Stabila: Modernising Stabila UK's Strategy And the Effectiveness Of Research
In this episode of The Build Up Podcast, host Dan Moore, Creative Director at dissident creative agency, chats with Ollie Partington, Managing Director of Stabila UK and Ireland. Ollie shares his journey from marketing graduate to leading the UK arm of a renowned German construction brand. They dive into the shifting landscape of construction marketing and how market research has played a vital role in Stabila’s strategy to increase brand awareness and diversify its product range.
The discussion touches on the importance of building strong relationships with both retailers and end users, with Ollie emphasizing a balanced communication strategy that includes social media, trade shows, and community engagement. They also explore the challenges of marketing through distributors, the power of influencer partnerships, and the necessity of long-term brand messaging. Packed with insights, this episode reveals how to modernise a brand in a traditional industry and how recommendations shape buying behaviour among tradespeople.
Ollie’s Socials
https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliver-partington-16232225/
Stabila's Website
https://www.stabila.com/en/home.htm
dissident’s Links
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:to the podcast. Thank you. This is The Build-Up. We're calling it
Speaker:The Build-Up, I think. It's a working title. I
Speaker:keep trying to call it The Grow-Up. Yeah, all right. But that's
Speaker:my own specific podcast about me just trying to stop being a
Speaker:man-child. We've
Speaker:Mum calls me Oliver, I'm in trouble. So
Speaker:we've got Ollie Partington from Stabila. You
Speaker:can call it Stabila if you like, you can call it Stabila if you like, but we've
Speaker:decided it's Stabila today. And
Speaker:you are the Managing Director, right? That's
Speaker:right, yeah. Of Stabila, but you used to be Marketing Director. Sales
Speaker:and Marketing Director. Sales and Marketing Director. So really
Speaker:well versed to talk about construction, marketing,
Speaker:especially from a brand side. I think this might be the first brand
Speaker:side kind of like marketing specialist that we've had on
Speaker:the show so far, which I'm really, really excited about. And we're
Speaker:going to be talking today about your
Speaker:sort of journey in construction, what you
Speaker:do at Stabila, how you see the kind
Speaker:of landscape and stuff like that. But before we do, can
Speaker:you give us a little introduction to yourself, kind of your journey and
Speaker:how you got from, I don't know, not working in construction
Speaker:Yeah, I can do. Yeah, so obviously I'm
Speaker:Ollie Partington. I'm the managing director for Stabila UK
Speaker:and Ireland. If I go all
Speaker:the way back to the start, I did a marketing degree
Speaker:when I was at university. More from a
Speaker:case of, I didn't know what else to do. I just did a generic business
Speaker:course, quite like marketing. It's more into sort of the
Speaker:psychology of buying behavior. So that's kind of the interest that
Speaker:sparked it originally. I then came
Speaker:straight out of university on a graduate scheme with Axe Nobel,
Speaker:so with Dulux paint, very much to try
Speaker:and do marketing and sales. To be honest, I probably
Speaker:ended up spending then the bulk of the next 13 years
Speaker:I was there working in some sort of commercial
Speaker:salesy type role. So probably sort
Speaker:of developed a bit of an opinion that, Sales
Speaker:was the coal face of the business
Speaker:and marketing was sort of a creative thing that happened
Speaker:in the background. I started to get more actively involved
Speaker:with brand strategy and comms and
Speaker:And then moving on towards Tabilla,
Speaker:I'd already been involved in a lot of different parts of
Speaker:organisations, supply chain, sales, marketing, operations,
Speaker:stores that we had at the time. and
Speaker:decided I wanted to do something that was a bit of a broader, more
Speaker:strategic commercial job. So Stabila
Speaker:came up. Now Stabila are a
Speaker:very well-established, been going for 135 years, German manufacturer. of
Speaker:measuring equipment. So predominantly spirit levels is where
Speaker:our reputation lies, but tape measures, digital
Speaker:levels, folding rules, laser levels. So
Speaker:anything to do with measurement equipment. Now for
Speaker:Stabila in the UK, they'd not employed
Speaker:their own people here before. A very traditional model
Speaker:of treating the UK and a lot
Speaker:of the rest of the world as export markets. you load
Speaker:trailers, you send it to agents and wholesalers, and then
Speaker:they're responsible for relaying the brand message. So
Speaker:they were looking for somebody to come in and effectively set up a
Speaker:business in the UK. So it
Speaker:kind of, it worked nicely for me because it's kind
Speaker:of a startup, but without the pressure of a
Speaker:Yeah, you've got a big brand behind you already. Exactly. And they're already well
Speaker:Yeah, established, well-known brand. One
Speaker:of the first things we actually did, I'm going off on a tangent a little bit, was we
Speaker:did market research. Because I said, when I came in, before deciding
Speaker:what sort of people we bring in, what brand strategies we put in
Speaker:place, we kind of need to know where we're at. And
Speaker:what it showed us really clearly was awareness was
Speaker:the gap for us. Actually, if people know about Stabilr,
Speaker:the chances are they already own it. And if they already own Stabilr,
Speaker:satisfaction is really high and recommendations really high. So
Speaker:we, I mean, we spent a lot of money on doing market research that
Speaker:kind of told us, told us one thing mainly, which is focus
Speaker:on awareness. If you drive, drive the brand message. So
Speaker:yeah, I, uh, I joined as sales and marketing director really
Speaker:with that, uh, that approach to start building better relationships with
Speaker:retailers to start building a clearer, um, uh,
Speaker:pull marketing strategy. So instead of just pushing products
Speaker:onto people to push it onto other people, to focus on
Speaker:the end user, um, and to get that cut through on marketing
Speaker:communication all the way, all the way down to, to the end user.
Speaker:So bringing in a marketing manager, a couple of sales guys to
Speaker:really grow and develop the business. Um, I think the step into
Speaker:being a managing director, um, To
Speaker:be honest, it was described to me pretty well by a member of my team who said, it's
Speaker:pretty much the same old shit wrapped in glitter, isn't it?
Speaker:I might as well show off the sparkles, but it's
Speaker:sort of a continuation of what we're already doing. It's
Speaker:a commercial brief. Stabila as an organization,
Speaker:the reason I've been going for 135 years is they
Speaker:are product focused. They have
Speaker:people within the organization that are so passionate and focused
Speaker:on innovation. I think they hold over 200 patents,
Speaker:which for people that might be outside of the industry go, it's
Speaker:just a spirit level, isn't it? But there's 200 patents behind the
Speaker:product range that we do. So you know that
Speaker:the manufacturing and the quality and the product that's coming over is
Speaker:brilliant. So you've got real trust in it. The challenge then
Speaker:comes to communicating it and getting the message out
Speaker:Can we take a little step back to the market research? Because that was something that
Speaker:we brushed on. brushed over, spoke
Speaker:about in a different episode with
Speaker:Ryan from SLG. He was really, really big into his research and it's something that
Speaker:I'd love to kind of find out more about. Just broad strokes, like
Speaker:what does market research look like? Like how do you engage with
Speaker:that? Are you looking at third parties or like
Speaker:putting out, are there specific places you can go to to get this data?
Speaker:Yeah, so we partnered with, I
Speaker:mean, for a start, you have to partner with a third party because you
Speaker:need to get authentic opinions from actual tradesmen. So
Speaker:I think we worked off a target of, I think it
Speaker:was 400 people tradesmen would speak to. And
Speaker:in that, you've got a clear
Speaker:brief to them on, there has to be a demographic split. Then
Speaker:there has to be a split on the trades that you operate in. So you have this
Speaker:full, network set out of
Speaker:these are all the type of people we need to talk to. So you have to have
Speaker:somebody that can source those people
Speaker:and find them. So it's a third party in Germany that we
Speaker:partner with that then had an agent or
Speaker:part of their operation in the UK. So, and they just
Speaker:start with a series of questions. So you agree with them. There are a
Speaker:series of questions that you want to ask that will give you data
Speaker:and an output to help you inform, inform your decisions. So,
Speaker:you know, take awareness as an example, simple question.
Speaker:Have you heard of Stabila before? Then
Speaker:it goes on to the next question, which is, well, what's your experience been
Speaker:like? And then they'll have like a criteria, you'll have
Speaker:24 different things that will say, well, where does it sit when it comes
Speaker:to quality? Where does
Speaker:it sit when it comes to longevity or accuracy? These
Speaker:sort of key attributes that you apply to a brand. You
Speaker:then compare it to other brands as well. So you
Speaker:have to find 400 tradesmen that are willing to spend quite
Speaker:a lot of time talking to somebody, talking
Speaker:to a researcher about it. It's quite a long process.
Speaker:Really cool though and I just I love the idea of being able
Speaker:to have like at the end of that you've let some you've you've not
Speaker:had to really deal with like you've obviously got to pay for it but if
Speaker:you've paid a third party who can get access to these people
Speaker:you can set the criteria of kind of what those people look like You
Speaker:get all this data back and I imagine there's some kind of trends and charts and
Speaker:all these kinds of different things of kind of, okay, this is
Speaker:what the general consensus of opinion is across, let's say, all
Speaker:of them but then you can specify to different areas. And then you can
Speaker:use that information as like ammunition to
Speaker:go, right, this is the strategy. Based on this research, we
Speaker:can move forward on a particular strategy because we're
Speaker:not just blindly having a go. I love that idea
Speaker:and it's something that we've not really ever come across as a, we've
Speaker:never had to utilise as an agency because we don't go
Speaker:that far in depth and as a result I know very
Speaker:I think you can, if you don't use a third party you can overlay your
Speaker:own bias and it's really easy like in any
Speaker:marketing decision or even a sales decision You have an opinion, and
Speaker:the longer you've been in the industry or the longer you've been in
Speaker:an organization, you apply your own view on what it
Speaker:should look like. And you can go into market research and think,
Speaker:right, I know that we need to drive awareness with a younger audience. position
Speaker:the questions differently according to who you're talking to
Speaker:because you're overlaying your own bias. So you use a third party and
Speaker:like you're saying, what you get afterwards is really rich
Speaker:data that you know has come from somebody that's completely impartial.
Speaker:They might have this network of people to talk to, but they don't really know
Speaker:Maybe, yeah. Can
Speaker:you tell us a little bit more about Stabila? I've
Speaker:done it again. Stabila, you can call it whatever you want. I might change
Speaker:it throughout the actual episode.
Speaker:In terms of like, It's
Speaker:a German brand, obviously, right? Is it German? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk
Speaker:to us a little bit more about who uses Stabila
Speaker:and is there a typical kind
Speaker:So I suppose our target market is professional tradesmen.
Speaker:That's sort of the global aim for
Speaker:Stabila is to be number one in measurement equipment for
Speaker:the professional. There's more that goes into
Speaker:making a Stabila level versus everything else that's out on the market.
Speaker:So it means that there's a price premium. So yeah, our target market
Speaker:is professional trade. Beyond
Speaker:that, we have the benefit of most
Speaker:trades and most people will need some form of measurement
Speaker:tool. You need an accurate spirit level. You need a
Speaker:tape measure. A lot of people will be using lasers now.
Speaker:We can cover a lot of different trades, from installer trades
Speaker:to carpentry to bricklaying. Again, going
Speaker:back to the research, beauty of that is it helps you understand where
Speaker:your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. Because
Speaker:the reality is what a
Speaker:plumber needs is different to what a carpenter needs. Because
Speaker:we just make measurement equipment, it means that actually we've
Speaker:got over 200, 220 products
Speaker:in the range that mean that there are products that are tailored and
Speaker:That's really cool. And from a business model point of view, Stabila
Speaker:is sold all through distributors,
Speaker:Yeah, correct. So we don't do direct-to-consumer. It's
Speaker:not to say it's not something we'd look at and consider in the future,
Speaker:because, like I said before, the big focus on
Speaker:communication for us is communicating directly to the end
Speaker:user, people that are using the product, and at some point, you'd
Speaker:expect that to evolve into being able to
Speaker:service them and have a direct relationship. But yeah, I
Speaker:say it's the same globally for us, that our model is we work either
Speaker:through wholesaler or we work through
Speaker:The reason why I ask that, because it has its own marketing,
Speaker:I wouldn't say problems, but things
Speaker:that you've got to check off, which is, and this is something we come across a lot
Speaker:in the work that we do, is marketing
Speaker:direct to consumer is very different to marketing to essentially
Speaker:like an end user that's buying through a distributor. Because the
Speaker:sales is different, you know, like all of a sudden you're,
Speaker:well, There's no point in doing an e-commerce
Speaker:ad, which is something we do for some of our brands, because some
Speaker:of them do sell direct to consumer, where you go, this
Speaker:is a product, it's amazing, click the link to buy it, and you can get loads of
Speaker:great sales data based off all of the creative that
Speaker:we make. Whereas most of the brands that we work with sell
Speaker:through distributors, sell through retailers. So that now we're marketing to
Speaker:end users, hoping that the end users go into the distributor to
Speaker:buy that product and the sales data eventually comes around in
Speaker:six months to 12 months time or whatever. We know if it's been successful or not
Speaker:and that's a big challenge. But also it's
Speaker:a unique challenge in the fact that if you've got a brand new product that's
Speaker:coming out, And currently,
Speaker:it's not in the distributors. It's not in the retailers and stuff like that. You've
Speaker:got to get sort of buy-in from the end user before the
Speaker:distributor will even consider taking it most of the time. I imagine some
Speaker:will be like, yeah, we know that that will sell, no problem at all, because we
Speaker:sell so much stabilizer stuff that it's not going to be a problem. But if you
Speaker:bring out something that's pretty wild, you've then got to do marketing
Speaker:campaigns to get the consumer to
Speaker:ask their local retailer to sell this stuff,
Speaker:you know? Do you come across that? And is that a
Speaker:Absolutely, yeah. And I think that there's the
Speaker:pace at which a lot of retailers, particularly larger retailers,
Speaker:work can be quite slow. So a really good example of you
Speaker:launch a new product and you can talk well in advance, but then
Speaker:you can have nine monthly times before it can physically get listed.
Speaker:and you're preparing yourself for a launch and you can generate the demand
Speaker:with end users, but you can also piss them off if they then can't buy
Speaker:it. This is where like online retailing,
Speaker:there are pros and there are cons to it. The pro is you can move quickly.
Speaker:So we had a big product launch last year and we
Speaker:did get some traditional retailers, builders, merchants on
Speaker:board, but we got some key online retailers all
Speaker:over it from an early stage, committing to content,
Speaker:committing to listings, full videos, everything all
Speaker:lined up ready. You can move really quickly then. So when
Speaker:you launch, you can do your pull, pull marketing. You can
Speaker:engage with end users. You can create demand for the product. you've
Speaker:got availability straight away because it's there online. And
Speaker:then the next step is then you drive demand with the retailer. I'd
Speaker:say with anything, it's a combination of that push
Speaker:marketing. You have to be able to drive demand with retail either
Speaker:through sales approach or through marketing.
Speaker:And likewise, you then have to have the other side pull, drive
Speaker:demand of the end user, and you squeeze it in the middle, and you push
Speaker:that relationship between an end user and between a retailer by
Speaker:doing the two. But we've had some really good examples
Speaker:where where the pool marketing, it's
Speaker:a longer game, but it's a better game to play. So
Speaker:without naming names, we partner with
Speaker:a social group. It's a Brick Lane social group. They
Speaker:set up a new event, we're straight on
Speaker:board with it, supporting it. And then a retailer also
Speaker:steps in to support it, who we've really struggled to get any
Speaker:contact with. But because of that focus with that end user,
Speaker:that end user group, straight away you then have the retailer coming to
Speaker:us saying, We need to talk to you about Stabila because we keep
Speaker:getting pestered by all these bricklayers about, um, we
Speaker:need to have this, this and this product in store. Perfect. So there's
Speaker:things like that that come through. Um, cause everything leaves a
Speaker:perception, you know, a buyer, a retailer, they're still
Speaker:a person that are involved in the industry. So the
Speaker:more things that you do, the more activity you do, they
Speaker:will see it. No, like I do get, um. you
Speaker:know, big, big buyers at big retailers that will
Speaker:say, I really like your social content. So you,
Speaker:you're not trying to build Instagram content
Speaker:for that senior corporate buyer, but they're following it
Speaker:Absolutely. We came across something the other day and it was something that got recommended.
Speaker:I was having some chats with some very clever
Speaker:marketers essentially. They work in a completely different industry to us and have
Speaker:completely different deliverables to us. But they
Speaker:were saying There's an interesting one, they were saying like, you know, marketing
Speaker:is always the first thing to go when when budgets are tight and stuff like that. So
Speaker:his strategy was he essentially a marketing agency, but
Speaker:they work with salespeople, sales directors, sales, as
Speaker:a rule. So if you separate marketing and sales, a lot of the time, there's like a gray
Speaker:middle ground. But he's like, we're going straight to
Speaker:the sales guys, what can we do to support the sales guys, which typically
Speaker:marketing support sales, but sometimes they don't speak to each
Speaker:other that well. And that got me thinking about something
Speaker:that we're working on at the moment with one of our clients, which
Speaker:is to completely revamp their sales experience
Speaker:of going into retails with a brand new product. Because like you
Speaker:said, typically products can take up to 12 months from
Speaker:launch to actually get into somewhere like Screwfix or something like
Speaker:that. Screwfix is a little bit better now because again it's online, a
Speaker:lot of it, but traditional retailers sometimes
Speaker:it can just take a long time, you can have a lot of conversations before it gets to
Speaker:the point where that's in there. So what we're doing is
Speaker:we're starting to look at the sales presentations and
Speaker:the way that they engage with these buyers and drive the
Speaker:pull within the actual presentations. Because a lot of the time, these
Speaker:presentations are like, this is the product, this is how it stacks up against its competitors, pricing,
Speaker:stats, maybe some cool visuals, but that's kind
Speaker:of it. And the sales guys are just kind of working on that. So we're
Speaker:looking at like revamping the whole experience so that we can, with
Speaker:a big emphasis on the pull. So we're showing the
Speaker:general public, the end user, the influencer going, where the
Speaker:hell can I get this product? Because it's amazing. And like really pushing
Speaker:sort of that element to it. Again, a bit of an experiment, we'll see how it works. But
Speaker:the idea behind it is if we can bring a
Speaker:product to market six months earlier than it would
Speaker:typically be before
Speaker:we were working with them. That would be a hell of a lot of income for
Speaker:the brand. An extra six months of sales would be
Speaker:crazy money. I never thought
Speaker:about it like that. I just always assumed let's just focus on the campaigns and
Speaker:let's not think about the sales guy because sales guy maybe gets some imagery from
Speaker:us, you know, like down the line or something. But that's about it.
Speaker:For me, one of my main learnings after
Speaker:spending a lot of time doing sales and now coming into a
Speaker:role where he's probably more marketing than he is sales is that
Speaker:the two are the same thing ultimately. It's a slightly different
Speaker:approach, slightly different audience, but you know, the
Speaker:role of sales and marketing is to get product in people's hands. It's
Speaker:a slightly different way. You know, it's that push and that pull. You've got sales people
Speaker:that are getting product into retailers and then you've
Speaker:got marketing people that are getting end users to demand it.
Speaker:But they're doing the same thing ultimately. You know,
Speaker:where we're quite lucky is we're a small team. So if
Speaker:you are in sales, you are in marketing. And if you are in marketing, you
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. I'm customer services. Seriously,
Speaker:that's not a joke. If you go on the website and you ring up Stabila
Speaker:Love it. I shouldn't really put that out there, should I?
Speaker:That's okay. might start ringing you and be like, I've got
Speaker:a problem with my level. Everything's on the skew. I
Speaker:love that. I mean, let's have a think about the
Speaker:sort of landscape of marketing in the construction industry.
Speaker:We've had a couple of conversations beforehand about this. What's
Speaker:your views on kind of what that looks like now? And
Speaker:perhaps you can reference like what it used
Speaker:to be like, you know, when you first started in the industry, because you were at Dulux
Speaker:Yeah so I was at Dulux for 13 years, I said predominantly in sales
Speaker:but spent most of the time in and around construction, so
Speaker:dealing with painting contractors. What
Speaker:I say is… there's a perception
Speaker:that it's a very traditional industry construction with
Speaker:an older demographic. And there is an element of truth to
Speaker:that. And I'd say historically, it has been driven
Speaker:by marketing and comms has been
Speaker:driven by very traditional methods. So print media, magazines,
Speaker:and that's what most brands would do. You know, you would have a magazine that
Speaker:all the builders merchants buy into and they have a stack of them on the
Speaker:counter and people take them away. and read them. But
Speaker:I think that it's accelerated really quickly. And I
Speaker:think a lot of brands have been left behind because there's been
Speaker:a perception that just do the same thing. Each
Speaker:year you follow the same path, the same type of look and
Speaker:the same type of feel and the same type of message and
Speaker:the same avenues to communicate. I'd say
Speaker:particularly the bigger established brands just
Speaker:follow the same path and almost treat
Speaker:the industry as, well, it's traditional, it's older guys and
Speaker:those older guys, they're not going to go on to TikTok. And
Speaker:the reality is that I'd say the different ways
Speaker:in which you can communicate your brand message have accelerated so
Speaker:much over the past past couple of years, really.
Speaker:And the reason why people have been left behind is they thought, well, you
Speaker:know, our target market, uh, are over the age of 55. But
Speaker:the reality is, yeah, there probably is some truth in that. And
Speaker:they might not be going on Tik TOK, but the industry
Speaker:is, is growing and is moving on. And there is a younger audience
Speaker:that everybody is trying to fight over to get in front of
Speaker:And they're brand loyal as well. These guys, like, you know, they care about
Speaker:what they wear, they care about what they use, they're invested in
Speaker:a story. Whereas, you know, traditionally I think,
Speaker:you know, the building trade was you got the cheapest thing you could get your hands
Speaker:on, cheapest boots, cheapest work clothes. Perhaps you'd
Speaker:spend a bit extra money on like your drills and stuff like that, but everything else
Speaker:was like, because they were buying it themselves, they were like, I just need to get the job
Speaker:done. Whereas I think these days, more and more, you
Speaker:see like apprentices like shelling out
Speaker:tons and tons of money on some of the best gear because it's like, I
Speaker:want this to last. And they've got like almost like a completely different
Speaker:mentality and they're very brand loyal as they are for their clothes
Speaker:and stuff like when they're outside of the industry. So yeah, there's still
Speaker:the old guard, they're still about, but the new guys
Speaker:Yeah, there was one thing actually that surprised me when we did our market research, because
Speaker:you see the different demographics and you see how they buy.
Speaker:And I'd sort of thought that you would have people
Speaker:that are over 55, they're more willing to spend money on
Speaker:quality tools. So for us, we sell quality tools, the
Speaker:more expensive, there's a lot of cheaper alternatives. So that's
Speaker:still our core market. Actually, the younger audience and those apprentices are
Speaker:just as, if not more willing to spend more money. So
Speaker:again, you kind of, you treat them as well. Younger people
Speaker:nowadays, and they'll shop around and they'll, uh, they'll go online and
Speaker:they'll buy, they'll buy cheap. They don't. How you
Speaker:communicate to them. is changing, that
Speaker:you do have to have then a really balanced
Speaker:comms strategy. Because again, I think a lot have been left behind, but
Speaker:then people lurch to Instagram. It's
Speaker:just Instagram. Actually, it's not. It's Instagram, it's
Speaker:TikTok, it's podcasts that people listen to,
Speaker:but it's also Facebook and it's community groups. I
Speaker:think the common thread all the way through, and we talked about this on the phone,
Speaker:is I think that in the UK
Speaker:in particular, trades people and their buying behavior
Speaker:is influenced heavily by recommendation. We
Speaker:hear it all the time from older people that say, you know,
Speaker:I bought my first Stabila level as an apprentice because my
Speaker:dad always had a Stabila. And you get the same thing, the
Speaker:same thing now. But the bit that's changed is how
Speaker:those recommendations get to people. Because if you go back, you know,
Speaker:that 55 year old plus, if you go
Speaker:back 20, 30 years when their first starting out might be a bit longer, You
Speaker:know, you're getting to a point where internet isn't even there. So
Speaker:recommendation is literally the guy on the site telling them.
Speaker:Now, people still work off recommendation, they're still
Speaker:willing to buy expensive quality tools
Speaker:and power tools. but they get recommendations through
Speaker:other ways and other means. And this is where socials becomes important.
Speaker:They will scroll through on TikTok and they'll look
Speaker:at videos and see what people are saying about product. They'll go
Speaker:on YouTube. They follow YouTube channels of people that
Speaker:give recommendations. That's how they get it. So
Speaker:that's probably the common thread has always been recommendation. The
Speaker:bit that's changed significantly has been the different
Speaker:Absolutely. Which it's, you know, the
Speaker:influencer, the recommendation kind of thing is, you know, the
Speaker:bones of it essentially. You have somebody, and
Speaker:it can be like, this can be working twofold, you've got the guy
Speaker:on site who you aspire to be, the top level
Speaker:craftsman, artisan, like, tradesperson,
Speaker:using like some of the best tools, you got that guy produces really good
Speaker:work, or that girl produces really good work. they're the tools that they use
Speaker:to get that job done, therefore they're probably a good fit for if I want
Speaker:to be like that. And you'll get exactly the same thing on social media. So
Speaker:if you aspire to be the, you know, the
Speaker:same level or if you just like really respect the opinion of
Speaker:a particular person on social media because they make good work and
Speaker:they get loads of jobs and whatever it could be, and
Speaker:you see the tools that they're using and the way they're using them, you go,
Speaker:that's obviously the right pick. You know what I mean? Even if they're not even
Speaker:saying it, you just see a logo. You just go, well,
Speaker:okay, that's obviously the one for the job. Because I
Speaker:can't imagine there's a lot of people out there that do, like, genuine research
Speaker:into tools. I might be talking up
Speaker:my arse there, but you know how you sort of do, like, you would research
Speaker:a car. and you would look at MPG, you'd
Speaker:look at the safety factors and all that kind of thing. I
Speaker:think trades people will probably buy stuff a little bit differently because they
Speaker:might do their research after the recommendation because it's kind of like a nerdy thing
Speaker:to do, it's exciting. But I can't imagine there's
Speaker:a lot of people put into a Google search but give
Speaker:me like a top 10 levels
Speaker:I don't think you are, and I'm
Speaker:not saying this with a huge amount of experience of it, I think it's
Speaker:slightly different in the US. So I think the US, there
Speaker:are a lot of YouTube channels that do comparisons. They
Speaker:get big hits and that is people that will say, I've got
Speaker:four different laser levels here and I'm going to show you how they work and
Speaker:I'm going to tell you what I think about all of them and then I'm going to rank them for
Speaker:I think that's a little bit different to what I had in my head, which was
Speaker:essentially going onto a web page and looking
Speaker:at one level against the other or one drill against another.
Speaker:I think something like top 10 or comparisons
Speaker:between two or three different products, I think that probably happens a
Speaker:lot, to be fair. even in the UK,
Speaker:because that's a fun thing to watch of an evening, isn't it? You know what I mean? Even
Speaker:if you've already made your decision, you know? It's like, well, at least I made the
Speaker:right choice or whatever. That's
Speaker:really, really interesting. It kind of brings me
Speaker:on to like how, so the market
Speaker:has changed. The way that people interact with brands is
Speaker:changing. So, and you've, how long have you been at Stabila 4 now?
Speaker:Two and a half years. Two and a half years. Have you
Speaker:made some differences to Stabila as
Speaker:a UK presence then and what does that look like since you took over?
Speaker:Yeah I think there's maybe two points I've made. One was again
Speaker:something we discussed around like modernizing a brand. So
Speaker:I'll go back eight years first. This was before I
Speaker:was with Stabila. So eight years ago Stabila was
Speaker:turning over 50 million euros. It's
Speaker:Globally, yeah. So not in the UK. Yeah, that'd be cool. I
Speaker:probably would need someone to do customer service. I couldn't do
Speaker:that myself. Yeah,
Speaker:so a lot of that growth has come from changing and
Speaker:breathing some life into the brand. So some of that starts with
Speaker:the research, but then goes to how you want to communicate the
Speaker:brand and where you want to communicate it. So that journey's already
Speaker:happened. And the reason I explained that first is part
Speaker:of that journey was bringing me in to
Speaker:start with, to try and put some changes in place. And
Speaker:a lot of it starts with What's your clear brand
Speaker:strategy? So use the market research that we talked about
Speaker:earlier. What are the key things that you
Speaker:want to focus on? So for us, it was things like awareness that
Speaker:we've already talked about. It was about product diversity. So
Speaker:one of our core strengths is we've got a lot of different products that
Speaker:nobody knows about. It's a bit of awareness. customer
Speaker:journey, so actually how people interact with our
Speaker:tools, our products, and interact with the brand. So build
Speaker:a clear strategy, and then it comes to what are the vehicles and
Speaker:the avenues you've got to communicate. So we
Speaker:started to do quite a lot more with community groups.
Speaker:So we partner with the Tireless community on Facebook.
Speaker:We partner with the Bricklayers Social Club. Those give
Speaker:us the opportunity to be part of
Speaker:the conversation. So you can do proactive social listening, there's
Speaker:a face to the brand. That again is a key
Speaker:part of communicating is you want to put a face and
Speaker:you want to create a relationship between the brand and the end user
Speaker:that didn't necessarily exist before. It then
Speaker:expands into trade shows, trade events. So we
Speaker:thought about all the different trade events that happen in the UK because
Speaker:it's a lot of money and a lot of time commitment to do them. And
Speaker:we don't have a big budget. So we sat
Speaker:back and said, we've kind of dabbled in them before, you know, we turn up with a toolbar or
Speaker:two and people can come and they can buy product. We said, we
Speaker:either do it or we don't. You know, I don't want to go and just have toolbars.
Speaker:So, you know, we committed, we invested in bigger
Speaker:stands, better execution, more like
Speaker:experience type things, like we do a strength bar to create challenge
Speaker:to try and bring people on. Because even at
Speaker:the shows, we just interact with people that already knew Stabila
Speaker:and already bought it. So we're like, actually, how do you, you have to create a bigger presence
Speaker:to pull people into the brand. Um, yeah,
Speaker:so we, we've tried to make a lot of
Speaker:changes in how we bring the brand in front of people, um, to invest
Speaker:in that pool marketing through shows, through socials, through
Speaker:partnerships and collaborations. And it's been working well.
Speaker:Amazing. So modernizing the brand essentially like
Speaker:that was that's been a huge success for you thinking about
Speaker:all the different ways that we can communicate to the end user and we can drive
Speaker:awareness to the actual product and there's multiple ways of doing that.
Speaker:In terms of the trade shows and stuff like that it's an interesting thought
Speaker:that because I have interactions with brands who've got big
Speaker:budgets and small budgets and so some of them like
Speaker:I don't I've had conversations with
Speaker:people who can't afford our services because they use
Speaker:a lot of their budget on things like trade shows and stuff like that and they get
Speaker:kind of like an okay stand, it looks alright. And
Speaker:then I see them and their stand's dead, like it's
Speaker:properly dead. And I sort of look at that and
Speaker:I'm thinking, I don't know. personally, which
Speaker:way would have been better for them? Working with us and having,
Speaker:you know, putting all of that budget into like social content, you
Speaker:know, a decent social media presence, a team behind like what they do, or
Speaker:this like, or the three or four trade shows. And
Speaker:I don't think I've ever really asked this to a
Speaker:brand before, but what's your measure of success from
Speaker:the trade shows? Because I
Speaker:see them as being massively beneficial and I've also seen brands
Speaker:that we work with really step up their game at the trade shows.
Speaker:and it's and like they've gone from like you know kind of the little stands that
Speaker:kind of barely branded and stuff like that kind of like boxes and
Speaker:stuff to something that's like had quite a lot of investment and
Speaker:their presence is skyrocketing and i'm so it doesn't make sense to
Speaker:me because i'm like there's not that many people at that trade show and not all of them have
Speaker:come to see you but You're seeing the trajectory of brand
Speaker:awareness just from a few big trade shows. It just makes sense to
Speaker:A measure of success with any, with any marketing activity you
Speaker:do, um, it's difficult to pin, pin
Speaker:on. The reason a lot of people like a trade show, um, particularly
Speaker:the tool fairs is you can sell. So you have a measure of success because
Speaker:you can say, well, we've sold X amount here. We've sold X amount there.
Speaker:Yeah, so you partner up with a distributor, they bring a till, you bring the
Speaker:stock and you can sell to people. So
Speaker:it gives you a bit of a measure because you can physically sell
Speaker:but then you go, what's your benchmark? Is it last year? My take
Speaker:on it is The sales is a good indication. It's
Speaker:not the measure. The measure is how many people are
Speaker:we interacting with and what's the nature of those interactions. You
Speaker:know, going back to our strategy, are you driving awareness? Are
Speaker:we talking to people that we didn't talk to before? Are
Speaker:we driving better product diversity? So are there people that come
Speaker:to the stand and love Stabila, but they didn't know that you did pocket
Speaker:tapes and they bought a load of them. So it's
Speaker:more, It's a little bit more advanced than
Speaker:just saying, well, how much do you sell on them? The
Speaker:way you invest your money from a marketing point of view, you could if
Speaker:you had if you doubled your budget you'd spend it straight away yeah you know but
Speaker:you'd never really know what exactly the return
Speaker:on investment is and you can spend a lot of time trying
Speaker:to gauge on that specific activity so like we've
Speaker:done radio advertising which you do and you straight
Speaker:And you can get different criteria, you
Speaker:can develop return on investment, the reality is you don't know.
Speaker:But going back a step, when
Speaker:you do that market research to start with, we will
Speaker:do that every two years. So that was, it's
Speaker:really important that you'd follow the same track every two years. Because you
Speaker:do the market research that tells you what your awareness is. That's your benchmark. You
Speaker:build a long term plan. So we'll do this next
Speaker:year, we'll do the market research again, and it'll tell us roughly
Speaker:how we've done. You take it with a pinch of salt, but that
Speaker:for me is the gauge
Speaker:of success for all the activity you
Speaker:Proper long-term strategy. It's massive and it's something that,
Speaker:you know, as a social media agency, you know, we
Speaker:don't focus as much on long-term strategy because
Speaker:we're just kind of being told what to do. We've got this new product, okay, let's do
Speaker:a campaign on that. We've got this other campaign that we're
Speaker:doing on sort of awareness of these kinds of things. So we're kind of moving on
Speaker:from that. But there's an overarching kind
Speaker:of like long-term strategy in all the different things that we're doing that's
Speaker:been set up by people
Speaker:who are more clever than us, the marketing directors and stuff like that, or
Speaker:other agencies. And I was
Speaker:speaking to, again, Ryan from SLG about this, the thing
Speaker:of long term, we as
Speaker:marketers and creators, we get bored of our content and
Speaker:the campaigns way before our audience does. Stick with
Speaker:it. Stick with it because, you know, we're just like, oh, we've seen too much of
Speaker:this same kind of thing. I'm like, your audience hasn't. There's people that
Speaker:you haven't even, that haven't seen this yet. It's just because you're sick of
Speaker:it doesn't mean you should move. Like, stick with it. Stay the
Speaker:course and re-evaluate in a year,
Speaker:two years time, whatever. and see how it worked. And I
Speaker:think a lot of that is missed in marketing. It's just like, if it wasn't a success on
Speaker:the day, how many numbers to how many, how many, how
Speaker:much engagement did we get in the first four hours? There's
Speaker:there's some element to like, that's, you know, that's, it's worth measuring. But
Speaker:There's a comms guru I worked with years
Speaker:and years ago. You always described it as it's
Speaker:what's the golden thread. So the golden thread that
Speaker:goes through all those five, 10 years of comms
Speaker:activation or even how you communicate a
Speaker:brand or whatever, that golden thread is the bit that pieces them all
Speaker:together, that stops you from going, right, we're going to
Speaker:do this this year. I'm bored of it. So we're just going to pivot and
Speaker:we're going to do something completely different. know, understand who
Speaker:you are and understand who your customer is, build a golden thread and
Speaker:just tie everything back to it. This is where, you know, for Stabila, we
Speaker:know what our golden thread is. We know what our audience
Speaker:is. It's a professional tradesman and for us it is precision.
Speaker:You know, like we always start our training with the most costly mistake on
Speaker:a construction job is a measurement one. Yeah. So that is
Speaker:why we exist ultimately. And that is our golden thread through
Speaker:Mate, that's a hell of a marketing message, isn't it? That like, like taking
Speaker:it back to basics, like why you need our product, um,
Speaker:because you know, it's, it's the thing that you use to measure everything.
Speaker:And anytime you. measure wrong, make
Speaker:a mistake or whatever, it's costing you time, it's costing you materials, it's costing you money. That's
Speaker:a really, really cool analogy, I
Speaker:guess, for like a great marketing message. Love
Speaker:that. Really, really interesting to hear about the trade
Speaker:show stuff because we are at a lot of trade shows. And
Speaker:I look at the cost of some of the stuff that we, you know, some of the stands that
Speaker:we have for our clients and the amount of time, amount of people
Speaker:that have got to put on it. they're bringing in celebrities and stuff like
Speaker:that and I'm like Jesus that's a lot of money, was it worth it?
Speaker:But I think it is. But I wouldn't know if I
Speaker:had the choice of having one thing
Speaker:or another, that's a hard decision for me. It's like do you go full trade shows
Speaker:and then no content, no social presence. What
Speaker:do you have? You know what I mean? I think ideally you'd have a bit of
Speaker:everything and you'd have enough budget to do all these kinds of different things, but
Speaker:I imagine that it will all come down to research, of
Speaker:course. I think the theme of this has almost been research,
Speaker:Is it like that's a hard balance? Because you're
Speaker:trying to balance, you know, you should say, well, you
Speaker:should be visible everywhere. You should have a balanced communication
Speaker:strategy, which says socials, content,
Speaker:print media, maybe a bit of radio, trade shows, you
Speaker:should do the whole lot. But like I was saying before, with
Speaker:things like trade shows, either do it or don't. If you're going
Speaker:to do it, you've got to do it properly. And it's kind of the same with socials
Speaker:and with content, because you have to You
Speaker:have to raise your game to a good level of content, but you have to
Speaker:be consistent. You have to stick at it, which is an
Speaker:area where we've done okay with, but we've not been particularly consistent.
Speaker:So you have to raise your game, produce good
Speaker:content, and then it has to be like a metronome. You know, you have to
Speaker:be able to just get the same consistent message
Speaker:Good plug for dissident creative agency then Keelan
Speaker:because you know obviously for small teams
Speaker:that perhaps don't have social media marketing or content creation then obviously
Speaker:we can help keep that consistency because someone else is doing it for you. You
Speaker:just have to pay us loads of money to do it. But
Speaker:that leads us really nicely into the awareness element because I
Speaker:think you guys do social media particularly well. There's a few elements that I think you do
Speaker:particularly well. You partner up with some really cool people, some great people You
Speaker:are out there and you're partnering with
Speaker:third parties like the events that you mentioned and stuff like that.
Speaker:Can you talk us a little bit about your kind of like how that came about, what's
Speaker:going on with Stabila in terms of your, I mean
Speaker:I guess social outreach would be a social kind of like presence
Speaker:and how you gain awareness would be interesting, most interesting to
Speaker:Yeah. So I, I suppose social has been quite an important part since
Speaker:way before I joined. So, you know, when I joined, I inherited
Speaker:a, um, a good UK platform on,
Speaker:on Instagram. Um, we have TikTok, we
Speaker:use Facebook as well. Um, so it's,
Speaker:it's across a number of different social channels. The, uh, our
Speaker:approach is, is again, we, we will map out content
Speaker:for a full year now. key messages that we want to get across.
Speaker:And those messages are split into product
Speaker:awareness, it all goes back to the market research and strategy. So
Speaker:And we try and then generate videos and content that
Speaker:are around the product. But the end game there is we want to
Speaker:show people products that they've not seen before. Amazing. Or
Speaker:we want to show them things about products that they have that they didn't know it could
Speaker:do. So you'll have things that are like product focus.
Speaker:And then you try and build in awareness features
Speaker:or things that create a little bit more interest. So,
Speaker:you know, I have things like golden oldies. So like we've got something,
Speaker:I've got a letter through from a guy who's had his level
Speaker:for 55 years and we're we
Speaker:put the letter out because it helps show longevity. So
Speaker:you have different features like that, or we have features where
Speaker:we focus in on the people that we partner with. When
Speaker:it comes to how our partnerships work, it's
Speaker:it's a balance. I've said the word balance all the time, all the way through this,
Speaker:but it is a balance between getting
Speaker:reach, because you want to partner
Speaker:with people that can get your message across, and authenticity. So
Speaker:we get a lot of people approach us wanting to
Speaker:work with us. We don't have a massive budget to
Speaker:do it. So we have to be quite careful with
Speaker:who we partner with. So they don't tend to be people that have hundreds
Speaker:and millions of followers. There tend to
Speaker:be people that, I mean you know the terms for it, I always forget, like
Speaker:a micro-influencer, that have less
Speaker:of an audience but more of a cult following. Goes back to that recommendation bit
Speaker:I was saying before, that you know if Liam's got eight,
Speaker:nine thousand, how many has Liam got now? I've no idea, I can
Speaker:Something like that. It's not, I don't think it's even that many is it? On
Speaker:Instagram, But the
Speaker:point is a smaller but more engaged following.
Speaker:5,800 is pretty good. We'll see if we can get that up. It
Speaker:But he will have those people that they listen to what he says and they engage
Speaker:with the message that he's got. So it's a balance.
Speaker:So we will have our Stabila family that are
Speaker:contracted partners that work with us and we collaborate with
Speaker:each year. We tend to max out around eight.
Speaker:With that we'll have like everybody does, the idea
Speaker:of the type of content that we want to produce each month, but we try
Speaker:and give an element of responsibility to
Speaker:them. And this is where the authenticity comes in. Yes. Because we
Speaker:don't want to say to them, right, this spirit level, we want everybody plugging
Speaker:this, this month. Because the reality is Liam's a plumber, Ollie
Speaker:Lee's a carpenter, Adam Simmons is a steel fabricator. They
Speaker:use different tools for different jobs. Yes. And that's what we want to try and get across.
Speaker:And in a lot of instances, you know, the
Speaker:way we partner is through tools. So,
Speaker:you know, you can have the option to take cash if you've been with us for a long time,
Speaker:but with most of them, you get
Speaker:a value of tools through every year. Give us the gear. Yeah. And
Speaker:that I think is quite important because that's where authenticity
Speaker:comes in. And with any partnerships and collaborations we do
Speaker:on socials, we want people that are already
Speaker:bought in and engaged to the brand. So it doesn't become a,
Speaker:we want to give you money or we want to throw tools at you in the hope that
Speaker:you'll put it out there and it'll get reached. We want people that are
Speaker:already passionate that will recommend it because they
Speaker:believe in the product, not because they're paid to. And
Speaker:that's really important. So most of the people we partner with, they,
Speaker:when we start having conversations, we've already interacted with them for years. You
Speaker:know, they share content of our products. They give us feedback. We've
Speaker:already got a relationship that then forms to something a
Speaker:bit more formal. Underneath that, we
Speaker:collaborate with people and can get them tool discounts. We
Speaker:don't give free tools out to people. And
Speaker:it might be a little bit naive because you might miss the opportunity to get some
Speaker:fantastic reach opportunities. But what it
Speaker:gives us is it's protecting that authenticity in
Speaker:message. And, you know, we'll have people that
Speaker:We'll say, look, I'm interested in getting this laser. And they go, great,
Speaker:I can sort you out a discount. If you do some great videos for
Speaker:us, I can get you a discount. But there's commitment from them.
Speaker:There's financial commitment from them to work with
Speaker:and back the brand. And then sometimes the follow up
Speaker:conversation is, what do you want me to say? What do you
Speaker:want me to say in the video? What are the things you want me to pull out? And we say,
Speaker:well, It's your tool, you've bought it, you
Speaker:know, warts and all, review it. If there's things that you
Speaker:think aren't great with it, say it, that's absolutely
Speaker:fine because it has to be authentic, warts and all.
Speaker:It's really, really interesting and there was a
Speaker:thread of thought that I had midway through that conversation around
Speaker:the authenticity and the difference between taking money and
Speaker:taking product. And I think that's this, I don't know where
Speaker:I'm going with this, but essentially, let me just air my thoughts. You've
Speaker:got someone like Liam, who is a full-time tradesperson. They
Speaker:make their income via their trade. But
Speaker:they love social media. They've got a small audience
Speaker:on social media. not enough for them to make a living out of it and stuff like
Speaker:that, but enough to be of interest to a lot of people. So
Speaker:you can take some money, but he doesn't need money, he's got a job. He's not a full-time influencer.
Speaker:So from my point of view, from a brand's point of view, If
Speaker:he's got an option, he can take some cash or he can take some
Speaker:product. If he's taking the product, it's
Speaker:kind of an indicator that that's going to be used and he's
Speaker:kind of almost got the right mentality for what you want
Speaker:to achieve because he's not looking to just make a buck off every brand
Speaker:that he works with. He just loves the brand and therefore he's going to talk
Speaker:about it in a really authentic way. I think every
Speaker:episode I say this about 60 times. Somebody takes
Speaker:the cash, nothing wrong with that. But eventually, the
Speaker:more you take the cash, the more it leads into, right,
Speaker:this is a full-time job for me now, influencing. And eventually,
Speaker:I'm not going to have enough time to do the actual work.
Speaker:And therefore, not always, there's going to be some accounts
Speaker:out there that are really authentic, and they are a full-time influencer
Speaker:that content gets less and less authentic and therefore the
Speaker:brands who have got a brand values like yourselves and a strategy are
Speaker:going to become less and less interested so they go on this kind
Speaker:of trajectory of like money money money money and then all of a sudden they get there and
Speaker:it's like like the the graph goes money and
Speaker:like authentic like but like the opposite way so that the this
Speaker:is like not authentic, this is really authentic and basically the
Speaker:more money they get the less authentic their content and then it
Speaker:goes like a dip down. So where
Speaker:I'm going with that is, and I've said it before, the market is
Speaker:all about this micro influence, the smaller creator, because
Speaker:it benefits everybody if they're, you know, if they're taking even
Speaker:if it's small amounts of cash, but mainly for like, they're just taking products and stuff means
Speaker:that they can make more content, and they can enjoy it more, and we
Speaker:can keep doing the job that they enjoy. And
Speaker:you're not turning Liam's and all these different people into
Speaker:huge accounts that eventually become defunct because no one
Speaker:cares about what they've got to say because they're not even a trade anymore. They're off the tools, which
Speaker:is a term you hear a lot about. They're off
Speaker:I think that model doesn't always work like that. It's
Speaker:the risk that as you grow and more money comes in, then
Speaker:you shift focuses away from being on the tools to off the tools.
Speaker:And actually, it's more about who pays you the
Speaker:most. We partner with, informally,
Speaker:some, what's the big influence, what would you call them?
Speaker:Just influencers, I think. Super turbo, mega rich. Yeah,
Speaker:Like we, we will work with bigger accounts that, um,
Speaker:we don't have any financial relationship with whatsoever. Um,
Speaker:they will recommend our products because they believe in it. You know, it's people like
Speaker:Robin Clever. Um, he does a show on fixed radio.
Speaker:He's got a really big social following. Um,
Speaker:he uses Stabila because he believes in it. Um, we
Speaker:talk to him occasionally. we interact with him, he's part of
Speaker:what we would see as our community. But it doesn't mean that there
Speaker:needs to be a financial relationship. His
Speaker:relationship is with the brand and with the product. One
Speaker:of our family, Adam Simmons, he's got, I
Speaker:think he's got over 90,000 followers. he
Speaker:would always share our tools. The reason he's part of the family is almost as
Speaker:a thank you because he's doing now what he was doing before.
Speaker:Exactly. Because his audience wants to see the
Speaker:work that he's doing and they want to see the tools that he's using and he believes and
Speaker:buys into the product anyway. Yeah. Um, no, like
Speaker:he, he bought one of our high end lasers, uh, and
Speaker:did all of the, the series of reviews on it. They're completely unpaid.
Speaker:He didn't tell us, didn't ask us for any support. Bought it
Speaker:That's really cool. And it's an interesting thing, isn't it?
Speaker:It's like, you know, we would keep doing this podcast regardless
Speaker:of whether Shure paid us for these microphones, you
Speaker:know? Because we like the microphone, we don't have to get paid for every product
Speaker:that's in all of our content, you know? We just go, I don't want any money off
Speaker:Shure. Like, Shure make cool microphones that look like they're really good, they're
Speaker:really expensive, but they do what we need them to do. You
Speaker:know, you don't have to get paid by everybody just because
Speaker:it's a tool that you've always used. Great if you can, but I
Speaker:think as soon as you go, I think, you know, he's been using Stabila
Speaker:forever. And then let's say he has a conversation with you guys, say, hey, do you want to start paying
Speaker:me? And you go, no. And like, would
Speaker:he then stop using Stabila? No, because it's his
Speaker:tool. You know, he's got that kind of brand loyalty, not just because of
Speaker:the brand, but because of the quality. it kind of fits with
Speaker:his workflow. I'm
Speaker:not sure what the takeaway is from that, apart from just being careful
Speaker:about the people that you work with when it comes to these
Speaker:kinds of relationships. You've got the family, which
Speaker:is a little bit more formal. You've got the guys who want
Speaker:to make content on your products, and you can go for
Speaker:it, but you've still got to pay for them. There's a little bit of a discount here, but you've still got to pay for them.
Speaker:And we're not associating ourselves with that, because
Speaker:I think there is risk and we've talked
Speaker:about this before there's risk with using influencers and big accounts because
Speaker:then you can especially if you actively partner with them
Speaker:rather than them just using your product you can't really control that but
Speaker:if you actively partner with a particular individual or several
Speaker:individuals and then all of a sudden they fall out
Speaker:of favor with the industry Yeah, which
Speaker:happens a lot. You are then associated, especially
Speaker:if they are the Stabila guy, you know, and
Speaker:you associate them with Stabila. There's a lot of
Speaker:accounts that you associate with a particular brand. And
Speaker:if they do something a bit shady or if they fall out of favor, they
Speaker:Or if you fall out of love with them, you know, like if you decide we don't
Speaker:want to partner with you anymore, it can turn very sour very quickly. But
Speaker:like you're saying before, I suppose key takeaway for me is the authenticity. If
Speaker:you have an authentic, uh, partner on
Speaker:socials and you have a genuine relationship there that is
Speaker:not a financial one that they bought into the brand, then
Speaker:you kind of protected from things like that. Because like you said before, if
Speaker:they were paid or not paid, they'd still be doing the same content and
Speaker:still be sharing the message about the brand. So you have
Speaker:And it goes back to the original message of garnering recommendations.
Speaker:If you've got this authentic people using
Speaker:your product on social media, that's going to result in
Speaker:more recommendations. And it's an extension of the old school 50 years
Speaker:ago, seeing the guy on site that was doing a really good job
Speaker:using those particular products and you go, well, I aspire to be that person and
Speaker:I had a question for you. Yes. So you were
Speaker:talking before about like measures of success. When it
Speaker:comes to socials, because you do holistic management of
Speaker:people's socials end to end, how do you
Speaker:It's a mix, and usually we'll have KPIs. So
Speaker:the KPIs, the key performance indicators, are
Speaker:things that are stipulated by the client. So
Speaker:sometimes it'll be sales, but that's quite difficult because
Speaker:most of the time we're dealing with people who are dealing direct
Speaker:distributors. So you can put out an amazing campaign, it will
Speaker:do incredibly well. And if all of your distributors are terrible at
Speaker:sales, it's there's not going to be that much benefit. So
Speaker:that's quite difficult. I think what There's
Speaker:a number of different factors that we sort of measure
Speaker:success on, which is followers. A lot
Speaker:of the time, there'll be some sort
Speaker:of KPI around building awareness of the brand. But
Speaker:because of the creative side of what we do, and
Speaker:because we don't do a lot of paid activation, a lot
Speaker:of the measurement
Speaker:is around the engagement on a particular campaign and how that's
Speaker:worked. Because not always are we creating campaigns
Speaker:based on a product. We might be doing a bit of awareness of something.
Speaker:We do quite a lot of brand work where we're sort
Speaker:of more sort of pushing the values of a
Speaker:particular brand because we want to associate the brand with a particular type of person.
Speaker:And then if we start to see more of those kinds of people using the
Speaker:products on social media, then we'll sort
Speaker:of gauge that as a success. But the
Speaker:hard kind of figures we really
Speaker:struggle to get. So we'll work with exactly what we've
Speaker:got, which is engagement, followers, and
Speaker:generally, from our point of view, from a creative director's
Speaker:point of view, is how is the brand appearing? So if I've got
Speaker:a goal of this is how I want the brand to appear, or our client has a particular
Speaker:goal, we want to appear like this to this kind of people from a visual point
Speaker:of view. And then we'll start to push
Speaker:out content that's more aligned with that across the next year. And
Speaker:so we'll look at the benchmark of what they were like before we started working with
Speaker:them and what they were like after. And we can see a very clear visual
Speaker:difference of how they look to an end user. And
Speaker:we could probably do some clever research with that and go, when you
Speaker:look at, let's say we want to appeal to a type
Speaker:of audience that will pay a little bit more for a more refined product.
Speaker:And so we'll take, let's say their socials, because we're a social media agency, we'll
Speaker:take all their social kind of content, pull it into some
Speaker:kind of document, which is the benchmark. And then a
Speaker:year later, we'll pull all of our stuff that we've made.
Speaker:And we'll make a visual comparison of to
Speaker:like let's say an end user of like which one of those would
Speaker:you pay more for? So we haven't done stuff like
Speaker:that. Research is very much like we could start doing
Speaker:this now because we've been working with brands a longer time. So
Speaker:it's a really wishy-washy way of saying there's quite
Speaker:a few different ways that we measure success. A lot of those will be stipulated by
Speaker:the client. The one that I'm most interested in is brand appearance.
Speaker:They're the things that really factoring because you know at
Speaker:Distant it has a look and not to say that
Speaker:it's the only thing we can do we work with healthcare brands not everything has to be like rock and
Speaker:roll and super gritty and contrasty but it
Speaker:is our preference especially for the construction industry it's like it's how we work
Speaker:best but visuals for me and
Speaker:the sort of the less measurable stuff is very much about brand
Speaker:appearance and Oh,
Speaker:there's a term I used the other day that was really clever and I've completely forgotten
Speaker:it. I feel like I might have stolen it from somebody else. Positioning. Positioning
Speaker:is not the term, but brand positioning, how the brand is
Speaker:positioned. I used a different term, but that's an easier one. It
Speaker:I wasn't ready. It does answer it because it's
Speaker:quite a leady question because somebody asked me the other day what's
Speaker:your target on number of followers. I said I don't
Speaker:have a target on number of followers. Vanity metric for the most part. Providing
Speaker:we're not losing people. I'm more interested in
Speaker:an engaged community and exactly like
Speaker:you said when people look at our
Speaker:content and our page, how does that make them feel? You know,
Speaker:like if you could survey people and say, right, now
Speaker:you've been viewing the content, how'd you feel about Stabila?
Speaker:You know, what are the five words that come straight to your mind? And
Speaker:if those align back to what your golden thread is and what
Speaker:your strategy is, then that's what you're
Speaker:trying to achieve. And it is more of a visual thing. You know, you look
Speaker:at it, you look at the grid and you look at the reels and go, is this, Is
Speaker:this helping to us achieve that feeling that
Speaker:That's the most important bit. Does it position it in the right area?
Speaker:And one of the things that you
Speaker:have to have a moral compass in this role, because we
Speaker:can manipulate our clients' accounts. We have
Speaker:a lot of scary control over what we can do to our
Speaker:brand as an agency. If we wanted to, we could ruin a
Speaker:brand really quickly. And obviously, but we don't want that.
Speaker:We want success. Don't put that on your sales page. We want them
Speaker:to keep paying us. But there are some KPIs that
Speaker:we do have. So followers is one of them. For a lot of our brands, they
Speaker:want to build their reach. Reach is important. Exactly. Not to be ignored.
Speaker:So, and so we, a lot of time we'll get bonuses on if
Speaker:we hit targets, which is cool. But we,
Speaker:there are quite shady ways of getting stuff up. I mean, buying followers
Speaker:is an obvious one, but putting out ridiculous competitions to
Speaker:get numbers up and stuff like that is another one. It's not
Speaker:shady, it's a genuine strategy and it works fine. But
Speaker:what you're going to get with that is a lot of people that don't engage with the brand. So you
Speaker:hit one KPI, but not another one. And then so
Speaker:you're fighting all those things. So you have to have a moral compass because yes, we
Speaker:could hit that KPI. We could hit it relatively easily in
Speaker:the time allotted to us. But we also want to make sure that
Speaker:we're not just got a load of people that aren't engaged with the brand because they're
Speaker:people who notoriously just enter competitions to win stuff.
Speaker:And we've come across that a lot. You've got to be so careful. So
Speaker:although we can hit KPIs, we will communicate
Speaker:to the client that we're going to do it in a way that's best for the brand. And if we don't hit that
Speaker:KPI, it's because our moral
Speaker:compass didn't allow it. Or, obviously, if we've just not done
Speaker:a good job, we will tell them. They'll know. They'll know because we communicate these
Speaker:things constantly. Yeah, there's
Speaker:so many ways you can manipulate the figures. And engagement, you know,
Speaker:it's one of those things where, I mean, I've said this before, going
Speaker:off on a bit of a social media tangent, people who don't understand
Speaker:social media, let's say we're working with marketing managers who perhaps aren't
Speaker:as knowledgeable about social media, which is fine, it's not for
Speaker:everybody, they are looking at a
Speaker:lot of the time engagement. So they want to see a lot of engagement on posts
Speaker:and things like that. My
Speaker:argument to this and a lot of marketers will agree
Speaker:with me that you can't always get engagement on everything. So because the
Speaker:classic example is you post a selfie of you with your dog, gets
Speaker:a shitload of engagement. You post an amazing 10 grand
Speaker:production of the new product, gets hardly anywhere
Speaker:as much engagement as that. But which has sold your product better? The
Speaker:one in the picture of you with your dog or the picture of the 10 grand
Speaker:production of this amazing product? And so the
Speaker:argument is that big production of your new product
Speaker:doesn't need engagement. It just needs eyeballs. When
Speaker:I see an advert, I don't instantly go, really cool ad, guys.
Speaker:Well done. But it's still worked. It's still ingrained in
Speaker:my head. And then if I start to see the follow-ups of that, I start to see
Speaker:influencers using it. I start to see users engaging with
Speaker:it. I start to see the brands doing little walkthroughs
Speaker:of that particular product. then it's
Speaker:working even further. If I see more selfies of you with
Speaker:your dog or whatever, they get tons of engagement. Yes,
Speaker:I might engage like that. Have a great time. Doesn't change any behavior.
Speaker:It's not led me to purchase a
Speaker:particular product. And that's something we have to educate our clients on
Speaker:a regular basis. Just because they didn't get the engagement that
Speaker:you wanted, doesn't mean it didn't work. But
Speaker:again it comes back to balance because there will be some pieces
Speaker:of content that we can make. A classic example
Speaker:is high production UGC content. So if we essentially are working with
Speaker:an account or just ourselves and we produce a vertical video that
Speaker:kind of looks like it could have been shot on a phone but it's actually like really nicely lit
Speaker:and it's really high quality and it's essentially 10 grand's worth of camera being
Speaker:turned on its side and shot in a way that kind of
Speaker:looks a bit like user generated content. um they
Speaker:get tons of engagement but what you've got to be careful with is if you've got a
Speaker:brand that's positioning itself as a as
Speaker:a high um you know higher level and uh
Speaker:you know a premium product you want to be careful with UGC content
Speaker:because that um positions you know when you start
Speaker:to see this kind of stuff being produced by the company
Speaker:it looks like I don't know it kind of it's there's a
Speaker:juxtaposition there between the brand positioning and the content that you create and
Speaker:so you've got to kind of balance that out we we struggle with this a little bit
Speaker:because UGC gets a lot of engagement and it's good because
Speaker:we can see the product in use. What I don't like is to see it on the feed
Speaker:of our clients so I struggle and I've sort of battled with our marketing
Speaker:managers to be like Can we not have as much crappy
Speaker:phone content on our client's socials anymore? Or
Speaker:can we at least have a little break because I need people to see that this is a very
Speaker:quality, high premium brand with all of the glossy stuff
Speaker:That's where your influence has come in though, isn't it? Let them do
Speaker:it in their own way. They've got their own style that appeals to their own audience.
Speaker:You just have a much cleaner, clearer way
Speaker:100%. It comes back to that balance again. You've got to figure
Speaker:it out and sometimes you can make mistakes and you go, hold on guys, I don't like how
Speaker:this brand's looking at the moment. And we do need to pivot,
Speaker:we need to stop this right now because my
Speaker:job as a creative director is to see things from afar and
Speaker:project things as much as possible. I
Speaker:feel like we're coming to the end here, Oliver. We've had some really, really good discussions and
Speaker:I think, hopefully, there's been a lot of really, really good takeaways. Is
Speaker:there anything that I should have asked you that you feel like
Speaker:I haven't? Is there something, if you come in here loaded with some information,
Speaker:No, I think I've probably got it through. There's maybe
Speaker:one bit actually that Going
Speaker:back to the market research, something that surprised us that is
Speaker:becoming more of a core part of how we communicate that
Speaker:I never expected to be. It was probably the biggest surprise when we did market
Speaker:research, Facebook. So we
Speaker:were all under the impression, Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker:you know, Facebook's dead. Everyone says that. To all
Speaker:people. I don't think it is. No. When
Speaker:we did our research, and we've done more since
Speaker:to establish this, Facebook shouldn't
Speaker:be forgotten because most tradesmen are on
Speaker:Facebook more from a professional perspective. So
Speaker:if you think of who their core market is, people getting
Speaker:stuff done in their house, it is boomers, isn't it? is people that
Speaker:have money that are at home more often and that are getting
Speaker:painting decorators in, they're getting extensions done, they're the
Speaker:ones that own property, they're the ones that have the money, they're the
Speaker:ones that are all on Facebook and they're the ones that are on community groups
Speaker:on Facebook asking for recommendations for a builder. So
Speaker:you find most trades people will have a business account
Speaker:on Facebook The other avenue is they're
Speaker:also part of these community groups. So
Speaker:like Tyler's community, like Bricklayer's online, Bricklayer's social
Speaker:club. They're huge. They have tens, hundreds
Speaker:of thousands of followers that the engagement levels that
Speaker:they get in their community is more than any
Speaker:other social influencer you'll find. Most
Speaker:people that are on it, are engaging actively. So if
Speaker:you as a brand start to engage and involve in those community groups
Speaker:and you're more visible, I'm not saying Facebook is an advertising
Speaker:opportunity, but that community aspect
Speaker:on Facebook is a lot bigger than a lot of people think
Speaker:Yeah and you know I'm starting to see a trend of the
Speaker:younger generation, I'm 35, Molly
Speaker:who works here is 24, she's on Facebook regularly
Speaker:and I always say like why the hell are you on, like I'm not on, I don't do anything
Speaker:on Facebook at all because I just think it's a weird depressing mess
Speaker:of news and ads. And
Speaker:you know every time I go on there I cringe and um
Speaker:but Marley's on it all the time and she doesn't post anything on there she's just kind of
Speaker:stalking doing her thing like looking at different stuff that's going on
Speaker:getting her news or whatever she'll be on Instagram as well but it's
Speaker:a surprising amount she's on Facebook it's almost
Speaker:like I don't know it's almost like trendy to
Speaker:be kind of retro again um which you know which
Speaker:I find that interesting. We've
Speaker:not had great success with a lot of our brands on Facebook, and it's
Speaker:purely from an engagement point of view. Our stuff engages better on
Speaker:Instagram, but we'll never discount it. You know, Facebook's old,
Speaker:you know, and the Facebook ads is still so
Speaker:powerful. And we don't put
Speaker:a lot into Facebook anymore for a lot of our brands. but
Speaker:purely because the organic stuff doesn't go anywhere near as much engagement
Speaker:but you're absolutely right. Trades people, smaller
Speaker:companies, white man, white fan man, I always could do that. Painters
Speaker:and decorators, small businesses, they're all on Facebook. I
Speaker:went, I flicked onto Facebook the other day, I was taking my bike in for a service, push
Speaker:bike. and it was the first time I'll be like, I'm
Speaker:just going to check, I know that this company's going to be on Facebook, I just want to see if they're open
Speaker:today on this particular time or something like that. No,
Speaker:I think I checked and they weren't open so I went onto their Facebook and it said, that was
Speaker:my news, it said we're out today, we're going to an event. So
Speaker:yeah, the classic example of like these small businesses, like that's where
Speaker:you get your information. They probably wouldn't have posted that on
Speaker:Instagram because it's just a quick post, you know what I mean? They don't have
Speaker:to find a nice bit of creative for that. It's just a quick
Speaker:text post and stuff. So yeah, absolutely. Facebook's still
Speaker:relevant. My sort of hot take for this
Speaker:is TikTok. If you're not
Speaker:on TikTok because you think you have to make silly videos and do like
Speaker:TikTok type content, What
Speaker:I'm saying is you don't have to make that stuff. You don't have to do those kind
Speaker:of like that kind of content. You can produce the same stuff
Speaker:that you're making on Instagram, on TikTok. Yes,
Speaker:it might not get as much engagement on that platform, but at least you're
Speaker:there. At least you're showing up. Show up in as many places as possible. However,
Speaker:to this day, I don't think we've got one client who has a X
Speaker:account, a Twitter account. We don't look after any of that stuff anymore. No, we don't do
Speaker:No. We had one that was owned by an agent that we're trying to get shut down, but it doesn't
Speaker:get used. Yeah. It's not an avenue. I don't really
Speaker:From a brand point of view, I don't know what you would
Speaker:use it for. No. I sort of get TikTok,
Speaker:Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, these as avenues to
Speaker:communicate different messages in different ways should
Speaker:Yeah, it's a weird one isn't it? Absolutely. Last
Speaker:question. We've talked about the past,
Speaker:we've talked about the present of marketing in the
Speaker:construction industry. Have you got any predictions of like the way
Speaker:it's going to kind of keep evolving from now on? Have
Speaker:you got any like sort of foresight into, I reckon it might go in this direction or
Speaker:I think it'd be a continuation of what we're already seeing. I think there
Speaker:will be an ever increasing number of ways for
Speaker:you to communicate in a digital virtual world. I
Speaker:think that it will lead to the
Speaker:erosion of sort of standard traditional methods
Speaker:like print media. So yeah, I think the future holds. to
Speaker:be honest, the same continuation of what we're doing now. But that
Speaker:said, you know, in three years time, there might
Speaker:be a completely new platform, a new TikTok and Instagram
Speaker:starts to die because there's a different way. The main message
Speaker:is you've got to be on your toes as a brand and
Speaker:you've got to be willing, like the conversation at the start about podcasts. to
Speaker:put yourself out there a little bit and step into a new way
Speaker:of communicating because soon that new way of communicating will
Speaker:be mainstream and congested. You just
Speaker:have to be constantly ready to keep on growing. Like
Speaker:you said a second ago, You want your brand to be visible in
Speaker:as many places as you can because it's a great opportunity
Speaker:to get better reach than would have happened 40 years
Speaker:ago when the only way is through word of mouth on sites
Speaker:And I think a good point to make from
Speaker:that is it's good to be seen in as many different places as possible, but
Speaker:keep your brand positioning, your brand message and the values intact.
Speaker:Don't feel like you have to conform to the rules or
Speaker:the perceived rules of that particular platform. Stick to the
Speaker:core messaging, stay the course, keep that golden thread. You
Speaker:don't have to start doing silly dances on TikTok just as
Speaker:a brand because everyone else is doing it. You can stay the course and
Speaker:still produce really good content. Oli, thank you so much. It's
Speaker:been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having
Speaker:me. Everybody go and check out Stabila and all the cool content and see all the stuff that
Speaker:they're doing and all the stuff that we discussed. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, mate. Thanks.
