-10 has been based on scarcity of knowledge. It's based on risk avoidance, guidance, relationships, imagination etc

Here again is the popular mistaken idea that lawyers charge a lot because they know the laws and the cases that you don't know. Like we have the textbooks and you don't, and if you just had the right library card, you'd be Neal Katyal or David Boies or whomever. No, you're mostly paying for experience, strategy, creativity, responsiveness, practicality, and many other things. The knowledge itself is far, far down on the list.

@asburyandasbury @rorysutherland Multiple giveaway uses of the ‘This isn’t X. It’s Y’ construct. Started to count and then gave up.

@rorysutherland Not definitive, but Pangram’s AI detector gives that article a 100% AI-generated score

brandingstrategyinsider.com/the-future-of-… by @adelborky

@tomfgoodwin @markgadala Huge confusion between tech demos and real work. One sells the tech to future users, the other is what’s created by practitioners. Naturally there’s a big lag between 1 and 2. The people selling the tech can’t tell the difference and sell 1 as 2, which confuses everything.

@markgadala I would start by asking if you have any knowledge whatsoever of movie making and the industry.

Just wow. How can anyone argue that AI won't be the future of cinema at this point?

@emollick How about an Agency?

A LinkedIn commentator (I cross-posted this post there) won this, I think. Matrix of agents is the obvious answer! (and it also includes the idea of organizational structure)

@tomfgoodwin Ideas are common. Good ideas are rare. Execution is common Good execution is rare. Good execution of good ideas is rare as hen’s teeth.

One of the great untruths is the idea that ideas are everywhere&everyone is always having them It's just not true GOOD ideas are really really rare & very very special. There are countless things that should exist that nobody is working on Tech people are completely wrong

@tomfgoodwin Do not under any circumstances go back to Thomas the Tank Engine. Mean-spirited, nasty and badly written. Great children’s books (eg by Donaldson and Scheffler) flatter the reader by making them beautiful and easy to read out loud like you’re a master storyteller.

I always thought I had very very little memory of being a small kid now, but then you start looking at books for a tiny kid and you realize you remember

@SonnerSounds Your kids? Bit harsh.

@tomroach Must be constant apology. I just mute them now.

Whenever we’re watching TV together as a family, and a bad ad comes on, my kids demand that I apologise on behalf of the ad industry, which seems a bit unfair to me. True story.

AI ads are starting to beat traditionally-made ads in testing, so don’t dismiss them. New research by @System1 and @andrewtindall_ and me in my latest for @MarketingWeekEd marketingweek.com/dismiss-ai-ads…