Jenni Romaniuk (00:00)
biggest danger of advertising is it's wallpaper. It's just not noticed at all. It doesn't have a negative effect. It just has you've spent money for nothing. So that's what we're trying to avoid.

Cole Heilborn (00:11)
So is it too simple to say that all we're trying to do as marketers is just build associations with our products and our brand with the customers?

Jenni Romaniuk (00:19)
In lot of cases,

yeah. We want to be able to have our brand linked to information that is used to interrogate memory so that when someone searches something in their memory, our brand is one of the options that comes up.

Cole Heilborn (00:33)
And does this come from the research that says only five percent of buyers are buying at a particular time?

Jenni Romaniuk (00:38)
Mental availability

is about the long run propensity of a brand to be thought of in buying situations. We don't remember everything we know all the time. Our brains are not interested in doing that. And this is why we've got to be wary of any models of marketing that presume people think a lot. Because we know they don't. We don't sit around and go, gee whiz, I hope I hope Nike's got a tagline for me.

Cole Heilborn (01:02)
On this podcast, we go behind the scenes with industry experts as they break down what it takes to produce creative work that works. If you're seeking insights from some of the sharpest minds of the industry, this is your guidebook to producing creative work that actually delivers. Welcome to the Backcountry Marketing Podcast. Jenny, thank you for being here. It's good to see ya. Cool.

Jenni Romaniuk (01:20)
Thanks for inviting me.

Cole Heilborn (01:21)
Okay, so Jenny, there's so much I would like to talk about. I have been reading your book. It's kind of blowing my mind, and I've been telling many people in my circle about.

about your work and your research. And as I was telling you before we started recording, I was like, we've got a chat with Jenny. There's a lot I wanna get into and I'm excited for folks to follow along for this episode. The first question that I want to ask you before you even provide a little bit more context as to who you are, can you share with us a little bit more background on yourself, some of the research that you have done and some of the books that you have written.

Jenni Romaniuk (01:51)
Yeah, so I mean my research, I sum it up in sort of three areas that are interlinked. So one is how the stuff in people's heads influences the choices they make. The other is how marketing activity influences the stuff in people's heads about brands. And then a third side issue is how do we how do we measure that? How do we given we can't like pry open people's brains and objectively see neurons firing.

without a lot of work. we usually have to ask people questions, but the problem when you ask people, you design questions to ask people is your own biases can shape how you ask the question, which then can affect how you the responses you get or how you interpret them. So how do we get sort of an unbiased read on that? And so my research has kind of surrounded those areas at different points in time. I've written three books, so one is

Co-authored with Byron Sharp on How Brands Grow Part Two, which really was originally supposed to be about how brands grow in emerging markets. But we discovered once we did the research that they just grow like everywhere else. So it was going to be a very short book, you know, see book one type thing. So we decided to expand it to start to illustrate, you know, all the different sorts of scenarios where

the things that we know about how marketing works apply, but then also take into understand not just how brands grow, but how to grow brands. Then following on from that, I have two other books. one is on building distinctive assets, which are the non-brand name elements that indicate the brand or trigger the brand in the minds of your audiences. So that's things like your colours or your characters or your

logo, you know, basically anything sensory. and then the latest book was on better brand health, which is all about that plug in part, which is about how do we measure the stuff in people's heads to get a you know, a good, accurate, unbiased read on the market.

Cole Heilborn (04:09)
So look let's start with the foundation and I guess you tell me if this is the foundation, but everything in marketing starts with memory. Is that correct? Is that is that the am I correct in understanding that for the most part?

Jenni Romaniuk (04:22)
I think memories are really important about it. I don't know that it's about the start of it, but to some extent, yes. Like there is a registering memory before we do things. Now, don't get me wrong, there are the was it the determinists who believe that we act before we think. where you know, they've done studies where they've shown, you know it's not free will, you don't choose to do something your brain.

That all aside, memory is an important part of it. Most of the time, most of the things that we're involved in marketing, there's usually some feedback mechanism, simply because we very rarely do the things that we do for the very first time are are unusual. Most of the time, most of the buying we're doing are from categories we know with brands we've experienced before. So identifying what's first becomes really, really tough.

but it is an important part of the feedback mechanism. So when I draw on my memory, I'm using my past experiences to sort of shortcut what I'm or make a better decision in what I'm doing now. Now sometimes that is a shortcut, it goes, that's what I'm just gonna do. Sometimes it might be, last that wasn't a good decision. So I have to think a little bit more, do something different. But in both cases, I'm bringing in my past memories to help make a

better whether that be easier or different decision now.

Cole Heilborn (05:55)
Yeah, interesting. So can you explain why understanding how memory works is important for the job of a marketer?

Jenni Romaniuk (06:03)
'Cause most of the things we do don't result in immediate behaviour. They have a lingering effect on our memory that then plays out into the future. And if we don't understand how memories are formed, how can we form the memories that are going to be helpful to our brand to the future?

Cole Heilborn (06:21)
Hm. Can you give us a very kindergarten level understanding of how our brains work and how we form memory structures?

Jenni Romaniuk (06:29)
How does our memory work? Well, the most commonly accepted model of memory is this idea of it being a network of associations. So things that you know and experience in memory are represented in nodes. So now that you know me, you have a Jenny node in your brain. Just as much you have a node for all the different people, all the different things, all the different brands that you have.

When two things are encountered together and your brain processes that information, it forms an association where those two things become linked together in your memory.

So for example, you are just outside of Seattle. I went to the World Cup in Seattle. So now you are associating me with the World Cup. So you might have not known much about the World Cup, but you've got a little bit part of your brain. I you know hopefully you picked up little bit about it. Now I'm connected to that part of your brain. Whereas previously, prior to this conversation I wasn't.

So why does that happen? Well, that happens because what that allows you to do is to access your memory. Because over time our brains become this dense network of associations. And this is why if someone just says, just think of something, you freeze up. You you can't because you don't have an entry point into memory. But if someone says, think of a restaurant we could go to on Friday,

Your brain will come up with ideas because you'll know where you are, where you've eaten before, where you've seen advertising for, and come up. So we form these links because they allow us to interrogate our memory and access information that's linked together to it. And that's what we want as marketers is we want to be able to have our brand linked to information that is used to interrogate memory so that when someone searches something in their memory, our brand.

is one of the options that comes up as a potential solution for that.

Cole Heilborn (08:42)
I see. Interesting. So is it too simple to say that all we're trying to do as marketers is just build associations with our products and our brand with the customer? Is that all we're trying to do?

Jenni Romaniuk (08:54)
In a lot of cases, yeah. I mean in terms of when we're talking about things like advertising and and we're building stuff in people's heads. I mean as marketers we do a lot of stuff that's not that, that's like getting distribution in stores and working out what price to charge and and things like that. So it's not all about memory, but when we're talking about the communications aspect of what we're doing and what we're trying to do that is sort of forward thinking, so that we're trying to build the memories of t in today.

So that in the future when someone's in a buying situation we're giving our brand a better chance.

Cole Heilborn (09:28)
I see. And does this come from the research that says something like only five percent of buyers are buying at a particular time? Is this why we're trying to do this as marketers?

Jenni Romaniuk (09:38)
Yeah, I mean that was a colleague of mine, John Doors, Professor John Doors. And yes, yeah, he just it was just an observation he had that, you know, most of the people, and it was actually in B2B, but it was actually true in all markets. The vast majority of people who will buy you in the next year aren't in the market for you now. and so, you know, so this is where a lot of our work now is about building our future demand rather than satisfying our current demand. Now

Our current demand's important. We want sales tomorrow. But if you're any s the companies are valued based not on sales tomorrow, but on the future sales that they will be generating. And that's what a big chunk of our marketing is all about.

Cole Heilborn (10:20)
I see. In your book you do you call it do you refer to this as mental availability? Is that how you describe this?

Jenni Romaniuk (10:26)
Yeah, in the history of marketing research, there's been a a lot of supposition about how the stuff in people's heads influences our choices. And we've gone through different sorts of mental models for that. And mental availability is one that sort of a lot of our other mental models came out of other disciplines. So the idea that attitudes drive our behavior came out of cognitive psychology.

The ide this idea of brand equity and brand value came out of economics. mental availability theory, which is a combination of mental and physical availability is what drives brand growth, actually came out of observing how people buy and how people think and bringing those two together.

Cole Heilborn (11:14)
I see. Interesting. And what are the elements of mental availability?

Jenni Romaniuk (11:19)
Well, mental availability is about the long run propensity of a brand to be thought of in buying situations. So that's different from situational specific salience. So if I asked you, say it, you know, come to your neck of the woods next week, where can I go for dinner? And you would give me on the spot a couple of recommendations, which would be based again on

Your past experience, but also maybe you've seen some advertising recently. Maybe some friends told you about some places they went to. You know, all of those things shape what you give me. Someone else might ask you that question in two weeks' time, and you might give a slightly different answer. There might be some brands of the same, but there might be some different because during that time period you might have got different information. But importantly, retrieval from memory at any one point in time is probabilistic. And even when it's in memory, you don't.

We don't remember everything we know all the time. Our brains are not interested in doing that. It's interested in giving us enough to keep us going and to make a choice, hopefully, because essentially our brains are pretty lazy. If they can get away with low cognitive thought, they will do so. This is why we've got to be wary of any models of marketing that presume people think a lot. Because we know they don't. You know, that's just being pervasive. So mental availability is that and it's underpinned by three key

areas and that is reach, getting out to as many category buyer brains as possible. Branding, making sure that everything you do is clearly and unmistakably about you and that's where it's your brand name but also your distinctive assets come into play there. And then messaging and that's about building up useful memories. So it's not just about building memories but building memories that people are likely to use next time they're in a buying situation.

And that's what we call category entry points. And they represent the thoughts that people have when they transition from being just an ordinary person to being a category buyer and therefore a potential brand.

Cole Heilborn (13:24)
I see. So you talk about category entry points as a way to if you can identify those, you can then start to build memory structures around those category entry points. Is that the the idea?

Jenni Romaniuk (13:37)
But you

can basically circum so there's a natural process that people get. So category entry points are used by people whether you market them or not. So it's not like you create them, they're there. You just get to choose whether or not that's what you message in your marketing or something else. And the advantage of messaging them in your marketing is it puts you ahead of the game because this is what people are using to think of brands.

And if you're not thought of, it's not that you have zero chance of being bought, but you have a much lower chance of being bought because if one of those ones that is thought of is able to be bought, chances are that they'll get the gig and you won't

Cole Heilborn (14:23)
I see. Is there a well, I don't wanna put you in a box, but is there a minimum number of C E Ps that you would recommend? Like what is a healthy versus an unhealthy amount?

Jenni Romaniuk (14:33)
So, so a different way of answering. So I was asking answering from a category perspective. If you're talking about a brand and what a brand should communicate, we recommend going for what we call the long short list. And that's where you've got about sort of five to eight category entry points that are sort of your longer term communications goal. Each category entry point, each piece of communication should focus on one. at this stage, the evidence is

We would say, you know, single message, single brand, bring that together. But you can have different creative four different category entry points and you can rotate between them. And this is particularly helpful if you're operating in a medium where you've got high frequency. So if you know, in a lot of digital properties, there's going to be a lot of frequency where you're hitting the same person over and over again. Even if you try to frequency cap it, it's still quite hard. You're going to get that.

That's where, you know, being able to serve them different executions allows you at least to vary the message even if you're hitting the same person.

Cole Heilborn (15:41)
I see. Interesting. You have a you have a sentence in one of in in in one of the chapters here where you recommend that folks how do you say it? Something about how you recommend them not using brand awareness as a metric to pay attention to as much as we have historically. Can you tell me more about that? Is that connected at all to to this concept?

Jenni Romaniuk (16:01)
well, yes and yes, yes, yes and no, in that so first of all, people think brand awareness is really simple. That's part of the reason why it's quotes often used, is because people think it's really simple and they can explain to others. And it seems logical people need to be aware of your brand in order to buy it. Technically they don't. I mean, sometimes people do pick up a brand on a thing and go, I don't know what this is, but I'll give it a go, you know.

Every so often we experiment, but sort of stuff. However, when you look at brand awareness, it's actually much more complex. There are three levels of difficulty, two different types of responses, and two different types of cues. Well, one cue, which is the category cue. Then you have two different types of responses, whether you do it prompted or unprompted, and then you have three different layers of measurement, whether you take the first response.

Any response or a prompted response. So actually that gives you quite a bit of complexity. And so when people talk about awareness measure, my usual first question is, what awareness measure are you talking about? Because people don't people typically have one they're referring to, but they're not necessarily all referring to the same one. Now, historically, people use top of mind awareness as a proxy for salience.

And as a proxy for mental availability. And we did look into it to see whether or not it was a useful, because it's very simple, you know, which brands first, but it's not for two reasons. One is it's a single response only, which means it doesn't capture properly the extent of the memory network. And secondly, it's only queued with a category. And so it's rare that we just go in with a category queue. Usually we have sort of modifiers to it.

So I'm sitting here on a cold day. So when I'm thinking when I'm thinking about a drink, I'm thinking of something. I'm thirsty, but I also want something to warm me up. Whereas if we were talking, you know, in six months' time when it's the middle of summer, I would have maybe a different modifier on what I'm looking for, even though both of them are about me being thirsty. There's other factors in both internal and external that I I I

Are changing how I'm accessing my memory. And so brand awareness just simply isn't sophisticated enough to pick that up. But there is one use of brand awareness that's really useful, and that is that when you're entering into a category, whether it be as a new brand or as a new brand in that category, so you're extending into a different category, you have to let people know you are a member of that category.

So if I said to you avocado, what would you think of?

Cole Heilborn (18:56)
the tagline Avocados from Mexico. Yeah.

Jenni Romaniuk (18:59)
You would think of Mexico, guacamole, Mexican food. Would you think of mattresses?

Cole Heilborn (19:05)
Right. No, that would not be first time I looked.

Jenni Romaniuk (19:07)
There

is a brand called Avocado Green that sells mattresses. So they have to get into the mattress part of your brain before they can build anything else. Because if I said to you, avocado, something great to sleep on, you'd be thinking, What? You're sleeping on avocados? Why are you doing that? Isn't that mushy or are they ripe or are they unripe? Yeah, we'll open up a whole range of questions that no one wants to answer. There is a role for brand awareness as a measure to know.

People know you're in that category, that then is a springboard for you to be able to build what I would call relevant awareness, which is part of mental availability.

Cole Heilborn (19:46)
And and what is relevant away?

Jenni Romaniuk (19:48)
Remont

awareness is when you're known for at least one category entry point. So we also call it mental penetration. But it's like you're you're known for something that someone's using to access that category.

Cole Heilborn (20:01)
I see. So like can you give me example?

Jenni Romaniuk (20:04)
So if we're talking mattresses, so it might be to, you know, sleep on if you've got a bad back. Or,

Cole Heilborn (20:11)
Okay, I see.

Jenni Romaniuk (20:12)
you know, f for someone who, you know, likes to sleep with their pets. I'm sure there's a mattress for that. I don't know. but if someone hasn't got one out there, I'm sure they should because it's amazing how many people do sleep with their pets.

Cole Heilborn (20:26)
I see. I'm wor I'm writing in a notebook right now that's a write in the rain notebook, and it's the type of notebook where you can write, well, in the rain. So that's an example. Exactly, yeah. Okay.

Jenni Romaniuk (20:35)
Yeah, now how many there's no you know, most people yeah, other people I didn't even know there were particular notebooks for writing in the rain. Yeah.

Cole Heilborn (20:43)
And let's talk about distinct assets. what role do distinct assets play in everything that we've talked about so far? And I'm particularly excited to get into this because I have a lot of questions and theories and I would love for you to tell me what is what is true and what is not. what is a distinct asset and why do they matter?

Jenni Romaniuk (21:04)
Okay, so distinctive assets are the non-brand name elements that you want to trigger the brand. Okay, so they can be so typically in marketing we focus on visual and audio because that's the mediums we're often playing with, particularly in the various touchboards we're dealing with, but they can also be smells, touch, let's see up taste. Also can be distinctive assets. But

They tend to be less useful because you tend to you have to be in the same environment as the brand to do that. but you know, a lot of retailers, for example, use smell as a way to you can even when you can't see the retailer, you can smell it. You go, I know that Lush is coming up or KFC is coming up or Subway is coming up because of that. yeah, so so

So and that means that they can be pretty much anything, which is the the sort of the joy and the curse of distinctive assets is they can be anything. But we they're they're not naturally innate. And so we have to build it. So you know, I talked about category entry points and how they would exist even if brands didn't. Distinctive assets would not exist if brands don't build them. Because we don't sit around and go, gee, we're a hope.

I hope Nike's got a tagline for me. So I really want a tagline for that brand. No one sits around doing that. But yet if I say just do it, you think of the brand immediately. I don't have to do anything else to do that. And that's the strength of a distinctive asset.

Cole Heilborn (22:47)
So is it distinctive assets is it everything that the brand produces or is it just limited to a select number of things?

Jenni Romaniuk (22:54)
It's limited to a certain number of things, and and the not all assets are strong. So you need to actually measure and assess the strength of your assets. we've done testing on it. So we do testing of distinctive assets, but we've also done testing on marketers' perceptions of their own distinctive assets before they know the results of the actual testing. And what we find is marketers tend to overestimate.

Fame and underestimate uniqueness. So these are the two metrics we use to assess the strength of distinctive assets. Fame, you uniqueness is how much do you own the asset versus it being also linked to competitor brands. You ideally want it to be 100% fame unique, where it's you're the only brand being thought of. And fame is about how widespread is that leakage. So is it amongst all category buyers or only amongst a group of category buyers?

And ideally, you want it to be a hundred percent every category buyer. When they see that asset, they think of your brand and only that brand.

Cole Heilborn (24:01)
I see.

Jenni Romaniuk (24:02)
Yeah, and so some assets might have so so yes, so marketers in general overestimate fame. They think more people know their asset than really do, and they underestimate uniqueness. They think their asset is

less well known or i is shared amongst many more brands than it is. And it's it's partially because they overestimate the impact of marketing activity on the consumer brain and don't realize that the vast majority of things they're doing is just going, passing people by. And yeah, sort of stuff. So when you think everything you do has a big impact, you think that your distinctive assets are stronger.

in f more famous, but less unique than what they really are. So it's really important to get a good grip on really what your assets are.

Cole Heilborn (24:57)
So in the outdoor industry, maybe this is true in all industries. I don't know. but we talk a lot about the sea of sameness that we see in the industry. You're nodding your head, so it sounds like you're familiar. Every brand basically looks the same, every brand talks the same from the small social post level to the large campaign level. In the outdoor industry, there's also a lot of like athlete documentaries and like ambassador films, and almost all those films look the same. Mm-hmm. Are those are those distinct assets that

ought to be truly distinct for a brand or are these the things that are lesser importance?

Jenni Romaniuk (25:32)
So so there's two ways to think about it. So so distinct assets, distinctive assets are a subset of branding. Your goal with any marketing activity is to brand. Now you have your brand name, which is essentially the ultimate distinctive asset, because it's something you own that is you've trademarked, it's yours, and it's only yours. And your distinct assets, distinctive assets support that, and they need the brand name to be part of it in there. So

With all of those bits of communication, you want it to be well branded. You want everyone to see it to know who it is. If they don't know who it is, then you've got a problem because it's not reinforcing your part of the brain. And therefore it's not working the way you want it to. Now, whether that branding comes from the use of the brand name or distinctive assets depends on how well you've built up your distinctive assets.

If you haven't built your distinctive assets, you have to rely on the brand name to do it. If you have built up your distinctive assets, you are in the process of doing it, you can utilize those as well to supplement your branding and if they're strong enough, replace your brand name usage. but the goal of getting a piece of communication is typically twofold. You have the branding, but then you also have the messaging.

So if you've got the branding, you can get the branding without the distinctive assets, but then the question is, what is the messaging and is the messaging going to the right part of people's brains? And it's okay to say things other brands can say, you just have to say it in a way that is uniquely yours.

Cole Heilborn (27:09)
So back to the social feed example, if I'm looking at a ski brand A and ski brand B, they basically look the same. Is that in is that a problem? Yes. In your opinion?

Jenni Romaniuk (27:20)
Well

well, for the brands, absolutely. 'Cause then their communications can't work as effectively as they want it to. just for the nature of it.

Cole Heilborn (27:30)
And your recommendation in that situation would be to do what?

Jenni Romaniuk (27:34)
To have a look at how you're communicating, think about what you can do to build distinctive assets. In building distinctive assets in the book, there I do talk about, you know, what do you do if you don't have anything? And that then becomes a case of going. So, first of all, what you want to do is take stock of what your competitors are doing. So, what colours are they using? What phrases are they using? What type of spokespeople are they using? And then you want to counter program.

So if they're all using natural colours and sort of stuff, then maybe you might want to add in a bright yellow. You know? If they're all using, you know, good-looking brawny men, might want to put a woman in there. You know, basically, you know, think about how you do something that's different to what others do because you want to look or sound different. I mean, there's a a brand Macpac.

Cole Heilborn (28:34)
I'm not familiar with them.

Jenni Romaniuk (28:34)
It's

a New Zealand brand. Okay. And they have an ad, and they have an ad which has a cliff and two people hanging off a jacket, a Mac Pack jacket that is attached to the top of the cliff. And they go and one of them goes and they have a use a broad New Zealand accent to say it and they go, you know, if this was a movie, the butt the the

the jacket would start to rip and the other one goes, Yeah, but it's a Mac pack. And it was like, And the other one goes, Yeah, they've got a sale going on now. We should go there. Okay. And you can tell they're sort of like, my God, we're gonna be stuck here for a while. But they use the New Zealand accent as something that really to me stands out as something different in that context as an audio asset or as an audio device and an audio asset.

Now, if there are five other New Zealand brands that are also using New Zealand accents, then that would not work. But it's the only one I've seen that's actually done that in that context.

Cole Heilborn (29:40)
Interesting. So what role does the method of communication play in building a memory structure? If we were to look at all the different types of things, all the different types of advertising a brand can create, you know, how do do they play different roles in terms of how they create memories? For instance, if I'm watching a 30 minute ski film from a brand versus if I see a, you know, a three second clip as I'm scrolling through Instagram, does that

Create any sort of different amount of impression on me.

Jenni Romaniuk (30:13)
I mean, hopefully, 'cause otherwise if if your thirty minute movie leaves the same as a three second impression, I think you'd wanna be as a filmmaker pretty disappointed with that. But it's

Cole Heilborn (30:25)
I mean yeah.

Jenni Romaniuk (30:25)
But it's more about actually the audience. And so the reality is the audience that you're gonna get to watch, you're gonna get a lot bigger audience hopefully for the three second thing than what you are for the thirty second thing. Typically things that have higher engagement where it requires people to spend more time and more energy, your audience shrinks and skews. So what happens is it shrinks, there's less of them, but the audience that's left over tend to be those who are more heavily involved.

If you want to grow as a brand, it's actually the light users that you really want to get out to. So your 30-minute movie, that's great, probably for the ones that are highly involved already know you exist and and sort of stuff. They also know lots of other brands because they're probably heavy category users, et cetera. But someone who say is a a weekender or, you know, once a year who maybe isn't out there that often.

But still needs the equipment, still needs the gear, and there's a lot of them. So individually they might not be worth much, but as a segment they're worth a lot. That's what your three second viewing on Instagram is hoping to reach.

Cole Heilborn (31:35)
Assuming that it's unique and differentiated from its competitors.

Jenni Romaniuk (31:39)
no, not necessarily. It doesn't have to be so y your distinctive assets need to be thing, but the brand doesn't need to be. The brand just needs to offer something that works in the category.

Cole Heilborn (31:51)
But in this example of the three second video clip, yep. That doesn't need to be unique.

Jenni Romaniuk (31:55)
Well, it needs to be well branded. Okay. So in that instance, that's the unique memory structure. But the category entry point or whatever it is, so if the brand and then the the residual that it's left behind in terms of what memory it's building, that doesn't need to be unique. That can be something very simple as, you know, next time you're out in the mountains or whatever it is see

Cole Heilborn (32:18)
Yeah, I can't.

Jenni Romaniuk (32:19)
remember that

The things that are really commonly experienced, the things that scale, the things where the money is in any category will be common to many brands. That's why you're in a competitive market. The things the things that only you can say that no one else can, unless you've got a patent on it, like you're a drug manufacturer or something like that, typically if no one else is is competing in that market, should ask yourself why? Why is no one else here?

And usually that means it's just too small that they just don't care.

Cole Heilborn (32:53)
Interesting. okay, I've always been really curious about this as a concept. People I mean, again, tell me if this is wrong, but people generally hate advertising. They write it it's

Jenni Romaniuk (33:05)
Hey advertising.

Cole Heilborn (33:07)
No?

Jenni Romaniuk (33:08)
No, I mean they recognize it's an intrusion, but you know look at the Superbowl. People

Cole Heilborn (33:12)
That's a rare is that is that not a rare

Jenni Romaniuk (33:15)
Most

advertising is just not very interesting and is seen as an instruction. But people don't know. People people like advertising that is interesting, fun to watch. I mean, how many times have you shared an ad with somebody because you really enjoyed watching it?

Cole Heilborn (33:31)
I've only shared the good ones.

Jenni Romaniuk (33:32)
Exactly.

But how many good ones are there? That's a big problem is that when you when you have crappy ads, yeah, no one likes crappy ads, but no one likes crappy movies. No one likes crappy

Cole Heilborn (33:42)
Okay.

Jenni Romaniuk (33:43)
you know, it's it it's it's it's about the quality that comes in comes into it. so that's a different conversation from the

Cole Heilborn (33:51)
Well

then okay, let me let me let me qualify what I was gonna say. Okay, so people dislike bad advertising generally. I in in the world of building memory structures, is there a a negative effect that can be had on a brand and the memory structures they're trying to build if they are using bad advertising?

Jenni Romaniuk (34:11)
Mm-hmm. I yeah, I would think the worst advertising is the stuff that's just not even noticed. So bad advertising actually sometimes gets noticed. There was a great ad, it was about I can't remember how long ago it was. It was a while back. It was a product that basically was you applied it directly to your forehead. And it was basically a it was supposed to be for headaches and things, but in the ad, they just had this woman against this like graph paper back.

ground like to look all sciencey and it said I think it was called head on head on apply directly to your forehead and it just had this woman that just took this thing and it just she applied it to her forehead head on apply directly to your forehead and she did the same girl head on apply directly to your forehead it was the most annoying ad any sort of likability rating it always scored low it also caused sales for the company

And I did some research into it to find out because I'm like, this is weird. Well, it just tells you how to use it. It doesn't tell you why to use it, what you did, it tells you nothing about what it's for. Turns out they couldn't make any of those claims because none of them were true and they'd actually been taken sued by the FCC for untrue claims. So they weren't allowed to say it like helped your headache or anything like that. So their ad was just this annoying litany of what you do with it.

And it generated sales for the the product. Now, I'm not sure that's a strategy for the long term, but the biggest danger of advertising is it's wallpaper.

Cole Heilborn (35:48)
Yeah.

Jenni Romaniuk (35:49)
It's just not noticed at all. It doesn't have a negative effect. It just has you've spent money for nothing. I see. So that's what we're trying to avoid. And so if you get your brand in there and nothing else, you at least get something. Okay? Because thing.

if you get your brand and useful message, then that's even better.

Cole Heilborn (36:10)
What about brands that have been successful in creating organic content, and building channels like y on YouTube where people are willingly participating in it's all advertising basically, but it's you know, what some might call like value driven content rather than an ad. Is there any difference in terms of how we think about or how you think about your research in those sort of contexts?

Jenni Romaniuk (36:36)
No, I mean it's all about reach and how you how you get it in there. So, you know, sometimes you can get organic reach with that. And this what I will say is that often we often we hear the successes and we attribute the success to things they didn't do. So this was brand was successful because they didn't advertise. And it's like, are they though? And how many

failed because they didn't advertise and we don't hear about those. So there's a there's a success bias that comes in, a survival bias that comes into it. And some colleagues of mine did some research on this because they were getting pressure from one of our sponsors was getting pressure from their board about that, you know, there's all these small brands that are growing without advertising and, you know, so why are you spending all this money on advertising? And you know, and and and the issue is you if you

Listen to the stories of those small brands, it wasn't that they chose not to advertise, it was just they didn't have the money to do it. So they had to work around other ways. And as soon as they got money, the first thing they did was advertise.

Cole Heilborn (37:55)
I see.

Jenni Romaniuk (38:07)
because we don't have a lot of money to splash around. but we need to be very careful in attributing success to constraints or to to what was not done rather than what was done.

Cole Heilborn (38:22)
It makes for a good story though.

Jenni Romaniuk (38:24)
It does, it does, and and you know, we we like you know sort of that underdog succeeding despite the thing. I mean, most people said yeah. I mean, we pay a price for things that we get free. and that as often a price as advertising, that's what funds that. That's what funds, you know. even whole genres, soap operas were developed because they wanted some way to sell

information. So they're like, we'll give you free content. Prices, you have to watch a few ads as you're doing it. but ads often are quite useful in a range of things of providing information, letting us know things that we don't know, reminding us of things that we have done and we, you know, we quite happily screen in things that are useful to us and screen out things that are not. But

I think we need to separate out just generally people's interest in communications and things like that versus just when things are b just bad or mediocre.

Cole Heilborn (39:30)
There's so much there's so much that I would like to talk to you about. If you haven't done this already, folks who are listening ought to go out and buy your three books because there's so much to dig into. I wanna try to wrap it up with with one or two more questions here. We live in an attention economy where people's attention equals value. What should advertisers and marketers what do we need to be considering in this attention economy that we live in today?

Jenni Romaniuk (39:57)
Be humble in what you can achieve and make sure that's laser focused on what's important. so this is where, you know, understanding what are you what are the really useful memory structures that I wanna build out of this are, rather than just going, I could just build anything, it doesn't matter. You know, and be humble in what you can achieve. I mean, we we got some ads from some sponsors for some testing we were doing and we asked them

what messages they were and sometimes they came back with five messages from a thirty second ad.

I can't even remember five things from I don't know a book I read, let alone from a 30-second ad. So I think we just need to be, you know, understand that and I mean we talk about the attention economy now, it's actually nothing new. We've always had partial divided attention through the things that we're doing. and so you know, I think we need to revisit that and

Just understand this has always been a by product of what we've been trying to achieve.

Cole Heilborn (41:04)
yeah, that's that's an interesting note. I've not heard anyone say that before. The tools have changed, the platforms have changed, but right, right, humans attention has not changed.

Jenni Romaniuk (41:14)
In the in

the nineteen seventies they were complaining that people weren't women weren't watching T V ads because they were ironing at the same time.

Cole Heilborn (41:21)
Fascinating. Huh Jenny, we've talked about a lot of different things. what would you want to leave folks with? Well, if they could only remember one thing from this conversation, one message, what would you want them to walk away with?

Jenni Romaniuk (41:34)
Every piece of communication you put out there, ask yourself, do they know who it's from? Is that really obvious to the person who has the most least amount of attention they can possibly give me? Have I given the brand the best chance of being noticed? And what message am I leaving behind in their brains and how useful is that? Just if you do that sort of audit on

each piece of communication you put out there just gives you a better chance of that communication landing and doing something useful for the brand.

Cole Heilborn (42:12)
Incredible. Jenny, thank you so much for the time. Thank you for the thoughts and the opportunity to sit down and for me to ask you just some questions. I really appreciate it. it's a pleasure. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Cheers. Bye. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving us a review on Apple. And remember, as you're working on that next piece of creative, the difference between creative that works and doesn't work often comes down to the hard questions that you ask while you're shaping it.

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