Never be boring: The signal and the noise
Every year, thousands of sea turtle nests are laid worldwide. When it comes time for the hatchlings to emerge from their shells, they all scramble to make it to the water. Unfortunately, only about one in one thousand sea turtle hatchlings are estimated to make it to adulthood.
It’s not hard to draw comparisons to the harsh reality of advertising in the modern day (and future) digital landscape. The average American is exposed to up to 5,000 ads per day. Ask anyone if they can remember ten ads they’ve seen or heard in the past week, or even the past month. People draw a blank. But here’s the rub — every single one of those impressions costs money. They are investments in brand equity, customer acquisition, and increased revenue. Brands can’t afford to have their ROAS (return on ad spend) hanging out on the same beach as turtle hatchlings. The irony is that the “recipes” and “cheat codes” brands and marketers yearn for (I’m looking at you AI) in order to maximize KPIs, are the type of thinking that dooms them. AI is not a strategy. Just as a celebrity is not an idea. Both, however, can be used in intelligent, strategic, and creative ways to optimize ideas and win in the market.
So how do you change this fate if you’re an advertiser or a creative team? You change it by seeing boldness, not as a risk, but as a necessity. Standing out is the key to thriving in a crowded marketplace. Innovation drives success. But there’s a colossal difference between actual innovation and simply “using AI”. Innovation is survival, but risk is hard to stomach. Brands often find themselves reconciling this dilemma by talking a big innovation game, only to follow the status quo. As a result, it makes it hard to identify and execute truly bold and innovative opportunities.
I oversee the Studio Resonate team at SiriusXM. We are an audio-first creative agency housed under SiriusXM Media, and every day we are tasked with helping brands and advertisers win in a marketplace they don’t fully understand. The audio medium is vastly underestimated. It’s grossly misunderstood. And it’s much more the future than it is the past. As a result, audio is a beach with fewer predators where more advertising hatchlings make it to the water. There’s a tremendous opportunity to stand out. And we’ve done so! We (along with the wonderful folks at Leo Burnett and Kellanova) played hip hop music to cheese as it aged to create a new flavor of Cheez-It. It worked! We have created custom compositions for Pure Michigan pairing color with music to mimic the changing leaves of the fall. We once made an ad campaign for Ziploc using Ziploc products themselves as instrumentation — who knew you could make a bass guitar out of a food storage container and rubber band?!
A Studio Resonate requirement: Never be boring. The rewards for bold, creative, and innovative advertising are indisputable. Boring is death. So, where is the risk? The risk lies within the fact that those types of ideas often require a leap of faith by advertisers and partner teams. It’s not enough to come up with the idea; you also have to convince marketers to go against the status quo. To zig against the zag of “best practices” if it makes the idea better. This requires trust. And trust must be earned. Over and over again. And it’s earned by demonstrating an understanding of the rules before starting to break them.
At Studio Resonate, we build off of three pillars: magic, storytelling, and moments. The magic lies in the science of sound — the way audio becomes a vessel for both nostalgia and imagination. The storytelling is the human element. The moments and connection? That’s the agility and swiftness with which audio can meet people in places that visual mediums cannot. We don’t view these pillars as “rules,” but rather through a lens of “tools.”
If you leave here with one thing, besides a newfound empathy for the noble sea turtle, I hope it is this: lean on and trust in your creative teams and experts. Empower them to take risks. And of course, never be boring. 
Author
Ariel Monismith
Integrated Marketing Manager, Global Marketing
