AVERAGES ARE KILLING BRAND DIFFERENTIATION

Brands have spent well over $100 billion in the past decade on gathering, warehousing, layering, analyzing and fetishizing third- and first-party consumer data. C-Suites and Boards now think CMOs have a crystal ball and expect brand turnarounds to be fast. They do not have a crystal ball. And worse, their strategic insights and resulting briefs are virtually the same as their competitors, leaving the onus of real brand differentiation on creative. In this talk, I will layout how the break out of this cycle of “average in, average out.”

Key Takeaways

• There is a place for large, quantitative data cuts. But the real truth about your audience can be found in deep, qualitative, interest-driven conversations.
• Meaningful and lasting brand differentiation happens further upstream than the creative process
• Subcultures are how you understand an audience, not a limit on who you can reach

About the Speaker

Adam Wilson is the co-founder of D/CAL, a subculture-driven creative agency built on the belief that understanding audiences better leads to building more distinctive brands.

His career spans some of the industry's most respected agencies, including J. Walter Thompson, BBDO, Organic, and McGarryBowen, where he helped pioneer innovative approaches to integrated storytelling and brand building. He later brought that experience to Carhartt, leading North American brand marketing before co-founding D/CAL with Tony Hawk in 2018.

Throughout his career, Adam's work has earned recognition from Cannes Lions, the Effies, Webbys, and Communication Arts. Today, he leads D/CAL's mission to uncover the audience insights competitors miss and turn them into brands they wish they'd built.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/themedium/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/dcal-agency/

https://www.dcalagency.com/

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