Orlando Wood is Chief Innovation Officer of System1 Group and Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. He is also a member of the IPA’s Effectiveness Leadership Group. Author of Lemon (IPA, 2019), co-author of System1, Unlocking Profitable Growth (2017), his research on advertising effectiveness draws on psychology and a study of the creative arts.

Orlando’s work has influenced thinking and practice in the research, marketing, and advertising, winning him awards from the ARF (Great Minds Distinction Award), the AMA (4 under 40), Jay Chiat (Gold Award for Research Innovation), ISBA (Ad Effectiveness Award), MRS (Best Paper and Research Effectiveness Awards) and ESOMAR (Best Methodology).

Orlando led the IPA’s Creativity and Effectiveness research for Effectiveness Week in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He has repeatedly worked with Peter Field and the IPA’s DataBank to demonstrate the long and broad effects achieved by emotional advertising, including the performance of fluent devices, a term he coined.

Orlando is a frequent conference speaker and has been published in The Journal of Advertising Research, Admap, and Market Leader.

What we covered in this episode:

Why digital disruption means we need to start ‘looking out’
His last book was a Lemon but it did rather well
How Prof Iain McGilchrist inspired Orlando
What history can tell us about what is happening today
How understanding the brain helps us capture & sustain attention
The left brain argument for right brain creativity
How our culture lost its vitality
The separation of writing a book during lockdown
Orlando reads his own introduction to the book
Its rude to stare. How the stare has been used throughout history
How advertising is starting to reflect art from periods of disruption & conflict
Fake news isn’t new. How the printing press created a publishing revolution
How the industrial revolution created a loss of community
The rapid rise of anxiety and the loss of humour
The different modes of attention and why they matter
Why we can’t see the wood for the trees
We watch what interests us and sometimes that’s advertising
How emotion orientates our attention, encodes in memory & aids decision making
The role of digital to support brand building ‘broad beam’ advertising
Why brand building becomes more important for online businesses
How emotion drives more viewing of advertising in digital environments
The trap of using digital style ‘narrow beam’ advertising on TV
What features in advertising holds attention and drives business effects
The swordfish strangler called Wilford. Why uniqueness creates believability.
Yorkshire Tea and creating connections
Poking fun at rigidity and the serious case for humour
What’s too silly to be said can be sung
How colour grading can change our mood and how effective an Ad will be
The pandemic and why we need a right-brained reaction
The story of a dog and cone and the inspiration for this book
Look Out for the book o Amazon and via the IPA’s website

Why it’s time to Look Out - Orlando Wood

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