Best of LinkedIn: Advertising Week Europe & Ammunition EU Launch

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frennis, based on the most relevant LinkedIn posts about Advertising Week Europe in Ammunition EU Launch.

00:00:08: Frennis is a B-to-B market research company helping enterprise marketing teams sharpen their strategies and outreach with customer segmentation, ideal customer profiles & deep dives, customer needs analyses...and buying center insights!

00:00:22: Alright so we are jumping into The Top Advertizing Week Europe Trends Seen Across LinkedIn.

00:00:29: To kick this deep dive off, I want you to just imagine taking like fifty five percent of your entire marketing budget.

00:00:35: This quarter stuffing it into a briefcase and dropping its straight into an industrial shredder.

00:00:40: completely gone

00:00:41: completely gone evaporated And according the raw data coming out of advertising week Europe.

00:00:46: that is The brutal reality for most enterprise brands right now.

00:00:50: It is billions of dollars are.

00:00:52: well they're vanishing.

00:00:53: And if you are listening to this right now while say staring at a dashboard full of supposed qualified leads that your sales team is

00:01:00: actively ignoring

00:01:01: Right, actively ignoring then the conversations.

00:01:04: We're unpacking today Are gonna hit very very close-to home.

00:01:08: Yeah because we're looking at a stack of insights that point to this massive industry reckoning I mean their traditional B to be playbook where you just You know.

00:01:17: Buy a bunch of ads, gate any book and watch the CRM graph go up.

00:01:21: It's fracturing!

00:01:22: it

00:01:22: is completely Fracturing.

00:01:24: And The most aggressive signal Of this shift?

00:01:26: It didn't even come from like A panel discussion.

00:01:28: Yeah...it came From a major business move.

00:01:31: Oh you're talking about the ammunition launch.

00:01:33: Exactly So.

00:01:34: the US based Agency Ammunition Just launched their European operation in London And the way they are positioning themselves It feels Like a direct attack on the old agency model.

00:01:44: yeah They aren't playing nice with

00:01:46: Not at all.

00:01:47: They brought in serious operators.

00:01:48: for this.

00:01:49: You have Renee Edwards as managing director for Europe and Chris Shadrick As Director of strategy to really drive This entry.

00:01:56: what's

00:01:56: fascinating here is the core philosophy that ammunition Is exporting to europe.

00:02:01: they call it growth no matter why which,is

00:02:03: a bold claim.

00:02:04: It's incredibly bold And chris shedrick was very explicit In his post about the london launch.

00:02:10: he basically said there Was only one measurement?

00:02:12: That matters.

00:02:13: and its growth Like it is a pass or fail metric, right?

00:02:15: They are completely rejecting the kind of non-performance driven marketing that relies on vanity metrics.

00:02:24: Or just proving that your team was active this month.

00:02:27: Okay let's unpack this because growth no matter what sounds fantastic But like, what does it actually mean operationally?

00:02:36: That's

00:02:36: the real question.

00:02:37: Because I look at traditional enterprise agency model and usually resembles this highly fragmented assembly line.

00:02:44: Yeah

00:02:44: total silos.

00:02:45: Exactly The strategy team sits in one silo dreaming up massive brand narrative.

00:02:51: Then they hand off to a creative team In another

00:02:53: Silo Who just wants an award for visuals.

00:02:55: Right They want them pretty.

00:02:57: And then At very end of the line Media execution is left holding bag force these subjective overly polished assets into a performance marketing campaign.

00:03:08: And it usually fails?

00:03:09: It fails miserably, but ammunition is claiming to replace that entirely with what they call an integrated operating machine which

00:03:17: basically means They are refusing To separate the thinking from the doing in A true integrated operating Machine.

00:03:24: you know The media buyer the creative director and the strategist.

00:03:29: they Are all working From the exact same real-time data feedback loop.

00:03:34: So no waiting around?

00:03:35: Exactly, if an asset isn't driving pipeline the creative team knows instantly and they pivot rather than you know waiting for some quarterly review to find out that wasted money.

00:03:43: but

00:03:44: um let me push back a bit on this.

00:03:46: is this operator-led hyper accountable expansion truly what enterprise clients are demanding right now?

00:03:52: or is it just you know clever positioning to win RFPs?

00:03:55: well You'd think It might be Just talk But The reaction from the market suggests They Are Absolutely Desperate For Really?

00:04:02: Oh, yeah.

00:04:02: Look at the ecosystem buy-in and their launch event.

00:04:05: we saw posts from senior figures like Evie Jaskerskine Robin Hartley And Chris Kelly.

00:04:10: oh Yeah, Chris Kelly literally rushed over from the propel multi club event just to be there.

00:04:15: exactly The density of btob marketing leaders celebrating this launch.

00:04:19: it points to this massive craving for leadership credibility.

00:04:23: I mean Renee Edwards and her team aren't just account managers right.

00:04:27: They are experienced operators who have actually built and scaled internal marketing organizations.

00:04:33: Clients are finally realizing that, you know outsourcing their strategy to people who've never held a commercial target... It's

00:04:40: huge

00:04:41: liability!

00:04:42: And I think the structural shift toward commercial accountability is bleeding into everything.

00:04:47: because of agencies having to prove bottom line growth internal marketing teams are under even more pressure to do the exact

00:04:53: same thing.

00:04:54: Oh, absolutely!

00:04:55: This

00:04:55: actually came up in a brilliant point from Priyanka Phalad –a client director at Microsoft AI–.

00:05:00: she argued that B-to-B measurement is desperately due for a glowup

00:05:04: A GLOWUP?

00:05:05: I love that phrasing and was referencing an insight from Lubna Koreshi from Sage heavily emphasizing that marketing KPIs cannot exist on a vacuum anymore.

00:05:15: No they can't.

00:05:15: They have tied directly into only metrics.

00:05:18: sales & finance care about

00:05:20: which is incremental pipeline and deal size.

00:05:24: I mean if you are a marketer optimizing your campaigns just to generate MQLs, marketing qualified leads... You're playing

00:05:30: the wrong scoreboard!

00:05:31: ...you really

00:05:31: are.

00:05:32: anyone can generate one thousand mqls by giving away free ipad in exchange for an email address.

00:05:38: Yeah that's easy.

00:05:39: But If none of those emails turn into closed-one revenue The CFO just sees marketing as cost center Not a growth engine.

00:05:46: Right, and Lucy Burnham reinforced this in her recap of the week.

00:05:50: She stressed that marketing leadership has to learn how to speak the language at the boardroom.

00:05:56: Yes

00:05:56: You cannot walk into meeting with an executive board and talk about click-through rates Or like social impressions.

00:06:03: They will

00:06:03: laugh you out of your room.

00:06:04: They really well!

00:06:05: Burnham noted that you have build your KPIs collaboratively With other departments.

00:06:09: Everyone needs to agree on the dominoes.

00:06:11: The dominoes meaning what?

00:06:13: Meaning like, What early signals indicate future revenue and at what stage in the quarter should those dominos actually start falling.

00:06:20: I see but hitting those boardroom KPIs is basically impossible if your team is bogged down by the very tools supposed to be helping them.

00:06:27: Oh!

00:06:27: The tech stack problem.

00:06:28: Yes This where i see a massive disconnect.

00:06:32: Leadership demands More pipeline more personalization faster execution.

00:06:38: So whats does marketing teams do?

00:06:40: They

00:06:40: buy another sauce

00:06:41: tool.

00:06:43: Todd K. Harris and Virginia Goupio both hit on this exact pain point during the week And Virginia used a phrase that I think every B-to-B marketer will feel in their bones.

00:06:52: She called it operational debt.

00:06:54: Operational debt, wow!

00:06:56: That is the silent killer of marketing ROI right there.

00:06:59: It really

00:06:59: is Because we constantly try to optimize our output You know tweaking the ad copy changing the email subject line But we rarely pause to fix the underlying system producing that output

00:07:09: Exactly.

00:07:10: and Todd Kay Harris made the argument that simply adding more technology To a broken operating system just creates expensive noise Just

00:07:17: noise Like think

00:07:18: about what happens when you buy a new predictive lead scoring tool, right?

00:07:22: But your CRM is full of duplicate contacts and your sales team doesn't even log their calls properly.

00:07:29: The tool is useless!

00:07:30: It's completely useless.

00:07:31: the technology doesn't fix the behavioral and structural gaps.

00:07:35: it just automates the dysfunction.

00:07:37: so you end up with missed handoffs between marketing and sales duplicated efforts and your day-to-day execution.

00:07:48: And Virginia Goopio's takeaway from speaking with leaders at Advertising Week was that technology without operational redesign is completely useless!

00:07:56: The smartest teams right now are entering what she calls the orchestration

00:08:00: era,

00:08:01: which means execution has to become systematic.

00:08:04: you have to map out exactly how strategy data in execution connect so the business can scale.

00:08:11: Fixing operational debt means auditing your workflow, stripping out the redundant tools and ensuring you team actually knows how to orchestrate tech they already have.

00:08:19: Which naturally brings us into most hyped and honestly most misunderstood technology in that entire stack artificial intelligence.

00:08:27: Of course!

00:08:28: Because if plugging in a new tool doesn't magically fix the broken system, how are B-to-B marketers actually supposed to integrate AI into this new highly accountable orchestration era?

00:08:41: I mean that tension was the defining debate of the week.

00:08:44: Everyone is talking about AI everyone claims to be experimenting with it but The reality of deploying it in an enterprise environment Is incredibly messy.

00:08:53: Oh It's so messy.

00:08:54: and here's where gets really interesting.

00:08:56: Steve Doyle from Four Stars Digital Recruitment shared this highly revealing anecdote.

00:09:01: Oh, the hand raising one?

00:09:03: Yes!

00:09:03: He noted that if you walked into almost any room at the event and asked hey who is using AI in their workflow?

00:09:09: nearly every single hand went up

00:09:10: Right because people are using it to draft emails summarize meetings.

00:09:14: You name It

00:09:15: Exactly.

00:09:15: but then If you ask That same Room Who would trust an AI To send a finished unreviewed piece of work straight to your boss or Your most important client.

00:09:23: Zero hands go Up.

00:09:24: zero

00:09:25: not a single hand.

00:09:26: Because

00:09:26: the technology is available, but the institutional trust is virtually non-existent?

00:09:32: Right!

00:09:33: So how do we bridge that gap?

00:09:34: because if we can't trust it to act autonomously where's the actual ROI?

00:09:38: Well Eli Brint Shavit he's Chief Business Officer at allison.ai.

00:09:43: He provided really pragmatic framework for this use.

00:09:47: ask point blank If AI is here replace human gut feeling and creative intuition.

00:09:52: And what did he say?

00:09:53: His answer was a definitive no.

00:09:56: AI is not here to replace human brilliance, it's here to validate using data.

00:10:01: and the financial imperative for this validation is where that terrifying shredder statistic we mentioned earlier comes in.

00:10:08: both he and Jessica Barter from Pinpoint Media highlighted.

00:10:14: Fifty-five percent of media spend is currently wasted on underperforming creatives.

00:10:18: Fifty five percent, that number's just staggering.

00:10:20: I mean if an enterprise spending ten million a year on Media they are throwing five and half million out the window Just because The creative asset didn't resonate with the buyer?

00:10:29: So how does AI actually fix That without just generating generic robotic ad copy?

00:10:34: by

00:10:35: analyzing what you led.

00:10:36: Brent Chavitt calls the Creative Genome the

00:10:38: creative genome.

00:10:39: yeah so historically creative approval has been highly subjective Like, a creative director likes the blue background.

00:10:46: The CMO prefers the red and they just argue about it in a boardroom.

00:10:49: Right!

00:10:50: It's just opinions.

00:10:51: Exactly.

00:10:52: AI changes this by breaking down video or an image into thousands of micro elements pacing logo placement color palettes tone-of voice And it mathematically correlates those specific elements to historical performance data.

00:11:07: Wow!!

00:11:07: It removes subjectivity entirely.

00:11:10: You still need the human to come up with a core creative concept, but the AI tells you precisely how to execute it and ensure that actually converts.

00:11:17: So its validating art in science?

00:11:19: Exactly!

00:11:19: But y'know this entire process relies heavily on quality of historical data.

00:11:23: you feed it.

00:11:24: Doraepritorius brought-up a concept from experience Sarah Robertson That perfectly illustrates this dependency.

00:11:31: Oh about fuel.

00:11:32: Yeah.

00:11:32: A lot of people say data is the fuel for the AI engine, but I think a structural metaphor works a bit better here.

00:11:38: Think of AI less like an engine and more like a high-speed highly obedient translator.

00:11:44: because if your underlying business data is speaking a broken language... Like If Your CRM Is Full Of Outdated Titles Unlogged Interactions Mismatched Accounts.

00:11:54: The AI Doesn't Fix The Language.

00:11:56: It Just Translates Your Bad Data Into Bad Decisions At A Terrifying Scale Exactly.

00:12:02: If you haven't paid down your operational debt, Your AI outputs will be actively damaging to your brand.

00:12:07: And if we connect this with the bigger picture.

00:12:09: The impact of AI goes far beyond just optimizing your internal workflows or refining your ad creative.

00:12:16: It is fundamentally rewiring how B-to-B buyers discover brands in first place.

00:12:20: This is the scariest part

00:12:21: It IS!

00:12:22: Traudra Catu Tripathi introduced a concept during that week That every marketer needs to understand immediately GEO Or Generative Engine Optimization.

00:12:31: Right, so we all know SEO optimizing your website.

00:12:34: So Google ranks it highly but GEO feels like entirely new territory.

00:12:39: How does a brand optimize for a generative engine?

00:12:41: Like chat GPT or Claude

00:12:44: Well, Tripathi pointed out a structural truth about large language models that most companies are completely ignoring.

00:12:51: LLMs do not care about your polished corporate press releases... I don't!

00:12:55: No?

00:12:56: They do not index.

00:12:57: you're paid media campaigns.

00:12:59: they are trained to find consensus And they look for that consensus in authentic customer conversations.

00:13:04: Oh, wow!

00:13:05: Yeah these great places like Reddit niche industry forums and LinkedIn comment sections to understand what real people think about a product.

00:13:12: oh

00:13:12: Think about the implications of that for a second.

00:13:14: In the traditional SEO model if you had a big enough budget You could essentially buy your way to the top-of-the-search results through paid ads and massive backlink campaigns.

00:13:23: sure?

00:13:24: Your saying that in a GEO world...you cannot bribe the AI YOU

00:13:28: CANNOT BRIBE IT with traditional ad spend, not at all.

00:13:32: Tripathi posed a critical scenario.

00:13:35: he said when a buyer asks an AI assistant for the best solution in your specific category do you appear?

00:13:42: What does the AI say about you?

00:13:44: and most importantly who told the AI to say that

00:13:47: gives me chills.

00:13:48: right if your brand isn't earning organic unprompted advocacy in those unfiltered community spaces Invisible.

00:13:58: He used Starling Bank as a prime example.

00:14:00: They currently have the highest brand voice presence in LLMs among UK challenger banks and that didn't happen because they bought the most billboard space.

00:14:07: How did it happened?

00:14:08: It happens, real verifiable customers talk about their user experience credibly at its scale across the internet.

00:14:14: The AI ingests those conversations is ground truth And the generative era your brand reputation is performance marketing.

00:14:20: So what does this all mean?

00:14:22: I mean if the LLM's are looking for authentic human conversation How does a day-to-day BDB marketing team actually adapt to that?

00:14:31: It sounds like we have to completely tear down the way we currently communicate.

00:14:34: You can't just publish all white paper and hope Reddit talks about it... Yeah, I was reading John Webb's takeaways from a panel that featured Alfred Samba.

00:14:52: And Samba had this brutally honest assessment of how most B-to-B brands behave on LinkedIn.

00:14:58: It is pretty embarrassing.

00:15:00: He pointed out that buyers are completely exhausted by the standard corporate update.

00:15:04: You know The Ones?

00:15:09: Nobody cares.

00:15:10: Samba compared it to a brand just standing in an empty room, playing its own playlist on repeat wondering why no one is dancing.

00:15:16: That's the perfect analogy.

00:15:17: His advice was stop acting like a broadcaster and start acting like DJ.

00:15:22: Because a DJ reads The Room They adjust the music based on the energy of the crowd.

00:15:28: Exactly, Samba argued that BtoB brands need to operate like modern media companies.

00:15:33: they need to prioritize serialization.

00:15:36: you know giving people a reason publish three blogs a week, it is a trust game.

00:15:48: And that demand for human led storytelling Is being heavily accelerated by the creator economy which has completely rewired The psychology of how buyers consume information.

00:15:59: GeoMarco Rizzo highlighted a statistic shared by Meta at Advertising Week that should terrify any traditional brand marketer.

00:16:06: Lay it on me!

00:16:07: Right

00:16:07: now, seventy percent of the content consumed on Metas platforms comes from unfollowed accounts.

00:16:12: Seventy percent?

00:16:13: Let's put that in perspective... What was that percentage just a few years ago?

00:16:15: In

00:16:16: twenty-twenty it was zero percent.

00:16:17: From

00:16:17: zero to seventy percent in four years.

00:16:20: That means the entire concept of building corporate follower pages becoming obsolete

00:16:24: Pretty much.

00:16:25: If reach is entirely dictated by algorithmic fit rather than who clicked subscribe, BWB brands are no longer just competing against their direct competitors.

00:16:34: you're competing for the buyer's attention against Hollywood trailers fitness influencers highly engaging independent creators.

00:16:42: yeah if your content isn't inherently interesting The algorithms simply will not serve it to your target accounts even if they follow you.

00:16:49: and To cut through that level of noise Julian Green and Leon Harlow shared a perfect example of this in action.

00:16:58: They watched UK rapper Giggs speak on the headline stage about a campaign he did with Oatly for their vanilla custard.

00:17:06: Oh, that story is amazing!

00:17:07: The

00:17:07: mechanics to how these campaigns started are fascinating because it defied every single rule... ...of traditional B-to-B procurement.

00:17:14: It really didn't start out as creative brief or RFP or some massive agency pitch.

00:17:19: Giggs just happens to be lactose intolerant.

00:17:22: He genuinely loved the Oatly Custard, but he was frustrated because he couldn't find it stocked in his local shops.

00:17:27: So he literally sent a direct message to Oatley's Instagram account pretending to be a member of his own management team just asking if they could send him some product.

00:17:35: and Oatley's marketing team was smart enough to recognize the organic goldmine they were sitting on.

00:17:40: They

00:17:40: leaned all the way in, they didn't force gigs to read a heavily vetted corporate script about the nutritional benefits of oats...they just let him tell his actual personal story.

00:17:52: And what happened?

00:17:53: The result was a campaign that drove over twenty million views and a hundred sixty-eight percent uplift in Google searches.

00:18:01: It worked because it tapped directly into culture, wasn't forced interruption but real human insight scaled up.

00:18:08: This raises an important question for our listeners though.

00:18:11: translating the dynamic to complex BtoB sales cycle like how do you apply lessons of a rapper selling oat milk or industrial manufacturing?

00:18:21: That is the million dollar question.

00:18:23: The execution looks different, obviously but the underlying psychology is identical.

00:18:29: Nick Konstantin summed this up beautifully.

00:18:31: He observed that traditional marketing funnel hasn't disappeared But it has collapsed in on itself.

00:18:38: Context and relevance are only things matter now

00:18:41: Because B-to-B buyers do not check their human psychology at the door when they log into work computers.

00:18:47: They still crave narrative, detect corporate nonsense instantly and buy from people that trust

00:18:54: them.

00:18:55: Constant pointed out brands have to abandon the mindset of interruption.

00:19:02: Community building is no longer a tactic.

00:19:04: You bolt onto the end of a campaign to generate some extra engagement.

00:19:07: community belongs at The very top of this strategy, right?

00:19:10: The brands winning Right now are the ones participating genuinely in the spaces where their buyers already live.

00:19:16: you have To earn the right to use aggressive performance marketing tactics by first establishing long-term authentic brand credibility.

00:19:24: If your entire strategy relies on scroll bait and gating content you're actively contributing to your buyer's fatigue.

00:19:30: It really feels like the overarching theme of The Week was finding clarity in the chaos.

00:19:36: Alex Montenegro framed this perfectly when discussing career longevity, but I think it applies universally to brand strategy right now?

00:19:44: In a turbulent bumpy market your legacy or historical budget size is not your safety net.

00:19:51: Clarity IS!

00:19:52: You have be undeniable on value.

00:19:54: you create and communicate that through actual human beings.

00:20:00: We have covered some serious ground today.

00:20:03: Let's briefly synthesize the journey for everyone listening, The through line here is undeniable!

00:20:20: No matter what.

00:20:21: But to actually deliver that growth, we saw that teams have to confront their operational debt.

00:20:26: you cannot buy your way out of a broken process by layering more MarTech on top of it.

00:20:30: You have to orchestrate your systems.

00:20:32: Orchestrate don't just add

00:20:33: Exactly and that systematic foundation is the only way to safely deploy AI whether you are using it to analyze the creative genome And stop wasting millions on bad ads or you're trying to ensure Your brand is organically visible To generative engines By seeding real trust in communities

00:20:50: Which is the GEO concept.

00:20:52: Yes,

00:20:52: GEO and ultimately earning that trust requires a total rewrite of how we tell stories.

00:20:58: The funnel has collapsed.

00:20:59: reach its algorithmic And if you aren't communicating with genuine human insight You are invisible

00:21:04: just to DJ in an empty room.

00:21:06: exactly

00:21:07: If you enjoyed this episode new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:21:10: also check out our other editions on account based marketing field marketing, channel marketing, MarTech.

00:21:15: go to market and social selling.

00:21:17: Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive.

00:21:19: make sure you hit subscribe So don't miss the next one.

00:21:22: I will leave with his final thought to mull over if seventy percent of content consumption is now coming from unfollowed accounts driven entirely by algorithmic relevance.

00:21:31: does The traditional B-to-B corporate follower page even have reason To exist in five years?

00:21:36: or Will your entire digital footprint be carried By the unfiltered personal voices Of Your employees?