MSoM #010 | Adland is an island
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Google and everywhere else.
Welcome to Making Sense of Martech, an irregular set of interviews with some of the most interesting people in marketing technology.
Making Sense of Martech is an extension of the TMW newsletter. Each week readers ask me to go deeper into the most popular topics of the newsletter. Making Sense of Martech helps to add additional context into what's featured every week by interviewing the people behind the research, ideas and important work.
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In this episode of Making Sense of Martech, I’m joined by Alex Murrell, strategy director at Epoch Design in the UK. He’s worked with 7 of the 10 world’s biggest FMCG brands and has a unique voice when it comes to understanding the role in which advertising and marketing agencies play in their client’s growth, culture, and society at large. Alex recently published a paper featured in TMW #030, entitled “Adland is an island” unpacking research into the dissonance between the demographics, culture, interests, and norms of agency people and the general population of people who receive their marketing efforts.
We talk about the state of the agencies and how major research into the interests, demographics, and behaviors of agency practitioners indicates a vast difference between "adland" and the general populations who receive the creative work from agencies. We delve into topics such as ageism in agencies, how agency work can be more insular than even the farming profession, and why the distinct content and media consumption patterns influence things like marketing and advertising strategy. Alex also gives us a view into how to counteract this sense of dissonance in adland by focusing on conducting your own primary research, recruiting older demographics into the profession, and avoiding technology innovation in strategy.
Listen on Apple, Spotify, Google and everywhere else.
📚 Resources
Bob Levinson DDB ad Do This Or Die
WARC and the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute on building and employing distinctive brand assets
WFA launches new guide on diversity and inclusion in marketing