David Tiltman is Chief Content Officer at WARC, the global marketing intelligence service, where he runs a content operation of around thirty people worldwide — publishing, commissioning and researching material on what actually works in marketing. As part of the Lions group, he also leads content for Lions Intelligence, the data and insights arm of Cannes Lions. He has spent his career on the question the rest of the industry avoids: what does the evidence say? He joined Boringly Effective at Cannes Lions to talk about the growing gap between best practice and real practice.
Key ideas
- The knowing-doing gap is widening. "Even though we know more about best practice, the gap between good practice and what's actually going on on the ground is getting wider."
- Measurement without learning. "There seems to be a lot of testing but not a lot of learning" — brands run diagnostics and then ship the work unchanged.
- Avoiding loss is not the same as winning. "Knowing how to win is a different question to knowing how not to lose" — most effectiveness knowledge protects against disaster, it doesn't create advantage.
- Big markets don't have a monopoly on wisdom. "I don't always like the idea that the big markets know what they're doing and the small have to learn from the big."
- Machine-readable brands and AI change distinctiveness. "If everyone's using AI, what does it mean to be distinctive?" — and much of the AI research debate is, frankly, "researchers fighting with each other."
Appears on Boringly Effective
- David Tiltman on Marketing Effectiveness, AI and Brand Consistency — Episode 3 — content churn, the practice gap, AI and machine-readable brands, recorded at Cannes Lions.