Despite being one of the industry’s most prolific LinkedIn profiles, Andrew Tindall lays out how the ads we celebrate in said bubble are a country mile from the effective work that builds brands out in the wild. Buckle in.
Yesterday, I ran my favorite kind of session, a strategy/data/ads workshop for a senior brand team. Using research from global tech, media, and effectiveness platforms, I helped marketers make smarter bets with their next £100m.
Meanwhile, on LinkedIn, there was a stark contrast. Endless posts celebrating viral campaigns with tens of millions of “views” or performative outrage over ads no normal consumer will ever notice. [Editor’s note: see American Eagle analysis]
Like adult content, perhaps we should require IDs and log-ins to read those flaming hot marketing takes from thought leaders who haven’t touched a brand since a 99 Flake actually cost 99p?
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Someone in my workshop spied the chart below from our recent mega-analysis of global campaigns submitted to Effie, noting the steady decline in the industry’s ability to create brand effects (awareness, differentiation, distinctiveness, trust, salience, etc.) as well as a drop off in how emotional ads are.
I think it is safe to say that these factors are correlated. In fact, I’ve previously bet my new house upon it: Feel or fail. Why emotional ads will always beat persuasive ones
The workshop asked, ‘How could this decline be true?’
They bask in the brilliance of fantastic work on LinkedIn all the time. Brilliant TV ads as well as viral social campaigns. What people have taken to calling “masterclasses *clap emoji*”.
So, surely, they thought, we are seeing a brand-building boom.
Well, sadly not.
Just because marketers rave about an ad online doesn’t mean it’s effective. Or even seen by enough real people. As Sarah Carter put it perfectly on the Uncensored CMO podcast: you are not the customer.
Viral campaigns warp our view of reality.
Take Jeremy Clarkson’s Hawkstone Lager ad, designed to get banned and then go viral. It’s now clocked somewhere between 50–100m social “views.”
Sounds big, right?
But let’s be clear: a “view” on social is a few seconds of attention at best.
For comparison, getting that much attention on TV would cost about £50k. For any serious advertiser, that’s pocket change. Just check out Lumen’s research below.
Viral campaigns make headlines and earn social chatter (sometimes they are genuinely effective), but they simply don’t represent the advertising that actually shapes consumer memory and behavior at scale over the long term.
So what really moves the needle?
It’s not sexy, but it’s paid reach.
Ads that consistently deliver with frequency, backed by proper budgets.
And yes, despite what marketing thought leaders might tell you, TV still matters.
EssenceMediacom’s latest analysis shows TV still drives over two-thirds of long-term advertising payback in the UK.
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Why?
Because it reaches the masses, commands attention, stirs emotion, and changes behavior.
And that’s not just theory.
System1 tests every new UK and US TV ad with millions of consumers. Measuring how they feel, what they remember, and if they even know who the ad is for. That’s in addition to what the day-to-day of our effectiveness agency actually does: work with the world’s largest brands, agencies, and media owners to privately test thousands of ads a week across the entire mix.
To ground us in the consumer’s perspective, I looked at the last 600 ads tested in July with nearly 100,000 everyday viewers.
1. Half of advertising is still rubbish
Around 50% of TV ads in July scored just 1 or 2 Stars on our Test Your Ad platform. These are low-emotion ads with virtually no shot of creating a lasting impact.
As Mark Ritson shared at Cannes, 3–5 Star ads deliver 55% more real business effects. That’s profit, market share., penetration and price elasticity.
The stuff rarely clicky enough to be shared on LinkedIn. We’re still flooding the airwaves with wallpaper, grasping at a sale without hope of generating lasting brand growth.
2. Branding is improving (but not enough)
Some good news: 62% of ads achieved strong branding (80%+ recognition) in July. Marketers have clearly taken Jenni Romaniuk’s work on distinctive assets to heart.
But here’s the sting: 30% of ads fail to trigger even 80% brand recognition after we force people to watch them. Imagine how much that falls when it gets into the real world and the consumer is sat half-drunk on their phone talking to their partner.
It’s probably not good enough, is it?
3. LinkedIn is not reality
This is where the echo chamber bites hardest. The work we see trending online is not what most consumers actually see, nor is it representative of what’s moving the dial in-market. In fact, some marketers sometimes prioritize getting noticed on LinkedIn over real distribution.
The real picture?
Ads backed with consistent, paid media weight that build memory structures over time. Not one-off viral hits. Not campaigns celebrated for cleverness within our bubble.
The stuff achieving the right frequency, reaching the right people across paid media. Bringing the brand to mind, making actual consumers feel something. And building memories.
The consumers view
We are pouring millions into ads that fail to make anyone feel anything. These will never be remembered. Meanwhile, the loudest conversations in marketing fixate on unicorns: ads that spark outrage or rack up fleeting viral reach.
It should be a refreshing thought. Most ads are crap. Imagine what would happen if you somehow managed to make a good one.
To ground yourself in what’s really happening in the advertising world, we (System1) sell this data to brands so they can see how their category is performing for a couple quid. Or follow me on LinkedIn where I share daily consumer data on ads that have launched and have a real shot at doing any real damage.
Or not, getting involved in the mega Rorschach Test, which is LinkedIn, and trying to find the “real” meaning behind the latest under-fire ad is a fun way to get to the end of the day, I guess.
Andrew Tindall is a senior leader in the advertising industry and SVP of Global Partnerships at System1, where he champions creative effectiveness and evidence-based marketing. Known for his sharp thinking on out-of-home, emotional advertising, and brand growth, he’s become a go-to voice on how creativity and data can work together. With experience across major brands like Diageo and Bacardi, Andrew now helps global agencies and marketers make better ads that actually work, contributing regularly to panels, podcasts, and the occasional punchy LinkedIn rant.
