Burst Your Bubble

Each week Andrew Tenzer and I post ‘Bubble Bursters’: a selection of our favourite charts (old and new) from our ever-growing library of behavioural and cultural research representing the lives of everyday people. Here’s numbers 1-5 all gathered in one handy place.  

Bubble Bursters (Number 3) Spot the difference? The marketing and research industries tend to think that understanding people is about understanding differences. But, out there in the real world, people often have much more in common than marketers think. Here’s a great example from our new ‘Everyday People’ worldview research. Despite all the column inches devoted to the transformative power of ‘Gen Z’, it turns out young people, more or less, see and interpret the world the same way as everyone else… And therein lies soemthing of a paradox for marketers- if you want a strategy that truly sets you apart from the competition you need to start thinking about what people have in common, not what separates them... Follow Andrew Tenzer and me for more 'Bubble Bursters' Open thinking. About everything. For Everyone #advertising #marketing #worldviews

Yesterday morning we held our annual #DCMUpfronts showcase event at ODEON Cinemas Group Luxe Leicester Square. Thank you to everyone who came along – we hope you enjoyed the event and took away some key insights and creative ideas to inspire your upcoming #CinemaAdvertising campaigns. The morning was jam-packed! 🎬 Our CEO Karen Stacey kicked off proceedings, introducing the theme of the day and how #cinema can MAXIMISE brand campaigns, especially when starting with cinema to launch a new product, new message, or new campaign. 🎬 Founder of Craft Media London, Jen Jones, hosted a special client panel with Alex Taborda, Head of Media for the Professional Products Division at L'Oréal, Steph Ferreira, Head of Customer Marketing & Digital at Hotpoint Appliances Limited, and Josh Hurrell, TVP Marketing & Media Planning Lead at Sky. They each spoke about how their brands have adopted a #StartWithCinema strategy, and how the medium plays a vital role within the wider #media mix. 🎬 Andrew Tenzer, Co-founder of Burst Your Bubble, presented our brand-new research piece: The Cultural Power of Cinema. He expertly explained cinema’s leading role in co-viewing experiences, and how brands using the medium can maximise commercial and social impact. 🎬 Content Business Director Tom Linay and DCM Studios’ Creative Director Jeremy Kolesar (DCM’s latest double act) then took us through some of the highlights of the upcoming #film slate, alongside new creative opportunities for brands, including bespoke brand partnerships, ScreenX and 4DX, and anamorphic 3D advertising. #DCMUpfronts2024 #MaximiseWithCinema

'Nobody knows anything.’ This is a saying that used to do the rounds in ad land. But I haven’t heard it for a while… William Goldman became an Oscar-winning screenwriter by ‘writing scripts he believed in, not the flavour of the day.’ According to ‘Variety’ magazine, he also wrote the best line in the history of Hollywood. But when Goldman wrote ‘nobody knows anything’ it wasn’t part of a famous movie script. He was writing about the inherently unpredictable business of creativity and making commercially successful movies. Of course, Goldman wasn't saying that people in the film business know nothing about making movies. The film industry is brimming with talent and innovative technical expertise. But all this knowledge doesn’t necessarily get anyone in Hollywood closer to knowing what a hit looks like. The history of moviemaking is littered with sure things that bombed at the box office. Goldman’s point was that immersion in the esoteric craft of moviemaking may actually make it more difficult to see things the way ‘normal’ people do. ‘Nobody knows anything’ could easily have been written about the marketing and advertising business. There are myriad ways to create successful advertising. And myriad experts offering sure fire formulas for doing it. But like any creative endeavour, creating successful advertising is a messy jumble of intended and unintended consequences. At the start of my career, I was taught that ‘brand response is more important than ad response’. It is still my guiding principle. We can never say, definitively, what makes successful advertising. And yet the 'illusions of control' peddled by the ad testing industry continue to lure marketers into creative straightjackets. But we all know a successful brand when we see one. That's why Burst Your Bubble created 'Signal'. Derived from some of the best thought leaders in marketing and behavioural science, Signal is a ‘real world’ research framework that focuses on brand success. Thanks to Lena Roland and the gang at WARC for giving me the opportunity to talk about it. Read more on the link (no subscription required) https://lnkd.in/erANn6FD #advertising #marketing #media #mrx

My latest column for WARC is out. It's called 'Burst your bubble...about ‘System 1’ strategies'. It’s about a fundamental contradiction between two dominant advertising industry narratives: 1) Our love affair with ‘emotion’ and ‘irrationality’ 2) The feel-good stories we tell ourselves about ‘purpose’ and ‘conscious consumerism’.    The challenge for marketers is that their story about 'emotion' and 'System 1' is often partial and out of date. It hasn’t kept up with the science or with the increasingly complex socioecological context in which brands now operate. As long as ‘emotion’ remains the answer to every question in our industry, ‘conscious consumerism’ will remain little more than an elusive ideal. Resolving these contradictions may hold the key to the commercial and social impact marketers seek. And that means getting comfortable with ‘System 3’ and 'emodiversity'… #advertising #marketing #system1 #consciousconsumerism #sustainablemarketing

By placing all the onus of change on the individual, marketers may be causing more harm than good. It's Burst Your Bubble's Ian Murray with the compelling argument here. Do you agree? And more importantly, how can marketers who do want to do good better embrace collective responses? Read here and let us know: https://lnkd.in/eKcSY_dC #Brand #SocialPurpose #Marketing #Opinion