Over the past two decades, a fundamental shift has occurred in advertising. Once prized for its creativity, emotional resonance, and ability to lodge a brand in memory, advertising now often feels transactional, literal, and narrowly goal‑oriented. In his work at System1, Orlando Wood argues that this drift (from “showmanship” to “salesmanship”) has eroded advertising’s ability to build brands over time. The remedy, he contends, is not a regression but a recalibration: to bring back the theatrical, emotional, human core of persuasive communication.
In this article, I outline Wood’s diagnosis, trace the theory behind it (especially its alignment with modes of attention), and draw out practical lessons for marketers seeking to rebuild advertising that works.
The Crisis of Advertising Effectiveness
Peter Field’s research shows that advertising’s capacity to drive commercial outcomes began to degrade around 2006–2008 as marketers gravitated more toward short-term conversion-led metrics, while creative quality and long-term brand health suffered. Orlando Wood picks up this thread, noting a systemic shift in how advertisers think and act, from broad branding to narrowly targeted activation.
In Lemon, Wood explores how creative execution has become increasingly mechanical by utilising short clips, product shots, and literal messaging. Resulting in a loss of narrative, surprise, and emotional resonance. In Look Out, he pushes further: how the decline in expressive, human, right-brain advertising reflects a broader erosion in the way brands perceive themselves.
Today, many organisations favour efficiency and immediate returns, but at the cost of salience, memorability, and a brand’s capacity for growth. The argument is not that sales activation is worthless. Instead, he argues that it has become dominant to the detriment of showmanship. In his view, showmanship must do the heavy lifting of attention, memory, and emotional connection; salesmanship then converts the warmed audience. Without the showmanship underpinning, sales pitches occur in a vacuum, with diminishing returns.
Showmanship versus Salesmanship: Two Schools, One Ecosystem
Wood frames the tension with language drawn from the history of advertising—showmanship and salesmanship—rather than the more common but fuzzier labels of brand vs performance. He credits Paul Feldwick for the original framing, but argues that this language is more clarifying for marketers today.
Showmanship refers to advertising that seeks to capture broad attention, evoke emotional engagement, convey a narrative, expressiveness, surprise, metaphor, and connection, even among people not currently in the buying window. Its objective is to lodge the brand in memory, build preference over time, and facilitate later activation.
Salesmanship, by contrast, is the logic of direct response: targeting the already half‑interested, giving reasons to buy, nudging people closer to purchase. It works when the audience is primed or warm, but it cannot generate that priming on its own.
Crucially, Wood argues the two are not mutually exclusive but symbiotic: showmanship makes salesmanship more efficient, and salesmanship validates the commercial relevance of showmanship. But the industry has inverted the balance: much of the budget and creative muscle now goes to salesmanship, leaving showmanship sidelined or underpowered.
Wood also distances his terms from “brand” and “performance.” He argues that those labels carry baggage and ambiguity, whereas showmanship and salesmanship speak more directly to creative goals and cognitive modes.
How Showmanship Works: The Brain, Attention & Emotion
To support his thesis, Wood draws on the work of Iain McGilchrist, who presents a theory of brain lateralisation and attention. The right hemisphere is associated with broad-beam, contextual, relational, metaphorical, expressive, and social attention. The left hemisphere is more narrow-focused, analytical, categorical, literal, and verbal.
In this framing, showmanship appeals chiefly (though not exclusively) to the right hemisphere. It presents something that can’t be immediately parsed but draws interest, surprises, tells a narrative, evokes emotion, and helps embed memory. Salesmanship aligns with left‑hemisphere attention: refining, specifying, directing, explaining.
By leveraging right‑brain attention, showmanship establishes a brand’s presence in memory and builds emotional affinity. Salesmanship then steps in with arguments and calls to action, but only after the brand has already made its way onto the mental shortlist.
In practice, this explains why purely literal, functional ads often struggle to break through unless they target a narrow audience already primed for a specific category or brand. Without the show element (e.g., emotion, surprise, human context), they rarely engage people outside that narrow frame.
Wood notes a common misconception: people assume only showmanship is slow to work and that it needs years to build value. He pushes back, preferring the term lasting effects instead of “long term.” Showmanship, he argues, can produce immediate returns (sales) while continuing to compound value over time by capturing new entrants into the category or brand.
The Tools of Showmanship: Fluent Devices, Humour & Nostalgia
If showmanship is the orientation, what emphasises its levers? Wood emphasises three: fluent devices, humour, and emotional resonance (including nostalgia).
Fluent Devices
Fluent devices refer to characters, settings, tones, or narrative devices that are consistently reused across campaigns. Think of the Geico Gecko, the Snickers “You’re Not You When Hungry” persona, or even recurring cinematic styles. The strength of familiarity (people recognise the device) and flexibility: it can be adapted or “transposed” while retaining its identity.
System 1 and IPA evidence suggest that fluent devices help reduce price sensitivity, enhance memory, and strengthen brand equity. Wood argues that the device must live—a dynamic character or scenario, not a static symbol or logo. That vitality is what catches attention and helps convey emotion (in contrast to left-brain symbols, fonts, and colours, which tend to flatten expression).
A helpful metaphor: the fluent device is like a musical motif. You can vary it to a new adventure; the underlying core tune remains recognisable.
Humour
Wood and his co‑researchers find strong statistical correlations between humorous campaigns and business effects. Humour captures attention through incongruity: people are drawn to resolve oddities or surprises. The resolution crystallises morous twist, which helps crystallise memory by forming connections.
Beyond attention and memory, humour also softens persuasion. It rewards the audience for participation (“I got the joke”), turning mere message recipients into intellectual or emotional agents. It is both a lure and a reward.
However, Wood laments that humour is disappearing in contemporary advertising. With the rise of literal, “worthy,” or serious tones, fewer brands risk a joke. But the data suggests humour should be revived—not frivolously, but as a creative lever.
Nostalgia & Yearning
A particularly potent mechanism for showmanship is nostalgia: the yearning for another time, place, or emotional resonance. Because nostalgia appeals to the right hemisphere’s sensitivity to story, memory, and emotional atmospheres, it can be intensely activating.
Wood points to the classic Hovis ad (UK, 1973) with a boy on a bike, cobbled streets, and classical music. That ad evoked a sense of belonging, place, history, even during the recession. That kind of emotional anchoring is less common now, but its effect can be powerful. He argues right‑brain attention is attuned to social context, metaphor, and emotional depth; nostalgia is a natural lever in that space.
Emotion & Research: Measuring What Matters
A critical part of Wood’s argument addresses research. Too often, marketers lean on repost-rationalised surveys or post‑rationalised judgments. Wood recommends a different path: measuring emotional response. Why?
Emotion is a strong proxy for attention (emotion orients us), memory (emotion enhances encoding), and preference or effect (positive feelings translate into favourability). System1’s catalogue of case studies consistently demonstrates that ads scoring higher on emotional metrics tend to deliver stronger commercial results.
Wood cautions that this does not mean emotion equals theatrics. The best emotional advertising is not melodrama, but rather something that resonates. It moves the viewer, offers a shift, and leaves a favourable impression.
Moreover, emotional metrics can show early whether showmanship is working (or failing). A campaign that fails to generate emotional engagement is unlikely to build long-term brand strength, no matter how efficient its slice‑and‑dice targeting may be.
Thus, research must focus less on surface metrics (did you see this, did you recall that) and more on engagement, affect, and the quality of connection.
Practical Implications: Creativity, Media & Strategy
How should marketers apply this in practice? Here are the key levers:
Balance Showmanship and Salesmanship
Allocate budget and creative energy to both modes. Showmanship should lead in creating salience and emotional affinity; salesmanship should activate people already primed. Don’t let sales activation dominate all priorities.
Choose the Right Media
Showmanship performs best in high-attention, broad-reach media—TV, cinema, out-of-home, and streaming — with brand uplift, as well as some social video formats. These media afford the time and context to engage right‑brain attention. Salesmanship is better suited for conversion points, such as point-of-sale, shelf, search, retargeting, and direct response channels.
However, note that no medium is exclusive. A high‑attention media placement can support both showmanship and salesmanship if thoughtfully designed. The risk is undeserving showmanship by using attentional media solely as a conversion funnel.
Resist Creative Shortcuts
Because data and targeting allow you to reach “likely buyers,” there’s a temptation to be lazy creatively. You might show product benefits to a warm audience and assume it’s enough. Wood warns that this leads to a generation of marketers unfamiliar with crafting compelling showmanship. You must design for attraction—novelty, emotion, narrative—not just proof.
Use Fluent Devices Wisely
If you adopt a fluent device, maintain consistency across campaigns while allowing variation to keep it fresh. The device must feel alive, not static. Over time, this consistency compounds in memory and lowers the cost of future engagement.
Leave Room for the Audience
Wood cites the creative maxim: “Bait the mousetrap with cheese, but leave room for the mouse.” In showmanship, you don’t over‑explain. You leave space for the audience to connect dots, make meaning, and feel ownership of the inference. This respect for the consumer enhances memory, liking, and engagement.
Embrace Novelty + Familiarity.
Too much novelty disorients; too much repetition bores. The balance lies in providing enough familiarity to hold people's interest, and enough novelty to surprise them. Fluent devices help here: they carry familiarity but can be played in new ways.
Embed Emotional Measurement in Workflow
Before scaling, test ads for emotional response. Use those insights to iterate creatively. Don’t wait for campaign-level ROI to know whether a campaign is emotionally viable.
A Core Principle to Remember
As Wood states near the end of his interview, marketers must “put on a show.” The show must be more interesting, more entertaining, more arresting than the content around it. In a world saturated with content, any ad that fails to compete for attention on those terms will be ignored.
This principle alone reorients how brands should think about creativity. It’s not enough to deliver proof or benefits. The ad must be a performance in itself—something people willingly peer into, rather than scroll past.
Conclusion
Orlando Wood’s diagnosis of the advertising landscape is timely and urgent. The shift toward pure salesmanship may be understandable in a data‑driven, short-term world, but it carries a hidden cost: brands lose capacity, salience erodes, and long-term growth stalls.
By recovering showmanship, creativity rooted in human stories, emotional turning, surprise, metaphor, and audience participation, brands can restore attention, embed preference, and amplify the effectiveness of activation. Salesmanship remains essential, but only as the closer, not the opener.
If you are a marketer, creative leader, or planner, start by asking: Does this ad feel like a show? If not, you have work to do.
Reference
This article draws primarily on the podcast interview with Orlando Wood on Behavioural Science for Brands (Method1) and related academic sources. Source: YouTube link: