What’s Lindy?
Rather than focus on low-probability predictions for the future of the industry, here are a handful of musings on things that are already true within the advertising world that have yet to catch on with the full industry.
Start with a Texas Two-Step
It is becoming clear that the best way to support commercial creativity is through a two-pronged set of investments.
The first crucial investments are based on growing long-term brand value (old-school "Above the Line" growth) and are delivered through broad-reach, high-attention, big emotion, and long-term intentionality about attaching to meaningful triggers outside the brand (culture, human habits, seasonal relevance, etc). The second set of crucial investments ("Below the Line" that maximize profit and can be considered "cost of sales" and be managed as such), are based on relative advantage over alternatives in the category, more focused on winning a disproportionate share of shoppers who are actively seeking to make a purchase.
These layers can go by several names, brand & activation, awareness & action, presence & precision; however, it's becoming abundantly clear that both are critical, and, should be the primary levers and layers to invest in, using the right set of complementary decisions in each (consistent tone, distinctive brand assets, and beyond).
That may not feel revolutionary - what is often unstated in promoting this BOTHISM-based approach is that it relies on reducing work spent everything in-between. On the digital-forward and hyper-personalized hype, on growth-hacking, on the gray-areas, the alt-purchase-model-based Funnel-based campaign layers, on the Path-to-Purchase based, on the Customer-Journey-Based campaigns, ads, and distinct strategies. Any "Mid-Funnel Consideration" campaign falls by the wayside for more focus where it matters. Your campaign should have one set of campaigns/tactics/flights that are for building future demand, and a complementary (often smaller, but more consistently "on") investment in performance. That does not mean brands need to do less overall, but the clarity and focus allow for easier and more nuanced measurement of the impact of each, offers clearer optimizations if designed correctly, and also sets the stage for more impactful creative. Constraints fuel creative thinking.
Better way to do it: consolidate and focus campaigns into two discrete objectives, then allow for wide ranging creative approaches - in the comms design, creative strategy, and ecosystem - to deliver more impact overall.
Unserious Reigns Supreme
Culture spotters and trend forecasters are circling a series of interrelated movements and style cycles that are coalescing towards a more unapologetically self-centered acceptance of indulgence, being loud, and escapism. Whether it's the expected rise of Hedonism (in small doses and loud binges), acceptance of adult play, Maximalist and Rococco Aesthetics, or simply "little treat" reward routines, escapism and indulgence are expected to be more accepted than in recent "millennial gray" and "adulting" dominant years. This rising cultural desire parallels the industry recognition of emotion (and in particular, positive emotions like humor & joy) as an creative impact multiplier, as these two trends meet, expect to see ever more indulgent and over-the-top campaign motifs and experiences offered by brands.
Better way to do it: position your brand as a co-conspirator for these moments of levity and escapism; be the facilitator of an unhinged experience, rather than the main character. Look for ways (small or large) to inject habitual moments of fun into people's lives in a way that feels seamless with their other routines.
Spectacles are rising
In support of breaking through in an unserious-dominant zeitgeist, orchestrated paid-amplified earned media moments will become a new normal for creatively-inclined brands. The effectiveness of these spectacles will become clear in the efficient incremental reach driven by the sharing and broad-based media coverage, the brand value will be realized in how memorable (and linked to a consistent brand asset) the spectacle is in action. Examples that will be used to sell these in: PopTarts Bowl Michael CeraVe, Heinz Ketchup & Seemingly Ranch, Velveeta Julia Fox courtside appearance, and most of Liquid Death's stunts.
Better way to do it: dont focus purely on sparking outrage or disbelief. There are a wide range of valuable emotions that can be evoked, a number of drivers of delight and reasons to cover in media. Dont get hemmed in with borrowed equity from celebrities or purely getting weird.
Shifting social from content to contagion
Social - organic and paid - is in the midst of a massive market correction away from being a driver of growth for brands.
Despite the past decade of social media being pitched as the most essential driver of growth for brands (by nearly everyone, me included), the reality has not lived up to the hype. Unfortunately, perhaps ironically, it's just now starting to gain traction within C-Suites and Boards of Directors as a crucial driver of efficient growth. So while more senior leaders are buying into the easy "promise" and high expectations for social media on short-term profitable growth (massive users, relatively low CPMs, AI-driven automation and personalization, incredible audience precision, near-omniscient insight into performance on sales, brand lift, and of course, potential for viral spread), in-platform practitioners are seeing that promise ring hollow.
Those high user numbers and time spent on-platform mask that each individual asset gets ridiculously low attention per impression (sub two seconds on average, across all platforms), a fast half-life on the usefulness of assets tuned to algorithmic relevance, scrappier-is-better, legally-risky to be culture-forward, high-cost to be always-on.
The optimistic take on social, in which it is a channel that facilitates spread for a campaign through earned media (through some mechanism), still holds strong potential. However, that type of campaign design lives far outside the processes and capabilities of most media and/or creative partners to deliver on a predictable basis.
Better way to do it: Influencer content as primary asset development strategy. Test & Scale, augmented with automated/DCO current-demand driving personalized ads. Let AI/ML handle the short-term results driving nudges. Maintain a steady drumbeat of big bets on campaign moments designed for cultural contagion over the course of the year that have the potential to ignite a disproportionate social reaction among your core audiences - make these small and focused to drive greater relevance with a meaningful audience, rotate through multiple valuable audiences if needed for scale.
Skipping the shelf
Retail Media will grow for many of the same reasons that social will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. And it may be necessary to make the "below the line" investments as successful in capturing in-market shoppers at a reasonable rate (just like some other paid search/display/digital rent), but should not be treated as if it is a significant driver of future demand and brand value. Deeper dive and full thoughts shared here.
Better way to do it: divide Retail Media Networks & the audience data signals that are available for use in a variety of other vehicles, and use either as appropriate. Fund any on-site and on-property retail advertising through a merchanidising and operations budget for clarity & sales-impact modeling.
All roads flow through CTV
CTV will continue to grow through advertisers becoming more tuned to the higher-attention-volume opportunity with the precision audience data and measurement capabilities of other digital channels. More audience use on streaming platforms and hybrid broadcast MPVD platforms allows this growth to flourish without significantly over-taxing the CPMs/efficiency of the channel.
Better way to do it: search for data-light options that allow you to reach audiences within your broadest brand category (e.g. light category buyers) without a total-pop Adults 18+ broad buying target.
