Presence Isn’t Impact: Kantar’s Bowles on Why CMOs Are Counting the Wrong Things
Stacking impressions across platforms might feel like progress. According to one senior research executive, it may actually be the problem.
In a media landscape where every platform promises reach and every dashboard overflows with metrics, the real crisis for brand marketers isn’t a shortage of inventory – it’s a confusion of signals.
CMOs are mistaking the accumulation of touchpoints for the delivery of outcomes, conflating how loudly a brand shows up with how meaningfully it lands, said Alvin Bowles, chief client officer at Kantar, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
Presence vs. impact
The fragmentation of media has created what Bowles described as an almost paradoxical trap: infinite choices leading to unfocused strategy. “Because there are infinite choices, individuals are often adding and stacking how many impressions you’re getting from platform to platform to platform and trying to aggregate what used to be just TRPs and GRPs with impressions, with likes and things of that nature,” he said, “as opposed to thinking about this in a very coordinated manner.”
The corrective, in Bowles’ view, is a shift from volume-based thinking to outcome-based planning. “It’s not just about how many people you reach – it’s are you reaching the right people at the right time with the right creative,” he said. That sounds intuitive, but the pull of raw numbers remains strong in boardrooms where campaign performance is still often reported in aggregate reach figures rather than conversion or brand equity metrics.
Kantar’s own research framework – what the company calls its MDS model, standing for meaningful, differentiated, and salient – underpins this argument. The firm’s BrandZ rankings, which track the world’s top 100 brands, apply this lens to assess whether campaigns are actually breaking through with target audiences or simply generating noise.
Creative fit for purpose
Bowles identified a second, related failure mode: repurposing creative across platforms without adapting it to each environment. “You can’t just actually make a spot or a brand campaign and then try to repurpose that, taking a 90 and cutting it to a 15 or cutting it to a 30,” he said. The medium, in his framing, is not simply a distribution channel – it’s a creative brief in itself.
“It’s almost like painting a picture, taking a blank canvas and then painting a picture and allowing that to have a continuity across all the platforms in which this creative may appear,” he said. The brand idea provides the through-line; the execution should be native to each surface.
He cited Heinz as an example of a brand that had done this well, taking a core brand truth – “it’s got to be Heinz” – and expressing it distinctively across TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook Reels, YouTube, and traditional media. “For a brand that is as well known as Heinz to be able to take that brand idea and embody that across a number of different campaigns, across a number of different platforms, really allowed it to come to life,” Bowles said.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of POSSIBLE 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
Stacking impressions across platforms might feel like progress. According to one senior research executive, it may actually be the problem.
In a media landscape where every platform promises reach and every dashboard overflows with metrics, the real crisis for brand marketers isn’t a shortage of inventory – it’s a confusion of signals.
CMOs are mistaking the accumulation of touchpoints for the delivery of outcomes, conflating how loudly a brand shows up with how meaningfully it lands, said Alvin Bowles, chief client officer at Kantar, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
Presence vs. impact
The fragmentation of media has created what Bowles described as an almost paradoxical trap: infinite choices leading to unfocused strategy. “Because there are infinite choices, individuals are often adding and stacking how many impressions you’re getting from platform to platform to platform and trying to aggregate what used to be just TRPs and GRPs with impressions, with likes and things of that nature,” he said, “as opposed to thinking about this in a very coordinated manner.”
The corrective, in Bowles’ view, is a shift from volume-based thinking to outcome-based planning. “It’s not just about how many people you reach – it’s are you reaching the right people at the right time with the right creative,” he said. That sounds intuitive, but the pull of raw numbers remains strong in boardrooms where campaign performance is still often reported in aggregate reach figures rather than conversion or brand equity metrics.
Kantar’s own research framework – what the company calls its MDS model, standing for meaningful, differentiated, and salient – underpins this argument. The firm’s BrandZ rankings, which track the world’s top 100 brands, apply this lens to assess whether campaigns are actually breaking through with target audiences or simply generating noise.
Creative fit for purpose
Bowles identified a second, related failure mode: repurposing creative across platforms without adapting it to each environment. “You can’t just actually make a spot or a brand campaign and then try to repurpose that, taking a 90 and cutting it to a 15 or cutting it to a 30,” he said. The medium, in his framing, is not simply a distribution channel – it’s a creative brief in itself.
“It’s almost like painting a picture, taking a blank canvas and then painting a picture and allowing that to have a continuity across all the platforms in which this creative may appear,” he said. The brand idea provides the through-line; the execution should be native to each surface.
He cited Heinz as an example of a brand that had done this well, taking a core brand truth – “it’s got to be Heinz” – and expressing it distinctively across TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook Reels, YouTube, and traditional media. “For a brand that is as well known as Heinz to be able to take that brand idea and embody that across a number of different campaigns, across a number of different platforms, really allowed it to come to life,” Bowles said.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of POSSIBLE 2026. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
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