Agencies scored plenty of wins in 2023. Major advertisers like Verizon, General Mills, and Kimberly-Clark all named new creative or media agencies of record this year, indicating that the AOR relationship is still valued among marketers.

But according to data from marketing consultancy R3, there have been roughly 29% fewer media pitches year over year in the US, and while there have been 45% more creative pitches, revenue from those pitches has remained almost flat.

One potential reason? Some brands are looking for specialized agencies as new technologies like TikTok and AI become more important, according to Moya Fry, senior global consultant at R3.

“On the creative side, more pitching for the same money is signaling to us that marketers are growing frustrated with the [AOR] model and so they’re parsing out projects and running specialized pitches,” Fry told us. “They are finding the agency or the partner that can do a specific job versus in the past, when there was an AOR, which was sort of the jack-of-all-trades.”

Other factors, like the pandemic and economic uncertainties, have also led many marketers to more closely consider what, exactly, they want from the agencies they hire. So what are they looking for? After talking to several marketers, we narrowed it down to three C’s: consolidation, creativity, and cost-cutting.

Continue reading here.—JS

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It’s no secret that people’s attention spans are shrinking in the era of social media. (Please don’t stop reading to check your notifications.) On TikTok, brands have mere seconds to make an impact on users: Internal TikTok analysis found that most recall and awareness impact happens within the first six seconds of an ad.

Marketers have been on the hunt for the secret to capturing attention in that precious window of time, especially as TikTok budgets continue to grow. Some use adorable pets, catchy songs, or pop culture references. While there might not be one surefire way to make sure TikTok users pay attention to branded posts, the platform dug into the data to offer a few tips for brands working with creators on TikTok.

Hook: Given social media users’ collectively short attention spans, “an effective hook is critical” for marketers that don’t want their content to be skipped over, according to a new report from TikTok and creator marketing platform CreatorIQ.

• Showing the creator—or any person—within the first couple of seconds “increases hooking power” by 50%, and also leads to 32% higher ad recognition, per the report.
• TikTok and CreatorIQ also advised brands to be “careful about being too promotional” early on in their ads.

The report praised this post from creator couple Matthew and Paul promoting Walmart+ as a “particularly effective, and, frankly, charming” example of best practices: The opening line, “I’m blind, and I’m surprising my husband with a home-cooked meal”—“hooks the viewer from the outset,” according to the report, and the video landed in the top 1% of all TikTok ads in terms of viewer retention.

Read more here.—AM

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Andy Pearson is VP of creative at Liquid Death. He’s also worked as a creative director at agencies including McKinney, Deutsch LA, and Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Each new one is my favorite. Seriously. But shooting a music video with a bunch of dancing Puritans burning a can of Liquid Death at the stake for the single “Fuck Whoever Started This,” from our Greatest Hates Vol. 3 album, was pretty ridiculously fun. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed as much on set as the crazy, chaotic, and fun shoot we had with Whitney Cummings for “Recycled Plastic Surgery Center.”

What’s your favorite ad campaign? I think my all-time favorite ad is Folgers’s “Happy Morning.” The idea is so wild. The craft is impeccable. And the tagline at the end is perfectly underwhelming. It’s beautiful.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: In my spare time, I train for and race ultramarathons. I just completed a 250-mile race across Arizona back in May. It was four full days of running almost nonstop.

What marketing trend are you most optimistic about? Least? I love that people are finally trying to build compelling brands from scratch rather than trying to add compelling creative to brands that already exist. If the brand is the entire idea, you almost get to write for an interesting character rather than an ad campaign. (We’ve proven that with Liquid Death.)

I’m less optimistic about all the hard canned drinks. I’m not sure how many more things we can spike. That feels like a category where the crash has to come fairly soon.

What’s one marketing-related podcast/social account/series you’d recommend? I’d say none of them. Go find a weird show or movie you haven’t seen yet. Or crack open a history podcast. Better to fill our minds with non-marketing so we’re not regurgitating someone else’s ideas in our own work.

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Crystal ball: 10 ad execs made predictions for 2024.

Shop ’til you drop: How AI could help retail advertisers better target ads and predict the chances that a shopper may return a product.

All dolled up: Tips on growing a viral brand, courtesy of makeup brand Youthforia.

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Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo partnered with upscale grocery chain Erewhon on an $18 smoothie called “good 4 ur GUTS.”
• Adobe and product design platform Figma scrapped plans for a merger after UK and EU regulators pushed back on the deal.
• OpenAI will pay news publisher Axel Springer, which owns a majority stake in Morning Brew parent company Business Insider, to use its content to train its AI in a multiyear licensing deal.