fischer fixings UK: Dan Czerwinski on Adapting a German Legacy for the UK’s DIY and Trade Markets
In this episode of The Build Up, host Dan, sits down with Dan Czerwinski, Sales and Marketing Manager at fischer fixings UK. They dive into the fascinating evolution of fischer fixings, a German brand, as it localised its marketing strategy to succeed in the competitive UK trade and DIY markets.
Dan shares his journey into the construction industry and the importance of understanding both sales and marketing. He discusses how fischer transitioned from a technical, product-focused approach to one that resonates with consumers, tradespeople, and DIY enthusiasts alike.
Discover how fischer’s rebranding, including new packaging and logo design, played a critical role in building consumer trust and standing out in a crowded market. Dan also explores the key differences between marketing to tradespeople and DIY customers, and how localisation and tailored strategies have been essential in driving their success.
Join us for this insightful conversation filled with industry tips, branding wisdom, and a closer look at the challenges and opportunities in construction marketing.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Buildup. This is the podcast for marketing
Speaker:in the construction industry. I'm
Speaker:Dan, the creative director at Dissident. We've been working with construction brands for
Speaker:a number of years. It's an exciting and rapidly evolving industry, and
Speaker:that's why we created a podcast dedicated to the weird and wonderful world
Speaker:of construction marketing. I'll be speaking to leading brands, other agencies,
Speaker:creatives, influencers, and startups. This is the
Speaker:resource I wish we had when we first started out in the industry. Thank
Speaker:you for being here and welcome to The Builder. Welcome
Speaker:back to another episode of the buildup. I am Dan, the creative director at
Speaker:dissident we are a social first creative agency, right key. And
Speaker:we deal specifically with brands in the construction industry to make cool
Speaker:content hard hitting social media marketing. And today I
Speaker:am joined with the sales and marketing manager of Fisher fixings our our
Speaker:boys Fisher fixings. Dan Shavinsky, welcome, mate. Thank
Speaker:How was that? That's pretty cool, isn't it? I want
Speaker:to preface this episode by the fact that me and Dan both feel a bit rough today,
Speaker:not because of like drinking or anything, just the winter and colds
Speaker:and stuff like that. Busy lifestyles. Really excited to have you on. Obviously,
Speaker:we've worked with each other for years. We're friends anyway.
Speaker:And I kind of know a bit of your story anyway, but I think there's some stuff that we can
Speaker:kind of like, there'll be some stuff that I don't think I'm that
Speaker:Exactly, for sure. But I want to start with, can you give
Speaker:So at Fisher's, obviously sales and marketing, but I also encompass
Speaker:product management. We set up an e-commerce department recently. And
Speaker:yeah, I've been at Fisher for nearly 10 years now. I
Speaker:like to say I'm involved in every single part of the business, like a good marketing manager should
Speaker:be really. But yeah, we've kind of just grown
Speaker:and grown in the past five years in terms of our marketing strategy, our
Speaker:communication strategy, and of course, working with you guys at Dissident,
Speaker:it just really helps us along the way. So yeah,
Speaker:I mean, the intention for this episode really was to just get one
Speaker:massive testimonial for Dissident Creative Agency. That's what
Speaker:I'm going for. Yeah, if you can sort of steer clear of any actual
Speaker:value and just talk about Dissident for the whole time, that would be amazing, mate. I'd
Speaker:appreciate that. I really like the directors at Dissident, they're really
Speaker:good. How did you find yourself in construction? Because like There's
Speaker:two sort of schools of marketers in
Speaker:construction. There's the ones that found themselves in it, and
Speaker:they do incredibly well, and they're excited about it. And there's the ones that found themselves
Speaker:in it, and they're not excited about it. And I feel like you're the
Speaker:first school. You really thrive on this industry,
Speaker:I think I do now. I was thinking this in the car on the way up. I
Speaker:hate it when people say, I fell into construction. I'm
Speaker:allowed to swear on this, but nobody fucking falls into construction. You
Speaker:apply for a job, right? Yeah, exactly. And I think I'm a bit more elegant than
Speaker:falling into construction. So I strode into construction, but by
Speaker:accident. So my first job 14 years
Speaker:ago now was as a merchandiser for ITW on
Speaker:a graduate program. So I just left uni and I
Speaker:was thinking, oh yeah, merchandising, that's cool. I'm going to be working with retail
Speaker:outlets, like in fashion or something like that. Completely not. I
Speaker:walked into my interview, as you do when you're
Speaker:21, do no research on the brand that you're going
Speaker:to go apply for. walked into a branch of a business called
Speaker:SIG, got taken into a room and got
Speaker:told I was going to be merchandising construction brands. And
Speaker:what do I know? Oh my God, I knew nothing. First
Speaker:question for my very first interview at ITW was,
Speaker:look at that store, tell me what's wrong. I
Speaker:don't know what's wrong. So the first thing I
Speaker:did was pick on a sales guy, which has kind of been what I do for
Speaker:the past 14 years. Just pick on the sales guys.
Speaker:But yeah, after that, I was a sales guy for like
Speaker:six months. So as a merchandiser, that's where I started, which
Speaker:kind of gave me a footing into what
Speaker:I use in a lot of our marketing now. So I like to think there's
Speaker:a lot a lot behind marketing with your
Speaker:gut, knowing internally what you think will
Speaker:work. And I think a lot of that has come from, okay, it's only six
Speaker:months in sales, but working a little bit in sales, working a
Speaker:long time in product management. and then making the transition to marketing.
Speaker:I think when I left product management and became a marketer, that's
Speaker:Yeah, I think having that perspective on sales in
Speaker:general, even if it's not necessarily in the same industry, I
Speaker:think that can make a big difference to your outlook on marketing content. If
Speaker:you've just got any kind of sales experience, it just gives you a
Speaker:Yeah, I think a lot of... people who join
Speaker:a marketing team or become a marketing manager can do it nowadays straight
Speaker:out of uni. There's jobs out there that you can be sort of like
Speaker:junior market manager or entry-level market manager. You need no background
Speaker:in that industry. You don't need to know what sells a product. You don't need to know what drives
Speaker:your consumer to buy that product. You are just a market manager. And
Speaker:I would say to people like that, spend time with your sales force.
Speaker:Spend time in your retail outlets. Learn why people
Speaker:actually buy your product. Because if you don't know that as a starting point,
Speaker:you've got no hope. Then developing a marketing plan, pulling
Speaker:more consumers into your product, getting them to understand the values
Speaker:of your brand, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there's a lot to learn from
Speaker:sales. And sales isn't just men and women walking
Speaker:to shops, flogging their gear. There's a lot more to it
Speaker:and I think understanding that as a marketer really
Speaker:I think also from the point of view of social media, which
Speaker:is that kind of our realm, ever since we started running
Speaker:accounts and actually doing the community management, which for people who
Speaker:don't know is actually responding to and engaging with
Speaker:people on social media on behalf of the brand. So we essentially put
Speaker:ourselves into the brand from the audience's perspective.
Speaker:You start to get almost like a feel, more of a feel
Speaker:for the brand. And it's almost like
Speaker:an opinion from the consumer's perspective, which I think
Speaker:makes a huge difference. So if you've got that insight into sales,
Speaker:but also that insight into, actually, this is, you know, unabridged,
Speaker:like what your consumer thinks of you, because they're actively
Speaker:tagging you in it, or slating it or whatever it could be.
Speaker:Again, I think that massively helps as a marketer to
Speaker:understand, okay, I'm starting to get a picture here of
Speaker:It allows you to understand the value of your brand, doesn't it?
Speaker:If your value proposition hits with your consumer, then you get
Speaker:that feedback straight away. If it doesn't, then you know
Speaker:you need to look elsewhere, or you need to change your tactic, or readjust
Speaker:your brand architecture. Something needs
Speaker:to change if it's not hitting those points that you want. Jobs.
Speaker:Next job, ITW. So finished ITW, joined
Speaker:Fisher. And yeah, like we were saying,
Speaker:10 years at Fisher now. joined it again
Speaker:as a product manager. So if you've never worked in product management before,
Speaker:it is literally the best job. It is
Speaker:the glue to every single department. I mean, you learn a lot about
Speaker:marketing in product management because obviously you get the information fed
Speaker:to you from product development or from R&D. So you really have
Speaker:to understand those key features first of a product or a service
Speaker:that you're offering, and then you learn how to market that
Speaker:and how to sell it and how to push it to your consumer. And even
Speaker:if it does fit within your product mix, you kind of learn all of that as
Speaker:a product manager. But then obviously the
Speaker:fun bit's the marketing, right? And that's where the love of marketing came,
Speaker:because he wants to be the glue that
Speaker:pulls in all the departments from procurement, from marketing, from sales, when you
Speaker:The colouring in department, as a lot of people call it. So
Speaker:you were a project manager at Fisher, where did
Speaker:Yes, I was a product manager for ITW. I took a
Speaker:short hiatus into the food and beverage industry, which
Speaker:isn't exciting as it sounds, it's super boring. But one
Speaker:claim to fame from that was I worked on a project team that
Speaker:made the the first ever conical metal
Speaker:detector. Is that right? Yeah, sounds fancy doesn't it? Basically it
Speaker:makes crisps go down a chute faster and make sure there's no
Speaker:I can get behind that,
Speaker:that sounds really cool.
Speaker:So now Sales and Marketing Manager at Fisher. But for
Speaker:those who don't know about Fisher, can you give
Speaker:us a brief introduction to Fisher as a brand, what
Speaker:So, I hope a lot of people do know Fisher now after a lot
Speaker:of hard work with brand awareness campaigns. Absolutely, I'm sure they do. But
Speaker:yeah, so for people who don't know, so we're a construction fixings manufacturer, which
Speaker:plain and simple means that we make wall plugs for DIY
Speaker:users, wall plugs for trade. We make resin anchors for
Speaker:kind of more technical specification work. We make through bolts,
Speaker:anything you think that connects something to a wall, something to
Speaker:steel, something to concrete, Fisher probably make it. Recently
Speaker:we've kind of expanded our sales channels and we make
Speaker:much more like system solutions now. So
Speaker:like supports for subframe, ACT fixings, which is a cladding system.
Speaker:So when you see those nice ceramic panels on the outside of buildings, there's
Speaker:probably a bit of fissure behind that holding it to the
Speaker:wall. So yeah, we've really diversified as
Speaker:a business, but I think our core business will always
Speaker:be wall plugs in nylon. And I love that about Fisher
Speaker:because even though it's such a highly technical brand
Speaker:and so much R&D and so much research that goes into everything
Speaker:that Fisher do. it's a tiny product at the end of
Speaker:the day. And for your general consumer, you
Speaker:don't need to know all that stuff that's behind it. You don't need to know the thousands of
Speaker:design hours. You want to know that's in the wall and it's working. And
Speaker:that's it. And I think that there's a beauty behind that of like complexity
Speaker:to simplicity. And that's a really easy
Speaker:way to market products as well. You know, there's so much research behind it.
Speaker:You can talk to your blue about all
Speaker:the man hours it has taken to design this product. You can talk
Speaker:guff about technical specification. But really, it's the
Speaker:simplicity of the product that sells it. And it's the trust of the consumer that
Speaker:sells it. And it's our job as marketers to tell that story,
Speaker:to kind of build the emotion behind it. And people don't care about the technical side. They
Speaker:But you have just given me an idea for a new campaign where we
Speaker:have like all of these different elements that go into like, let's say the duopower or
Speaker:something like that. Number one, world's number one
Speaker:UK's number one. UK's number one plug. But let's say world. Let's say world. It's opinion based, this
Speaker:Yeah, who cares? Universe's number one plug. But
Speaker:you got all these kind of like cool pieces of content that are
Speaker:like, it's almost like a montage of like, scientists, developers,
Speaker:salespeople, blah blah blah blah all these different things like and
Speaker:and the research and development you get all these films and they
Speaker:all kind of like are within their own little boxes and they're all kind
Speaker:of like getting funneled into the duo power and then eventually it just goes
Speaker:into a wall. It's some DIYer just putting like up like a
Speaker:I like the idea of that. So German
Speaker:brand. And then it brings me
Speaker:on to this incredible phallic prop
Speaker:here, which is the S-plug. S-plug, right?
Speaker:We've not really had anything to do with the S-plug because it was kind of a four hour time and
Speaker:we've kind of always been focused on the duopowers and stuff like
Speaker:that. But that was what Fisher, like, that was their
Speaker:This is like our legacy product. As some cooler people
Speaker:than I would say, this is the OG Fisher Globe. Yeah,
Speaker:so Arthur Fisher's, not first invention, but
Speaker:first invention in the construction industry. I'm
Speaker:about to say a really contentious statement because there's a lot of
Speaker:other brands who don't believe this is true, but it is true. So
Speaker:it was the world's first nylon wall plug. So
Speaker:we'll put that out and I'll get loads of hate from other brands, but who cares? Yeah, so
Speaker:it was the first invention by Fisher. It kind of started our way
Speaker:into construction and then it just developed from there, really.
Speaker:I saw some piece of information the other day that Fisher
Speaker:holds over 10,000 patents and they develop like another
Speaker:20 patents per employee every single year, which is like crazy when you think
Speaker:about it. But yeah, it's been a, if
Speaker:you think that started a multi-billion euro
Speaker:business from, Not this, not the metal one. Not
Speaker:that specific thing. No, I don't know what wall that would go into. But
Speaker:yeah, the whole business built off a nylon wall plug. It's crazy when
Speaker:You think of all the different subsidiaries across the world. Yeah.
Speaker:You know, all the money in the research and development, the content from the marketing
Speaker:perspective that gets put into this. And it's all from something that
Speaker:Yeah, and if you think about it, for the past five years,
Speaker:Fisher and specifically in the UK, all of
Speaker:our marketing content and all of our brand awareness campaigns have
Speaker:been centralised around not this version of the Warplug, but
Speaker:another version of the Warplug. So you think of all the investment from
Speaker:marketing, from sales, from procurement, that goes into this one
Speaker:tiny little product, it's crazy. I know. Fisher
Speaker:now, not just that wall plug in shot, but all
Speaker:the ones that we do, 10 million plugs a day are sold.
Speaker:Yeah. Somebody's putting stuff up. Yeah. And
Speaker:Maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got a lot
Speaker:of wall plugs, a lot of duo powers in the studio as a
Speaker:result of a lot of the campaigns and stuff that we've done and it's nice
Speaker:to have. In
Speaker:terms of Fisher as a brand, in terms of
Speaker:where the
Speaker:products positioned and the brands positioned, Can you
Speaker:give us an insight into kind of like where they are? I mean, straight
Speaker:off the bat, what do you think people think of Fisher
Speaker:So we kind of went through a big change like five or
Speaker:six years ago. We called it like a corporate design
Speaker:refresh or a brand refresh, but it
Speaker:wasn't really that. It was more like a repositioning or
Speaker:repositioning statement from everybody within the group. So
Speaker:when I first joined Fisher, And I think up until probably like five
Speaker:or six years ago, we were very much like a technical business that engineers
Speaker:would know or installers would know, but we weren't, a
Speaker:DIY user wouldn't know Fisher. We weren't a consumer-focused brand.
Speaker:We're still not anywhere near a consumer brand,
Speaker:but we were never focused on being that. And there
Speaker:were some really simple changes that happened over the space of a year
Speaker:that really changed the aspect of Fisher and how it related with the customer. So
Speaker:the first one was we changed our logo. So not as drastic
Speaker:as like the crap that Jaguar are doing right now, like making their
Speaker:brand look like a toy car. Nevermind. So
Speaker:before the Fisher logo was as it is now. but
Speaker:with innovative solutions underneath, which kind of means nothing to nobody, right?
Speaker:It's not making a statement to anybody, unless you're an engineer, unless you're
Speaker:invested in R&D at Fisher, it didn't mean anything to
Speaker:anybody. So we dropped that, cleaned up the logo, created
Speaker:what we call at Fisher the brand box. So standard Pantone color
Speaker:for Fisher that has been from the very, very start. Don't ask me to quote
Speaker:Or the hex code? You know the hex code, don't
Speaker:EA2227. My boy knows his
Speaker:I should have asked that before I came on the podcast. Like, quickly ring the marketing team.
Speaker:Like, what's the Pantone colour? What's the hex code? I'm
Speaker:No, but yeah, so we created this really simple brand box where the
Speaker:logo sits, really proud, like really visible. And
Speaker:then I think that's what that allowed Fisher as a brand to
Speaker:do is completely change the way we present our product in
Speaker:our packaging. Yes. So I think a big part of marketing that is
Speaker:And that's like, even if it's a tangible or a non tangible
Speaker:product, people don't pay enough attention to packaging. You
Speaker:can spend thousands on marketing, even millions
Speaker:if you're a big brand of marketing, and if your packaging looks toss, people
Speaker:aren't gonna relate to it once they've seen your content, once they've seen your advertising. If
Speaker:you forget about the packaging side of marketing, then that's
Speaker:your conversion area, right? That's your marketing to sales side.
Speaker:And if you're not hitting that, or if you're not focusing
Speaker:on the right consumer base, people aren't gonna pick it up. Same
Speaker:with a website. If you've got a great product, If you're marketing, if
Speaker:you're like broadcast marketing or you're advertising is on point, you
Speaker:It's graphic. It's a break in the funnel, right? Yeah.
Speaker:It's massive, isn't it? You see, especially in DIY, more
Speaker:so than in any other industry, where you've got people who
Speaker:are probably less educated, perhaps less educated. in
Speaker:what all these products do. Perhaps anytime they come to a
Speaker:new project, they're introduced to brand new products that they don't have any sort
Speaker:of prior knowledge to. They're going to go based on price and look
Speaker:Big problem in construction price. It's awful
Speaker:the amount of just selling on price goes on in construction. The
Speaker:only industry where people still buy the cheapest thing. Yes.
Speaker:Would you ever buy the cheapest shoes? Absolutely not. Would you buy like two
Speaker:pound flip flops or would you buy 30 quid, 40 quid, 50 quid,
Speaker:You always go for kind of middle ground, don't you? Yeah,
Speaker:it depends on your sort of thought process, but I
Speaker:sort of probably position myself sort of middle to high end
Speaker:on most things. Like I sort of like, okay, I don't want to
Speaker:have like the cheapest thing, unless it's like very specific stuff.
Speaker:Yeah, that's my thing. But people in construction don't have that. psychological
Speaker:It's all about the bottom line. Yeah, it's such a struggle to
Speaker:get to that point where people now believe, okay, this product is
Speaker:actually worth 50% more, 20% more. But packaging can do that. Packaging
Speaker:can really help you increase
Speaker:your product margins. Because if it's believable, if it's on brand, if
Speaker:it's hitting the right consumer segment, then it helps. But
Speaker:what that kind of centralized change allowed us to do in the UK
Speaker:was to completely kind of reposition Fisher's
Speaker:direction into the marketplace. So like I was saying before, we're very much a
Speaker:technical brand, same in the UK, selling to engineers,
Speaker:selling to installers, didn't really care about trade, didn't really care about DIY. I
Speaker:say that, I wasn't at Fisher, so I don't know. But I think when
Speaker:I joined, that was kind of the ethos of the business. But what
Speaker:kind of simplification of the brand, the design, the
Speaker:evolution of the packaging kind of made me think
Speaker:was, okay, so we've got these building
Speaker:blocks now. Let's focus on trade. Let's reposition where
Speaker:Fisher stands within the construction sector. And
Speaker:let's go to these markets because we've got a good looking brand.
Speaker:We've now got good looking packaging. Why don't we start marketing to
Speaker:these people? Why don't we try and get them to believe
Speaker:in Fisher, or at least know about Fisher and know what we're about? And
Speaker:that's really kind of what we've been doing for a good five or
Speaker:six years now, just banging that drum. Like we are a trade
Speaker:brand. We are,
Speaker:we are still a technical brand as well. And we are, we are a DIY brand, but
Speaker:behind all this is kind of like one core positioning
Speaker:statement. And it's not like, I think a
Speaker:lot of marketers do this, but don't realize they're doing it. It's not a
Speaker:secret positioning statement. It's not like kind of, marketing voodoo that
Speaker:nobody knows about and you finally find it. I think people do it or
Speaker:they know what their positioning statement is but we changed our
Speaker:positioning statement We still, the messaging that
Speaker:we use is still different per channel, like it always should be, because you'll never
Speaker:be saying the same message to the same people.
Speaker:But behind it all is like trusted in construction. And
Speaker:through everything that we do in our broadcast media, in
Speaker:our advertising, even through to like our PR
Speaker:and white papers, it's always got to kind of in one way think
Speaker:back to, okay, this is a trusted brand. These guys have been in the construction industry
Speaker:for 70 plus years and know what they're talking about. And if it
Speaker:doesn't, then it's not usable, it's
Speaker:pointless. Why are you spending all this time
Speaker:and money trying to reposition your brand to this position statement, but
Speaker:in your advertising, you're not saying those words. You're not
Speaker:making the consumer think that. And that really helped us kind
Speaker:of bring us back in line with the trade sector, not
Speaker:as much with the DIY sector, but we're pushing that. We're still going,
Speaker:but there's a lot of DIY brands out there. Have a heads up
Speaker:I mean, that's the thing with DIY. So
Speaker:there's this. So we, you know, we're heavily invested
Speaker:in Fisher's marketing and brand positioning. And now we
Speaker:tailor the content and social media marketing towards that
Speaker:brand position. So, you know, our
Speaker:big thing with installers, tradespeople is
Speaker:we're looking for those people who care about
Speaker:longevity, care about doing a good job. The
Speaker:kind of guys and girls that have got some of the best tools, therefore they
Speaker:use the best consumable products, like a wall plug,
Speaker:a screw, whatever. They want to make sure that if they put something in,
Speaker:it's well secured, because first of all,
Speaker:they want to do a good job. They care about that kind of stuff. That's part of their values. But also, they
Speaker:don't want to get called back. If they're an actual self-employed tradesperson, and
Speaker:they put up, I don't know, 500 quid's worth of
Speaker:radiator, they want to make sure that radiator stays on the wall, regardless of what's going
Speaker:That's kind of like the key value proposition that you just hit, but it's
Speaker:still so hard to get the consumer to think like that. Oh,
Speaker:your wall plugs are twice the price of a standard wall plug.
Speaker:It's a couple of quid. And there was always that thing that
Speaker:we struggled with early on. We didn't
Speaker:struggle with that. I think it's actually OK. But the thing that came up
Speaker:a lot was I know Fisher, when we started when we as dissidents
Speaker:started to promote that we were working with Fisher, we were telling our trades sort
Speaker:of friends, they're like, yeah, Fisher are good. They're really good, but
Speaker:they're too expensive. Yeah, they're good, very expensive. I'm like, okay,
Speaker:but there's got to be a way here. That's like, everyone
Speaker:knows that Fisher are the best, or, you know, or
Speaker:one of the best or whatever. Real, real high quality. There's
Speaker:always that but. I'm like, well, if
Speaker:you do that thing, like, Dark Minds are one of the nicest boots you can
Speaker:get, but they're expensive. You know what I mean? People still buy them. People still
Speaker:buy them, you know what I mean? Because they are the boot to get, for the most part.
Speaker:So it's not a far cry from, you know, going from, it's
Speaker:not too expensive. Expensive, because expensive means quality, right? So
Speaker:it's positioning your brand in a way that
Speaker:exudes quality. But the reason why I was getting
Speaker:at that was, do DIYers care
Speaker:about price? Because a lot of time, they're not consuming a product on
Speaker:the level that perhaps a tradesperson is or an installer. So
Speaker:my thought has always been, are they an easier market? Because
Speaker:they're kind of looking for, good packaging essentially.
Speaker:I imagine perhaps a DIYer is going into
Speaker:buying some wall plugs without a great deal of industry knowledge and prior
Speaker:sort of interaction with all of these different brands that are
Speaker:to the other literatures going on that looks fancy I'll
Speaker:get that because it's because it's five quid there's definitely
Speaker:an element of that I think I think packaging cells in DIY but
Speaker:also like consistency cells in DIY yes so
Speaker:like if there's Consistency sells in all marketplaces,
Speaker:and it's kind of one thing that every brand should always follow. Be
Speaker:consistent in your messaging, but even more so in DIY.
Speaker:And it's through the whole scope of marketing practices. If
Speaker:you look at some big DIY brands, they've been there selling
Speaker:the same product in the same place in the store with the same
Speaker:packaging for five, 10 years. And that
Speaker:helps just to breed the trust. There might not even be a position, a
Speaker:certain message that they're trying to get across to a DIY user, it's
Speaker:in good packaging, it's in a decent place within the
Speaker:store, so it's that kind of like panic buy, oh, I need these
Speaker:items, I'll just pick these. But price doesn't come into it at
Speaker:all, I don't think, because if you think of how a
Speaker:DIY customer consumes product, they'll consume product
Speaker:in very minor quantities. So you're talking like packs
Speaker:of four, packs of eight, because they buy enough to do that job right. So
Speaker:you see the differentiation of price between
Speaker:a pack of four, say, let's use a great brand
Speaker:example, 3M and Command. So you can pick that
Speaker:up in any DIY store, right? Yeah. And
Speaker:they've done a great job at marketing to the consumer because people, everybody
Speaker:knows Command, right? Yeah, exactly. It's the one thing that everybody knows. And it
Speaker:works well as well. But they're always in the same place in store, packaging always
Speaker:the same. Their advertising is always the same. It's
Speaker:very clean. It's very kind of, it's not subtle at
Speaker:all. It's like, use this product to stick up this picture frame,
Speaker:but it doesn't need to be subtle, right? It's not trying to make it look cool. It's trying to
Speaker:It's almost like one step up from like JML, isn't it? I've always found like,
Speaker:No, no, exactly. They've got this market where they've got this thing
Speaker:that works incredibly well. And they've gone
Speaker:a step further than JML in terms of like, this is a really
Speaker:clever thing. Let me show you how it works without the JML
Speaker:kind of things, the TVs that are auto
Speaker:playing in shops. And
Speaker:you go, that's really innovative. Well done. I
Speaker:don't know how they did it, but they've done it. Same
Speaker:with Frogtape, right? I've always thought about Frogtape and things like
Speaker:that. I've never picked up a roll of Frogtape as
Speaker:someone who isn't at all handy and
Speaker:certainly not a tradesperson. But if I've needed something like masking
Speaker:I can put myself in the mindset of a DIY and go, that
Speaker:looks fun. But I've never looked
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. It's a second thought, isn't it? And then if you were
Speaker:to look at the price, like I was saying about command or even something
Speaker:like screws, price of 8 compared to the price of a box of 50 that
Speaker:a trader would buy. You're probably paying the same price but for in
Speaker:trade a much larger quantity but it's not in cool packaging
Speaker:or it's not in not in cool packaging sorry but it's not in like really DIY
Speaker:focused packaging. So yeah, if
Speaker:I look back now, probably like when we first launched Duopower,
Speaker:the best place to launch it would have been in DIY, because the
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, it looks cool, right? It's like two colors, it's got these little fins on
Speaker:it, it's got serrated edges, it's like perfect DIY product.
Speaker:But we started off with, and this kind of harps back
Speaker:to the consistency, of
Speaker:our brand, of our new brand position, let's say. We started
Speaker:off like advertising in trade, basically just pushing trade. This
Speaker:is where we saw the most kind of like capital gains for JuroPower.
Speaker:I mean, JuroLine in general, basically. So we just did it like,
Speaker:I think we've been pushing JuroLine now for like six years. Same
Speaker:messaging behind each single piece of advertising, same
Speaker:kind of layout, same kind of structure. Packaging's always been
Speaker:the same. The price has gone up and down depending on on market dependence. and
Speaker:what people are willing to pay. But it's been a hard slog
Speaker:for like five, six years pushing the same product,
Speaker:trying to find a new way to display the same messages
Speaker:to the consumer. But I think maybe like two or three
Speaker:years ago, it just switched, like the taps just started flowing. People
Speaker:were just, yeah, we love this product. We know this product. We've seen
Speaker:it everywhere. We've heard about it everywhere. I've never used it,
Speaker:but I'll use it now because I trust it. And it's that kind of consistent, kind
Speaker:of working off the positioning statement in the background, but it's the same messaging
Speaker:to the same consumer. They know where to find it. They know what the
Speaker:content is going to look like. They know what the performance advertising is like
Speaker:on like GA. They've seen it everywhere. So yeah, we'll buy it. Yeah.
Speaker:And it's all of a sudden like somebody switch. just
Speaker:It's great. All of a sudden Duraline is a
Speaker:It's our top performing product now. In terms of growth, in terms of value to the business,
Speaker:it is the top performing product group for Fisher UK, which
Speaker:is crazy. And it's such a simple
Speaker:Oh, yes, absolutely. I think the beauty
Speaker:of something like this is in the simplicity of
Speaker:how it works and what it does. And I think, again, although
Speaker:we've really, really pushed trades for the last
Speaker:three, four years or whatever, with DuoLine, and
Speaker:there's always been an element of DIY sort of attached to it, but it's never been a pure
Speaker:focus for us. Like, I don't want to get too heavy into a
Speaker:particular product that we all know doubt about in Dissident. It's
Speaker:quite perfectly positioned for DIY because it works, and
Speaker:it's a lot, it's really forgiving. You know what I mean? It's like, it's
Speaker:one of those kind of things. We speak to, again, I'm not a
Speaker:tradie. I'm not even really a DIYer. But
Speaker:you hear the kind of, the feedback and
Speaker:it's like, it just feels right. When you're driving a screw and
Speaker:it just feels right, you know when it's like, when it's been engaged
Speaker:and it's like. So I think you've been brainwashed by our
Speaker:Maybe, maybe. It's all the years of pushing it down.
Speaker:All of the influencers have started influencing me, I think that's what it is.
Speaker:I think maybe one reason why we haven't gone into, that
Speaker:heavily into DOIs, it's maybe like a problem of
Speaker:like background like, I know trade really well. Yes.
Speaker:I know the consumer base. I know the installers. So
Speaker:like because a lot of our marketing is kind of like gut marketing. So I know that's
Speaker:going to work. Let's try it. Let's look at the KPIs after but I know that's
Speaker:going to work. So you kind of like tend as
Speaker:a market manager to stick to the places that you know you're going to do
Speaker:well in. Yes. Because you've got a limited amount of resource, limited amount of
Speaker:budget. So where do you get the biggest bang for your buck? The place that you know. Yeah.
Speaker:And it's a failing but it's also a positive because you
Speaker:want to invest in somewhere where you're going to get your biggest ROI right. And
Speaker:Yeah, I think it definitely comes into it that you've got a lot more
Speaker:tradies buying a lot more products than you would perhaps DIYers. It's
Speaker:still a big market, DIY. Huge, yeah. But
Speaker:your tradies, they're knocking up bathrooms left,
Speaker:right, and center. They're putting in kitchens. They're going to need
Speaker:a lot of products compared to a DIYer. Um, but it's again,
Speaker:still, it's still a huge, uh, industry. And I'm kind of, I'm
Speaker:excited to tap into that. Uh, to the point where I was, I was saying the
Speaker:other day, I don't know, did I tell you about this? I've been thinking about like actually setting up like a
Speaker:DIY, like social account. And actually like from
Speaker:the point of view of like, I would like the, I, I, I'm not
Speaker:handy at all. I always feel like a fraud when I'm like, you
Speaker:know, working with all these more like construction brands and I'm
Speaker:not handy at all. Like sometimes I'll get in
Speaker:the marketing material and you can just tell I don't know how to hold a drill. But
Speaker:I thought about it the other day because I do like, we did a
Speaker:video with my daughter and it was installing a Duo Power
Speaker:and a Duo Tech. Duo Tech's my favorite Fisher product.
Speaker:We did two videos and actually one of them actually went
Speaker:out on Fisher Socials and I was like that was really
Speaker:cool. My daughter, this was a couple of years ago, she was
Speaker:really into it. She'd have been like five at the time I reckon, something
Speaker:like that. That's a cool concept, you
Speaker:know what I mean? Just like father learns DIY because
Speaker:he'd like to pass that kind of knowledge on to his daughter or something like that, but
Speaker:There's like a longevity feel to that, like passing on the
Speaker:But secretly, I've got to try and learn it myself. But
Speaker:I thought it'd be a good opportunity as well to like actually, you
Speaker:know, if there's a big push for DIY, like, then at
Speaker:the very least, I can talk about it a little bit. I've got some experience in DIY,
Speaker:Don't worry, I've worked in the industry for 14 years and still can't put a shelf on
Speaker:Anytime you do put a shelf and you look really angry when you do it from
Speaker:I'm dreading seeing this. I won't watch this podcast. I hate my
Speaker:You're so angry, yeah. But if you look at my daughter's face, if you
Speaker:go onto Fisher's socials, scroll back far enough, you will see
Speaker:a video of my daughter doing an install of,
Speaker:I think it's the Duotech, and she looks so angry
Speaker:when she's put in. Obviously, it's not just you. Yeah, maybe it's me. When
Speaker:she's driving the drill in through the plasterboard, she looks like she could kill
Speaker:I love it. So what's worked
Speaker:for Fisher? And then I think we could probably talk about
Speaker:the fact that Fisher is a global brand. They're
Speaker:massive. They started in Germany. And then
Speaker:so they've got all these different subsidiaries across
Speaker:the world, all these different countries that have their own sort of Fisher slice
Speaker:of the pie. What's worked specifically for
Speaker:Fisher UK? Well, I suppose over
Speaker:In terms of marketing or in terms of product marketing? In terms of marketing. I
Speaker:think it's just being UK centric. Yes,
Speaker:we have an international marketing team that produce a lot of assets for
Speaker:all the subsidiaries and they do a really good job. on
Speaker:providing the deliverables to us, but they're not always focused
Speaker:to individual marketplaces. So as you can imagine, big European
Speaker:business based in Germany, they're going to focus more on Central Europe. And
Speaker:that works for a lot of the subsidiaries in Central Europe because the content's really
Speaker:good. The assets are really crisp, clean. They deliver a
Speaker:The renders are cool as well. There's some great 3D
Speaker:stuff that you can only get from head office because they're developing the product,
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. And they work really well, and we use those in the UK.
Speaker:But what I think has worked for every subsidiary is the corporate design
Speaker:refresh, like what I was talking about before. So big, bold, red,
Speaker:big, bold logo, always stick to that. And I think every subsidiary
Speaker:now does stick to that. I think that's one core thing that has
Speaker:worked for all of the different countries, like stick to our brand
Speaker:architecture, basically. I say that
Speaker:and I realize that I'm wearing a t-shirt that doesn't stick to the brand architecture. That's
Speaker:Oh God, what a bit of spiel wearing this then. But
Speaker:yeah, sticking to the brand architecture really works because it's kind of like that
Speaker:unified front. People know when they see
Speaker:a brand box, when they see the logo, that that's Fisher, right? It's
Speaker:cool for any brand to do that across their kind
Speaker:of touch points in the marketing sphere. But what's worked for Fisher UK
Speaker:is being very UK-centric in our advertising and
Speaker:in our advertising concepts. We moved pretty
Speaker:much from when I first joined Fisher away from using
Speaker:a lot of the broadcast media stuff that came
Speaker:from centralized marketing because it just didn't suit our consumer. I
Speaker:think the UK are lucky because we have a
Speaker:very different consumer to any other European country.
Speaker:You can maybe align it to kind of like Australian or
Speaker:American construction workers as well or
Speaker:tradesmen, maybe Australian because we're a
Speaker:very close country anyway. But yeah, there's a huge
Speaker:difference between the way that kind of Europeans consume
Speaker:the content and what they want to see like clean, crisp, like really
Speaker:focused on product, really focused on installation. Don't need to
Speaker:make it look cool. Like they don't care if it's cool or not. They want to know, yes,
Speaker:this has been engineered perfectly and it will work in every situation. Whereas
Speaker:I think the UK consumer, they want to know it looks
Speaker:cool. They want to know, yeah, I'm buying this really cool product. Even
Speaker:if it's a fix-in, fix-ins aren't cool, but if it looks cool, yeah, I'm
Speaker:Fix-ins are cool, I think. Fix-ins are one of
Speaker:the cooler products in construction. But
Speaker:I think you're right. A lot of European content is
Speaker:They're in this perfect environment, and
Speaker:the models are pretty good looking, and everyone's pristine.
Speaker:All their clothes are pristine and branded and stuff like that. And
Speaker:then you get to the UK, and you still want to have an element of
Speaker:the protagonist, let's say, in a particular film, a tradesperson, a tradeswoman,
Speaker:a tradesman. um are still like you kind
Speaker:of still want them to be what what's the what's the word where it's
Speaker:like it's it's relatable but also you're
Speaker:looking to like attain it like i think it's realism though isn't
Speaker:producing a fairytale advert that doesn't mean anybody to anything is never
Speaker:And like you said before, I just I'm just thinking back to some of the content I've seen,
Speaker:like the construction worker on the site with all branded
Speaker:clothing from the brand that he's using. Is that ever gonna
Speaker:happen? Is that believable? No, it's not, is it? Unless
Speaker:maybe you're like a Milwaukee or something like that. Yeah, do some nice clothes and
Speaker:a proper fanboy, but you'll never get one person just wearing head to toe that
Speaker:one brand. So it just doesn't relate. And I think That
Speaker:is where our kind of concept for our
Speaker:advertising and kind of everything that we do in terms of marketing is, yeah,
Speaker:let's make it relatable. Let's understand who the guy or
Speaker:who the girl is buying this product and let's advertise to them. And
Speaker:let's make them kind of like easily think, oh
Speaker:I do stuff like that. I look like that. I want to work with that product. It's
Speaker:kind of making like that cognitive decision a lot quicker and
Speaker:a lot easier because it's relatable. They don't have to think, Oh,
Speaker:do I do stuff like that? Is that brand that I could use? No, it's
Speaker:there. That's me. That looks cool. Yeah, I'm gonna try it. Yeah. And
Speaker:I think through all of the the past like four or
Speaker:It's one of the I see when I speak to other
Speaker:other brands who have got their head office in especially Germany, but like just
Speaker:in general, like, like mainland Europe. This
Speaker:kind of thing of like, We'd love to work with you, but we
Speaker:got all our content from, from head office and yeah, it's
Speaker:really hard for me to say, but yeah, it doesn't look right over here.
Speaker:It's great for them. Um, and, and some of
Speaker:it's, some of it's really good, but a lot of it, you just sort of think doesn't
Speaker:translate, doesn't translate well to the UK translator translates really
Speaker:well to all of the other countries that you're, you know, you in Europe.
Speaker:Which is probably the smallest market typically. And
Speaker:it's really it's a tough sell to
Speaker:these brands that we're looking to work with. Just like saying you
Speaker:know we don't have any sort of resource to
Speaker:do anything in terms of like localized content. But
Speaker:all their content is foreign. And I'm just I think I
Speaker:wonder like for these especially like things like clothing brands and
Speaker:some of the like the sexier products like the power tools like if
Speaker:they did actually put like a little bit more budget into the localized content
Speaker:that's like more relevant not just influences but like proper
Speaker:media content yeah whether it'd be more successful over here
Speaker:I think I think it definitely would like you even like look at some of the
Speaker:kind of centralized marketing well, they'll still produce localized
Speaker:content for each market. Yes. And
Speaker:you kind of think of some of the bad ones, you kind of think
Speaker:of some of the smaller like cleaning product brands, and you you'll know
Speaker:the ones I mean about like, you you watch the advert, it's a mom and
Speaker:a child like cleaning a window, but it's so obviously overdubbed from
Speaker:like a Spanish ad. Yeah, you can really tell that then you go on
Speaker:holiday to Spain, you see that advert, you go, Oh, that's the
Speaker:original. So there's a good, there's a good way
Speaker:of doing it. And there's a bad way of doing it. I think the big consumer brands, okay, never
Speaker:worked for one, but you see the different advertising types in every single country.
Speaker:So you go on a holiday, you see a Kocad. Okay, it looks the same,
Speaker:it kind of has the same feeling as a Kocad in your own country, but it's slightly different
Speaker:because it's tailored to that market. Yes. Perfect marketing. Yeah. So
Speaker:why? Why can't construction brands
Speaker:do the same? Because you see a lot of good content, but it's not UK specific.
Speaker:And you can have such a bigger impact just changing some minute
Speaker:little things like the guy's dressed differently, he's a bit more rugged. The
Speaker:advertising copy itself looks a bit cooler, it speaks differently too. to
Speaker:the UK, it's not rocket science,
Speaker:No, you get the look right, you get the feel right, you get the
Speaker:messaging right. It's like three or four sort of core
Speaker:components that are specific to a
Speaker:You still speak for your brand, but just in a slightly different way to
Speaker:It's almost like a tonal change. It's
Speaker:just thinking like, Well, let's
Speaker:say we take a piece of marketing from
Speaker:Europe and you go, OK,
Speaker:the messaging's nice. What I want to do is
Speaker:stay along those lines of that message. We're just going to tweak it.
Speaker:And then the tone of the video or the still, we're
Speaker:going to tweak. We're going to make it a little bit more gritty, a little bit more rock and roll. We're going to make it a little bit
Speaker:more sexy for the
Speaker:I think that's what some of these decentralized brands are
Speaker:scared of. If we change our core imagery
Speaker:or core content delivery, it's not going to
Speaker:look like the brand anymore. But it is. It's just going to look like the brand
Speaker:in a different space. It's not going to change the
Speaker:ethos of your brand just by tweaking it. The messaging is still going
Speaker:to be there. What you're trying to tell the consumer is still there. It's
Speaker:I think there's going to be a lot of brands that are
Speaker:so tied into their brand guidelines and
Speaker:you must not tweak this. And I think in some circumstances, I
Speaker:can, I understand, I don't understand that thought process behind that.
Speaker:Cause you just like, uh, like you, when you see these brands that
Speaker:are like really inconsistent, not, not huge
Speaker:brands, obviously, but these guys that, you know, the mark, the website looks completely
Speaker:different to the imagery, the imagery is all over the place. There's socials that are a
Speaker:mess because it's just, there's no. consistent messaging
Speaker:and consistent look and feel, it just doesn't
Speaker:look right, doesn't resonate. So I get it, but I
Speaker:think for the UK especially, give them a bit of
Speaker:I think there's time and place for brand guidelines, like on
Speaker:any kind of corporate communication, delivery
Speaker:you need to follow corporate guidelines like to the T and
Speaker:we do it and okay it might not always look the prettiest it
Speaker:might not always be what we want but kind of when it's
Speaker:that corporate communication to a consumer to another business
Speaker:then I think yes that works because when you're
Speaker:when you're delivering that kind of pure information on a
Speaker:product or on a service that if all around
Speaker:the world, it looks exactly the same. And there's a lot of work gone into the background of
Speaker:it in terms of your typeface, in terms of your position of your
Speaker:brand logo. So it's all consistent. I think that works really well. I
Speaker:think when it comes to kind of like the more creative advertising, then
Speaker:No, no, yeah. I think that, yeah, there's certain elements
Speaker:that you think, well, that's got to stay consistent across the board. You're gonna
Speaker:get me in trouble with the brand police now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It
Speaker:wouldn't be the first time. No. What's
Speaker:the focus now for Fisher? As a
Speaker:marketer, as a sales manager, we're
Speaker:coming up to, I mean, this is going to age the podcast because this is probably going to come out
Speaker:next year. We've come up to the end of 2024. What's
Speaker:the focus now? Are you continuing along the same veins? Are you
Speaker:Yeah, I think one mistake, marketers
Speaker:and market managers make is changing too quickly. Yes.
Speaker:Like we're not a consumer brand yet. We don't own 100% of
Speaker:the market space. We're not fully integrated into trade yet.
Speaker:So why move away from it and start a different campaign and start a different like
Speaker:tact. We'll evolve from
Speaker:what we're doing for 2024 and for the past few years. But
Speaker:the messaging will be the same. We'll do it in a more creative way. We'll
Speaker:stick to kind of like the position that we've aligned ourselves to. I
Speaker:think there will be more avenues for Fisher into DIY. And
Speaker:I think that's going to be a big part of our
Speaker:sales and marketing directive for 2025. We miss
Speaker:out on this huge consumer segment that we do know
Speaker:how to market to. We have done in the past, we know how to
Speaker:sell product to them, but we just haven't put that resource into there. So
Speaker:I think that'll be a big part. And
Speaker:yeah, I think. I think moving to try
Speaker:and become more of a consumer brand as Fisher was kind of
Speaker:my end game at Fisher. If I can get Fisher
Speaker:to be a consumer brand and to be known by 100% of
Speaker:the market, yeah, that's me done. That's my marketing
Speaker:career sorted. I'm happy. We did, I think
Speaker:three or four years ago, we did a bit of international market research. We
Speaker:asked some key questions to every single, to a sample, sample
Speaker:consumers in every single country. And Fisher UK came
Speaker:out really bad. And this is like five or six years ago, let's say.
Speaker:So the unprompted, do you know who Fisher Fixins are? I
Speaker:think it's 14% came out. That's pretty terrible. I was
Speaker:shocked by that. I thought, oh, we're much bigger than that. But no. We
Speaker:kind of try and track this on like a yearly basis, but the last time I tracked it was
Speaker:the start of this year and a completely unsegmented
Speaker:sample of the UK population. So not in trade, not
Speaker:in DIY, just everybody just took a sample of that, put out
Speaker:Yeah, 50% of everybody in the UK know what Fisher Fixins are.
Speaker:Amazing. Unfortunately, it then went only 30% know
Speaker:a little problem that we might need to look at it as Fisher as a brand
Speaker:and kind of like our channel structure in terms of terms of sales, but
Speaker:still 50% unprompted, do you know Fisher Fixit? I think
Speaker:that's a great result in like five years. It's crazy
Speaker:that we've come so far in such a short space
Speaker:of time by focusing on the same thing. Yeah, it just hops back
Speaker:to consistency, Consistency breeds
Speaker:performance. It's relevant for, for everybody. Um, every
Speaker:marketer, like keep it consistent, like keep on going. And
Speaker:yeah, it's, uh, I think we, we, we need to get higher. It'd
Speaker:be good if it got to like the 70% and then got the usage
Speaker:usage percentages up. So there's a lot of those 50% that wouldn't use
Speaker:the product, but they're afraid of it. So it's kind of looking at those metrics
Speaker:now and kind of like trying to take those up next and yeah.
Speaker:Be interesting. If there is going to be more of a focus on a DIY audience,
Speaker:be interesting. Like
Speaker:I say, you've dabbled in that a little bit, but it's not been a core focus. It'll
Speaker:be interesting to see what the results are. Now that we've got
Speaker:trade, we've not got 100% of the market, but we've got
Speaker:a big, big chunk of the trade market. Does
Speaker:I think we've got that like, we've got that key metric now. So without marketing and
Speaker:DIY, we've got that kind of consumer awareness metric. So
Speaker:it'd be really interesting to see like, okay, let's do 30% of
Speaker:our marketing that we would have done to trade to DIY next year. Halfway through
Speaker:the year, review the metrics, see where we are. Yeah, that'd be cool. And
Speaker:I think that is for DIY, that is the metric you focus on.
Speaker:Do people know your product? If it's 100% yes,
Speaker:great, then you look at the conversion strategy. Then you think, okay, they know it,
Speaker:why aren't they buying it? So get that knowledge out there first, and
Speaker:It's almost like, you know, you speak to anybody that's,
Speaker:well, let's say DIYers, but it could just be anybody, like, have you heard of WD-40?
Speaker:You know, and it's like, it's such a well-known brand.
Speaker:I imagine a lot of people don't know what it's for in
Speaker:general. They assume you spray it on something and
Speaker:it stops creaks or whatever. They might not be super,
Speaker:super educated on what the brand is, but they know the brand. It's
Speaker:kind of like pushing into that. I did a bit of research into what the hell
Speaker:I think they were just around for like a hundred years. Is that what it is?
Speaker:No one else bothered to do anything close but you know if
Speaker:you can get if you can get to that level where it's just like... It's one of those products
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, it's mad. We were, who were
Speaker:we speaking to the other day? Loctite. And
Speaker:you know, it's like, if you've done anything with like bikes or
Speaker:cars, you know what Loctite are, what Loctite is. And
Speaker:I got like really nostalgic kind of looking at that. And I don't think, they're
Speaker:not a huge consumer brand, but like if you're a little bit into like
Speaker:engineering or mechanics and stuff, you know who they are. Or
Speaker:if you're into like maintaining bikes and stuff. But
Speaker:it's mad because their packaging, their look and feel
Speaker:has not changed for like 25 years or more, I
Speaker:don't know. But yeah, synonymous with
Speaker:I don't even know any competitors for WD-40. No. If I
Speaker:There will be tons of them, and they're just like scratching, trying
Speaker:The market manager's doing nothing. He's sat there like, yeah, I don't need to do anything
Speaker:That's what I want to be. I want to be that man. It's got superpower, isn't
Speaker:Yeah, it's done. It's a no-brainer to
Speaker:the whole industry. I wonder if there are, I'd be interested
Speaker:to hear if there's like, who are the competitors of
Speaker:WD40 and how do they try and compete? I'd
Speaker:love to get one of those guys in. Are there any particular channels,
Speaker:like going really nerdy into marketing now, any particular channels
Speaker:that Fisher are focusing on? Or sort
Speaker:of a different way of tackling that is, are there any particular channels
Speaker:that are working incredibly well for Fisher,
Speaker:in terms of like, you know, obviously social channels or PR,
Speaker:you know, whatever, any sort of marketing vehicles that are working particularly
Speaker:Yeah, so always for Fisher, Instagram's kind of been our
Speaker:go-to. We stepped away from Facebook quite a while ago,
Speaker:just to do with the complexity and the poor performance of the advertising spend,
Speaker:I think. You rarely hit the people that you want to on
Speaker:Facebook. But Instagram, it's a channel
Speaker:for trade for us. And it's solely focused on trade. There's kind
Speaker:of very little technical content. There's no content focused on
Speaker:engineers, but I like that about our Instagram channel. It is the channel
Speaker:for trade for Fisher. Where
Speaker:we have kind of developed more recently
Speaker:is putting a lot more money into performance marketing. So putting a lot more through
Speaker:Google ads and focusing on our SEO, which is then kind of trying
Speaker:to position a different sales
Speaker:channel official, so our kind of engineering side, a lot
Speaker:more differently because it doesn't hit as well on social channels. Or
Speaker:if it does, it's
Speaker:not particularly interesting unless you want to look and find it, which is where
Speaker:GA and SEO actually really work because people are looking for it
Speaker:and people are finding it, right? They're not just flicking through your socials and stop
Speaker:on a four hour talk about, I don't know,
Speaker:BSA 2022 or something like that. Nobody's flicking through Instagram
Speaker:and going, oh, there's a post on the Golden Thread, I'll stop and watch that. No,
Speaker:it's not happening. So that's kind of a more recent
Speaker:big push, like we've always worked with SEO and Google Ads,
Speaker:sorry. But yeah, it's been much more of a focus and
Speaker:it seems to be really kind of resonating with people who are looking
Speaker:for that particular kind of content. And especially within the engineering world,
Speaker:obviously they reviewed the report from Grenfell the other day
Speaker:and a lot of information came out from that. But one of the biggest kind
Speaker:of regulation changes has prompted us to really
Speaker:kind of hyper-invest really quickly and to pushing people
Speaker:to this. to this very long form, but very detailed content
Speaker:is the BSA 2022 in the golden thread, which is all about correct
Speaker:product, correct place, correct installation, not overturning specs. So
Speaker:that's been one area that's kind of still in development, but
Speaker:it's working really well because it's that information share, it's that knowledge share, it's
Speaker:positioning Fisher as an expert in this field, like we
Speaker:are, but we just don't shout about it. So I think that
Speaker:that's just going to grow and grow for all businesses. regulation is
Speaker:going to be huge moving forward so you're not going to be able to
Speaker:It's almost like a marketing or you know a
Speaker:USP for a lot of these brands isn't it you know like the the
Speaker:Grenfell stuff as tragic as it was has delivered
Speaker:for some brands who are able to get these certain
Speaker:certificates relating to like fire
Speaker:safety for instance, like all you do then is you just
Speaker:market the crap out of the fact that you've got that certificate. Our
Speaker:product is suitable in these types of situations. Check
Speaker:it out. And it's kind of like an easy sell because everyone's way
Speaker:too scared or it's just completely illegal to
Speaker:not specing products like that. So
Speaker:we work with quite a few brands that are just like, you
Speaker:just need to shout about this, it's an easy sell. All the other
Speaker:stuff's kind of like a moot point because there's only about three other companies
Speaker:that have this kind of certificate or whatever. I think that's
Speaker:really interesting. So Instagram, huge for the tradies.
Speaker:Facebook, not so much. Instagram,
Speaker:Yeah, then YouTube as well kind of never really been
Speaker:a huge focus for us because I don't
Speaker:know, I think you need to have a large following
Speaker:or be kind of a consumer brand to kind of drive
Speaker:that viewership. I think influencers do a great job because
Speaker:they create that buzz around themselves. But
Speaker:it's very hard to create that buzz around the brand unless you're Coca-Cola, Nike.
Speaker:People aren't going to automatically consume the content that
Speaker:you deliver unless they're interested in it. But it's
Speaker:now working to deliver that interest, to
Speaker:start building a base on YouTube, a base of kind of solid core fans,
Speaker:and then pushing it out to mass market and kind of focusing on the areas,
Speaker:on the reasons, sorry, why people consume content on YouTube. Long form
Speaker:specifically. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And kind of, What's
Speaker:the key points that we need to get across to kind of retain viewers
Speaker:and to increase our share of the watched hours?
Speaker:Because our share of watched hours is very low at the moment. Okay,
Speaker:when we push a video, yeah, it gets more watched hours, but that's not
Speaker:the metric you want to look at, right? It's like, okay,
Speaker:80% of your viewers watched 80% of your video. You don't want... 200,000 people
Speaker:watched one second. The hours might
Speaker:be great, but you've just spent that money for nobody to watch your video. So
Speaker:I think for 2025, it'd be really interesting to try and
Speaker:develop some content people actually want to consume and actually take
Speaker:something away with them. Like you were talking about earlier about learning DIY
Speaker:and then being able to pass it down. That's a really interesting concept. And I think maybe
Speaker:that's something at Fisher we can develop on like training people to
Speaker:use Fisher products obviously, but in
Speaker:different areas of this kind of day-to-day life. And we've done a few of
Speaker:those bits on YouTube already, which actually performed
Speaker:really well. But I don't think we kind of put it into an exciting kind
Speaker:of, we didn't serialize it. And I think that's one
Speaker:of the huge things about YouTube, serialization. You need to serialize your
Speaker:content. People need to expect another episode,
Speaker:another episode. installation on a weekly, monthly, two
Speaker:weekly, whatever basis. And then that's how you kind of start to build your
Speaker:viewers and build your engagement rate. And it
Speaker:just, it kind of just started like
Speaker:Half a year ago, a year ago, we started really focusing on what we were delivering
Speaker:on YouTube. Obviously, you've got to put advertising
Speaker:Yeah, especially when you've actually invested quite
Speaker:a lot of money into the content as a whole. If you're just filming all this stuff on
Speaker:your phone, You don't need to be doing stuff flat because you've
Speaker:not lost a ton of investment doing that. You've just lost time. Whereas if you're
Speaker:actually producing high production
Speaker:value content and you just let it go out organically, unless
Speaker:it's amazing. It's just not gonna
Speaker:get even then if even if it is amazing like it's you've
Speaker:got to build you got to build some consistency on
Speaker:YouTube it's interesting that because like if you think about coca-cola like I would never think
Speaker:about like going on to like coca-cola or Pepsi's YouTube, you
Speaker:know, I mean, you have to have a reason almost don't you know, and I think because because
Speaker:companies like Fisher fixings construction brands um they
Speaker:solve a problem they're not like a consumable that's just like nice to
Speaker:drink or whatever they're solving an actual problem then you can focus on the
Speaker:problems and you can educate and i think you know cocoa
Speaker:probably have do have a really good youtube i've just never thought to go on
Speaker:it but you think it's full of just their ads so people go to watch your ads I
Speaker:don't know. I would hope that the market is
Speaker:good enough that it would almost be like, who
Speaker:was it? I think it's Red Bull is a really classic example of like
Speaker:if their YouTube is full of stuff that's not related to their drink at all. It's
Speaker:Well, because they're doing an excellent job with all their like extreme sports,
Speaker:sports sponsorships. I think they also kind of Sponsor
Speaker:a German football team as well. So they're so diversified. It's crazy.
Speaker:Yeah, but for the most part that you know, all they have all their advertising
Speaker:all their marketing is is literally just entertainment for
Speaker:their target audience and they're just but they've become such a big brand
Speaker:that You just associate that kind of stuff with with
Speaker:with Red Bull You could totally do the same with any kind of construction brand
Speaker:couldn't you you can just go here's here's here's a
Speaker:series that Becomes very familiar could be a podcast could
Speaker:be whatever You just slap the name on there and it's just entertaining
Speaker:content or educational content for a particular audience
Speaker:I think that's the two segments in it. It's
Speaker:entertaining or educational and like YouTube is a
Speaker:new Google, right? You go onto, even though it's part of the same business, you
Speaker:go onto YouTube, you search what you would have searched in Google. So all
Speaker:the metrics are exactly the same as Google would be. And it's kind
Speaker:of delivering either those two segments that we just spoke about. And
Speaker:it's getting the balance right. You don't want to be too educational and people don't
Speaker:stay on your channel and watch your other videos. But also you don't want to
Speaker:be that company that just takes a piss all the time. It's just math. What I
Speaker:think would be interesting would to see how much influencers
Speaker:have to spend on YouTube advertising compared to brands. and
Speaker:what kind of the relation between okay we have to spend 50% less
Speaker:because we've developed this persona around our kind of
Speaker:YouTube channel and our own influencer team compared to what a
Speaker:It would be like the types of content as well that would make a big difference.
Speaker:The difference between what the content, the brand makes
Speaker:compared to the influencer will have a big impact on that. It's a
Speaker:tough one really, because when you think about, it's
Speaker:a bit like LinkedIn in that respect. You know, YouTube,
Speaker:if you follow a person, it's a bit like, you know, that kind of
Speaker:thing about the Richard Branson versus Virgin. Like you're more likely to follow Richard
Speaker:Branson than Virgin. So influencers content
Speaker:creators and stuff like this an individual that you happen to engage with then
Speaker:That's probably gonna be more successful than just a brand. Mm-hmm.
Speaker:I would say yeah, especially on things like YouTube if
Speaker:you do a hybrid where it's like You've the
Speaker:content is a particular individual But they're massively associated
Speaker:with a brand and their branding is all over everything you
Speaker:think of Oh Mark
Speaker:Tiff and Unilight or something like that. You associate Mark
Speaker:Tiff with Unilight. So any content that Mark Tiff makes is
Speaker:no stranger to promoting Unilight during his
Speaker:content and stuff like that. But essentially, because he's been so synonymous with it,
Speaker:I believe he's sponsored by Unilight. Don't quote me on that. You
Speaker:know, you, what you technically could do is you could create, you could find another
Speaker:marketer. If you could find another influencer like that, who's, um,
Speaker:you know, really engaged with your particular product and you could just go. make
Speaker:this, here's money, go and make this stuff and
Speaker:we're gonna slap our name on it. That would totally work on YouTube
Speaker:It's a rising influencer market now isn't it? It used to be you
Speaker:slap a celebrity face on a product and that association between
Speaker:that celebrity and that product sells it for you and every
Speaker:time you see that celebrity you think of Red Bull, you think of
Speaker:Nestle, you think of whatever it might be. Now it's you
Speaker:work with an influencer that influencer becomes synonymous with that
Speaker:brand and now they sell it for you. And that's, it's kind of
Speaker:just, it's gone huge. And it's really weird how people kind of have
Speaker:moved away from trusting celebrity endorsement and would much
Speaker:rather trust a real life person who's working with that brand, who
Speaker:uses it every day. And it's not just, oh, we know that
Speaker:Because the construction influencer marketing is very different
Speaker:to perhaps cosmetics, where you see typically
Speaker:it's female influencers and they're like, it's
Speaker:so blatant. The whole piece of
Speaker:the content was funded by this brand.
Speaker:and they make almost no effort to try
Speaker:and hide that but at the same time they kind of do so
Speaker:it becomes a bit fake and stuff like that whereas I think construction
Speaker:the guys who do it well It's long-term stuff, isn't it?
Speaker:We hear about it all the time on the podcast, that just
Speaker:shilling out one product, then a different product, then a different product, then a different product, and
Speaker:Yeah, we're back to that point where we said before, it's the realism. It's
Speaker:realistic. Okay, so I believe it. Like you say, just...
Speaker:okay i've been sent this i'm gonna try oh my god it's amazing yes i mean
Speaker:it was in that light bulb moment oh no yeah but you could you know i
Speaker:think there's this element of like i use this all the time this is really really
Speaker:good as opposed to like you could totally be the kind of person who's like fisher
Speaker:have sent me this thing or whoever have sent me this thing I
Speaker:have no idea what it's like, I'm gonna try it. That's kind of almost a
Speaker:little bit more authentic. It's the kind of the, join
Speaker:me as I do my such and such. Obviously I put my such and such thing
Speaker:on that's completely different to last week. You've just been paid
Speaker:for, and people can just see through it now, but I think actually
Speaker:construction influences are actually quite a lot more savvy. And
Speaker:Exactly. They don't really believe in the brand that this one support. I like, obviously
Speaker:I don't know any, but you could just get the impression that they don't believe in the
Speaker:brand that they're working with, or they don't, they wouldn't use it on a daily basis or
Speaker:they know they've just got a big payday. Whereas with, with the construction
Speaker:market and influences in particular, because they're using
Speaker:it, they're not going to rely on themselves to a brand that. they don't trust, they
Speaker:don't believe in. They wouldn't use. Whereas in
Speaker:Yeah, it's just shilling out. There are people in
Speaker:the construction industry that do just shill out for a payday.
Speaker:We know them, don't we, Key? You know what I mean? We're familiar. We don't mention
Speaker:Yeah. I say it all the time. I would be the worst
Speaker:influencer because I would shill out to every brand known to mankind. It's
Speaker:like as an agency, we're very much like that. Before
Speaker:we start working with a particular brand, we don't care if it works. We
Speaker:don't care if it's good, do we? You know what I mean? It's like you're paying as a service to
Speaker:market it. Influencers is a little bit different because you're paying
Speaker:them for their authenticity and the trust that
Speaker:their audience has with them. So they have to kind of Understand
Speaker:the product especially if it's new to them understand test it Let me see if it's any good
Speaker:because I don't want to wreck the trust that I have with with our audience We
Speaker:don't have an audience not much not much of an audience anyway And
Speaker:the our audience certainly doesn't care if we think a product's good
Speaker:or not because that's not what we're saying necessarily it's an interesting
Speaker:kind of difference between influences and and
Speaker:agencies where the classic
Speaker:example of an influence is working with a brand, they decide
Speaker:to not work with them anymore, next week you see them with the
Speaker:competitor brand and you think it's a
Speaker:bit nasty, their audience loses a bit of that trust and stuff like that.
Speaker:The influencer is selling their believability as a person, right? And you're selling
Speaker:your skills as an agency. Exactly. It's completely different.
Speaker:But yes, which means like, you know, I would hate to be an influencer from
Speaker:that perspective because I'd be like, I would be looking for who's paying us
Speaker:the most. Whereas those guys have to make that honest decision of
Speaker:just like, yes, I might get a better deal here. And
Speaker:I do like the product, but I like this product better. And
Speaker:It's got to be difficult because there's a shelf life to everybody in there, especially
Speaker:on social. So you've got to make that bang for the buck, but you've got to be believable at
Speaker:And most of these guys aren't full-time
Speaker:influencers anyway. So there's a little bit of flexibility, I think, in that most
Speaker:of them have got jobs anyway. which I
Speaker:think is cool. Typically we have this conversation with brands
Speaker:like Fisher, Stabil, Vera or
Speaker:Wera, that essentially they are not
Speaker:selling direct to consumer, they're selling to distributors. So they've got
Speaker:this balance of their
Speaker:end user, which they're kind of marketing, a lot of time they market their product to,
Speaker:and then they've got their actual buyer, which is the retail
Speaker:or the distributor or whatever. How do you guys sort of tackle, how
Speaker:do you specifically tackle that kind of mindset of almost like there's
Speaker:So this is quite simple, like we completely ignore it. Okay. Like
Speaker:half and back to when I first joined Fisher, all of our marketing
Speaker:was B2B. Okay. All what we did was deliverables for
Speaker:the distributor. Times change, things move
Speaker:on, marketing strategies change. Even back in my
Speaker:ITW days, it was just B2B marketing again. So
Speaker:very little focus on the actual end consumer. It's
Speaker:almost like saying, if it's in store, people will buy it. It's
Speaker:kind of that mentality, which doesn't work, especially in this day and age. People
Speaker:have choice, people have variation. So you need to pull that
Speaker:choice towards your own brand. So we kind
Speaker:of switched 100% from what we'd
Speaker:call push marketing or push campaigns, which was B2B,
Speaker:trying to push product into there, trying to force demand. from
Speaker:the distributor rather than now, which is much more pull
Speaker:market into pulling that demand from the end user into
Speaker:our distributors. And then that generates sales for us to
Speaker:the distributor. So it's a very kind of clean
Speaker:cut way to look at it because, okay, we still deliver
Speaker:literature and kind of stuff like that into our distribution network. Yeah,
Speaker:yeah. Okay. It's still placement marketing.
Speaker:It's still a big part of marketing, but it's kind of not, how
Speaker:we market the product anymore. They are kind of like tertiary marketing sectors
Speaker:that we still deliver, but don't focus on. Because
Speaker:at the end of the day, it's become harder and harder to convince
Speaker:a retailer to take your product if there's no demand for it. Because why
Speaker:would they? Because there's so much
Speaker:kind of, reflection of similar products in other brands
Speaker:that they can say, well, I already stock X, Y, and Z, so why would I stock a
Speaker:Exactly. I'm already getting sales on these. I've only got limited space in
Speaker:my stores to have an amount of products. Something's got
Speaker:So we completely switched off our B2B focus. I'm
Speaker:not saying that we don't care about it, but what we found was that, obviously,
Speaker:when we're doing our B2C marketing, that consumer or
Speaker:advertising to that consumer will still hit our distributors. They'll still see
Speaker:our advertising content. They'll still see what we're putting out on socials. They'll
Speaker:still see like our white papers. They'll still see our
Speaker:performance marketing for Google ads. They'll still see all of that. So
Speaker:it still encapsulates the B2B market, but it's not
Speaker:driven for them. It's not aimed at them. We're not trying to convert
Speaker:them. We're trying to convert the end consumer. And
Speaker:it works. Like we get, we've had kind of
Speaker:like, over the past
Speaker:few years, maybe like 20, 25% customer growth in
Speaker:terms of just pure numbers as in how many customers that we have. So
Speaker:people come in to Fisher and say, we want to buy your product because we
Speaker:know there's a demand for it, which is great. It's a shining light
Speaker:on the marketing that we're doing today. Inbound marketing. Yeah, I use that all the time when
Speaker:I have a review of the MDs. I've delivered this. Purely
Speaker:They're calling us. We're not having to call them. And that's all based on
Speaker:Yeah. And same with existing customers who we want to expand our product mix
Speaker:with. We don't market direct to them. Yes, we have deliverables for
Speaker:them, but we wait for that pull to come from the end user.
Speaker:And then you don't even need to sell the product then. No. Because they already
Speaker:want it. The demand's already there. Why waste your time on creating
Speaker:more demand from that distributor when it's already there? Exactly. You
Speaker:don't need to spend any resource on it. It's done. So yeah, completely
Speaker:upended our kind of way of thinking in terms
Speaker:of the marketing scope of what we did. We
Speaker:still do little bits like email marketing mainly goes to
Speaker:our distributor network, but it's
Speaker:not kind of focused, it's not resource heavy, it's this
Speaker:is us, this is our new product kind of thing, it's not. We
Speaker:don't really have any KPI driven marketing based on
Speaker:When you think about it from the distributor and the retailer perspective,
Speaker:all your marketing is generated towards getting them more sales. And
Speaker:so even before the product is launched in
Speaker:their stores. There's a higher demand for
Speaker:it. When it does go in, it generates sales for that particular business,
Speaker:which of course generates sales for the actual
Speaker:manufacturer, the Fisher Fixins. So it's
Speaker:great for them. Basically, they should do, but they don't have to do any
Speaker:I think that's kind of what made us think of this switch because
Speaker:we always used to think, oh yeah, okay, so our retailers are going
Speaker:to sell this product for us. Anybody that walks in is going to sell
Speaker:Fisher over somebody else. It doesn't happen in a retail environment. People
Speaker:pick up off the shelf what they want and take it to their tail. It's the same in
Speaker:any retail environment. Why would construction be different? Maybe when you
Speaker:get to the higher end, like technical specification and engineering work, yes, then
Speaker:it does get sold by other businesses and by other
Speaker:distributors. But when it's purely retail focused, it's never
Speaker:going to happen. So why don't we skip that side of the marketing? Do
Speaker:kind of the retailer's job for them as well, and just push the product to that consumer.
Speaker:Just find them on their phones. And then they go, oh, that's interesting. And
Speaker:it's a mixed bag of, I mean, we could talk a little bit before we
Speaker:finish off, because I feel like what what time we on key 117 you're joking
Speaker:me feels like two hours flown by that's the
Speaker:yeah maybe I'm still a bit poorly the Now
Speaker:I was going to talk about the mix of what
Speaker:we do in terms of the social and
Speaker:stuff, but I feel like we're at the point now where we
Speaker:can start thinking about finishing
Speaker:off the episode. This is going to have to get edited out by the way because I'm just not
Speaker:making any sense. It's all right, I'm writing it down. Thank you. What
Speaker:about So we've talked
Speaker:a little bit about, you know, there's obviously influencer marketing. It's
Speaker:getting bigger. This year was a big push on
Speaker:that in terms of the industry as a whole. I think next year it's gonna be even bigger.
Speaker:But I think people are gonna be a little bit more careful. I think brands are gonna be a little bit more
Speaker:careful next year with the influencers because I think
Speaker:there was a big surge of them this year, as in
Speaker:Yeah, I think also, like, I think construction has
Speaker:had a pretty tough year this year. And I challenge
Speaker:any brand into construction to say, yeah, we've had a storming year and
Speaker:we're 30% up year. I don't think it's happened. Just because of the way that
Speaker:the economy is driven this
Speaker:year and the way that construction kind of output has gone this year. I think
Speaker:a lot of brands, including Fisher, will be a lot more careful with the resource that
Speaker:we have. And that doesn't mean spend is going to go down and things like
Speaker:that. I think it means that people look more closely
Speaker:at the KPIs that they achieve with each piece of content, with
Speaker:each advertising campaign, and that includes influencers. I've
Speaker:never been one for kind of like data-driven marketing. I
Speaker:like KPIs as an afterthought to kind of prove that this is right, this
Speaker:is wrong. and then you kind of readjust and go again. I
Speaker:don't like looking at KPIs to then deliver a creative. I think that's
Speaker:kind of the wrong way around. And it's
Speaker:not the fun way around either. Yeah, who wants to live like that? Yeah, come up
Speaker:with a great ideas first, spend a load of money on it,
Speaker:make some great content that you think is amazing, and then look if it's done well. Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, it might be a bit counterintuitive, but. it's
Speaker:fun in it. If you don't have fun in life, it comes across in what
Speaker:I think you've got to be, it's all about being careful about how you
Speaker:manage your budget. If you've got a tiny budget and you can only afford one thing, you
Speaker:have to be very careful about what that one thing is. If you can use
Speaker:that budget more efficiently, spread it across multiple different campaigns and,
Speaker:you know, There's luxury to having a bigger budget, obviously. There
Speaker:are certain things that you can go, this isn't going to generate tons
Speaker:and tons of interest, but it is going to add to our brand positioning of
Speaker:being more integrated
Speaker:and more aligned with, let's say,
Speaker:the construction worker, the tradesperson. So we're going to
Speaker:do a load of thought leadership pieces or something around,
Speaker:I don't know, leather behind the trade stuff that we did, which,
Speaker:you know, for the most part doesn't sell Fisher products at all. They're just heroes, heroes
Speaker:construction. It was like a fun project that we wanted to do, but we
Speaker:But it's that position, back to that positioning statement, that basically feeds
Speaker:off that core positioning statement. And that's, that's the way
Speaker:that we got it across in that kind of certain segment of our
Speaker:advertising. I think It
Speaker:might go that a lot of brands might go the way that their market has to prove its worth.
Speaker:Like we and ROI. I hate the word ROI.
Speaker:Like why people ask for. I know why they ask for ROI. But I bloody
Speaker:fucking hate the term. I hate calculating it. Because a lot of
Speaker:time ROI is. Yeah, I think it might do about this much a
Speaker:Yeah, who knows? Especially with your sort of strategy
Speaker:of like the B2B marketing basically is for the most part, especially the digital
Speaker:side is turned off. You know what I mean? I'm going straight to the consumers. That's
Speaker:a way, it's a more long-winded process, but I would say it's a
Speaker:more, it's going to
Speaker:be a more successful process really long term. But How
Speaker:the hell do you get the data for that? You haven't got
Speaker:I'd love to have it. And then it'd make my job a lot easier when I'm reporting
Speaker:Yeah, and also all of the Google Analytics, all that kind of thing, all the
Speaker:CRM, you haven't got access to that. So you
Speaker:Yeah, you can only go off sales data, feel, and then if you want to spend
Speaker:money doing market research, that then takes away core
Speaker:budget from what you want to do in the creative space, but you probably will
Speaker:need to do it because somebody's going to want to know what bang
Speaker:they got for their buck, right? And the only way to do it then is market research. So
Speaker:yeah, I think that could take a much bigger role because
Speaker:people need to do market research to prove the worth of marketing. It's
Speaker:a great place to be in if you're a market research company, but in terms of
Speaker:like creative marketing, It's kind of like a step backwards a little bit.
Speaker:Hopefully. Future of construction, what
Speaker:are you thinking? Marketing specifically. We've
Speaker:seen this boom of social media. Still brands that
Speaker:are not really taking content and social media seriously, or
Speaker:they're just starting to have a little play with this. I
Speaker:think we're on some brands that still haven't really got a website. Properly, you
Speaker:know, there's a lot of brands that still don't have a website It's
Speaker:like, you know, you know, we always joke that Construction
Speaker:marketing is about 10 years in the past for a lot. Yeah as
Speaker:an average Predictions for
Speaker:the next couple of years of construction marketing what like what which
Speaker:think kind of the power of your website is going to become key, especially with
Speaker:the increase in regulation within the industry, not
Speaker:just on the technical side, kind of on like the trade side as well. So
Speaker:where you can deliver
Speaker:information that is relevant to that regulation change
Speaker:or the increase of increase
Speaker:of eyeballs on what you're actually doing, then that's going to, I think that's
Speaker:going to massively increase. So people who don't have websites or don't have
Speaker:really accessible content on their websites really need to up their game. Because
Speaker:if you can't find that information, like, and if you're working on
Speaker:a high rise building, for example, and you can't find information from the manufacturer that
Speaker:you need, you get to another manufacturer. Yes, you go to another construction
Speaker:company. So I think that's a huge part of construction. Like
Speaker:you say, 10 years behind, people have awful websites still. People have
Speaker:one page websites that I know have said under construction
Speaker:for the past five years. How long are you taking? Yeah, so
Speaker:I feel like the performance and the UX of your website needs
Speaker:to be spot on. And Fisher's isn't. We still need to do a lot of
Speaker:work. So I'm not even saying that our website is a perfect example but
Speaker:we're getting there and 2025 will be okay we need to be
Speaker:there we need to be the top of the game especially when
Speaker:it comes to like delivering certification and regulation changes yeah
Speaker:being that thought leader being that occupying that space as an expert again um
Speaker:And then I kind of see, because there's been such a huge growth
Speaker:of influencer marketing, like you were just previously saying, I
Speaker:can see it kind of declining or teetering off. Because the more people
Speaker:that occupy the space, the less believable it becomes. I think
Speaker:there'll be a core demand for certain influencers that
Speaker:you know are kind of like, OK, I believe them. They use their
Speaker:products. The genuine article. Yeah, they are the real deal. Whereas
Speaker:all the other ones who kind of like, try and occupy the
Speaker:space, but they do a little bit here, do a little bit for that brand, kind of
Speaker:flip between what they actually, not
Speaker:what they advertise, but what they physically do as a
Speaker:job. Yes. So like, I think it's a much more believable where you have
Speaker:a guy who's an electrician, and on his Instagram, or
Speaker:wherever he posts his content, that's all he does. Always
Speaker:a plumber, and that's all he does. Not one day I'm a plumber. Next
Speaker:day, I'm a kitchen cabinet fitter. Next day, I'm building a wall. That
Speaker:doesn't work. OK, there are general trades people, but in terms of
Speaker:the believability in pushing a product and pushing yourself,
Speaker:I think you'll be much more focused on sector or application rather
Speaker:than... We do everything for everybody and
Speaker:I think there'll be a push as well for long form content. I think YouTube,
Speaker:they've got more of a pull on the content creators at the
Speaker:moment because I think it's getting saturated on Instagram, TikTok and
Speaker:stuff like that. YouTube still, I feel a little bit untapped really
Speaker:as a platform because the barrier for
Speaker:entry is quite high and the fact that you've got to
Speaker:If you don't know your stuff and you're doing a 60 minute video, you're
Speaker:kind of fucked right now. What are you going to talk about for an hour if
Speaker:Because there's a lot of gimmicks out there on Instagram and TikTok where people
Speaker:just kind of show you the product and then it's like, come over here and the
Speaker:camera moves. It's like everybody's doing it. Whereas YouTube can be a little bit
Speaker:more, you can be a little bit more individual. And
Speaker:I quite like that, but also from an authenticity point of view, like
Speaker:the YouTubers of, you know, I'm a YouTube guy, every single night,
Speaker:YouTube on the telly. Um, and, uh,
Speaker:I've got certain accounts that I watch, especially in video production and photography and
Speaker:stuff where if they tell me a product is good, I believe them because
Speaker:I've watched them for years and they've showed up in a
Speaker:long form, 10 minute, 20 minute videos talking about how
Speaker:they did this or how they did that. I'm gonna believe them when they say this
Speaker:products actually decent. Yeah, I was somebody on Instagram. I don't know.
Speaker:I don't know I just I feel like long long form is you just get you get
Speaker:a little bit more of a relationship built So I I think that's gonna happen I'm
Speaker:here for it. I quite like the idea of long form and it's from a brand's point of view I quite
Speaker:like the idea of going I would like to be on your long form content,
Speaker:please I think it's the demographic that YouTube pulls
Speaker:It's like probably that kind of slightly older, like
Speaker:outside of the teens, we're looking for the kind of content that you're consuming anyway. People
Speaker:who have got a longer attention span and who are willing to give that
Speaker:kind of professional content. more than
Speaker:20% of the video's chance. Whereas we all know Instagram, scroll,
Speaker:scroll, scroll, scroll, maybe watch a reel for 30 seconds, not
Speaker:really consume the content fully and
Speaker:not really kind of like think about what this person's saying. Oh, yeah, that looks cool.
Speaker:Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Whereas YouTube, I think that the
Speaker:way that you consume it in kind of your head is much different. You go looking
Speaker:for that kind of piece of factual evidence, or the
Speaker:entertainment side, and then that's kind of a different side of the coin. But
Speaker:yeah, you go looking for professionalism and kind of somebody to deliver you
Speaker:something that you need, but you still want to be 100% believable,
Speaker:You're a child, Keelen. What's your
Speaker:YouTube workflow? What are you doing on
Speaker:How are you consuming YouTube? I
Speaker:just watch funny stuff, really. Funny stuff? Not funny, but not
Speaker:Into your shorts and stuff like that, is that a thing? Nah. Where
Speaker:do you consume it as well? Like what platforms in terms of like computer,
Speaker:phone, TV? Oh, I'm a TV guy, yeah. TV guy, right. That's
Speaker:interesting. So long form, entertaining, and
Speaker:you're like 12. So that's an interesting demographic. And
Speaker:I'm the same. I'm on my TV. I'm on my Google TV,
Speaker:my 70 inch or whatever in the living room,
Speaker:a ridiculously big TV. And I'm there, I'm looking
Speaker:for the recommended and my subscriptions and I'm
Speaker:catching up on the stuff that my guys that I've subscribed to.
Speaker:I like raw stuff at the minute. Like
Speaker:stuff that's just like, it's not really like produced
Speaker:that highly, it's just like this guy being genuinely him.
Speaker:It's interesting and again I'm here for that as well because from
Speaker:a point of view of like if I was to be a content creator I would like the
Speaker:idea of not having to edit a great deal. But also
Speaker:from the point of view of the brand stuff that still needs to be separated from
Speaker:things like influencer content and stuff like that. It's still got to
Speaker:be glossy. I think, I think there's, there is a space for having
Speaker:some brands deliver raw content, but
Speaker:not at the expense of their brand positioning. You know what I mean? Which is
Speaker:why TikTok's a little bit of like a gray area for a lot of brands because
Speaker:they're like, Oh, it needs to be raw. It needs to be on my, doesn't. I
Speaker:don't think it can be. But
Speaker:polished content like the stuff that Dissident does or whatever, which
Speaker:is like, you know, don't get me wrong, it's not like a TV ad. It's just
Speaker:a little bit more production value. It
Speaker:can still work on TikTok. Yes, it might not work as well as
Speaker:an individual who produces raw content. But
Speaker:that's not what the brand is. And I think you can damage a brand by trying to, trying
Speaker:Yeah, I think that's it. Like, I remember when we first
Speaker:started jumping every single social media trend going, yeah, no matter what
Speaker:it does to the brand, no matter what it does to your, your CD, completely
Speaker:trick your CD out. Yeah, don't go on. We'll copy this. Oh,
Speaker:there was a really shit trend. It was like a little stick
Speaker:I hated that. We did something for Fisher from it. It wasn't the
Speaker:current social media. media manager who's doing it, it was one that's
Speaker:left a long time ago. I looked at it, I was like, what the fuck is this
Speaker:brand are we doing? Bob likes Fisher, you like Bob. Fuck
Speaker:Oh yeah, we tried them. I
Speaker:don't think you were a fan of that and neither was I. We
Speaker:were trying, we were having a play with stuff like that. It
Speaker:Oh yeah, because everybody jumped on that as well. There's a
Speaker:time and a place for following trend, but I don't think it's for brands.
Speaker:No. Like sometimes some brands do it really well, but you've got
Speaker:to be really clever if you're going to jump on a trend. Yes. And kind of
Speaker:maybe even counter-intuitively go against the trend, just
Speaker:to kind of occupy the opposite space. But not
Speaker:enough people do it well enough. No. And it
Speaker:just looks shit. let's all do the same thing
Speaker:at the same time, and all reach for the same kind of grab of
Speaker:Yeah, and this is the thing, if you're not separating yourself in
Speaker:the market, and in terms of your actual material, the
Speaker:content you put out, what's the point? It's a throwaway piece of
Speaker:content, unless it's doing something that's wildly interesting,
Speaker:It's like people following sporting events and
Speaker:then their feed becomes all about that
Speaker:sporting event. When the brand's got nothing to do with sport. But
Speaker:why? It's not getting you a new consumer segment because
Speaker:they're not looking at your brand for content about football or
Speaker:content about the rugby. That's not why they're looking at your brand,
Speaker:but you're trying to occupy the space of the brand that is. So it's not
Speaker:gonna do anything for you. It's just, again, like wasted resource.
Speaker:At Fisher, we try and stay away from any trends and
Speaker:kind of following any kind of like cultural sporting events.
Speaker:Although we did have a, we had a laugh at a meeting,
Speaker:didn't we, where I pitched an idea where we
Speaker:get a load of like non-related influencers and
Speaker:we put a load of budget towards that. and like sponsoring sporting events
Speaker:That's counter-intuitive marketing. That's like occupying the space and
Speaker:just doing something really creative and funny with it. Like why
Speaker:the fuck is this footballer holding up a massive duopower or
Speaker:We were looking at like show jumping or something like that or like dressage. Like
Speaker:Fisher Fixings presents dressage. Eh?
Speaker:And then you get these beauty influencers who have got
Speaker:no experience in DIY perhaps and they're just like this is the new superpower. But
Speaker:I love that. I love that because it is that counterintuitive marketing
Speaker:that people make people like sit up and think, yeah, this is hilarious. But
Speaker:It's going to be one of those things where you'd have to do it perfectly. Yeah, I
Speaker:think that's why we've not done it. It's like it would be so much resource. And if
Speaker:It'd be fun to do, but it'd be, you know, it's... And you know what, I'm
Speaker:stealing this off a podcast that I listened to the other day, but a brand that have
Speaker:done it really well is Yorkshire Tea. Oh yeah? If you watch any
Speaker:of the Yorkshire Tea adverts, they hire, like, really, like, high-end
Speaker:celebrities and put them into the Yorkshire Tea environment. Amazing.
Speaker:I'm not going to say anything more, just go watch the adverts, listen to the... find the podcast, it's
Speaker:There was... we will finish off in a second but like
Speaker:like war buttons did some you know they've had a few different campaigns
Speaker:where they've had like um who's
Speaker:the guy that says no Samuel
Speaker:L. Jackson. Samuel L.
Speaker:Jackson and Lenny Hedrich. I swear I've seen them on Warburton's advert. You
Speaker:may well have done. I think he got Sylvester Stallone,
Speaker:I'm not 100% sure. I watched a keynote speech
Speaker:with Jonathan Warburton and he was talking about that. It's
Speaker:brilliant. At what point would you associate Samuel
Speaker:L. Jackson with Warburton's bread? The most English
Speaker:Brilliant, but it's like the opposite of celebrity endorsement, but it
Speaker:Yeah, but it was so, so, so good. I feel like we've come
Speaker:to the natural end of this, Dan, but is there anything
Speaker:that you wish we'd have talked about that I haven't asked you a question on? Is
Speaker:I don't think there's anything that we haven't covered that I specifically wanted to say.
Speaker:I think like kind of, hopefully the little
Speaker:gold, if one golden nugget of marketing has come from this, it's like
Speaker:follow your, your position statement. Make sure that it's
Speaker:true for all of your marketing. I don't think you can really go wrong if
Speaker:you, if you truly believe in, in that and what
Speaker:your brand is about and you just make sure that it emanates through wherever
Speaker:it's your copy, wherever it's your advertising content, wherever it's
Speaker:your push media. It doesn't matter, as long as it emanates that same
Speaker:message and keep consistency. I think that is
Speaker:kind of the two key messages that I would hope people would take
Speaker:I 100% agree. Positioning is massive and
Speaker:it's got to be consistent across all platforms. It
Speaker:doesn't mean that everything has to look the same, it just has to deliver the same messaging,
Speaker:same communication, same values. Dan Stravinsky,
Speaker:Fisher Fixins, our friends. Thank you so
