There was a great deal of marketing common sense on offer in New York earlier this month, along with the usual fresh crop of buzzwords. Atomic 212 chairman Barry O’Brien has taken the time to sift through the dross to find the gold.

Advertising Week New York and the parallel Brand Innovators Marketing Leadership Summit wrapped earlier this month. Looking at the media coverage, if you strip away the complaints from attendees about a sweltering venue, the sales pitches dressed up as sessions and the constant talk about AI, a handful of clear themes stand out. Australian marketers should take note.

The first is that you are probably not your audience. Chipotle’s marketing chief Fernando Machado has spent nearly 30 years in the business, yet when his team proposed working with Salish Matter, one of Gen Alpha’s biggest creators, his first reaction was: “Who is that?”

His team knew, and he backed them. At Smirnoff, Diageo’s executives hadn’t heard of singer Troye Sivan. Smirnoff’s global marketing director Jose Velez took that as proof the brand had picked the right person. Rather than have Sivan hold up a bottle, Smirnoff made him its “Chief Vibes Officer” and brought his fans into the creative process.

It’s a simple lesson: trust the people in your team who actually know the audience.

The second theme is listening before you talk. A Mazda executive said a brand entering an online community should behave like a guest at a dinner party: arrive, listen and read the room, don’t change the music and don’t start talking about yourself.

When Reddit users started arguing about a redesigned Mazda, the company asked the moderators for permission and sent in three product experts to answer questions from fans and critics, including the tough ones. The community responded well because Mazda was open, honest and willing to cop criticism.

The health care company Genentech went further. Two years of ads had failed to get people with diabetes to book eye screenings. Months of research, Reddit included, showed the barrier was emotional, not a lack of information, and that people were already joking about it. So, the company made its ads with patients and comedians, working to one rule: never make the person the punchline. A JPMorgan Chase executive summed it up well. The brands that move fast in culture are successful “because they’ve done the slow work first”.

The third is to respect your brand’s history. Machado is going back through old Chipotle campaigns and menu items to see what is worth reviving, just as he brought back Burger King’s old logo and slogan. Consumers remember what they loved. He also had some blunt advice for new marketing chiefs. The person who had the job before you wasn’t stupid, so find out why they did what they did. And “don’t poop on past work”.

The fourth is that creators are taking a bigger share of the budget, and fast. Procter & Gamble has reportedly moved around 70% of its advertising spend into creator marketing.

The best brands are using creators and their audiences to do more than shift products. Tito’s Handmade Vodka knew “bed rotting” was big with Gen Z, so it turned its Thanksgiving fun run into the Turkey Rot and donated money for every person who signed up to stay on the couch. It raised US$1m for Meals on Wheels America. That idea came from knowing the audience’s language.

The fifth is a warning about AI. Research company GWI found that 97% of CMOs know AI-generated content contains factual mistakes, but only 36% check and correct it. The rest say they don’t have time. That means a lot of senior marketers are sending out reports and information they know could be wrong. The risks in doing that are obvious.

AI is also changing how people shop. Coca-Cola dominates supermarket aisles with a sea of red bottles and cans, but when a shopper asks an AI assistant for a soft drink, Coke gets a single mention like everyone else. Every brand that relies on shelf presence should be thinking hard about that.

None of this is rocket science. Know your audience or find the people who do. Listen before you talk. Respect your brand’s history. Check your facts.

But judging by how much of what was said in New York was dominated by buzzwords like “authenticity”, “roadmaps”, “know your customers” and “magic”, the basics still need saying.

Barry O’Brien, OAM, is founder and chairman of Atomic 212. O’Brien is here summarising the lessons he drew from reports of the New York conferences — he did not attend.

Article originally published on Mumbrella.