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The Most ABSurd Blog
So you want people to share your ad
Want people to share your ads? Jonah Berger and Daniel McDuff’s global study found one emotion beats them all.
Stories beat montages
System1 found story-driven ads—real characters, real plots—beat flashy montages every time.
How fragile is your brand?
Warren Buffett says reputations die fast—but VW’s Dieselgate shows brands bounce back way easier than people do.
So you want an "ownable" brand asset...
Everyone wants ‘ownable’ brand assets—but Ehrenberg-Bass’s global study of 1,200 elements shows few are truly unique.
Small brands don't have loyal fanbases
The data is clear—small brands don’t have super-loyal fans; they just have fewer buyers who buy less often.
The science of Zoom fatigue
We all know Zoom fatigue is real—and it’s not just mental; our brains simply aren’t built for nonstop eye contact, self-view, and talking heads.
The wiggle room in marketing science
My latest for Contagious digs into the wiggle room between marketing’s laws and the creativity that breaks them.
What's better than a logo in an ad?
You’d think slapping your logo on an ad boosts recall—but Ipsos found other brand cues work way harder.
But how many times did you show the brand?
Kantar found that how often—or where—you show your brand in an ad doesn’t actually boost recall. Yowza.
Steal share or grow the category?
Ehrenberg-Bass found that for most brands, growth comes from stealing share—accounting for 65% of revenue gains.
Cognitive illusions
Charm pricing works like an optical illusion—once you see the trick, you still can’t unsee it.
Are Costco members loyal or not?
Brands love to call their heaviest buyers ‘loyal’—but heavy doesn’t mean loyal, and regular doesn’t either.
Heavy buyers aren't loyal buyers
Heavy buyers aren’t your most loyal—because the more people buy, the more brands they buy.
How to be less human
Mondelēz says it’s moving from marketing to ‘humaning’—because nothing says human like inventing a new corporate buzzword.
Why did Quibi really fail?
Quibi bet big on our so-called short attention spans—but maybe that wasn’t the problem at all.
What we think drives profit in ads (vs the truth)
Kantar found most marketers misjudge what drives profit—overrating targeting and media mix, and underrating creative and brand size.
How are airplanes like sneakers?
Turns out buying airplanes looks a lot like buying sneakers—B2B and B2C follow the same laws of brand science.
What Can a Brand "Own"?
Every brand wants to ‘own heritage,’ but in mature categories, size—not story—drives those associations.
How bad are our guesstimates?
We’re terrible at estimating reality—like how Americans have thought crime was rising every year for the past 24 years.
Is neuromarketing dead?
One veteran fMRI researcher says the field’s at risk—because brain-scan follow-ups barely match the original results.