Never Mind The Adverts 2025 Review
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
In this festive Christmas episode of Never Mind The Adverts, hosts Jon Evans and Orlando Wood reflect on the biggest marketing stories, effectiveness studies, and creative moments from 2024. (02:36) They discuss groundbreaking effectiveness research including "The Multiplier Effect" and "The Creative Dividend," examine the rise of influencer marketing with measurable ROI data, and analyze performance marketing trends. The episode also features a special segment on Christmas advertising history with Dr. David discussing a 1928 Gillette razor ad, plus their annual Christmas advertising awards recognizing the year's best and worst campaigns.
Main Themes:
- The year marked unprecedented advances in advertising effectiveness research, with multiple studies proving the superiority of brand + performance combinations over performance-only approaches, while Christmas advertising reached record-high quality scores averaging 4.6 stars.
Speakers
Jon Evans
Jon Evans is the host of the Uncensored CMO podcast and a performance marketing expert who was named to Performance Marketing World's Power List Top 20 in 2024. He has become a trustee for the History of Advertising Trust and regularly interviews leading CMOs and marketing professionals about industry trends and effectiveness strategies.
Orlando Wood
Orlando Wood is a leading authority on advertising effectiveness and creative strategy, working with System1 on groundbreaking research into brand building and performance marketing. He co-authored influential studies including "The Multiplier Effect" and contributes regularly to industry thought leadership on the importance of emotion and creativity in advertising effectiveness.
Key Takeaways
Brand Marketing Delivers Superior ROI When Combined with Performance
The groundbreaking "Multiplier Effect" study revealed that while performance marketing alone provides limited returns, adding brand marketing to performance campaigns creates significant uplift. (02:21) However, the critical insight often missed is that brand has the bigger impact - adding performance to brand provides only a small uplift, while adding brand to performance creates substantial gains. This challenges the industry's over-investment in performance marketing and demonstrates that most advertisers should be prioritizing brand building for maximum effectiveness.
Scale Matters More Than Targeting for Market Share Growth
Les Binet's "Go Big or Go Home" presentation emphasized that budget explains 89% of variance in incremental profit, while ROI only explains 11%. (07:22) To achieve meaningful market share gains in the UK, campaigns need 200-600 million exposures, not the 1-2 million many marketers consider substantial. This research challenges the industry's obsession with narrow targeting and small-scale campaigns, advocating for big media buys and broad reach strategies to cut through fragmented media landscapes.
Creative Consistency Beats Creative Fatigue
The Creative Dividend study revealed that marketers abandon successful creative campaigns too early, leaving effectiveness on the table. (03:54) Mark Ritson's key insight was that brands get bored of their creative work long before audiences do. This is demonstrated by successful long-running campaigns like Aldi's Kevin the Carrot (10 years) and consistency in Christmas advertising, which reached record performance levels in 2024 with an average 4.6-star rating due to sustained creative approaches rather than constant reinvention.
High-Attention Media Dramatically Outperforms Low-Attention Alternatives
Karen Nelson-Field's "Cost of Dull Media" study calculated that $189 billion is wasted annually on low-attention media placements. (05:05) When Peter Field applied attention-weighted approaches to media costs, TV became the second cheapest medium after podcasts, accounting for 80% of media consumption when attention is factored in. Even for Gen Z, TV accounts for over 50% of attention-adjusted media consumption, debunking myths about younger audiences abandoning traditional media and highlighting the efficiency of high-attention placements.
Influencer Marketing Delivers Measurable Long-Term ROI
New research on creator marketing revealed that influencer campaigns deliver ROI comparable to online video and paid social, with particularly strong long-term returns. (09:16) However, the same effectiveness principles apply - "salesmanship" style influencer content drives immediate conversions but doesn't build business fundamentals, while "showmanship" approaches build trust, fame, and long-term brand equity alongside driving conversions. This demonstrates that even in new media channels, the fundamental rules of effective advertising remain consistent.
Statistics & Facts
- Christmas advertising quality reached a record average of 4.6 stars in 2024, with 5-6 advertisers achieving the maximum 5.9-star rating. (33:47) This represents the highest performance levels ever recorded for the category.
- Christmas ads were viewed 500 million times on YouTube in 2024, a 10x increase from 50 million views in 2023. (38:35) This dramatic growth demonstrates the increasing investment in and engagement with seasonal advertising content.
- TV accounts for 80% of media consumption when attention is weighted, and even for Gen Z specifically, it accounts for over 50% of attention-adjusted media consumption. (06:46) This data contradicts assumptions about younger audiences abandoning traditional media.
