Concentrate Ad Spend for Optimal Frequency and Campaign Success

This conversation on CPG advertising performance reveals a critical, often overlooked truth: effective advertising isn't just about creative quality; it's fundamentally about achieving sufficient frequency to penetrate consumer consciousness. The immediate temptation for brands is to spread budgets thinly across many channels, a strategy that Mark and Justin argue leads to wasted spend and minimal impact. The hidden consequence? Campaigns that are "a little bit pregnant" with budget fail to reach the necessary exposure levels, leaving potential sales on the table. This analysis is essential for any brand manager, marketer, or business owner looking to move beyond vanity metrics and engineer campaigns that deliver tangible, measurable results, offering a significant competitive advantage to those who embrace the discipline of sustained exposure.

The Invisible Wall: Why One Ad Isn't Enough

The core of effective advertising, as Mark and Justin articulate, lies in understanding how human brains process information. It's not a one-and-done event. Our brains are naturally wired to filter out noise, a mechanism that requires repeated exposure to an ad before it registers, is understood, and eventually considered. This process, particularly in the cluttered digital space, demands a significant number of impressions. Justin highlights the digital world's "rule of 17," where banner blindness and the ease of scrolling past ads necessitate explosive hooks in the first second. The implication is clear: a visually arresting but insufficiently frequent digital campaign is functionally invisible.

Conversely, traditional media like television and radio, while more expensive, offer a more concentrated impact. Here, the "rule of seven" emerges as a more realistic target for activation. The sheer size of modern televisions and the singular focus of the viewer create an environment where ads are more likely to be absorbed. Mark illustrates this with a simple, yet powerful, observation: people remember TV commercials they saw years ago, a feat rarely achieved with digital ads. This sticky quality, combined with greater perceived credibility, underscores why traditional channels, when used strategically for frequency, can be so potent.

The data presented reinforces this point dramatically. A single exposure offers a mere 0-14% lift in outcomes. This number escalates significantly with repeated exposure: three to five exposures yield a 30-60% lift, and crucially, six to eight exposures can result in a 70-80% increase. This is where the "promised land" of ad effectiveness lies. Pushing beyond this, into nine to twelve exposures, yields diminishing returns, and even worse, thirteen to fifteen exposures can lead to a decrease in impact. This phenomenon is attributed to the brain's reticular activating system, which, after repeated exposure, begins to tune out the message as familiar noise.

"There is more money lost every year on underinvested ad campaigns than has ever been lost on overinvested ad campaigns."

-- Mark Young

This insight is a stark warning against the common practice of "being a little bit pregnant" with an advertising budget. The desire to stretch dollars thinly across numerous platforms or to constantly refresh creative without achieving adequate frequency is, according to the speakers, a recipe for campaign failure. The data suggests that underinvesting in frequency is a far greater financial drain than overinvesting. The immediate discomfort of concentrating spend on fewer channels or maintaining creative for longer periods is precisely what creates a durable advantage, as most competitors shy away from this disciplined approach.

The Niche Advantage: Owning a Smaller Conversation

The conversation then pivots to a crucial strategic implication: the power of niche marketing. Mark emphasizes that being "passionately desired by four or five million people" is far more valuable than being "known by 340 million" without deep connection. The Kmart versus Lululemon analogy is particularly illustrative. Kmart achieved broad name recognition but lacked a compelling reason for customers to choose it, ultimately leading to its demise. Lululemon, conversely, cultivated a passionate following within a specific niche, becoming vastly more valuable. This isn't about obscurity; it's about relevance and depth of connection.

This principle directly informs how brands should approach media buying to achieve frequency. Instead of trying to reach everyone, the strategy should be to identify a specific audience segment that is most likely to desire the product and then concentrate media spend on platforms where that audience is highly engaged. For instance, targeting specific networks or time slots within channels like Fox News, CNN, or Sirius XM, rather than spreading spend thinly across multiple networks, allows for the concentration of impressions needed to hit the crucial frequency thresholds.

"Less is more."

-- Justin Gerard

Justin’s concise summation, "less is more," encapsulates this strategy. It means being highly selective about media placement and focusing budget on a few key channels that offer deep engagement with the target demographic. This approach, while counterintuitive to those who believe in broad reach, is what mathematically enables the achievement of sufficient frequency. By owning a specific conversation within a niche, brands can ensure their message is heard repeatedly by the right people, fostering deeper engagement and driving more impactful results. This requires a disciplined focus, resisting the urge to diversify spend for the sake of perceived breadth, and instead, doubling down on depth within a chosen segment.

Creative as the Amplifier, Not the Sole Driver

While frequency is presented as the engine of ad performance, the role of creative is not diminished; rather, it's reframed as the crucial amplifier. Mark argues that while industry norms suggest spending around 10% of the budget on creative assets, the reality is that great creative can be the difference between amazing results and zero. The Uber commercial featuring Kevin Bacon, for example, highlights the significant investment major brands make in celebrity endorsement and production, recognizing its power to capture attention and enhance the impact of frequency.

However, the conversation cautions against viewing creative as a panacea. A great story, told effectively through compelling creative, is essential, but without sufficient frequency, even the best ad will fail to break through. The "Be Cozy" travel neck pillow example demonstrates this dynamically: the same commercial, run with increasing frequency, shows a direct, real-time correlation with rising sales numbers. This underscores that creative quality enhances the effectiveness of each frequency exposure, making the overall campaign more impactful.

The discussion also touches on the duration of exposure. A 30-minute infomercial, for instance, requires a much lower frequency because the extended duration of exposure itself contributes significantly to message absorption. In contrast, shorter formats like 15-second spots, while often costing less, retain a substantial portion of the recall value of longer spots. This flexibility in creative length allows advertisers to strategically achieve frequency targets within budget constraints. Ultimately, the message--the story--is paramount. Whatever the length or medium, if the story is compelling and resonates with the target audience, it can dramatically amplify the impact of achieved frequency, turning mere exposure into meaningful connection and action.

Key Action Items: Building Frequency That Converts

• Immediate Action (Next 1-2 Weeks):

  • Audit Current Campaign Frequency: Analyze existing campaigns to determine the average frequency achieved per target audience member. Identify campaigns falling significantly below the "rule of 7" (traditional media) or "rule of 17" (digital).
  • Define Target Audience Niches: Clearly identify the 1-3 most valuable customer segments for your product, focusing on their media consumption habits and receptiveness to your message.
  • Creative Consistency Check: Ensure that all creative assets across different platforms currently in market are telling a consistent brand story.

• Short-Term Investment (Next 1-3 Months):

  • Concentrate Media Spend: Reallocate budget from low-frequency, broad-reach campaigns to higher-frequency placements within identified niche media channels. This may mean reducing the number of channels used.
  • Invest in High-Impact Creative Hooks: For digital campaigns, prioritize developing creative with immediate, disruptive hooks designed to overcome banner blindness and scrolling behavior.
  • Test Creative Refresh Cadence: Based on frequency achieved, plan for creative rotation not based on a calendar, but on when frequency might lead to message fatigue (e.g., after 6-8 exposures for a specific segment).

• Longer-Term Investment (6-18 Months):

  • Develop Durable Creative Assets: Invest in creating high-quality, evergreen creative that can sustain effectiveness over multiple campaign flights and frequency cycles, reducing the need for constant, costly refreshes.
  • Explore Omnichannel Synergy: Strategically integrate touchpoints across different media (TV, radio, digital, CTV) to build cumulative frequency, ensuring each touchpoint reinforces the same core message.
  • Measure "Time with Media": When selecting new media partners, prioritize platforms with higher average "time with media" for your target demographic, as this offers more opportunities for frequency.