Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - Tom Roach - Brand Strategist and VP of Jellyfish

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Welcome back to another episode of The Radcast with Ryan Alford! This week, Ryan interviews brand strategist Tom Roach! Tom has over 20 years of industry experience and is the VP of Jellyfish. In this episode, Tom shares his opinion on TikTok and short form videos vs. traditional advertising. If you want to keep up with Tom, you can follow him on  LinkedIn and Twitter @TomRoach, or check out his website www.tomroach.comIf you enjoyed this episode of The Radcast, let us know by visiting our website www.theradcast.com. Check out www.theradicalformula.com. Like, Share and Subscribe to our YouTube channel, or leave us a review on Apple Podcast. Be sure to keep up with all that’s radical from @ryanalford @radical_results @the.rad.cast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You know, TikTok will say, don't make ads, make TikTok. They're trying to say advertising. Traditional advertising is dead. Have on new thing. But they're just selling ads because we're lazy creatures and our brains are really lazy. And if it's a famous name, then we assume it must be pretty good. And what the marketing literature says is you want to get it about 6040. I really like the 70, 2010 rule, which is like 70% on stuff that you know to work,

20% on stuff that is optimizing things that you think are pretty good. and then 10% on stuff that is more of the best. Best practice guarantees average. I love it. I'm telling you, that's a nugget right there. You're listening to the Radcast. If it's radical, we cover it. Here's your host, Ryan Alford.

Hey guys, welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Offer's your host. We're talking advertising. today. We're talking marketing. We're talking strategy. We're talking to the VP of brand strategy at Jellyfish. Tom Roach. What's up, Tom? Good. Thank you. Great to be here. Hey, man. Excited to have you. You know, as we talked pre-episode and transparency, you know, I own an agency. I've been in the agency a long time at world like you, and I don't get a ton. I'm starting to venture out to the guys that I listen to. I follow Tom's a brilliant strategist on LinkedIn. I'm going to brag on you a bit, Tom,

because I don't honestly have that many people that sneak into my ear, like I go that I nod my head. But everything you post, everything you write makes sense to me. It follows my train of thought. And I think you're brilliant. I really appreciate you coming on the show. That's really, really kind of you. Thank you. I'm also available on Twitter. And I have a column in marketing week. So LinkedIn is just one of the places you can read the stuff I do. But thank you. Thank you. That's really nice. And Tomroats.com, right? Is it the Tomroach? It's the tomroach.com. People keep telling me you've got to buy Tomroach.com because the there is getting in the way. It's only $400 to buy the other URL. But I get loads of SEO advice from

people at work and random. So, well, I'll tell you, I kind of like the, because like in the states, you know where everything's chest beating, much more than I think than across the world. Like, the Ohio State, the Miami, the university. Like, so you're the, not A, you're the Tom Roach.

I am B, Tom Roach. There is a Tom Roach who is mayor of White Plains City, New York, I think, who I get confused with on Twitter. And there's a Tom Roach, who's an Australian rules football player. I'm not him. I'm the team.

Yes, I love it. Well, I'm looking forward to spending the next bit. I don't know. I call it geeking out. I don't know if it's geeking out. It's fun to me, and I think people are going to get a lot of knowledge on it because, you know, being the general marketing show that we are and talking a lot of business journey, it's pretty high level. And, you know, Tom, I really wanted to have you on the show and definitely want to give your background here shortly. But I want to get kind of. to the nitty gritty of marketing and advertising and some of the fundamentals and some of the thing what's changed what hasn't and so i think this is going to provide a lot of value to people in giving perspective for how marketing and advertising professionals think about the business and so i'm super pumped for that but uh tom let's just start down the path i know you've been you're a strategist uh let's uh let's break it down for people for exactly what that means and just you know, kind of your professional, you know, journey. Sure.

So you're starting with what a strategist is in an ad agency. I guess agencies basically have three or four kinds of people. You've got creative people who are coming up with the ideas. You've got client management people who are making the trains run on time and making sure that we do things on budget. And you've got strategy people who are coming up with the, I guess doing the research, working out what the issue is that the brand has, and brief and creative people to solve that problem. So that's what I do. And I've been doing that

for 20 odd years. I've spent since about 99. I've been in mostly in creative agencies. So I spent a lot of time at AMV, BBDO, which is a London, biggest London UK agency. And then some time at BBAH, which is another big agency. And then more recently a place called Adam and Eve, DDB. So big creator and also Learbonnet. So big creative agencies for 20 or years. And then I made a switch a year and a half ago to a new kind of place called Jellyfish. We're, I guess, a sort of digital first media, creative and performance agency. So we do everything full funnel. And if you think about the way that media and creative kind of split about 10, 15, 20 years ago, we're kind of bringing that back together. And we're particularly good at working with the platforms.

So if you think about the way the ad industry has developed over probably the last like hundred years, when it started out, it was in, you know, off the back of the newspapers, and then there was the world of TV and the agency world kind of followed that. Well, if you think about the major media players now are the platforms, we are a new breed of agency that has really been born out of the growth of the platforms. So our growth is jellyfish has, we're now 2,500 people, 40 offices worldwide 8 in the U.S. Our growth has really mirrored the growth of the platforms. Yeah, that's incredible.

And I do want to, I'm going to ask you questions that are probably simple for you, but just to provide perspective for the audience, when you say platforms, which you said several times there, and being jellyfish is specialization within them, the fine platform. platforms for the audience. Okay. Well, I mean, I guess the most obvious answer these days would be your Google's, Metas, Amazon's, increasingly Apple, TikTok, LinkedIn. So the places where people do most of their, spend most of the time in digital, where brands have their biggest opportunity to engage people with advertising is now the

platforms. It used to be more TV. TV is still a big part of, of, of people's media, consumption, behavior. But it's less of what we do, I have to say, as we're, you know, we're primarily the digital platforms. That's what I mean is that is the, is the, is the big that the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the historical, which, you know, I think you and I came up through similar time periods. Like the four P's, the platforms now were probably the place. Would that be like a safe place or people place? No, the platforms are still the promotional P.

Yeah. I guess, well, it's interesting actually because when I'll talk about platforms, I normally mean the promotional P. But the place P is also where you will discover brands in terms of when you want to buy them. So increasingly those platforms are also not only means. media platforms, but they're also retail platforms as well. So yeah, it's both the promotional peer and the place, but you're right. Yeah. What are, you know, you've been in a long time. You've obviously developed your own perspective and which I'm excited to get into

talking about the full funnel and all those things. But what have, what have been the influences? I mean, you've worked with some of the largest brands of the world at some of, Whether you know this or not, everyone listening, the names that Tom just dropped of the agencies are worldwide, like some of the most recognized, respected agencies in the world. So, you know, Tom's not going to brag on himself, but I'm going to brag on them for them. And, you know, so it's, but what has kind of formulated your perspective on marketing over the years and advertising? Yeah. Okay, well, I guess firstly, starting off with the, in the agencies that I've worked, some of the, like, I mean, you've, you've touched on how kind of famous some of those names are in the UK,

and some of the characters working in those places, maybe before me, but like people like, some of the creative gods of the UK, like John Hegetty, who is the H of BBAH, which was one of the places I worked, he is a real legend. And, like, you talk about the kind of Madmanera. He was a real legendary character in the 70s and 80s and 90s in the UK and it's still going. He and others, there's a guy called David Abbott, who is the A of AMV, BBDO, another amazing agency. He is somebody that wrote some of the most famous British advertising of all time. And if you work in places like that, you're just kind of, you pick up by osmosis,

the quality, the creative quality that people like that absolutely insisted on, the excellence that companies like that always deliver and the consistency of it. And it just is in the kind of fabric of the building. So I grew up in those kinds of companies that had been founded and run by those kinds of legendary characters. So big influence, I think, is those kinds of creative gods, really. And then the other set of influences, I think probably the big academic kind of writers and thinkers

in the marketing world, particularly people like Professor Barron Sharp who I could talk a bit about if you wanted. There's a got a Lesbonnet, who I was really, really lucky to work with, who is, he's known as the godfather of marketing effectiveness. And I was lucky

to work with him at Adam and Eve DDB. he has kind of written, literally written, some of the books on how advertising works, particularly around the effectiveness of advertising, the commercial impact of advertising. And that's a big part of what I've kind of specialised in through my career so far. Les works still with a guy called Peter Field, both of them together are these legendary characters who write these amazing books. There's a book that anybody that's interested in this world. has to read, which is called the long and the short of it, which is like literally the Bible about how advertising communication works in two ways in the short term and the long term and

works best together. And then the other name I mentioned is I called Professor Barron Sharp, who's a marketing professor working out of Australia. He's actually a Kiwi, who has written probably the most important marketing kind of textbook really. It was called How Brands Grow, written in 2010. still relatively unknown, I think, in the US, more known in the UK and Europe, well known in Australia. And again, his thinking is probably the most influential on me in terms of how I think about how ads work and how can he goes to work. Lesbonette is one of my favorites. It's one, as I've come up like you and watch, now we have performance marketing, which is,

another term for, I'd call a short term, you know, in a way. You know, but I think, and I do want to stop and talk about that for a second, Tom, because I love your perspective on it. And Les is spot, I mean, you know, he's like the godfather of it all. It's because we've come up in this world where everyone wants success now and they think you can build a brand overnight. And, you know, it's just not true. We live in a short-term, short-termism, you even call it, where, you know, people think that you can sustain a company, build a brand, you know, on short-term promotional sales driving stuff. And, you know, if you're listening, there's this notion that, you know, well, with e-commerce

and different things, you know, everyone can kind of start a company now. But to have longevity with a brand, you have to have that mix of, short-term tactics and long-term tactics, Tom. So I'd love for you to kind of maybe go down that path a little deeper for both your perspective and, you know, where that was, you know, you've already spoke to how it was influenced, but just kind of how those, what's the interplay of those things? Yeah, yeah. So where to start on that.

So, I mean, the fact, you know, there's literally books on it. I mean, the first thing to say is if you think about the brands that really have stood the test of time, people like Apple, Nike McDonald's. These are brands that spend an awful lot of money on brand building. And they obviously do a lot of selling as well, over the short term, and a lot of promotional stuff in the case of McDonald's. But if you really want to be successful, you have to do both.

You can't just do the hard sell, because what happens is you might get an uplift in sales, but as soon as you stop doing that activity, the sales drop. And what's happening there is that you're only doing things which kind of incentivize people that might catch their eye fleetingly, there might be an offer or a discount that gets them into it. But it's not really lasting long in their memory. You're not giving something of great value

that is going to be carried with them in their synapses and their memories for much longer than the time it takes to act on a short-term piece of advertising. or sales promotion. So what you really want to do is combine your performance activity or sales activity with something that is going to have a longer lasting impact, that when somebody is out of the market can appeal to them and can attract their attention, even though they're not looking in that category or for that product or brand at that time.

So you want to be able to grab the attention of a much wider number of people who are not yet in market, land something in their heads that you repeat consistently, that presents an image of your brand that gives them some things to remember you by, something famous that they can kind of hook into their brains, and can develop what Barron Sharp would call mental availability. And mental availability is a fancy term really for memories, so that when somebody then comes into the marketplace, maybe a few months later, maybe a year later, maybe a decade later,

you're the brand that stands out for them and is the one that comes to mind and they choose first. And what happens is the brain does this funny thing of if a brand comes to mind when somebody is in a decision-making or buying moment, they may be online, they may be in a store. If your brand is the one that pops into their head when they're thinking, I need to buy an X, then your brand is more likely to get chosen than another brand. Because what the brain does, it assumes that that brand name has a popularity and a familiarity and a quality to it.

Because we're lazy creatures and our brains are really lazy. And if it's a famous name, then we assume it must be pretty good. It must be good enough. And so you're more likely to choose that brand over another one. And that is this long-term effect of advertising that we prize above all else. And so what you really want to do is combine both those two things, the longer lasting effects, the memory effects of brand building and the short-term effects of sales activation or performance. And get the two right, get the two imbalance. And what the marketing literature says is you want to get it about 60-40.

It's a rough rule of thumb, 60% of your time and effort and budget spent on brand-building activity and about 40% normally on more kind of performance activity. Of course, it changes from category to category brand to brand. New and more immature brands might want to start out with more sales promotion activity to get themselves going. But more mature brands may be in a different combination. So I think the 6040 rule, it's not a hard and frost rule. It's a good place to start. And then you can test and learn from there.

Do you think that is perfect? That I could not have. you uh professor tom just took us to school and uh i think that was right down the path of what what of understanding of exactly those things and i think you know we've gotten conditioned with promotions and things like that and i want do you think i don't know if it's starting to swing back but i definitely think two or three years ago the pendulum swing way too much to the short term and would you agree with that? Have you seen that with brands? And I know you guys work with some massive brands. And we work with kind of medium brands. And so the small to medium brands, I feel like that

pendulum swing, you know, a little too far. But I don't know your perspective. It's really hard to know for definite which way the pendulum is ever swinging and what the genuinely, what the split is. I mean, there's, you know, $690 billion worth of advertising spent globally, what proportion of that is being spent on the more promotional stuff, the more short-term stuff is really hard to tell. I think there's definitely a sense, when you've come from the world that I was originally in, which is this kind of brand-building world, it felt like we were under threat from the development and the growth and maturity curve that the platforms were doing.

And if you think about the way that Google and Facebook and co, they're very, very cleverly attuned those platforms initially to doing that performance job. And I think it's only more recently that the platforms are beginning to work out how they need to attract the brand marketing budgets of those big brands. So it's really hard to say which way things are, I suspect there is a slight pendulum swing back. I think that there is increasing understanding of the importance of balance and I certainly feel that, you know, the kind of clients I'm speaking to, I think they're increasingly getting it, but it's by no means ingrained yet. And there's, I think there is a whole generation of marketing people who've, who've been born in the kind of, you know, what I call

a performance era. And they're now needed to mature themselves in their careers and in the companies they're working for are beginning to need to learn some more of the longer term tactics. that have been more meat and drink to people like me in the world that I've been in. Yeah. And I think the reason I think I've seen it or felt like it was, it's had swung too far. And because let's face it, like, who's the first person to get fired at every large company, the CMO? Like, and so, you know, I mean, I'm categorizing here, but are stereotyping. But, you know, marketing's been under such pressure to drive sales.

that to me pushed it that direction. Yeah. And so it should, in a way. You know, what I'm not arguing for is that CMOs should not be in charge of creating growth for their companies. That's absolutely their central role. Yeah. But it's about understanding that it's not only about sales. It's also about creating saleability for your brand.

Yeah. Creating the context and the environment in which people will want to make a sale, make a purchase. So it's absolutely about both. There's a phrase that was coined, bothism, which I really like, which is this idea that you need to be doing both at the same time. And that's, I think, a really powerful philosophy. But yeah, definitely what I think, that there is a new breed of marketer and a CMO

that is going to need to be a kind of equally adept at at the longer long and the short and getting that balance right i think is is is is is just critical how do you feel like you know we've talked about it a little bit but with the platforms changing do you feel like we're talking about some old school like taty things here the long and the short like that still holds true but have we is it just the platforms changed or has marketing advertising truly evolved as much as people try to say it has? It's so hard. I mean, I'm a big believer in the fundamentals

and of people understanding the fundamentals, the things that never change. And so I'm slightly biased, I think, towards making sure that people have those foundation stones in place. I'm probably because of the kind of, the role I play in the career I've had. I've been less into like the technology and the specifics of how the tech works. And so I think you can get, you know, we're all used to, I think, in this industry,

in the marketing industry to this idea that marketing people are obsessed with the shiny and the new. And we get kind of into whatever the latest tech is, whatever less platform is. And I think that could be dangerous because you get taken down a road into what the latest fads are. And some marketing people will make brilliant careers out of placing great bets on being the first to use a platform or being the first to really work out a certain new piece of technology. And other marketers will make a great career on doing the fundamentals really well. And who's to say that one is wrong and the other is right? I'm not going to say that. But, you know, in different companies, different brands will have their culture of risk-taking.

personally I wouldn't be making loads of big bets on on all on incredibly new and shiny things much as I think it's important for brands to stand out and to be distinctive I don't think you necessarily get that from kind of media firsts always I think I think you know fine for small small new brands to try those things out and see see how they go but if you're a McDonald's you're probably not going to be wanting to place 90% of your budget on what are essentially your bets. You want it to be 90% to be on stuff that you know to work. I really like the 70-20-10 rule, which is like 70% on stuff that you know to work, 20% on stuff that is, you know, optimizing things that you think are pretty good, and then 10% on stuff that is more of a bet. So I think

some kind of balance like that, it's probably not a bad rule of thumb. I like that 70-2010, writing that down. I might TikTok on that later, and I'll hashtag Tom Roach told me so. But Tom, I agree with that approach, and I know with the size brands, especially McDonald's and the brands you guys have worked with, but I am curious, like, from a strategist point of view,

because the nuances of some of the platforms that are getting out of what I'd call maybes and into the realm of Canada, ignores. Like Instagram, obviously, he's been there for a while and reels and then TikTok. So that short form, I call it the ADD, you know, like get it to me quick, get it to me fast. I know even being a clinical strategist like you are, like, but does it, does it not change

a little bit of, you know that TV's not dead. we're going to go we'll talk about that a little bit more um it's still the mat the medium of choice for mass like uh but our attention is fleeting and so is that insight the fleeting attention of 30 year olds that have they're going to be the leaders of the world the digital natives does that change your approach strategically when you're building out plans for clients okay well firstly let's kill the this this assumption that people's attention spans are shortening because Netflix is a very good example these days of you know I will happily sit and binge watch hours and hours and hours worth of quality content right um so the first rule of

it for me is if you create something really really worth really valuable to people really entertain you really rewarding, they will spend time with you. So I don't really believe that attention is getting shorter. That said, the platforms that we have increasingly to deal with and reach our audiences through, people will spend less time watching a particular format of advertising. No question. So the average number of seconds that people will watch a 30 seconds, attend to a 30 second TV commercial for is about 13. The average number of seconds that people watch a YouTube ad is about six seconds. The average number of seconds that people watch a Facebook video is about, I think it's about two. Now, that's a problem because in order to make people remember something,

you need the science says, at least three seconds. So what we've got now is a number of platforms where we are challenged with the amount of attention that we can assume that we're going to achieve on average. and this is all averages, of course you can get more than three seconds, more than two seconds attention in a Facebook video. But on average. And so, you know, there is no question in my mind that the number of the size of the screens is getting smaller, the length of the ads is getting shorter.

And I think there is some doubt about the level of creativity that is happening on a number of these platforms. We haven't even in, what is it, 15 years since Facebook, and you usually, have become really big. We're still not really at the level of creativity that I think the 30 second TV spot in his absolute heyday

had achieved. That's not surprising because it's less mature as a medium, as an industry, we're still getting used to how to work it. But I'm not gloomy. I think it's really exciting to see when you look at a platform, particularly like something like TikTok,

which is inherently a creative platform. You've got people, and YouTube, I think you can say similar. You know, TikTok is a platform which is born out of people's creativity and their, you know, humanity's creativity, if you like. And so if we follow some of the principles that a TikTok video, like a TikTok native is following and apply those to how we communicate its brands and brand builders, I think that's a really interesting space to go.

So I think we're really only in my mind of the foothills of working out how to do really cool creative things with some of these platforms. And so, yeah, I'm an optimist. I'm not a pessimist about the, you know, what digital has done to creativity. I think that's a pretty gloomy view to take. A lot of people do take it, though. I love it. And I'm going to footnote. So if you're listening, you're taking notes, get your brand in early and often on that two seconds.

you get on Facebook and that six seconds you get on YouTube. You need to buy those bumper ads. There are five seconds. Get that logo and you're a stinger in quickly. Is that what I'm hearing, Tom? Oh, God. There's a real, there's a conflict isn't there, between what you've just said,

which is best practice from the platforms. And what I would want, you know, if I'm a creative person, a creative in an agency or, you know, an influencer or somebody who's, trying to develop great content for the brands that are paying them, you don't always want to just follow best practice. There's always going to be some better ways out there. Do you want to be average? Because that's, you know, average best practice will get you average. I think if you want

to really outperform or maybe risk underperforming, you've got to explore the boundaries. And I think best practice isn't necessarily always great practice. Damn. That, you don't know how profound that is. I'm going to put that. There's another quote. I'm going to put best practice guarantees average. I love it. I'm telling you, that's a nugget right there. That's going to be a quote on Nick, take note.

That's going on the highlight clips. Best practices guarantee average. It's so true, though. It's so true. All right, Tom. Sometimes average is what you need. If I had a brand and I have factories rolling, I might appreciate average, rather than peaks and troughs.

Hey man. I run an agency called Radical. There's no average around here. All right, man. I love, I'm a funnel guy. I don't know why. I'm a new school guy. I'm half digital, half traditional.

I love a good TV spot. I love a good TikTok. I'm as blended as they come. But man, the funnel has always made sense to me. And it's been undergris. scrutiny forever. There's this, you know, McKenzie with the cycle or the circle and all this stuff. What's, what say you? What's say Tom about the, the marketing and advertising funnel? Well, I wrote this thing called the funnel is the cockroach of marketing.

What I meant by that is, you know, it's a really simple concept. It's people try and kill it off. There's always somebody trying to invent a new thing, trying to write a kind of article about the funnel is dead and here's my new shape. And, you know, I thought, well, this is, it's clearly got something. It clearly is an idea or a concept that is very simple and easy to get. It's something that's now, I think, about 100 years old. So it's been the way that kind of salespeople have been teaching each other how to sell since around the 1890s, actually, this is well over a century. And so I kind of had a look at, you know, the history of it,

and then the very recent sort of, over the last 20 years at least, it's become incredibly ubiquitous. And that ubiquitousness is really, I think, down, again, down to the platform. So it became the way that Google and the other platforms used to sell their own inventory and simplify the digital advertising ecosystem. which, let's face it, could be very, very complicated and can get very complicated. So really, it's a simple shape format that can help you understand the way different kinds of digital ads work. And some of them are better at the brand building bit, and some of them are slightly better at the conversion bit,

is the basic kind of, you know, theory, I guess, of the funnel. And you've got to funnel people through, you've got a wider pool of people who are not necessarily in your market yet, and then you've got some people who may be in the market who are beginning to consider you as a brand, and then you've got some people who are really ready to buy, and you want to hit them with something sort of more salesy. So conceptually, it all seems to kind of add up. It's very appealing. It's very simple.

But if you then begin to apply some of the kind of marketing theory and marketing science about how we actually know that appetising works, some of it doesn't quite reflect. So the classic funnel, which is awareness, consideration, conversion, doesn't quite reflect how a lot of advertising works for a lot of brands. So I wanted to begin to explore it. And I had a look at what I thought, how we could apply some of that marketing science to the funnel to improve it slightly. So I evolved it slightly, not very much, but just enough to kind of nudge it into the 21st century a bit. And again, using some of the thinking of Byron Sharp, so this idea of mental availability was the thing I would put at the top of the funnel.

So the fundamental role of all marketing communication is to build brand memories. So I said rather than talking about awareness, which is quite a blunt thing. Of course, we want awareness. That's dumb. What you actually want is mental availability or you want to build memories. So I said, let's call the top layer building, brand building essentially. And then in the middle, you can begin to be a bit doubtful actually about whether this thing called consideration is always the case.

We don't always want to drive consideration because some brands, you just don't need to consider. The idea of consideration is quite a rational thing. It's not actually purchasing is often a much more emotional thing than that. So I was like, oh, I'm not sure we need that. But let's say we need to actually nudge people to a sale. So when they're in the market, let's give them a little bit of a nudge. little reminder of the thing that we've built in their minds, and that might nudge them towards a conversion. So it's called the middle nudging. And then at the bottom layer, I was like, well,

actually there's a lot of what we call advertising these days, which is kind of directing people, helping them navigate towards the brand that they've already chosen. So if you think about the way a lot of search ads work, people are searching for something they really want, and search or SEO is helping them get to that site, get to the brand that they're after. So let's call that connecting. So we're connecting people to the brand rather than converting them. So building, nudging and connecting was the sort of three layers that I kind of evolved the original funnel from. It seemed to be some theory that people kind of liked.

And we're now using that at Jellyfish as our kind of core version of the funnel that we often use with clients. Of course, it's only a start point with any brand. you want to be thinking in a more bespoke way about the actual journey that people are taking towards your brand and you need to be thinking in a tailoring that to your specific objectives rather than always having that kind of cookie cutter. But it felt like a useful evolution that accepted that this thing, the final is going to be with us forever, not something that's going to, you can just kill with a piece of B2B content marketing like McKinsey, Mike. Hey, that's why I had you on the show, man. I think it's brilliant.

I may or may not borrow from it occasionally when describing it to clients. I give all due credit, though, and we're talking with Tom Roach, the Tomroach.com. You can follow along with Tom and all his perspective and brilliance on marketing and advertising. But the new funnel, it's not ever going away. Don't ever let it die, Tom. I'll keep waving the banner if you do. hilarious i mean i didn't really you know i didn't really you know think i would ever write an article about funnels but i did and people seem to like it so you know what talk about uh i'll i do

want to get have saved some time to ask you about personal branding uh but you know your latest tom has published a lot with marketing week so in the biggest names um in journals come to tom for for articles and insights and all that your latest article why advertising will never People are trying to kill it, Tom. We can't let it happen, can we? Because we need jobs. I'm kidding. I'm somewhat kidding.

Self-serving. Of course, I'm going to defend it. It's been in the career. Yeah. But talk about your latest article, that perspective. Yeah. So, again, it came from a similar place of just, it's a very, very common thing. Again, over the last 20 years or so, you will read repeatedly,

advertising is dead. In fact, somebody dug up an article from Wired in 1994 saying advertising is dead. And if you Google that term, you get so many different articles. Normally what people are actually saying is TV advertising is declining a bit

and this new channel is kind of coming up a bit. So what I think has happened is it's a kind of journalistic trope to say this is dead, here's the new thing. And a bit like the funnel thing, I guess. And really it's a way that people often in the advertising world, bizarrely, have been trying to flog their new or sell their new thing that they've got to sell. Often it's a platform with a new kind of format. You know, TikTok will say, don't make ads, make TikToks.

They're trying to say advertising, traditional advertising is dead, have our new thing. But they're just selling ads. You know, so don't fool people. And I don't think we should allow ourselves to do down our own. industry. We work in this amazing industry that, yes, it's changing and evolving. Of course it is. But has it's a, as I said before, $690 billion industry globally, for every dollar spent on advertising, there is a $6 contribution to the wider economy from what we do. We should be proud of what we do. We don't need to be looking to other things. Too often we'll look to the

societal purpose of the work that we do for some kind of, I guess, you know, solve our own consciousness, consciences about selling or something, as if there's something dirty, bad about selling. Selling's okay. It's good. It can be good. In fact, it can be very good. And we need to be, to embrace that in order to really be proud of our industry and help it

evolve and be future-facing and evolve for the future, not kind of do it down and say it's changed for the worse and there were these guys in the past and that the stuff that they were doing is no longer done and there was this kind of golden era of creativity called the mapan era I don't really believe in golden eras I think that you know there is always a percentage of what anybody does that it's a bit rubbish and there's always a percentage of what we do that is pretty good and yes digital advertising can be better but I'd much rather be a part of an industry that says yes it can be better let's improve it than than part of an industry that says what we're doing is is terrible and must die.

I think it's, we need to be optimistic about the future of what we do. Brilliant. Love it. And, you know, here's how I, when people say that, I'll never say that.

But what I do say is, and it's a little different nuance is, people are more aware of being advertised to than they ever have been. And they don't necessarily love it. If it's not done well. Is that a fair statement? I think it's probably a fair statement. What I would say, though, is that I'm not sure that people have ever loved advertising.

I think we have this notion that there was some time, maybe some distant time in the 70s. Yeah. It's very fictitious. Yeah. Yeah. So Bill Burnback and DDB made some amazing VW ads in the 60s, right? Yeah. Which we in our industry worship.

Yeah. But that was probably 1% of the automotive ads in the, the US at the time. So let's not believe that somehow there was this golden era. And, you know, there's always, I mean, there's kind of 5% of anything is good and 95% is shit. So, but I'd much rather be part of the 5% than than the 95. So, so right. So right, my friend. Before I asked you a couple quick takes, you know, obviously you have a personal brand. I like to talk to people about. about this because it seems to be a bit of a polarizing topic that people can be brands.

And so people that I actually really admire really look down at it. But yet, it's funny, they write books and they do things. And I'm like, you have a personal brand. You just don't want to call it that. But like, you know, what's your perspective? Let's say you on personal branding. Does it bother you the term? I'm just trying to get over my kind of,

awkward Britishness around the idea of having a brand or a brand name. I understand the kind of parallels between a product brand and the fact that, you know, you might have a name that has a certain set of associations and things that you're known for. I mean, in the music industry, they're perfectly happy to know that their brands. I mean, Madonna is an example of somebody that has absolutely killed it, decade after decade and follows a lot of the rules of branding. So there's no question in my mind that people can have brands of a kind. But when it comes to a kind of professional name, I think people have always in any industry had a name that they've sought to protect or to grow

or to build. I think we live in an era where it's perfectly possible now to write things and have reputation that is, it isn't just kind of, you know, I used to work for, you know, a company. I now work for jellyfish. My personal brand now is possibly, has grown a bit in terms of that balance between my personal brand and the corporate brand I work for. But everybody benefits. It's not a, you know, what's great is I'm allowed, in fact, expected to write stuff and to put, to put articles out there that are.

my own personal thoughts and feelings and opinions about stuff that then jellyfish can benefit from. So it's a symbiotic thing. I mean, it's slightly awkward to talk about, as I've said, but it's definitely, I enjoy it. I enjoy writing stuff. I'm not a natural extrovert. So what it does, writing things for me, I think what I'm writing. So it means I can put my thoughts down on paper. I can publish them.

I then get asked to do fun stuff like this and get on stages. And I've got something to talk about. If I hadn't written the stuff I'd written, I would find this conversation extremely difficult to have. But, you know, luckily, you're asking you about things I've written. So it's all, I'm really, like, I enjoy doing the stuff I do and writing the things I do and the kind of benefits that come off the back of that. And people at Jellyfish seem to really support and endorse it, which is great. It's really great to work in a company where that's kind of accepted and people want you to do it. the high tide raises all ships so uh that's how i'd summarize that you know tom roach is known jellyfish

comes with it you know because you're working for and together and so uh there you have it what's your favorite ad of all time tom tom this is such a hard question um i probably have to say something like ginnis surfer which is a bit of a cliché is a classic uk ad from 1999 which i um i worked just after that. And it's often voted the very best out of all time. It's just a pure, amazing piece of creativity. I was lucky enough to meet the creative Walt Campbell who wrote it just a couple of weeks ago. And he's a real legendary figure. Very good. Real quickly, we do a little rad or fad. I'm going to give you a topic, rad or fad being. And, you know, some people, I don't know why you get.

hung up on it and maybe you aren't but some people what's that mean rad is obviously awesome fad is may not be here tomorrow this is purely your opinion and we will not play it back in five years to say Tom Roach was right or wrong it's uh

all right rad or fad the metaverse well I think it's probably not a fad but in its current sort of made up state it's like you so I'd say rad, but the moment there's a sort of weird thing going on, which is

it's sort of not a thing yet. I've heard a really interesting opinion, which is that we should just call it gaming as a brilliant guy called James Whatley, who says, gaming is the metaverse. We don't need this word called the metaverse. It's gaming people. Where's my ding?

Where's my ding, Nick? I'm going to want that fat or did. Ding, I said that exact thing on the podcast a few weeks ago. Similar thought. I was just like, aren't we just playing a game? Like, you know, like, isn't it just playing, you know, a different version of Minecraft or whatever? Anyway, brilliant.

TikTok. Rad or fad? Definitely not fad. It's definitely rad. I think it's got some growing up to do. But as a as an advertising proposition, it's got to reach some maturity. But as a creative platform for real people to express their creativity, I love it. 100% agree. Non-fundable tokens, NFTs, RAD or FAD?

No, I don't know much about them really, but what I hear is it was a bit of a fad, but I'm sure that, again, I'm sure the technology will develop, and we will see once again that there was something in that. But the early adopters of it look to have lost a bit of money right now. I will say smart contracts, smart contracts, digital contracts, are the future in some way, shape, or form. You know, art that is bad art, that's drummed up scarcity,

no fad. I don't know if you'd agree with that take. Well, yeah, you can't help laughing at some of the people that have spent millions on, I don't know, the first tweet, and then they can't sell it for a few thousand. So, you know, there's some Chardon Foyder in there. But I'm sure somebody will work out the best uses for it. I think, you know, I never try and predict,

and it's why this game's awkward for me, because I never really try and predict technology. But there was a story that people used to tell about how text messaging was invented, just I think as a way of engineers to speak to each other. And it became a thing that consumers would use, real people would use. They never predicted that. So some of the best pieces of technology, they will find their use. It just isn't necessarily the usage that we assume or we predict it's going to be.

And we always overestimate the impact of a technology in the short term and massively underestimate its impact in the long term. So I'm pretty sure most of these things will be RADS long term and Fadd's short term. There you have it. Always smart. Tom Roach, man, I really appreciate you responding to my Hill Mary on LinkedIn and going, you know, I've been following you for a few years and listening and like, you know, like on. All right. And then finally, just like, dude, I'm going to get this guy on the show. So I really appreciate you coming on time.

And I hope we can continue discussion and, you know, at least shoot me the first, you know, insight. Like whatever you, if you said, if you got a book or something, you need to send me the first link or when you got an article coming out, I want to be the first to read it. So I really appreciate you coming on. That's a real, real, it's been a real pleasure being on. And I'll send you, send you the next article to read or maybe the first chapter of the book whenever I get writing. I don't know when it's going to be. People do keep sort of asking for a book, but I'm not sure if I've got one in need right now.

Yeah, we'll see. But hey, hey, guys, go follow the Tom Roach. Go go to the Tomroach.com, Twitter, Tom Roach, LinkedIn, Tom Roach. You'll thank me later. You'll get more of what you heard today. You know where we're at. We're at the radcast.com.

Search for Tom Roach. You'll find all the highlights from today's episode. And you know where I'm at, at Ryan Alford on all the platforms. and I'm blowing up on TikTok and it's rad. And I'll see you next time. On the Radcast.