Traditional marketers assert sales are up 19% - but let's remember that this time last year, no one was leaving their homes!


With Meta announcing its first ever quarterly decline (Source: Meta), the changes at IOS14 making it harder to understand the point of conversation with consumers and Snap Inc. and Twitter echoing similar financial sentiments – old school marketers (many of those set up prior to 2011) have been proclaiming that the 'math men (e.g data scientists) "aren't as clever as they think they are", and that the days of 'Mad Men' style marketing are making a comeback. (Source: Bloomberg)

Sam Gormley from one of London's leading digital agencies, Osaka Labs, is calling bullshit and says these claims are based on incredibly misleading data... and again, using the 'smoke and mirrors' approach to reporting that he has been calling the industry out on for years.

He explains, "Maybe there has been a 19% increase in billboard sales in the past year... which we are comparing to a period in time where literally nobody left the house. So now we are out again, let's consider that 19% growth from a time of lockdown is still actually small - given that they're providing annual comparisons. Yearly budgets were not going to spend money on out of home billboards (as nobody left their home during COVID and more people are out of their house now... so of course they'd go up – and 19% isn't really significant considering the world's position now compared to a year ago."

Sam Gormley is a vocal spokesperson about the data manipulation often used by marketing agencies to 'shine up' results that are often not actually very shiny. 

When speaking about the losses that companies like Meta are announcing, Sam explains that digital markets are not dying – they're just shifting.

"Whilst Meta made a loss of 1%, Amazon made an 18% increase! It's not dying, it's just that money is going in two different directions, more to purchase.  People are trying to get through a recession, so money is flowing to the point of sale rather than brand awareness (like Coca Cola) which in turn is getting people over the line. Essentially, money will go elsewhere, so less of a focus on Meta (Facebook) and more on a focus on TikTok GenZ platforms."

Sam expresses the importance of flexibility when it comes to digital marketing and says that with such an 'everchanging landscape' – it is essential to work on a 'reactive marketing approach.'

"Reactive marketing is essential – no brands should be 'setting and forgetting' their ads or planning strategies into the future with no plans to adjust as needed. You MUST have an audience led approach - the whole idea that broadcast is dead and humans are brands and brands are humans, branding is conversational. We're in very uncertain times, so it's hard to prepare in uncertainty, that's why flexible models and reactive marketing work."

About Osaka Labs: Founded in 2017, Osaka Labs is a Content Activation Studio based in Shoreditch built for future-thinking businesses. The infamous team of young talented masterminds such as 25-year-old Head of Digital, Shannon Osborne, develops remarkable and trackable digital brand experiences from social to purchase. Osaka Labs pushes industry boundaries by giving their dynamic staff a platform to preach individualism. The thriving studio has worked with some of the nation's most well-known and trusted household brands such as Pedigree, Wrigleys Extra and Mars.

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