Marketing Strategies From Top CMOs: Five Marketing Strategies From Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler Of BetterBriefs
Define your enemy. Strong brands define themselves against something. Be clear on what your brand fights for and against. What does your brand strongly believe in? This will provide both your team and followers with a deep sense of identity and community.
We fight against two things: bad briefs and poor idea evaluation practices. By sharing our knowledge and exposing the poor state of briefs and idea evaluation globally, we’ve created a group of loyal followers who strongly believe in what we do and advocate for us.
In today’s fast-paced and ever-evolving marketing landscape, effective marketing strategies are the cornerstone of business success. CMOs hold the key to crafting innovative approaches that resonate with consumers and drive growth. We would like to feature and interview accomplished Chief Marketing Officers to share their insights, strategies, and personal stories about what it takes to lead in this dynamic field. As a part of this series, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Pieter-Paul von Weiler and Matt Davies.
Matt Davies and Pieter-Paul von Weiler are former creative agency strategists who’ve worked on thousands of briefs over the past two decades. Their work has garnered two Grand Effies and an IPA Effectiveness Award, among other industry accolades. Passionate about sharing their knowledge, they have released several studies on brief writing and idea assessment. Together with the team at BetterBriefs, they now work with some of the world’s biggest and most ambitious brands, helping their marketers create better briefs that inspire more effective work.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
For a long time, we worked as strategy leaders in creative agencies. We noticed that marketing briefs caused excessive confusion and misunderstanding when the agency received them. This was happening everywhere, regardless of industry or location.
We discovered that very little research had been done on this important document: the brief. We decided to change this and conducted the first global and most extensive study on the topic.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?
We uncovered a gigantic financial black hole. In our first study, we asked marketers and agencies to quantify what percentage of their marketing budget was going to waste due to poor briefs and misdirected work. Marketers around the world were very much aligned: 30%.
In 2025, global advertising spending is forecast to reach US$1.07 trillion. That means up to US$350 billion will be wasted due to unclear briefs and misdirected work.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
No idea.
Ok super. Thank you for all that. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview. Marketing is constantly evolving. Is there a strategy you swore by five years ago that you’ve entirely rethought today?
Marketing might continuously evolve, but there’s one constant that we come back to both as former strategists and business founders: the strategy that builds a brand for the long term. It’s easy to get seduced by short-termism, but all measures we see with our activity revolve around the strength of our brand and how we constantly feed this.
Can you share a campaign or project that didn’t go as planned? What did you learn from that experience, and how did it shape your approach moving forward?
A few projects early in our BetterBriefs journey involved training some of the world’s biggest brands on brief writing and assessing ideas. It became evident that some Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) weren’t engaged. Engaging leadership became our learning. Everyone needs to buy into the process to have the most significant impact. In our opinion, CMOs who don’t think they can benefit from going through training with their team show a lack of leadership. Our best, most successful engagements happen when everyone is leaning in.
Data is everywhere now, but it can be overwhelming. How do you decide which metrics to prioritize when shaping your strategies?
To shape a strategy, data has to be turned into insights. A point of data on its own is just a fact. It needs work to become insightful and influence strategic thinking. Asking ‘why’ and going deeper is essential.
Don’t try to understand all the data. Focus on the data and metrics that matter. Understand their relationship. Which attitudinal metrics influence behavior? And what type of behavior will deliver the most substantial commercial results?
Avoid being wishful; metrics should be linked and logical. Nail that, and you’ll be well on your way to a strong strategy.
What’s one unconventional or bold marketing move you’ve made that turned out to be a game-changer for your company?
We’re unconventional in the way we share and give away all our research, intel, and publications.
This feels counterintuitive. However, it has been a game changer for our marketing. It helps us grow brand awareness and consideration. It armed our CRM activities. And it grows trust amongst our existing and future customers.
Based on your opinion and experience, what are your “Top Five Marketing Strategies” and why?
1. Define your enemy.
Strong brands define themselves against something. Be clear on what your brand fights for and against. What does your brand strongly believe in? This will provide both your team and followers with a deep sense of identity and community.
We fight against two things: bad briefs and poor idea evaluation practices. By sharing our knowledge and exposing the poor state of briefs and idea evaluation globally, we’ve created a group of loyal followers who strongly believe in what we do and advocate for us.
2. Everyone is lost without a clear picture of success.
Businesses invest in marketing to drive better business results. However, many marketers struggle with setting clear objectives in their briefs.
It is essential for everyone involved — the marketing team and agencies — to have a precise understanding of what needs to happen from both a behavioral and attitudinal perspective.
Three types of objectives must be considered to provide a clear picture of success:
Business metrics: the ultimate effect that the communications activity will have on the organization (e.g., sales, profit, cost savings to the community)
Behavioral metrics underpin the business metrics. They specify the change needed in people’s behavior to realize the commercial objectives (e.g., signing up, downloading, adding more items to the basket, quitting a bad habit, or making healthier choices)
Attitudinal metrics are crucial because people don’t just suddenly change their behavior. A shift in how people think or feel is required to trigger the desired change in behavior.
These three types of objectives should be interlinked to ensure a cohesive strategy.
3. Poor briefs expose poor strategic thinking
A brief is the summary of all the thinking a brand has been doing. It should always be the endpoint — not the starting point of strategic thinking.
However, if the strategic thinking has not been done, is incomplete or lacking altogether, it will show in the brief. It is easy for a poor strategy to hide in long decks; however, in the brief, there’s little room to hide for a poor strategy.
The nature of briefs exposes poor strategic thinking. It is very hard to write a brief if you’re not clear on the strategy. From our research, we know that 78% of marketers believe their briefs provide clear strategic direction; however, only 5% of agencies agree with that.
4. Targeting is the foundation of any marketing strategy.
Many brands and briefs fail to specify their target audience clearly. This lack of clarity hampers agencies’ ability to develop effective strategies and creative executions. We know that only around ⅔ of marketers are clear on who they target. What’s happening with the other ⅓? How can you market your product or service effectively without a solid understanding of who you’re designing your marketing efforts around?
5. Without criteria, you’ll struggle to select the right idea
Many brands don’t have criteria or standards in place for how they will evaluate ideas. A brand is only as strong as the creative work it aspires to make. Set clear, creative ambitions. Define what good looks like. Develop a roadmap and set the criteria that make it happen. If nothing else is in place, at least ensure that the work will engage the target audience, earn their attention, and make the brand unmistakable.
With so many platforms and trends popping up constantly, how do you strike the right balance between trying new things and sticking with what you know works?
It’s always good to try things but ensure the fundamentals are working correctly. We see too many clients distracted by the next shiny new thing. If less than half the industry is trained in writing briefs and less than 20% are trained in assessing creative ideas, we’d start there.
Looking ahead, what’s a significant shift or trend in marketing that you think CMOs need to prepare for in the next five years?
Contrarian thinking will become increasingly important as marketers rely more on martech and automation while marketing budgets are being shrunk.
By questioning assumptions, challenging category norms, and zigging when others zag, marketers can uncover fresh insights, untapped audiences, and more effective strategies. When everyone follows the same playbook, differentiation becomes nearly impossible, leading to a sea of sameness where no brand stands out and earns attention.
Because of the role you play, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
It is a movement focused on repairing the broken relationship between marketers and agencies. The impact would be significant.
This movement would help marketers write better briefs, and agencies would produce more vigorous, more effective work. That means brands would perform better, businesses would grow, and consumers would see more meaningful, creative advertising instead of forgettable wallpaper. Better briefs lead to better work, leading to better outcomes for everyone.
This was really meaningful! Thank you so much for your time.