Episode 236 / Rishi Mulgund / Haleon / Performance Marketing Director
Creating Authenticity in Data Driven Marketing with Audio
While using voiceovers and audio in ads is certainly not new or “rocket science,” it’s a shiny new object for Rishi Mulgund, Performance Marketing Director at Haleon. It brings a level of authenticity and connection that stops you scrolling your social media feed late at night - and that’s what effective data driven marketing is all about today.
At Haleon, Rishi and his team have run multiple tests to see how ads with voiceovers impact on users’ attention span, responsiveness, and conversion. The results mirror other studies run by Kantar, Meta, and YouTube: ads without sounds are just too easy to skip. In return, ads with sound provide a 25% uplift in sales and 10% lift in ROAS (return on ad spend).
Why sound matters
Marketers have become too used to optimising for “audio off” mode. On social media, in particular, we’ve had years of people scrolling without sound. However, the rise of the creator economy on platforms like TikTok, which deliver added authenticity with original audio, and the fact that it’s much easier to listen to the sound on your phone through Bluetooth headphones, combine to make audio a “shiny new object” again.
Audio not only gives you more authenticity, it also makes ads more accessible, especially in the healthcare space. Rishi talks about how audio ads can reach a wider population - a point he’s proud of on behalf of Haleon.
Be too enthralling to skip
Another essential benefit of sound and voiceovers is that ads are more arresting - not so easy to skip past. Rishi uses a simple question to test whether an ad is good: would he scroll past it if it showed up on his TikTok feed at 10.30 at night? That’s how you know when you’ve created something that’s relatable, gripping, and effective.
The data backs this up. In Haleon’s experience, ads with sound delivered a 25% increase in sales and a 10% increase in return on ad spend. And that’s simple data driven marketing: testing two versions of the ad, with or without a voiceover, before any other type of creative optimisation.
Tune in to the full episode to learn more about how audio can enhance your creative effectiveness and listen to Rishi’s key learnings from Pixar’s Ed Catmull’s “Creativity, Inc.”
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Rishi Mulgund 0:00
The brilliant basics used to be optimizing for sound off so people could just thumb scroll in, you know at work and things like that. And now we're not there anymore. I think we've lost our swagger of optimizing for all of the various senses people have, the most notably of which is audio.
Tom Ollerton 0:23
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Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative the creative effectiveness ad tech platform. And this is a weekly show about the future of data driven marketing. And I have the pleasure of interviewing some of the best talent in the industry every week or so on this podcast and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Rishi Mulgund who is performance marketing director at Haleo.. So Rishi for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give us a bit of background?
Rishi Mulgund 1:39
Sure. It's great to be here, Tom. Thanks for having me. So I am currently performance marketing director at Haleon the large consumer healthcare company made up of products, you know, Advil and Tums and Centrum and Robitussin, and I've been in marketing now, but my entire background is in brand marketing. So I think this is a wonderful step of kind of becoming that modern marketer of being data driven focus. So we run agile optimization Sprints to improve the ROI of all of our advertising, whether it's paid or earned.
Tom Ollerton 2:12
Very close to home, Rishi, so I'm looking forward to this, and you're also a client of ours, so I have to be on my best behavior, but um, hopefully, I won't step too many feet wrong in the process. So what is your favorite marketing book? What is that bit of writing that you find yourself coming back to most often and recommending to others?
Rishi Mulgund 2:34
Yeah, for me, I've always kind of had a passion for creativity and like creatively solving new problems, I have an engineering background. So so the book that always comes back to me, and I think I read it before I really got into marketing was creativity Inc. by you know, the people who founded Pixar. And it's just a fascinating process that they use to develop and improve on new ideas, to create the incredible string of successful movies that they've done. But bring that into work constantly. I think that's, you know, in our business of kind of data driven, kind of being driven by insights and data. It's just a good reminder of, you need to have a strong team and creative team that comes together. individuals don't create ideas, they, they get built, and they get broken down to build stronger ideas. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of creativity, Inc.
Tom Ollerton 3:34
So I'm not much of a reader as a listener of books. And I have actually listened to that book. I'm not sure is it the guy who wrote it that read it, it certainly felt like that, and I got a lot from it. So I'm just kind of want to help anyone who hasn't listened to that book, understand, like what those key points are, and know that one of the ones that came back for me was - I can't remember what it was called, was like a peer group where you bring your story or your storyboards. And then this is this group that sits around and passionately sort of picks it apart in a constructive way. What were the other bits in a book that you've taken onboard into your day to day?
Rishi Mulgund 4:06
Well, I think so. Yeah, they're their peer group's called the brain trust. And I think that's a massive one. And a lot of the best work we've seen recently, our industry, AB InBev. I think even McDonald's, they use an element of that. The key thing I think to that it's a, it's it's a key lesson from that, that replies to everything in our industry. But one of the things they learned was like, you have to eliminate the power structure when you're getting creative feedback, right? If our if your manager gives you feedback in a certain way creative feedback in a certain way, or feedback, anything in your job you have and you're inclined to follow it, but that's not going to necessarily improve the ideas and that's one of the first things they found at Pixar. So I think, try and create that peer group that can can honestly improve on your idea without having any biases between them.
I also think going against the grain. Another common theme and you know, as we work together Tom, is, is exactly that of, you can't just use the historical aspects of what's been considered best practice as an indicator of the future best practices, you constantly have to challenge your, your biases and your opinions and make those mistakes, make those past mistakes. So you can work even quicker.
Tom Ollerton 5:23
One of my favorite stories in the book is when someone managed to delete Toy Story two, they had this kind of bizarre set of instructions where it couldn't possibly be deleted. But somehow someone managed to delete like three quarters of the film. And then someone was like, Oh, I backed it up on my laptop last night, they sent out the taxi and then they wrapped it up in like bubble wrap or something like that, and had to drive it 30 miles an hour back to the studio. And then they held the doors open and it was sort of restored. But you think such a massive bit of work? Like Toy Story almost vanish?
Rishi Mulgund 5:53
Yeah. I mean, it's filled with... that that is a wild one, you feel that one, right? Have we've all been there where our work is kind of like... in the hard drive days. I think for me the story that sticks because it's just such a and as, as we both have children in that kind of way. But the original idea for Frozen, right, based on a book where they were going through it and the witch, it's like a horrible witch, and she treats her, you know, treats the princess like very poorly, and it just wasn't clicking. And someone randomly had the idea to you know, let's make it sisters who love each other. And they're trying to get through and that's what created Frozen and we're you know, we're talking about billions of dollars here. So it's just kind of shows the power that you can have when we work as a team.
Tom Ollerton 6:44
So what is your top data driven marketing tip? Rishi, what do you share with your team most often? What is that bit of advice that you rely on and use often?
Rishi Mulgund 6:55
Yeah, I, for me, it's both kind of the data driven and more also kind of a personal philosophy. But I always tell people to follow their passion, and treat the analysis they're looking at as if they're going through their real life, every single day, one of the things we kind of find is that people will almost treat the data that they're looking at. I see, I see engagement rate go down on this, but I'm struggling to figure out why. But then they'll read their personal email or personal website in their own time. And they would never click on the same thing that they've created. I remind people, you've got to follow your passion, you've got to follow your treat yourself, put yourself in the shoes of those consumers. And try not to create that much of a difference between your everyday work life and your your in personal time. Because your consumers they're not work people. They browse just like us. They watch commercials just like us. And they certainly skip commercials just like yourself.
Tom Ollerton 8:00
Lovely advice. But how do you practically advise people to do that? So say you're talking to someone on your team saying follow your passion? Remember the consumer's exactly the same as you like, practically? How do they apply that thinking?
Rishi Mulgund 8:14
Yeah, so one of the things I'll do with my team, when when creative is brought during, or anything kind of way? I'll give them the chance to speak up, then I'll kind of ask them, would you watch this ad if it came up? And usually the answer after a little thought is? Well, I would I would never watch these things where the ad I wouldn't even I wouldn't even I wouldn't even I would skip right through it. After six seconds, I would kind of say, well, why do you expect the consumer to do any different? And where we practically move that to is improving those first few seconds is, is driving even more engagement, having a different story arc in a digital first six seconds, than the TV six seconds. So it becomes a you know, an improvement by making things more personally real.
Tom Ollerton 9:04
And what is the common retort when they say, Well, I wouldn't watch this, then what happens to that in that scenario? Do they go away and like rip it all up? Or that was a wonderful way to review your own work? But how do people then go and build on it? Did they just kind of tear it all up? And start again? What's the most common response to that?
Rishi Mulgund 9:21
Yeah, I think it becomes a try to make it certainly more because now I've done this a few times. I've tried to make it more of a almost philosophical personal conversation of like, well, what was your mindset when you created it originally? And you know, how is that mindset different than when you're, you know, at 10.30 at night just scrolling the internet just browsing on Tik Tok or whatever it might be. The common response is well, my I was focused on my objectives of the brief, and what we start to do was start to dig in deeper again becomes less about the creative at that point and more about I think personal development and career development of making sure that they're seeing it the difference that they're bringing a work person people almost bring a workplace mindset when they're developing their creative and working in brand marketing, trying to meet the objectives and various brief business objectives driving awareness and and how do we grow brand love with these people, and they forget to bring that almost consumer centric real mindset. I call it the when you're scrolling TikTok at 1030 at night before bed mindset of like what's actually going to engage you what's what, what's going to entertain you what's going to give you information. And bringing those two people together has actually been a major focus of what I develop people with the advice I get people to become a data driven, better data driven marketer. And the way it comes to life, I think in creative is that people will come to the realization that they're trying to meet brief objectives that are too complex. We have too many objectives happening, we're trying to hit too many targets, instead of just being single minded single focus, because what they find is that's the creative that actually entertains them in that 1030 at night Tiktok mindset.
Tom Ollerton 11:31
this episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with MADfest. Whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect the distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from Madfest events, you'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
So we're gonna move on now to your shiny new object. And someone might argue that it's not shiny and new, but it's shiny and new to you. And that's audio and voice. So Rishi: Why have you chosen that as your shiny new object?
Rishi Mulgund 12:23
Yeah, I love the way you said it. I think it's, it's shiny for me and not shiny, it's almost bringing it back. But we have now come to a world I think where, you know, a lot of the creative a lot of the best practices many of us were trained on, you know, 10 years ago, were this world of audio off, where the idea of optimizing the Brilliant Basics used to be optimizing for sound off so people could just thumb scroll in you know, at work and things like that. And that world's not there anymore. I think we've lost our swagger of optimizing for all the various senses, people have the most notably of which is audio. And in our particular case, particularly in healthcare where things need to be sometimes to be explained a bit bit more voice. We've forgotten the importance of optimizing clearly for explaining our claims, explaining our science, even humanizing it a bit more. And we're seeing, we're beginning to see some incredible results, just by making sure our claims are voiced over just the difference of voicing over your claims your ad, and having that layer of information to meet the ABCD best practices is providing huge lifts in sales, conversion and relevance.
Tom Ollerton 13:49
So let's get on to the data in a bit. I don't know how much you can share maybe that you can but that's fine. But what I'm wanting to know is like how did you get on that journey? It sounds like you've done testing that's great. But the best practice was like, you know, there's I'm sure there was a meta report that went round 10 years ago that no one had no one has sound on but now with like Bluetooth headphones, everyone's got it on or something like that. But how did you get on that journey? What was the light bulb moments go? Oh, my wish to like a proper voiceover?
Rishi Mulgund 14:19
Yeah, I think it's similar to the mindset that I have a personal passion about of, of bringing the consumer's head, you know, space that 1030 At night scrolling mindset to the workplace. And when I look at the ads that transparently, even I was creating, I was like, these aren't good enough. These aren't things that I would watch. These aren't things that I would share with my friends and family. I mean, it's not lack of being proud of it. It's more just, I would scroll right past these and one of the things that became abundantly clear, not so much from advertising, but just the creator economy that's defined us now is just when people are voicing over their work. When people are voicing over when people are talking, you see, you see such a level of personally increase increased engagement to the ABCD best practices, it's increased connection with the ad with the with the Creator. So it's become a little bit of a passion point for me in the last kind of year or two years here to make sure that we lean into that ease of advertising experience for people to voiceover as much as possible in our ads. And, you know, what I would certainly can share is that, in tests we've run of just the difference between having a voiceover experience versus not, we see results in line with Kantar, results in line with meta and YouTube have run similar studies, where we're getting about a 25% lift in sales conversion, when you add just by adding that voiceover, and, you know, roughly a 10% lift in ROAS from the same ad, with a voiceover without so it's, it's almost, I love the kind of the note of it's not a shiny object, but it is because it's not rocket science in that way. And it shouldn't be it should be easy for the consumer to understand. But it is rocket science in the sense that why aren't we doing this, we see, we see a sizable number of creative in our industry that has made it so hard for consumers to understand because we're not prioritizing, voicing over and audio in our creative.
Tom Ollerton 16:44
So if I'm hearing you right, the rise of the creator economy, so TikTokers talking from the heart in an authentic way about whatever that topic is, or that product is or thing is that they're excited about sound brings an authenticity that you just can't get with nice animated text. So therefore, if people are listening to those kinds of platforms that are driven, oddly, primarily by audio, despite being visual channels, as soon as an advert doesn't have that it becomes almost black and white, almost redundant?
Rishi Mulgund 17:12
Exactly, it becomes too easy to skip, it becomes too easy to forget to the craving that mental availability space, I think we are, we are the human brain is wired to look for shortcuts to find ways to remember information. So seeing it visually hearing it from a, from a trusted source as a voiceover. And then even the distinctive assets, both audio and visual, to reinforce that the next time are so critical. And what's what's crazy, is that, you know, doing this is as we think of as we think about making our ads more inclusive in the advertising industry, doing this is a huge function of making our ads more accessible for people to fully experience our ads. It's a sizable population. I don't have the number or anything, but it's a sizable population of people who, who actually can't experience the ad fully unless it has this kind of voiceover addition onto it. So super, I just, you know, it's one of those things of why we're in the industry, why do you work so hard? And it's super proud of knowing that we're making just a little effort there to make our ads more accessible.
Tom Ollerton 18:26
So the stats you've shared, and thank you the 25% lift in conversion and 10% boost in ROAS, can you go any deeper into that? I assume not. But what I mean is, do you have data on different types of ads? So if there's a voiceover when there's a human in it talking, or is it any voiceover for any ad?
Rishi Mulgund 18:43
Yeah, you know, not able to go fully into it, because that testing is certainly underway. I think our results mimic, like I said, many of the work that's been done already in studies by Kantar. But we are finding those nuances. I think that will be infinite in that nuance of when is the right time? What's the right words? And then even within the sense of voice itself? Who's that right, trusted voice? Is it gender specific? Is there a dialect specific to it? I know we've had this conversation before. That's an infinite level of testing and it could be regionalised it's exciting in that way. It's just I think the leaps and bounds we've made and in visual advertising are bad to be made in voice advertising. I like the idea of infinite testing.
Tom Ollerton 19:40
Rishi you know that speaks my language.
So that creates an opportunity and a problem as far as I can see it so if your unique voice someone's got to record that audio or have you found a smart AI way of doing it? And do you see is there like any correlation between an authentic naturally recorded voice versus some of the audio tools that are available?
Rishi Mulgund 20:09
Yeah, the the, to the, to the point of infinite testing, there are ways to do simple tests, we found. We through, you know, a synthetic, synthetic voice test. But one of the things we're really finding is that we as a business, we have talent coming all the time, we have voice over talent, we have actors in concert in production. So majority, and pretty much all of our testing will still be done with human talent. For that reason to get that nuance and to establish that credibility.
Making sure our brand names are positioned consistently, throughout, I think this gets to almost audio distinctiveness, you want your brand name to be said a certain way you want the claims to be enunciated a certain way. So voice over talent is really fantastic in that way. And that's not to diminish the tremendous work that's been made in synthetic voice.
Tom Ollerton 21:10
Yeah, I'm just extrapolating out for for automated creative, obviously, we work at scale and test, and I'm just starting to think right, that's gonna get really expensive for an actual actor, isn't it and so there's, there's gonna have to be that uncanny valley crossed at some point where the synthetic voice is good enough, really. But that's, that's great feedback to know that without it being real, it doesn't quite hit the brand guidelines that it needs to. And it actually reminds me of a conversation with one of our other guests on the show, and he's talking about pet care. And he was saying that the best practice back in the day used to have two models who were really good looking with a with a dog or a cat. And he says that fundamentally, if you work in pet care, it's so easy to spot when that that model has never met that animal before. It just doesn't look it in the right way. And that authenticity is such a buzzword, but it's so true. And I think you've opened my eyes actually getting someone to stop scrolling at half ten at night, when you're about to fall asleep, you've had a couple of beers, it's got to be has to be compelling has to be creative, it has to be authentic. Otherwise, it's not, it's not going to be functional, right.
Rishi Mulgund 22:13
And, and it's incredible, but just because of the amount of content that's consumed, how, how kind of how our, our, BS meter is so high and so finely tuned to find those things which talk about whether it's an Petcare Audio and these kinds of things. So I think there's also an element of what might be good enough for testing might not be good enough for scaling in those kinds of ways. And that might be some of the nuance that you're talking about, of when human talent comes into it.
Tom Ollerton 22:46
So unfortunately, Rishi, we are at the end of the podcast, I would love to carry on talking about this. If someone wants to get in touch with you, where's the best place to do that? And what goes into a message that you will actually respond to?
Rishi Mulgund 22:58
Yeah, LinkedIn is definitely the best way. And I think, I think being as upfront as possible, right at the beginning, I, sometimes it's challenging to respond to anything related to, you know, a sales call and that kind of way, but as I've been fortunate enough to do many times and get responses, it's just being upfront of asking for guidance, ask for help, any anything I can do. I'm a huge supporter of this industry. It's a wonderful thing we do. Marketing and Advertising is wonderful. So anything I can ever do to support the industry, I try to be pretty proactive there.
Tom Ollerton 23:37
Fantastic. Rishi, thank you so much for your time.
Rishi Mulgund 23:39
Thanks for having me, Tom.
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