More Doorways, Fewer Tunnels: Rob Beevers on why context matters more than precision

Advertising has spent years perfecting the pixel. We can track a skip at 2.3 seconds, predict breakfast spreads, even guess the star sign of your neighbour’s dog. Clever, yes. Always useful? In the race for ever-finer targeting, have we risked neglecting the environments that truly shape what people do?

As Rob Beevers, our Chief Effectiveness and Analytics Officer, sets out in his latest Substack essay, the biggest growth lever isn’t always the algorithm. It’s the pavement, the park, the shop floor. Residents of Mole Valley, with its leafy lanes, are nearly twice as active as those in Blackpool. Not because they’re more motivated, but because the context makes activity possible. Likewise, shops on streets with bike lanes and benches see sales rise because the environment invites people in. Context creates customers.

This isn’t just about urban planning. The same principle applies in media and retail. Specsavers reframed “go to Specsavers” by sending opticians into homes. Lululemon turned stores into yoga studios and community hubs. Majestic Wine invited shoppers to taste in-store, turning retail into a date night. None of these required new data pipelines. They required creativity applied to context – designing doorways into the brand, not tunnels of retargeting.

So what should marketers take from this? A few prompts:

• Budget: Shift a little spend from ever-narrower targeting into environments that reinforce your Category Entry Points. The places people arrive from matter as much as the media impressions that take them there.

• Message: Stop treating context as wallpaper. Out-of-home, retail media and in-store touchpoints can work as prompts, not just placements.

• Experience: Think like a host. What small design changes – from home delivery to community space – could create fresh doorways for your audience?

• Measurement: Look beyond click-throughs. Track new-to-brand buyers, footfall and repeat visits. That’s where the true impact shows.

Rob’s provocation is simple: creativity is not just the final flourish, it’s growth infrastructure. When we treat it as a discipline applied across planning, partnerships and place, we don’t just make better ads, we make better environments for people and brands alike.

If media only chases individuals, we miss the bigger stage. The opportunity is to design the doorways people actually walk through — digital and physical. That’s how brands grow categories, not just clicks.

It’s a perspective worth sitting with as we head into the autumn planning cycle. If you’re intrigued, his full essay More Doorways, Fewer Tunnels: Pavements Before Pixels is well worth a read.