TrueGroup is a privately held company operating across platforms, media and venture-backed businesses.
Alongside advisory and board roles, I’m involved in building consumer and media platforms.

Patrick Lambert

The World’s Best Ads & Why They Work | SVP @ System1 | Marketing Effectiveness

Marketing effectiveness researcher exploring how creativity enhances the impact of advertising across modern media.

I build global effectiveness partnerships with the world's largest and most exciting brands, agencies and media owners to scale creative effectiveness learnings and publish award-winning thought leadership with System1's data.

Strong marketing and commercial experience working for large FMCGs, I now advise and consult for top global brands on making effectiveness happen. Everything I share and publish is accessible, entertaining and full of practical advice.

Andrew Tindall

Is this accidenlty an ad for Coca-Cola? Or has Pepsi made the best Super Bowl ad in history? We've tested it to find out

Lots of marketing chatter about how brilliant Pepsi's Super Bowl spot is, hijacking Coca-Cola's polarbear to do the famous Pepsi challenge. And finding out he prefers Coke and has to go to therapy.

But do consumers love it?
And do they even link all the attention to Pepsi?
Or is it building Coca-Cola's brand?

System1 has tested it with a crowd of US consumers (like we do all TV and Super Bowl ads) to predict and understand its effectiveness. Full testing results in the comments, but here's the topline....

1. This is one of the most emotional Super Bowl ads ever made, sitting in the top 15% of of Star Score, a measure of it's brand building potential. If this was launched last year, it would be in the TOP 10.

2. But is it a Coke or a Pepsi ad? PEPSI! Consumers aren't stupid! The Super Bowl is a fantastic opportunity to push creative boundaries, given the attention and fame the big game brings to advertising. Sure, there's a red can in the ad. But they're consistently building on their very long-running campaign. 91% of viewers linked the ad back to Pepsi, making it one of the most distinctive Super Bowl ads in the past 5 years.

3. It's done this not through following the Super Bowl formula, it's a brilliantly culture-rich creative idea with a celeb making it work even harder. 38% of viewers found it hilarious, and it's one of the most "right-brain" ads we've tested in a while, with viewers loving the characters and story, with no obvious hard selling.

So, yes, marketers love it. But our robust, predictive consumer creative data confirms this is one of the strongest Super Bowl ads in recent years. Big congrats to those involved.

It's so good, in fact, that I hope this gets life beyond the Super Bowl. It belongs on TV all year round to achieve that magical Excess Share of Creativity.

We'll test all the SB ads and share the results, including what we learn about creativity beyond the Super Bowl. Sign up for all that free here: https://lnkd.in/ev_xeM5a

PepsiCo The Coca-Cola Company

My must-read marketing books - updated for 2026

4th year doing this. Read to level up.

A decade-ish ago, you'd have to do an MBA to get anywhere near the level of knowledge these books share. Now, we can become killer marketers for a couple quid.

This is the 4th year updating this list, here's my rules:

1. No shite. So so so much made-up nonsense out there at the moment.
2. These will move you from saying "yes" too much to asking "why" more.
3. All changed how I work, or multiple strong clients mention them.
4. Touch on most facets of marketing. A good marketer is second-best at everyone's job.
5. All great to read and inspire further exploration.

LBines Binet & sarah carter - How Not To Plan - Planning gold.
AG Lafley - Playing To Win - After reading this, most strategies look like guff.
Byron Sharp - How Brands Grow - Obviously.
Phil Barden - Decoded - Phil, I found mine in a thrift shop in Brooklyn once with notes in it. I felt like I was learning from the Half-Blood Prince.
The Copy Book and The Mirror Markers - Honestly humbling reads which made me appreciate advertising more.
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking, Fast and Slow - Nobel-winning thinking that underscores everything we do.
Adam Morgan - Eating The Big Fish - How challenger brands can win.
Will Guidara - Unreasonable Hospitality - How Will made the world's best restaurant. AKA how to put the customer's feelings first.
Sam Tatam - Evolutionary Ideas - How to win in innovation.
Rory Sutherland - Alchemy - Think differently!
Richard Shotton - Anything Richard writes is gold, the first marketing book I read. Breezed through it in a couple hours, then started again to take notes!
Les Binet & Peter Field - Long and Short Of It - Anyone that spend a pound on advertising needs to read this. And yes, it is a book.
Orlando Wood - Lemon and Look out - How creativity and media can work together.
Paul Feldwick - Why Does The Pedlar Sing - I listen to this every January, Paul, we need lunch again sometime!
Jenni Romaniuk - Both her books - Basically a masterclass in brand measurement and DBAs - which will be the topic of the year in marketing.

Let me know if I've missed any key ones - and hope this list is useful!

It's going to be a crazy year, starting with a book I've authored with Effie Worldwide and System1 coming out in a few weeks! Enjoy the big Monday back. Hope everyone had a good break!

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more.

The power of distinctive brand assets

New Tabasco X Absolut 🌶️ collab is spicy AF

The Absolut Company has partnered with Tabasco to create a spicy new vodka (that I can only presume makes a killer Bloody Mary).

I've not managed to try the juice myself yet, but the ads from Wieden + Kennedy are equally spicy from an effectiveness POV.

Firstly, the bottle itself speaks to why partnerships are often so powerful. Our brains do weird things, and they only bring the positive things about each brand to mind. They've really smashed what makes each brand distinct together.

Secondly, the iconic Absolut bottle campaign featuring the Tabasco diamond. In System1 and Effie Worldwide's new book, analysing what made over 1,250 campaigns effective across Europe and the US, the type of Distinctive Brand Asset used had a huge impact on how distinctive a campaign really was.

Campaigns using a distinctive product shape like this are 1.9x more likely to win BRANDED memories. That's 50% better than using a celeb. We'll bang these into testing and see how they make customers feel!

You can grab that book free here: https://lnkd.in/exppdWEk

Congrats to the Pernod Ricard team and Debasree Dasgupta!

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more

The best ad I've heard this week

Teas & Cs by Yorkshire Tea

My least favourite thing about adland on LinkedIn? Everyone ignores radio and audio channels.

Apart from when it's a podcast video of some dude slapping themselves on the back.

In my research connecting all System1's ad testing with Effie Worldwide's huge awards databank, I found that radio is a super touchpoint. It delivers more long-term growth than it should, given how well it converts demand.

Les Binet calls radio a "dual action medium" for a reason.

Delighted to hear this Lucky Generals audio ad. It won't go viral or have everyone cheering, but it's proper creativity.

1. Consistency done proper. Relentlessly pursuing their positioning and idea across channels.
2. It acknowledges the channel it's in, and treats the audience with respect.
3. It uses most of the right-brain audio creative features I defined with Orlando Wood three years ago in Listen Up!, our Radiocentre research into top-class audio creativity.

Might seem small, but the touches like the slurp and tapping of the spoon, "sounds of the living", do horrendously good things to brand awareness growth in audio advertising.

PROPER ADVERTISING

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more.

Marketers will work with one hand tied behind their back until creativity & media are brought back together

After 3 years of research, our new book does exactly that.

I've been guilty of applauding creative that not nearly enough customers will actually see for it to even work. And many of us have been guilty of preaching certainty from media figures, without even considering if the ads are any good.

In reality, we know both creativity and media must work together for a campaign to be effective.

Enter 'The Creative Dividend', a new book from Effie Worldwide and System1, which introduces Excess Share of Creativity (ESOC).

It's the first study to connect consumer creative measurement data at scale, with media choices and in-market outcomes across Europe and the US. Analysing campaigns representing $140bil of market share. To show that when creative quality and media are considered together, advertising is not a cost to minimise, it's a predictable investment that all businesses should make.

Across 120 pages, 115 charts, and 10 incredible case studies, we introduce:

- Creativity Stack, a framework to benchmark how creative your campaign is against the category.
- ESOC, a new metric to understand how much creative advantage actually enters the market using creative and media data, which explains 60%+ of advertising outcomes.
- The Advertising Planning Matrix, a simple tool to help everyone actually achieve this.

We also show that campaigns with higher ESOC are 3x more likely to gain market share and 8x more likely to report profit. But only 18% of campaigns are really positioned to achieve this.

We've decided to make the entire book free online: https://lnkd.in/exppdWEk

A huge thank you to many people who contributed, challenged, advised, pushed, analysed, and supported this entire process. All of this builds on the legendary work of others: Juliet Haygarth, Traci Alford, Michele Siegel, Allison O'Toole, Mark Ritson, Les Binet, Peter Field, Jon Evans, Orlando Wood, Laurence Green, Callum Mayfield Smith, Adam Morgan, John Kearon, Paul Dyson, James Hurman, Beth Marchant, Josh Fruttiger, Amy Houlihan.

And my boyfriend for understanding all the late nights writing.

I hope this is helpful, practical, effectiveness thinking.



PS. In a bizarre turn of events, someone ran up to me to get in this picture. I was totally star struck. Shared it in the comments below. Extra points if anyone knows who this is...

KitKat's marketing team heard I finished writing a huge marketing book and decided I needed a break

This is what sticking to your positioning consistently for decades in EVERY channel looks like. KitKat, one of the world's most consistent brands. Even in gifting!

Coincidentally, we've shown in the book that consistency can 9x the chance of profit with Effie Worldwide and System1 data. Grab the whole thing free here: https://lnkd.in/exppdWEk

Big love, Wael Jabi 🫶 My boyfriend can't contain his excitement.

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"Take your holiday seriously" is the perfect example of what a creatively consistent campaign does for a brand

The partnership between an entertainment brand and a travel brand is very standard. What isn't standard here is the level of quality execution.

British Airways has been using this creative platform for a couple of years now to build equity specifically for holidays. It's essentially Yorkshire Tea's "done proper," but for a premium flight brand (not using that as a slight, measuring creativity by how unique it is is a fool's errand).

In higher attention channels (cross-track and TV), it's perfect. The idea has become more familiar and distinct through commitment and consistency.

Allowing them to now stretch it into other places, like partnerships with other brands.

This ad would have been too complicated to deliver when the campaign first launched, now it makes sense quickly. That's exactly the point of my research, "Compound Creativity".

Tomorrow we're launching a new book with System1 and Effie Worldwide, the first of its kind, connecting creativity and media to make advertising reliable. Part of this new playbook is consistency, which we've shown to do CRAZY things to distinctiveness and differentiation. Which we also show to be crucial for brand growth.

I'll share more about it and where you can grab it for free tomorrow. For now, congrats to BA on this excellent campaign.

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more.

Only 2 out of 10 global ad campaigns are "Growth Engines." Which are 3x more likely to report profit growth. Here's what we can do about it

A bit blown away, thousands of people downloaded our new research in the couple of hours after it launched yesterday. Effie Worldwide and System1's new book, "The Creative Dividend," is still available free here: https://lnkd.in/exppdWEk

There are 115 charts and tables in the whole thing. Carefully showing how advertising becomes predictable and reliable when media and creativity are brought back together. However, this framework is what most of the emails in my inbox this morning are about. The Advertising Planning Matrix.

Admittedly, this was a final thought as we were editing. I really didn't want us putting out more theory that gets thrown about in meetings. By benchmarking your creative quality (through measurement, experimentation, or creative reviews) for emotion, distinctiveness, showmanship, and consistency against the category. And understand the reach you're giving each asset. You can clearly understand next steps. Ideally, you can do this BEFORE you launch.

I like this approach as 1) it highlights how 38% of campaigns are busy work... 2) campaigns that balance creative and media to get into the top right see +50% more Business Results, and 3) these campaigns are nearly 3 times more likely to use research. Research is a powerful tool for marketers to plan.

In the 1960s, media and creative split up. We should work to bring them back together. Both sides are needed. Together, advertising becomes a reliable and obvious choice for all brands.

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more.

Cadbury just launched one of the best ads of 2026

Here's how and why, with receipts...

After 2 years analysing Effie Worldwide and System1 global data, exploring campaigns with $140bil in market-share, we've launched a book which shares how marketers can benchmark creative quality, but importantly, how to plan it alongside media to make advertising predictable and reliable (We made it free here: https://lnkd.in/exppdWEk)

Every month, I'm going to select 1 campaign I expect to be among the most effective this year. Using and sharing all the data to explain why.

In January, it's obviously "Homesick" from Mondelēz International's Cadbury:

1. Positioning for relative differentiation. Before we roll up our creative sleeves, we must nail our diagnosis and strategy. Deciding a handful of associations to position for (or against) to achieve perceived difference (MORE generous and comforting) and salience (great for gifting and enjoying). If this groundwork isn't laid out, you'll struggle to see consistent growth. Yes, you may see some random big wins. But that's not how brands are built.

2. This campaign has a huge Creative Dividend. A key step marketers should take is benchmarking creative quality against the category, much like ESOV benchmarks media weight relative to a brand's size in the category. In this research, we introduce a new "Creative Dividend" metric that indexes a campaign's level of emotion, distinctiveness, showmanship, and consistency relative to the category. The metric significantly predicts market share.

We've tested it. 95% of viewers recall it's for Cadbury, +5pp above the category average. It's very distinctive.

3. Is brand recognition put to good use? It also scores 5 Stars in our testing, again above the category average, which will help with building more useful memories.

4. It's full of showmanship, a clear sense of place, story, character, etc. Far more than the usual chocolate ad, further multiplying its creative dividend. 

5. Finally, the campaign is one of the most consistent out there, measured against the "Compound Creativity" framework. Consistent use of positioning, creative idea, and brand assets. Also, this is going across various channels consistently. 

6. And then comes the question of actual reach. Creativity is useless without reach. Cadbury is backing this BIG across TV, online video, and more. Getting this creative advantage in front of more people.

That's what we call Excess Share of Creativity, brands with big creative going big on media. And it EXPONENTIALLY increases the chance of profit growth.

So, I reckon this will be one of 2026's big winners. 

Here's the data:

- The ad research results: https://lnkd.in/eFNayYi9
- The new book with all the charts, evidence and examples: https://lnkd.in/exppdWEk

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more.

POV: Most brands at the Super Bowl

New data shows celebrities in ads reduce profit and market share gains, but also brand trust and equity.

We analysed nearly 1,300 campaigns in the Effie Worldwide database and tested all the ads with System1 to create a handbook on creative effectiveness.

By comparing all campaigns vs those with celebs, and those with brand characters (what we call "Fluent Devices", like the Geico Gecko), the results are revealing.

1. Campaigns with celebrities are 50% less likely to grow trust and see a reduced chance of reporting brand equity and image growth.

2. They see a little bump in new customer penetration and revenue...

3. But 60% less chance of increasing their pricing power, and they are less likely to report profit, loyalty, or market share gain.

However, campaigns with a Fluent Device are 3x more likely to report gains in distinctiveness and 2x more likely to report profit growth.

If anyone has the president's address, I'd love to send him our new 120-page marketing book. For any marketers wanting to read it, we've put it online for free: https://lnkd.in/exppdWEk

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more.

"I'm pleased to announce that I made it through another Thursday."

I'm the "LinkedIn guy" in my friendship group, someone just sent me, and I nearly fell off my barstool.

LinkedIn is great. You can build your network, prokote your work, land that job, and meet all your clients.

But there's also the games, the strange courses, and certificates. And bizarre daily cold outreach.

I promise, it's a serious place if you treat it seriously.

A good place to start is telling people what you do 👇

I share #advertising and #marketing insights daily, follow for more.

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Andrew Tindall's LinkedIn Performance

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