Person
Tom Goodwin
Guest; marketing and digital-transformation consultant, author of Digital Darwinism
Marketing and digital-transformation consultant, co-founder of All We Have Is Now, and author of Digital Darwinism. Widely followed on LinkedIn (voted its number-one voice in marketing four times) and host of The Edge on Euronews.
Argues most modern advertising is "genuinely awful" because the internet let advertiser numbers explode from roughly 100,000 (mostly agency-served) to 10-20 million (mostly self-served, algorithmically optimized, never touched by a human creative), while simultaneously convincing marketers that all wastage is bad and all results should be immediately measurable — a false expectation, since advertising is a slow, weak-but-important force that does roughly 30 different jobs at once (reassuring existing customers, letting a business charge a premium, giving salespeople confidence to pitch retailers), not simply "find someone who wants to buy and target them." Frames deliberately wasteful, repeated exposure as valuable rather than inefficient, since familiarity itself breeds liking (see Moreland and Beach Classroom Mere Exposure Study, Cialdini Banner-Ad Repeated-Exposure Study).
Distinguishes messaging (what an ad explicitly says) from signaling (what an ad's cost, aesthetic quality, and consistency imply) — illustrated with a grand historic bank building now housing a Wetherspoons (see Grand Bank Building Costly-Signal Case) — and argues aesthetics and production quality function as a costly signal on their own, citing a study finding slow-motion ad footage raised stated willingness to pay for wine by 11.4% and clicks on a chocolate ad by 17.7% (see Sunjin Dubois Slow-Motion Ad Costly-Signal Study). Offers three practical rules: repeat a consistent message rather than constantly changing campaigns, say something genuinely compelling rather than relying on production polish alone, and make ads easy to act on (a click should lead somewhere directly relevant, not a tangential brand story). Argues heavy targeting precision is mostly illusory — his own browser has only roughly a 52% chance of correctly guessing his gender — and that brand-building, not micro-targeting, remains the more reliable lever, pointing to sequel-dominated box offices (18 of the year's top 20 films) as evidence familiarity still reliably drives choice under uncertainty.
Discussed in
- Episode 228 — 228-99-9-of-ads-are-genuinely-awful-tom-goodwin