🚨 I’m going to about the B word. Yes… BRAND.
It’s cropped up in three different conversations over the past week. Firstly with Chris Wilson of Transmission, we chatted about how marketers have done themselves a disservice by trying to categorise “demand” and “brand” spend. In fact, we’ve done a really bad job, confusing our leadership peers to such an extent that they now see them as distinctly separate & almost competitive buckets of spend. Chris has started to use the term “reputation” instead. “Brand” has almost become a dirty word. One Exec last week told me it was “the part of the budget that has no impact”.
We all know that brand and demand go hand in hand. Does brand need a, errmmm, re-brand?
Cut to Orlando Wood of System 1 talking about this very topic on Rooster Punk’s “The B2B Creative Revolution” Virtual Event. He proposes a different way of looking at things: two marketing/advertising modes: showmanship (story-led, emotionally engaging, right-brain, long-term brand growth) and salesmanship (product-centred, rational, left-brain, short-term activation). Modern campaigns have over-rotated toward salesmanship - quick cuts, on-screen claims, rhythmic edits - eroding effectiveness as emotion-rich work falls to only ~6 % of ads.
Emotion matters because it 1) grabs attention, 2) builds preference, and 3) protects price, all of which lift profit. System1’s data show that four- and five-star “fame” ads - those that spark strong emotions - deliver the highest ROI. History echoes this: the 1950s fact-based USP era (pioneered by Rosser Reeves) ceded to Bill Bernbach’s creative revolution (see the “Lemon” ad for the VW Beetle), proving that wit and charm outsell dry repetition.
Showmanship seems to resonate better with executives too, and to revive it, Orlando offers three principles:
Find the magic: the attention-getting device must also tell the product story.
Moto e azioni: pioneered by renaissance artists, “motion & action” is a way of depicting pivotal human moments - in faces, gestures, connections - to trigger feeling.
Fluent device: use a recurring character or scenario (e.g., Specsavers, M&M’s) to build easy mental recall and justify premium pricing.
Yorkshire Tea’s long-running “where everything’s done proper” campaign illustrates all three, doubling market share since 2017. And in B2B, Workday has done a great job with their Rockstar Campaign (featuring a host of real rockstars from Ozzy Osbourne to Gene Simmons to Gwen Stefani).
Orlando calls for a new creative revolution, and I like it! Check out his “Advertising Principles Explained (APE)” course with Sir John Hegarty.
Ultimately we need to work our way back to spending our hard-won budget in the right way for our businesses. Growth will not come without investment in both showmanship and salesmanship. Whatever we decide to call it.