Peter Sumpton: Strategic Marketing in Construction - The Key To Success
In this episode of The Build Up podcast, Dan has a dynamic conversation with Peter Sumpton, the founder of the marketing consultancy Build Different and the podcast Construction Disrupted. They delve into the unique challenges and opportunities within construction marketing, emphasising the importance of strategic planning over mere tactical execution. Peter shares insights from his extensive experience in the industry, highlighting how marketing should be viewed as a revenue generator rather than a cost. He discusses the need for businesses to understand their marketing objectives and the significance of thorough market research and positioning. The episode also touches on the evolving perception of trades and the construction industry, advocating for a shift in how apprenticeships and careers in construction are viewed. With a focus on innovation and technology, Peter outlines the types of clients he typically works with and the value of having both internal marketing teams and external consultants to drive effective marketing strategies.
This podcast is produced by dissident creative agency, the original disrupters of construction marketing. This podcast is born out of our passion to create conversations that push boundaries as hard as our content!
If breaking rules and standing out is your thing, we want to hear from you...
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Build Up 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 Build Up Welcome
Speaker:to the Build Up podcast. I'm Dan, I'm the creative director of Dissident. And
Speaker:Yeah, you are. Good. I've had a lot of variants
Speaker:in life, but I'm no one to talk because every time someone comes
Speaker:on my podcast or I meet somebody, I ask them to pronounce their name, because
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. Get it out of the way before you, because some
Speaker:people are too polite to say anything until right at the end. You
Speaker:think I've been speaking, I've been saying your name wrong for an hour. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And
Speaker:Peter, you've got your own business, Construction Disrupted. Yeah.
Speaker:Is that right? Yeah, the podcast. Oh, yes. And it
Speaker:Yes, built different. And I noticed as well on
Speaker:your branding, built different. lowercase B,
Speaker:uppercase D. So like the kind of branding kind
Speaker:of like person to me was like, I quite like that. That's different. That's unique.
Speaker:I've got a bit of a thing about not putting like capital letters on things all
Speaker:the time and stuff like that. So Build Different is your marketing
Speaker:Wicked. So I've
Speaker:balled up your business name and the podcast already,
Speaker:so it's probably a good idea if you give me a little introduction to yourself, kind of like what
Speaker:For sure, you got the surname right though, so that's the main thing.
Speaker:We're on a win. No one gets that right. Everyone gets the business name
Speaker:right. So we're different already. It's a good start. Yeah,
Speaker:sure. So the marketing consultancy is called Build Different. Lowercase
Speaker:B, capital D, stands out. That's the
Speaker:reason I did it. And then the podcast is
Speaker:called Construction Disrupted. Found out yesterday
Speaker:that there's a podcast called Construction Disruption, which always helps
Speaker:things, doesn't it? Very, very similar, but they're in the US.
Speaker:We're in the UK. Yeah, so build difference to marketing consultancy
Speaker:and essentially it does what it says on the tin. I'm
Speaker:sure we'll get into consultancy and strategy and tactics and
Speaker:all that kind of jazz a little bit later, but effectively what
Speaker:I do as a consultant is help people understand how
Speaker:marketing can benefit their business. Okay. that
Speaker:rather than them seeing it as a cost to
Speaker:a business, it can actually be a revenue generator. And
Speaker:it should be a revenue generator. And that's where most people go wrong with
Speaker:marketing. So in simple terms, I
Speaker:find businesses that aren't really getting the
Speaker:value out of their marketing, they're doing the same old, what their competitors do,
Speaker:et cetera, et cetera, spending money because they feel like they have to
Speaker:and not really seeing a return and put something in place
Speaker:Really cool, because you think about marketing typically,
Speaker:you know, a lot of the time, especially if you're working not top down,
Speaker:like, like, like, like, I guess you are, I imagine you look
Speaker:strategically over, like a lot, a lot of stuff. When
Speaker:you see agencies like us who we do ask questions, but for a lot of the time, we
Speaker:are just being doing what we're told, you know, we're creating a thing, we've
Speaker:been given a brief, and we're kind of executing that brief. And
Speaker:we might deviate from that and do as much creative stuff as possible. It's
Speaker:the bit, I guess, before and after that, which is, how long can we make
Speaker:this thing make us money? You know, how can we get a... It's
Speaker:always that thing of, like, return on investment in marketing. It's always, like, that horrible
Speaker:term. And we're quite lucky in the fact that we never have to justify
Speaker:that because we don't really... It's
Speaker:usually the marketer that has to do that. We're just being told what to do by
Speaker:the marketer, which is quite nice. But yeah, essentially, you know, rather
Speaker:than it being just a... an exercise of brand
Speaker:awareness or something like that. It's actually like, let's see if we can generate revenue
Speaker:Yeah. And I think you've sort of hit the nail on the head there.
Speaker:And that's where people go wrong. So I love an
Speaker:analogy and we'll try and get as many as possible. And a really good one
Speaker:here is if you think about booking a holiday, there's a lot of
Speaker:planning and effort goes into that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker:you can say that the likes of online booking and packages
Speaker:make it easier, but you're buying a package for a particular thing. But
Speaker:you don't just shut your eyes and go, right, we're going there. Some people do. But we're going
Speaker:there, and it costs that much, right? Off we go, and we've done it, and we've had a great holiday.
Speaker:There's loads of things to consider. Do you want sun? Do you want beach? Do you want city?
Speaker:How much is your budget? Et cetera, et cetera. And so just
Speaker:booking a holiday, something that everybody does, they put a lot of planning into
Speaker:that ahead of doing that particular thing that
Speaker:is what they're going to do. If you put that into marketing terms,
Speaker:that's like you doing all the creative stuff. and
Speaker:not having a brief and not having a plan and
Speaker:them not knowing what that creative stuff is going to do and just say, no, just some
Speaker:creative stuff, please. It's like, it's just going
Speaker:to be art at the end of the day, which is beautiful, but it's not going to
Speaker:generate revenue, which is what marketing needs to
Speaker:do and is there to do. That's the discipline of marketing. It's there to
Speaker:So it's like if you were to book a holiday in the way that you suggested, a
Speaker:holiday is going to happen. but it might not necessarily be one you enjoy.
Speaker:And in the creative terms, creative is going to happen, but
Speaker:Absolutely, yeah. And I don't know, unless you're a crazy person, I
Speaker:don't know many people that just book a holiday and just go, sod it, we'll just do
Speaker:it. Yes. You know? Yeah. You want it to be the
Speaker:best that you want to do, because let's face it, nowadays you don't get many
Speaker:of them. No. So you want to enjoy them, and you want to get value out
Speaker:of them. flip it to marketing. Ideally,
Speaker:you'd enjoy it, and you certainly want to get value out of it. So that's
Speaker:what I bring to the table, that planning and implementation to
Speaker:make sure you get what you deserve out of your marketing,
Speaker:but also make it a bit of fun as well. Yeah, make it exciting, get
Speaker:Love it. I'd like to come back to build different a bit later on,
Speaker:talk about exactly what you what you do there and kind of like what
Speaker:the clients typically look like and stuff like that. But I'd love
Speaker:to know, because it's an interesting one. A lot of people find themselves in construction by
Speaker:accident. How did you find yourself working, kind of in this
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, if you
Speaker:go way, way back, my dad was a joiner. And
Speaker:weirdly, my mom and dad only worked for
Speaker:one company both their entire lives, 50 plus years, same
Speaker:company in construction. So
Speaker:I'd like to say it was in my blood, but I never really wanted to be a
Speaker:joiner or a builder or anything like that. I always loved marketing
Speaker:from the perspective of it influences people's decisions, not
Speaker:from a deceptive perspective, but you can certainly influence what
Speaker:somebody thinks about something. So that
Speaker:kind of drew me to marketing. And then few
Speaker:various roles, right from assistant to
Speaker:manager, et cetera, et cetera. And then got the opportunity to
Speaker:work in the construction industry. Well, it's more distribution, but
Speaker:within construction. So I wouldn't say I stumbled
Speaker:across it or fell into it, but there was a role there available.
Speaker:And I felt that I could know and
Speaker:understand the construction industry better than other
Speaker:people having kind of lived it with my parents
Speaker:being in that industry and just listening to what they
Speaker:do at work and things like that. So that's kind of how I got into
Speaker:the industry and stayed in it ever
Speaker:since. Been in it for about 22 years now,
Speaker:agency side as well as client side. So I've kind of
Speaker:seen both. do various other things as well. So
Speaker:if you want to kind of categorize who I help, it's anybody that
Speaker:builds, creates, or educates. OK, that's cool. That's
Speaker:kind of my premise. If you do one of those three things, we
Speaker:Love it. Is there a particular reason, do you think, that you've managed to
Speaker:stay in and around this kind of industry,
Speaker:construction, for so long? Is there something that's kept you here?
Speaker:Yeah, it's almost like, what film is it, that famous
Speaker:line, you know, I thought I was out but then they pulled me back in. Yeah, yeah, yeah, The
Speaker:Godfather. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go, The Godfather, should really know that.
Speaker:I think it is, yeah, Al Pacino. Well, we
Speaker:can always dub that with the actual answer, if
Speaker:it isn't The Godfather, I'm pretty sure it is. But anyway, it's
Speaker:kind of that, you look at different industries and you think the grass is
Speaker:always greener. But it very rarely is
Speaker:greener. I love the educational space. So
Speaker:I do a bit in education with innovative products
Speaker:and educational technology. The
Speaker:thing that keeps me in construction at the moment is the technology behind it
Speaker:and the way the construction technology industry is going
Speaker:and progressing. There's just so much innovation, so
Speaker:much tech that we can build on, develop,
Speaker:and learn from. It really is an amazing industry.
Speaker:Yeah, it's definitely getting nerdier, isn't it, construction? And I think
Speaker:I was speaking to, I mention him all the time, Ryan
Speaker:from SLG. he
Speaker:said quite rightly that construction has got a bit of a branding issue
Speaker:and the fact that a lot of people when they can when they in their mind's eye when they think about
Speaker:construction if they're not in the industry already they think of a typically
Speaker:a man in high veers and boots you know and a hard hat and stuff
Speaker:like that getting mucky getting dirty perhaps I don't know you
Speaker:have your own kind of like visual thoughts of that but that that's for
Speaker:the longest time been been quite a typical kind of a branding
Speaker:problem whereas you know there's some there's some really crazy
Speaker:innovation and really, really clever stuff going on. One of our clients has
Speaker:got a, they produced
Speaker:a robot that puts fixings into a ceiling, like
Speaker:high up, like in a really precise way. And
Speaker:it does loads of mad stuff. And I said, it's like a robot dog that
Speaker:does this. It's insane. I'm like, that's coming.
Speaker:Absolutely. So on that point, I mean, Ryan has spoken about
Speaker:things like this in the past, a lot of time for Ryan
Speaker:and what he's doing at his agency. And yeah,
Speaker:it is an image problem, but it's not just the
Speaker:image, it's the educational piece. So if you take it right
Speaker:back, to when I was at school, long time
Speaker:ago. It was just the development of whiteboards
Speaker:was coming into school then, yeah. Showing my age
Speaker:then. But we had one hour lesson
Speaker:in our final year on career development. And
Speaker:it was essentially, I remember it quite clearly, essentially you've got three choices.
Speaker:One, go to university. Two, go to college. Or
Speaker:three, if you're a thicko, you can do an apprenticeship, which
Speaker:is probably plumber, electrician, et cetera, et cetera. Now,
Speaker:that sounds derogatory. I help
Speaker:apprentices, marketing apprentices. I love apprenticeships. I think it's actually
Speaker:better than a university degree at this moment in time. You get more out of it. So
Speaker:by no way am I disparaging anyone to do an apprenticeship. That
Speaker:That was what you thought. When you see the guys going for the,
Speaker:You know we had a thing where you could go to, I
Speaker:think I've said this on the podcast before, you could go and do like bricklaying at like the local college
Speaker:or whatever but it was kind of reserved for the people who really weren't fit
Speaker:to be in a classroom. So that was typically people with learning difficulties
Speaker:or behavioral issues and stuff like that. They're the guys that were sending into
Speaker:the trade like early on. And so of
Speaker:you know you're in in your head you're thinking like um like
Speaker:that's not for me it's for them um so uh
Speaker:yeah but if you if you if you look at that and you and you
Speaker:take it forward and you think okay well nobody's explaining
Speaker:to me that if I go and do an apprenticeship as a plumber then
Speaker:a year's time, I can be a qualified plumber, technically.
Speaker:I can sort stuff out around my house, which makes that
Speaker:cheaper. I can help my friends and family, which obviously
Speaker:can grow a business, which means I can work for myself, which I have independence, which
Speaker:means I can take more people on if I can grow the business and end up being
Speaker:a business owner. And then other people doing the work, and then I've
Speaker:got a fully-fledged business that I'm running. You're an entrepreneur. Yeah, an
Speaker:entrepreneur. And no one ever tells you that. They just say, no, you go and fix pipes.
Speaker:Yeah. You know, because you're not that well educated, are you? So off
Speaker:you go. And it's madness. So I don't think
Speaker:there's just an education problem, sorry, an image problem in
Speaker:terms of hard high viz, which there is. But I think it's
Speaker:that gateway into the industry not just for the
Speaker:high tech, the analysts that we're going to need as the tech comes through,
Speaker:but also for the manual trades, the laborers, the plumbers, et
Speaker:cetera, et cetera, which they need to be told at a young age,
Speaker:look, you could do this rest of your life. And if you're happy doing that, fantastic, because
Speaker:you can make a killing in some of these industries. Or we
Speaker:can help you develop a business off this. you know and it's just
Speaker:I think it's getting sexier. I think it's definitely on
Speaker:the up. I don't know who's doing this but I
Speaker:think it's on the up. I mean I'm talking specifically about trades because
Speaker:I don't think marketing and construction has ever been considered sexy, to be honest with you.
Speaker:But the trades are definitely getting sexy, because if
Speaker:you're interested in money, laborers, and even
Speaker:like the simplest kind of like, I don't know whether you consider laboring to
Speaker:be unskilled, I think it's probably a lot of skill involved in it, and a lot of dedication.
Speaker:But you can, in a real serious way, if you're a hard worker.
Speaker:But likewise, carpentry, plumbing. electricians, you
Speaker:know, there's, there is there's money to be made if you're good at what you do.
Speaker:And if you're clever about business. So,
Speaker:so that side is definitely getting sexier. Whereas like, you know, when
Speaker:I was in school, like, yeah, like being a tradesman, wasn't that
Speaker:and I might upset a few people here, but again, this was
Speaker:the thought back in the day for a lot of people. This isn't my thoughts. Being
Speaker:a tradesman, like a plumber, wasn't that many rungs up the ladder than a bin man, you
Speaker:know, and that's always been considered to be one of the lowest, like kind of like, I
Speaker:don't know, in the minds of the public, like not something
Speaker:Please continue. Well, I mean, it's bizarre, isn't it? That
Speaker:that was the thought at the time. And it might be some people's
Speaker:thoughts. now, but if you think, if you take the
Speaker:people that are called refuge collection collectors now
Speaker:away, what happens to all the rubbish? Society
Speaker:Yeah, take the builders away, you're screwed as well, likewise. So
Speaker:yeah, you're right, I think the education thing
Speaker:is is, is massive. I do feel,
Speaker:I think it's getting better. I get the impression, certainly since I've been
Speaker:back, since I've been from school a long time ago, I
Speaker:think it's, it's, you know, there's, there's more push and
Speaker:the colleges and stuff are sort of better funded and
Speaker:better equipped to take on like more trades, more people in the trade and stuff like
Speaker:that. So I think, I think it's, I think it's on its way up. We could do giving
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. Anybody out there that wants
Speaker:to get into a trade, regardless, be it from marketing to
Speaker:bricklaying, for example, do an apprenticeship. It's
Speaker:the best way to learn on the job. And you'll get a mentor, you'll
Speaker:learn in a college or in your own office or virtually
Speaker:or whatever it is, some theory, and then you apply that
Speaker:in the real world to a real company. It's the best way to kick
Speaker:I've always had a bit of an issue with apprenticeships from in our industry because
Speaker:there's as a business owner. I've always struggled to
Speaker:find the value in an apprentice early on
Speaker:because you kind of You're encouraged to pay apprentices well
Speaker:these days, more so than it was when I was
Speaker:16, you know, when your mates were on two pounds an hour or something like
Speaker:that, doing their apprenticeship, because, you know, there was that kind of thing of they were,
Speaker:they were learning, they were, you know, someone was almost on one of those things where, like,
Speaker:you should be paying us type scenario. So
Speaker:in the creative industry, it's quite difficult to get value out of an
Speaker:apprentice in the first, let's say, year, because you can't just send them on a shoot, you can't send them
Speaker:on a production, there's not a lot of sweeping up to be done. in
Speaker:a creative agency whereas I think for the construction industry,
Speaker:apprenticeships are massive. I think a lot of people say
Speaker:I'm a bit worried about training up an apprentice and they just leave and
Speaker:so far I get that but they can still provide value early on
Speaker:you know depending on what trade they're in, especially plumbing I think and
Speaker:Most jobs in the trade, it very much feels like it's a person and
Speaker:a half job. So you know, there's fetching, there's carrying, there's
Speaker:holding. If you take, I
Speaker:don't know why I keep coming back to bricklaying, but if you take that, for example, you
Speaker:need somebody to keep that mixer going. You
Speaker:know, on small builds, you need somebody to keep it going and someone to
Speaker:lay bricks. Well, if you're keeping it going and laying bricks, well, it takes
Speaker:double the time. It's only really half a job to keep that mixer
Speaker:going. So then they can do other stuff and learn as they go. So
Speaker:I get the impression there's less support for business
Speaker:owners these days when it comes to apprenticeship. I feel like there may have been some grants knocking about
Speaker:and stuff that aren't there anymore. But I think there's still
Speaker:some stuff out there to help businesses. I don't know enough about
Speaker:Yeah, there is like a levy. When I was running a
Speaker:marketing department, I think we had to pay something like three grand. to
Speaker:So it's like well we might as well use it then. It
Speaker:makes absolute sense. So you've stuck around in the construction industry,
Speaker:it's a good industry, good people and it's evolving and
Speaker:innovating which is exciting. I think
Speaker:brands are innovating as well and when it comes to marketing that they're becoming
Speaker:more receptive to more interesting and creative ideas, which is
Speaker:exciting for us. Because that's what
Speaker:gets the juices flowing is like, oh, you know, we're up for trying new
Speaker:and interesting kind of creative ideas and things like that. So
Speaker:when it comes to your actual work, can
Speaker:you talk us through like, what a typical client looks like? And what I
Speaker:guess what a typical kind of like service offering is, although I'm sure
Speaker:you can, it's different every time, isn't it? But what are
Speaker:Yeah, so a typical client's quite hard to
Speaker:quantify, really. Just because if you look at the construction
Speaker:industry alone, you've got everybody from
Speaker:a one-man band, SMEs, to T1 contractors,
Speaker:to large multinational organizations. So it's not, I
Speaker:don't like to pigeonhole a particular thing. It's easy
Speaker:to say, kind of the organizations that I don't necessarily help. And
Speaker:that's kind of the, anything that's done on site. So,
Speaker:you know, it might be one-man bands, builders, generally
Speaker:contractors, subcontractors, not really my bag. It's more
Speaker:the services around construction that
Speaker:I help. So anything that's tech driven, innovative
Speaker:products. So we're talking data, certification,
Speaker:auditing, anything numbers and figures-wise that
Speaker:is done more digitally is kind of my bag. That's cool.
Speaker:So those are the kind of organizations that I help. Typical
Speaker:services, it always starts, it's
Speaker:funny because you speak to marketing agencies and like, of course we
Speaker:can help. It's like, well, how do you know you can help? Because you don't even know the problems. Yes.
Speaker:And the funny thing about marketing is that people think you
Speaker:need, that you know everything. So you know, and
Speaker:you probably get it from a creative perspective, but that you know everything
Speaker:from, well, you must know what PPC is, right?
Speaker:And SEO, yeah? Well, can you design this PowerPoint? Oh,
Speaker:yeah, of course you can, because you're in marketing. But also, we need this creative
Speaker:thing doing. Oh, yeah, we're going to an event. Can you run that? And it's like,
Speaker:whoa, you've just spoken about seven people's different roles there within
Speaker:marketing. What I
Speaker:do first and foremost, I say, okay, fine, we need to do a bit
Speaker:of a health check first. Where are you currently? Because
Speaker:you need to do due diligence to find out what they've got, what
Speaker:they're doing, what's working and what isn't, before you can advise on
Speaker:where they need to go. So that's first and foremost, do a bit of a health check on
Speaker:them. And then What we do is
Speaker:sit down with them, show them the problems, where we can take it, and
Speaker:then develop some form of plan for them. So
Speaker:that is strategy, tactics, and
Speaker:how to implement it. Now, I can help with the implementation. That's
Speaker:part of what I do. And I think you need to do that. Similarly
Speaker:to what you do here, if you didn't do
Speaker:things like this, if you weren't in front of the camera, behind
Speaker:the camera, doing that kind of thing, you'd soon lose touch with
Speaker:Yeah you still got to be on the tools a
Speaker:Yeah absolutely, so the thing that I bring is
Speaker:I'll do all that dirty work, that research, that market
Speaker:orientation, that strategic development, then
Speaker:the tactics that you need to implement to get you to where you want
Speaker:to be, to deliver an objective I think a
Speaker:lot of marketing within this industry isn't
Speaker:set to objectives and it's just done because it's done. Yes.
Speaker:Well, I think you can have goals rather than objectives. Can't you sometimes, and I
Speaker:know that they kind of, you can, they're
Speaker:probably like interchangeable, but, um, you know, a goal for instance, could be,
Speaker:we want to, um, have X amount of followers on Instagram.
Speaker:We want to have X amount of reach and we want to have this many hits to the website, whereas an
Speaker:objective is really about like the
Speaker:more bigger picture stuff. And it's creating
Speaker:situations for other areas of the business or something like that can
Speaker:But if you're a marketing manager, head of
Speaker:marketing, and you haven't gone to the business owner, the CEO,
Speaker:the MD, or whoever and said, what is our business goal this
Speaker:year? Say, oh, we want to increase turnover by 10%, which
Speaker:is fictional. And then said, OK, well,
Speaker:let's sit down for a day and work out
Speaker:how marketing can help increase turnover by 10%. And
Speaker:then that is what we will do within marketing for the year, for 18 months,
Speaker:whatever. That is our main objective. And
Speaker:then you set goals around that. And you have a team. Ideally,
Speaker:you have a team which you can set individual goals. Hopefully you
Speaker:have their own talents, their expertise in certain areas of marketing. that
Speaker:can help achieve that. And if you're not doing that, then you're
Speaker:just, you're just going over, you're just turning the pedals
Speaker:and probably quicker and quicker because people want things faster and faster and it's
Speaker:It's funny, you mentioned, you know, about like, you know, you
Speaker:can, can you do this or people, people assuming
Speaker:you can do this. A lot of the time they ask, is one
Speaker:of those things where I had a conversation with someone on LinkedIn the other day, a nice guy. And
Speaker:he straight away was just like, hey, we like what you do. Do you do copywriting? I'm
Speaker:like, kind of. We don't like offer as a service. Obviously,
Speaker:we do write stuff because we're a social media agency. So there's
Speaker:an element of copywriting involved with that. creative writing.
Speaker:What do you need help with? And
Speaker:he was like, well, we've got an agency currently, that's looking
Speaker:after our socials PPC for social specifically Google
Speaker:ads, and the website and sort
Speaker:of the copyright, we're having a new website built though, And
Speaker:we're looking to sort of change agency from this agency, and I
Speaker:think it was a different country. And
Speaker:the first thing we need is website copy for the new website. And I
Speaker:was like, I gave him a list of the things that we could do. And
Speaker:I was like, copywriting was like a maybe I was like, depends depends what you need.
Speaker:He's to write everything. in which case that's not, doesn't sound
Speaker:like fun to us at all. But if we're tweaking
Speaker:language and changing up a few bits and bobs and having a look at,
Speaker:you know, actually just this read well, does it tick
Speaker:all the boxes in terms of like, well, how you want the user
Speaker:experience to be on the website, whatever. But yeah,
Speaker:it was basically, it was a hard pass from this guy because I was like,
Speaker:no, I don't think we're really going to do the copyrighting for your website and
Speaker:stuff like that. But I said to the guy like, I'm not this was
Speaker:like our first conversations like a cool like, like, I'm not fight
Speaker:like fight over like we should definitely we should definitely do all this work. But
Speaker:it was weird that he needed one company to do all
Speaker:of these different things. And I've
Speaker:never seen great success from from from like,
Speaker:having that mindset. You will find agencies that can do all that kind
Speaker:of stuff because they might have the right people. But yeah,
Speaker:it was an interesting one. And it's quite freeing to say no about stuff
Speaker:like that. I quite like being like, nah, we're good. Because
Speaker:a hungrier me a
Speaker:few more years ago would have said yes, I think, and regretted it.
Speaker:For sure. But if somebody is looking for that, then
Speaker:they're looking for an agency that's probably going to cost quite a lot of money because they're
Speaker:going to have to pay, particularly if they want it done well, because they're going to have to pay
Speaker:a lot of individual experts to bring those talents. And
Speaker:they probably haven't got that in their budget. So
Speaker:that's one key thing. It's like, people think the
Speaker:marketing, it's almost like this one hit wonder. Let's
Speaker:create an advert that will do this. Let's create something that will do that,
Speaker:and that will solve all our problems. And it's like, no, it's
Speaker:just a touch point. It's just a touch point that is there to deliver one
Speaker:thing, essentially. What is that one thing that you want that touch point to
Speaker:do? Yes. Focus on letting it do that. You're going
Speaker:to need a lot of these touch points, by the way. Yeah. But that is one singular
Speaker:touch point. An advert is not going to make you millions. I
Speaker:can almost guarantee it. you need
Speaker:a lot of different things going on for any
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely. It was an interesting one because we
Speaker:got everything going that that particular company
Speaker:needed. Relatively unsexy kind
Speaker:of construction business, I
Speaker:can't remember what it was, well that's right up our street, we love that, we
Speaker:can make this cool. But it was just this one thing and
Speaker:it was like, unless you can do all of these things together, it's a
Speaker:no. Which I thought was interesting because copyright for me is one person's
Speaker:job. Get a freelancer for that. Some great individual. I don't
Speaker:know loads of copywriters that work in agencies. I think that's typically, it's
Speaker:a bit like a photographer. It's one of those things where you just do it on your own. You don't need to be in an
Speaker:agency. I'm sure there are. I'm sure there's some great ones, but it
Speaker:seems like all the copywriters I know were in one-man bands, you know, just kind
Speaker:of... picking up work, especially in
Speaker:the construction industry. Actually, if you want to be a copywriter in the construction industry, you
Speaker:can make a killing. Especially if you're a technical writer or do like
Speaker:white papers and stuff, because no one wants to do them. That's
Speaker:all. really, really cool. So
Speaker:is there a particular area of the of like what you deliver to
Speaker:your clients that really gets you going the most like is
Speaker:it is that initial strategic kind of phase or is
Speaker:like a bit like we talked about like still being on the tools, there's still elements of
Speaker:like marketing is just like this is my favorite thing to do. Yeah. Or I'm
Speaker:But I mean, It's a mixture, because that's kind of why I
Speaker:got into marketing. It was that influential aspect that
Speaker:you can persuade people in the right way ethically to
Speaker:think a certain thing about a certain product or service. But
Speaker:it was the discipline of marketing that was so varied that you
Speaker:do get to do a hell of a lot of things. Even
Speaker:if you take a subset of marketing, like creative, like SEO,
Speaker:there's still a hell of a lot of different things that need to go into those things. And
Speaker:it was that variety. So there isn't one particular thing that
Speaker:gets me going. I suppose the thing that I enjoy
Speaker:the most is when it's fresh and new and
Speaker:then you get your hands on it and it's like possibilities are
Speaker:endless where we're going to take this. And then you can start to
Speaker:narrow down where you can take this through your research, through
Speaker:information and where the organization currently is, what budget
Speaker:they've got. what resources they've got and
Speaker:what they need. And then that massively narrows down the field.
Speaker:And then you're like, OK, well, how can I, from that narrow field, make
Speaker:this stand out and memorable? Because as
Speaker:you all know, being creative, that's key, being memorable. It's
Speaker:got to happen. And getting to that point and
Speaker:having almost a science behind the art and the creative,
Speaker:which is hugely important, That's the bit that I really
Speaker:enjoy because not many people focus on that. It's
Speaker:always the promotional aspect of marketing. And
Speaker:I forget that there's another three disciplines that take up 75% of what
Speaker:a generalist marketer should do. But everyone focuses
Speaker:and goes to that promotional thing. And that's when most marketers
Speaker:or marketing departments fall down, particularly when they work with agencies, because
Speaker:they're like, well, we just need some promotional stuff like we were talking about before.
Speaker:And they don't consider the pricing. They don't consider distribution. They
Speaker:only consider promotion. So that's
Speaker:kind of what gets me going. They're probably the more boring bits and
Speaker:It's natural, isn't it? Let's say you get put into a marketing job
Speaker:in a construction business, let's say. Let's say
Speaker:it's a manufacturer, let's say you're pretty green, you're going to go straight
Speaker:to the fun stuff, aren't you? You're going to go to the shiny objects, which is
Speaker:like your promo videos, social media, marketing,
Speaker:ads, all that kind of thing. And if you've not got an infrastructure behind that, all
Speaker:Customer journey, all these kinds of different things. It's
Speaker:not going to be as successful. I know some businesses that have done relatively well
Speaker:off a couple of ads, but it's not sustainable. You're going
Speaker:to have to play catch up. Exactly. You've got to catch up with all
Speaker:What next? I was asked that. What next? OK, so
Speaker:we're going to do this campaign. Yeah. Fine. It's
Speaker:got a goal. We want to achieve that goal. But what next? What
Speaker:happens when that finishes? Because the business isn't finished then. And
Speaker:if you haven't got a strategy or a marketing plan in place, what
Speaker:next? You're just doing it daily, or
Speaker:going month by month, and that's no way to develop something.
Speaker:This is why I love working with manufacturers, especially manufacturers
Speaker:that bring out a decent amount of products per year, because your
Speaker:what next is always solved. But the
Speaker:downside of that is, Um, like quite
Speaker:often the stuff that you're working on and doing, you know, some really,
Speaker:really good work on three months ago, you're like, ah, forget about that one
Speaker:to the next thing or whatever. And like, you know, we're, we're kind of moving
Speaker:on to this product now when that one just gets kind of left behind. and
Speaker:stuff like that. But yeah, beautiful thing about working with manufacturers who
Speaker:make like, you know, especially smaller products that you can create
Speaker:new ones and fresh ones all the time is you've always got a
Speaker:roadmap, some kind of roadmap for the year of just like, cool, looking
Speaker:forward to this, looking forward to that. Which
Speaker:is always, always pleasant as opposed to like a service based business where it's like, you've
Speaker:got to find that stuff. Yeah, you got to figure it out. You,
Speaker:when we were doing the research for this episode, you were speaking to
Speaker:Aisha and she brought back a thing
Speaker:that you'd love to talk about and I found really
Speaker:interesting. I don't know whether this is like a tagline or like a phrase or something, but
Speaker:I've written it as this, which is thinking strategically before
Speaker:think work strategically before tactically. Yeah, something
Speaker:along those lines. And when I
Speaker:started to think about that, and I was like, I'm not sure I
Speaker:can figure out the difference from that. So I thought I'd be a really, really cool question to
Speaker:ask, like, what does that mean? And what does that look like to
Speaker:For sure, for sure. It's kind of something that I
Speaker:love talking about and going through, really, because it's
Speaker:almost mission critical for me. And if you haven't got
Speaker:a strategy, then you shouldn't be looking at tactics, and you certainly
Speaker:shouldn't be looking at creative. You only get to do that fun, nice stuff
Speaker:if you do the hard graft first. Or you only get to do that fun,
Speaker:nice stuff that will help the business if you do the hard graft
Speaker:first. So what that means is that you need
Speaker:an overall direction. You need a shining light somewhere that
Speaker:you're looking to get to before you start thinking about
Speaker:the individual tactics that are going to help you get there. So let's
Speaker:bring another analogy in. Car journey. OK. So
Speaker:I drove here today. So my objective was
Speaker:to get here by half one. Didn't do that, so
Speaker:failed the objective straight away, but let's just say I did. So objective
Speaker:was get here by half one. My
Speaker:strategy for getting here was to drive. Everyone
Speaker:can understand that. Everyone knows what that means. I'm
Speaker:going to drive here. The objective, get here by half
Speaker:one. OK. But that doesn't consider all the
Speaker:small little things that are going to help me drive here by
Speaker:half one. Those are the tactics. OK. So strategy, dead
Speaker:simple. Make it as simple as you possibly can. going
Speaker:to drive here. If you ask anyone in my car, in the
Speaker:company, if you like, what the strategy was,
Speaker:it's drive to here. Tactics, this
Speaker:is your sat-nav, road, music, fuel.
Speaker:Are you going to stop at any point? Is there any diversions? What
Speaker:food are you going to take? Is there any passengers? What else
Speaker:do you need to be aware of? Things like that. Those
Speaker:are the tactics that you need to implement to
Speaker:I love it. So it's kind of like, if we
Speaker:could, if you could summarize it in a slightly different way, because that
Speaker:was the, you know, some people might still
Speaker:not be aware of the kind of like the difference of
Speaker:strategy and tactics. And there's other terms like that
Speaker:can kind of can kind of get like adds to the add to the wars. But I
Speaker:guess strategy is almost like the thought process and
Speaker:the planning. Tactics is activities essentially, all
Speaker:the stuff that's happening, actual stuff happening as
Speaker:opposed to the planning and thought out and organizing
Speaker:Yes. So your strategy should be something that
Speaker:everybody kind of lives by. That's your direction. If
Speaker:we go back to what we were talking about earlier, you go to meet
Speaker:your MD, CEO, company owner, whoever it is, and
Speaker:you say, what do you want to achieve in 12, 18 months? Want
Speaker:to achieve this? OK. Well, how as a marketing department can
Speaker:we help you achieve that? And you
Speaker:have that discussion, and you say, right, OK, so as a business,
Speaker:as a marketing department, our sole focus is to do
Speaker:this thing, to deliver this strategy. OK.
Speaker:Off you go. You tell me how you're going to do it. That's where your
Speaker:tactics come in. OK. The tactical implementation, the
Speaker:implementation is the doing bit. The tactics is setting out what
Speaker:So if you had like a, let's say, If you made
Speaker:a marketing strategy, for instance, let's say you made a document. I don't know
Speaker:how many people do this these days. Because I always ask for them
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're absolutely right. And we've worked with quite a
Speaker:lot of companies. We've stopped working as much with
Speaker:companies that don't have marketing managers, because we've found that we
Speaker:can help them initially, but after a while, the relationship will
Speaker:go stale, because we need someone to manage us. And
Speaker:there needs to be somebody that kind of knows what they're doing to some extent. We
Speaker:can sort of hound people up to a certain point, but after
Speaker:a while, we're doing stuff for the sake of it, because
Speaker:we've not been given a strategy or given a plan. But
Speaker:when you, let's say you were delivering a marketing strategy, even if
Speaker:you do this yourself, do tactics get added
Speaker:into this? Or is this something that happens after the strategy is kind of
Speaker:figured out, essentially, like, in terms
Speaker:of the actual document, like when you say, well, here's the strategy, and here are the tactics
Speaker:that we're going to do to kind of facilitate that. Would you do that typically or does
Speaker:No, no, it happens like with it. You
Speaker:know, it's a bit like brother and sister, I suppose. Older
Speaker:brother, strategy, younger sister is tactics. Same
Speaker:family, very different. Yes. Well, if
Speaker:you're my son and daughter, yeah, very different. But
Speaker:what would generally happen is you agree on a strategy. And
Speaker:if we put that in business terms, because we've done the analogy, and people
Speaker:still might be slightly confused, yes, you have that overall statement, like
Speaker:we said, going to drive to here. But
Speaker:within strategic intent, we could call it, you need
Speaker:to understand your target market and the positioning. So
Speaker:we can narrow it down to kind of three things, if
Speaker:you like. A strategic statement.
Speaker:segmentation the market, which means targeting. So grouping
Speaker:people, businesses together, and what's kind
Speaker:of what's the most viable market for you to target.
Speaker:And then positioning. So how are you going to position yourself in the market? And
Speaker:once you've done those three things, then
Speaker:you can start to think tactically. So for example, say
Speaker:you're a manufacturer and your
Speaker:manufacturer roofing products used to work for one. So
Speaker:why don't we just stay with that? And you start to
Speaker:do insulation, which they did. Well, that
Speaker:insulation can probably go in walls, it can probably go under floor, and
Speaker:it can go in roofing. So your strategy for that part
Speaker:of the business is going to be slightly different. And your
Speaker:target market is going to be slightly different. Therefore, your positioning in
Speaker:the manufacturing or construction industry for
Speaker:insulation is going to be slightly different to what you were previously doing,
Speaker:dependent on the quality of the product, dependent on the pricing of
Speaker:the product, depending on how it's going to be distributed. And
Speaker:therefore, I've just mentioned three, the other three disciplines within
Speaker:tactics, product, price and place.
Speaker:And then you do the promotion on top of that. So
Speaker:you cannot get to product, price, place, promotion,
Speaker:creative, without doing the
Speaker:strategy, the positioning first. Because if you are,
Speaker:then you don't know your positioning. You don't know
Speaker:what that creative should look like. You know, I mean,
Speaker:you'll have seen it time and time again, and you want each
Speaker:of your clients to be different and stand out, and rightly so. But
Speaker:if you stand out for the wrong reasons, that's not going to be in line with
Speaker:the type of business they are, the type of products they sell, and particularly the
Speaker:quality and the pricing of what they're trying to achieve. And
Speaker:that's why strategy is integral, because
Speaker:you can't do any of that unless you know your strategic direction, your
Speaker:So if, for instance, if
Speaker:you're, again, let's say a manufacturer, medium
Speaker:sized manufacturer, even like a UK arm of, you
Speaker:know, a bigger enterprise. And you've got a team of
Speaker:salespeople, you've got your admin staff, customer service, all that kind
Speaker:of thing. And you can only
Speaker:afford, I've only just come up with this
Speaker:off the top of my head. Let's say you can only afford three marketing
Speaker:teams. three people in your marketing team. And
Speaker:I was just thinking like there would be a way because I think once
Speaker:like I can't imagine. There's
Speaker:definitely going to be marketers out there that can be like, right, I'm going to get this strategy done and stuff like
Speaker:that. But is that going to be the best use of their budget rather
Speaker:than like bringing in someone like yourself, who's like a consultant who
Speaker:can come in, set everything up, do a bit of implementation, but
Speaker:for the most part, set that team on the right path. Would that be the way
Speaker:that you would go? Or do you think they should be employing somebody like
Speaker:yourself, for instance, to kind of be a full time member of staff and then have
Speaker:like perhaps two juniors or something? Would you go one way or the other with
Speaker:Typical marketing answer? Yeah. It depends. Of course,
Speaker:you know, it's just typical, isn't it? It all depends, because the thing
Speaker:that is the disruptor to that is
Speaker:the fact that businesses aren't standing still. No.
Speaker:Now, if you're a new business, then absolutely, then you've got a more
Speaker:of a justified decision to make on which way to go. Yes. But
Speaker:because that business is probably halfway through certain things, the
Speaker:likelihood is, or the easier option is, to bring somebody in to develop something
Speaker:while the other marketers get on with their day-to-day activities. Now,
Speaker:if you're starting from scratch day one, I
Speaker:would say that you're better employing somebody, like
Speaker:you said, to be a marketing manager because
Speaker:they can run day-to-day and they can develop and build something. But,
Speaker:huge caveat here, Anybody
Speaker:that works for a business has not
Speaker:got a noose around their neck, that's too strong, but they've got that somebody's
Speaker:paying them a wage, so they're much more likely to
Speaker:be not as truthful in answers as they possibly
Speaker:could do, whereas somebody externally could come in and go, it's a
Speaker:pile of shit that, and not care that much Yes.
Speaker:As soon as you start paying somebody PAYE on
Speaker:a regular basis, they start to get
Speaker:blinkers on. Yeah. Now that's not saying someone's holding them
Speaker:Absolutely, but you just get blinkers because you're far too
Speaker:close to it. Yeah. Far too close to it. So therefore,
Speaker:I always believe you need somebody externally to tell you the truth. And
Speaker:if you find that agency, that consultant in any walk of
Speaker:life, keep hold of them. Because you want them to tell you the
Speaker:truth. You don't want them to say, oh, you're doing a good job, pat on
Speaker:the back. then six months later your business has gone
Speaker:under. You want somebody to say, look, if you carry on like this in
Speaker:six months, there'll be no business. You know, that isn't doing
Speaker:what it should. So bit of
Speaker:a fluffy answer, I'm afraid. There's no right or wrong. But
Speaker:I think you need a bit of both. You need that external person,
Speaker:team to tell you what's actually going on, but you need somebody
Speaker:internally to manage and do the day-to-day and
Speaker:It's an interesting one isn't it? Because yeah, I think about I
Speaker:think about the agency models being like almost like the perfect model. There's
Speaker:obviously downsides to it for some
Speaker:for some businesses. But essentially you've got
Speaker:a load of really talented people who are
Speaker:specialists in a particular area working together for perhaps one goal. So
Speaker:you might like three of you know although let's say we've got one service delivering for
Speaker:a particular client we might have three people working on that. adding
Speaker:their own little bit of spice and seasoning to that particular service
Speaker:offering. And if we don't do a good
Speaker:job, they stop paying us. And if the
Speaker:business still isn't going in the right direction, they'll stop paying
Speaker:us. And so it's in our interest to
Speaker:be like, right, it's got to be better. It's got to be bigger. It's got to be better. Whereas,
Speaker:of course, if you're an employee, you're not as safe as you think you are, but you're
Speaker:still pretty safe. You know, as a rule, you can make more mistakes
Speaker:and whatever, but as a result, they're usually cheaper,
Speaker:kind of cheaper. Depends because you couldn't like hire
Speaker:all of us. Because like most
Speaker:companies haven't got like a creative team the size of like our agency
Speaker:for instance you've got all specialist skills because it'd just be so expensive. But
Speaker:most of the time it's cheaper to hire some an individual when
Speaker:you've just got like one simple service offering. So
Speaker:I've often wondered whether the top, the
Speaker:top, some of the real top level thinking, you know, real strategy
Speaker:should be done by an external person, but then have the implementation done
Speaker:by in-house people who are closer to the action. Do
Speaker:you know what I mean? They can do the white papers, they can do the social media marketing,
Speaker:they can do whatever. But they still need to, there
Speaker:still needs to be an external person here looking at the whole of the market and going,
Speaker:what's going on? You know, and one of my other clients is having this problem. You
Speaker:having this problem? Okay, let's figure this one out. solve it. I've always, I've
Speaker:often wondered whether you would do that. Or, you know, again,
Speaker:again, it always depends, but whether you go the other way, and you have a
Speaker:marketing manager, which typically how we work, there's in house, and
Speaker:then they hire out to a load of freelancers, agencies and stuff like that.
Speaker:And they all have specialists and things. We see a
Speaker:mix of both. But most of the time, that's, that's what that's how that's where we get
Speaker:hired. You have a marketing manager, someone who's clever, figures out
Speaker:what they need to do for the year and then figures out all the best people to do
Speaker:The downside to what or the
Speaker:issue I would say that you have in your industry and
Speaker:what you do is the fact that the bar is so low to creating content
Speaker:now. Anyone can do it. Yes. And
Speaker:it's free. And there's platforms that allow you to do that
Speaker:for free and to publish it for free. And
Speaker:therefore, just do it in-house. Simple. Just
Speaker:You know what I mean? That kind of thing. You see it time and time again. And it's like, it's
Speaker:almost within marketing particularly, it's, it's, I
Speaker:call it tick box marketer. If you've got a tick box marketer,
Speaker:you need to rethink what you're doing. And that's just OK. So if
Speaker:I post on social, if I do a presentation with
Speaker:what we've done this month every month, if I
Speaker:keep the website up to date and do a blog post a month and
Speaker:maybe do a couple events a year, I've done
Speaker:everything. I'm a marketer and the CEO is happy because
Speaker:that's what marketing is and that's what marketers should do. Forget
Speaker:the return investment, forget the objectives, forget the business aligning
Speaker:with marketing. Forget all that. Tick box marketing or
Speaker:It's so easy to do that if you're a house marketer, isn't it? Because you just sort of think, this
Speaker:coming in and I'm just 9 to 5 ticking the box. Not every in-house market
Speaker:is like this of course but you're more likely to be like that
Speaker:because you're doing the same thing day in and day out for the same company. The
Speaker:unfortunate thing with in-house versus external is in-house usually pays
Speaker:better and is easier. And then you go to agency, it
Speaker:pays worse and it's way harder. But more exciting
Speaker:and more fulfilling. And you see, you know,
Speaker:I see so many in-house marketers or creatives or whatever, just
Speaker:like not interested at all. They're just done. Whereas I'm like, this is
Speaker:great. This is cool. You can tell me like, I don't know, they do a, They're
Speaker:a safety gloves company or something like that. I'm like, how
Speaker:are you not loving this? This is great. This is a cool product. They've been
Speaker:there for seven years. They've been through three
Speaker:And that's the thing, right? You even look at really
Speaker:good marketing teams within the industry that, unfortunately,
Speaker:I personally feel a few and far between. But you can find them. They
Speaker:are out there, believe me. They are. and
Speaker:their output, particularly the creative output, it's not great. It's,
Speaker:you take the logo away and you're struggling
Speaker:to, you know, to categorize them from
Speaker:their competition on what's theirs and what's their competitors. And it's
Speaker:a bit sad that, like
Speaker:you say, if you've been at a company for seven years, you can't express
Speaker:that creativity and think, okay, how can we make this
Speaker:quite cool? You know, it's been kind of drilled out of
Speaker:you that, no, we just need a brochure and
Speaker:that advert, that's a bit crazy. Can we just have a glove
Speaker:that says it's robust? That'll do, that's
Speaker:Do you know what's funny? Construction is the only industry
Speaker:I've ever worked in where graphic
Speaker:designers call themselves marketers. And it's a really, really
Speaker:interesting thing, like Keelan behind the decks,
Speaker:we need to get you a camera mate, for sure. We've got a new camera that's
Speaker:going to be like the Keelan one, because I reference him all the time and he's just, no
Speaker:one sees Keelan. Keelan's a graphic designer, but
Speaker:you wouldn't necessarily class yourself as a marketer, would you? Necessarily. You're
Speaker:creative, right? Within marketing? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker:yeah. You support marketers, potentially. Whereas like, I've
Speaker:literally had conversations like, yeah, like, I'm
Speaker:a marketer for this company. I've got a graphic design degree. I'm like, doesn't make
Speaker:you a marketer. That's the weirdest conversation I've ever heard.
Speaker:It's so weird. But because brochures are so important, or
Speaker:have been so important to construction businesses, manufacturers,
Speaker:whatever, they're kind of like put into the same sort of category. But
Speaker:they believe their own shit. It's bizarre. You could
Speaker:be a marketer and obviously be a graphic designer at the same time. But being
Speaker:a graphic designer doesn't automatically make you a marketer. But
Speaker:it's the only industry that I've been in where I've met several people that
Speaker:have said exactly the same thing. It's
Speaker:so weird. Yeah. But yeah,
Speaker:really, really interesting. We were on to something there with this kind
Speaker:of like, We weren't expecting to
Speaker:go down that rabbit hole, were we? I quite like because because this is
Speaker:the kind of like where we come in. In fact, so I've told you where typically
Speaker:where we're brought in. So the typical situation
Speaker:is we have a we have a usually a
Speaker:large company. usually a manufacturer. So
Speaker:they create something for the construction industry. They've got an in-house marketing
Speaker:team who are somewhat passionate. They
Speaker:do have to be pretty passionate usually. But it's quite
Speaker:a small team. So they'll rely on us for social
Speaker:media marketing, creative. They'll
Speaker:usually lean more on our production stuff than social media because typically they'll
Speaker:have someone in-house that does social media or whatever. some
Speaker:of the bigger teams, which is weirdly like some
Speaker:of the some of our bigger, bigger clients are the ones that uses for social media
Speaker:marketing and the smaller ones will sort of have someone in house that does socials and
Speaker:I'm like, can we not do it? We could do a much better job, please.
Speaker:But they'll typically not lean on our production services and things like
Speaker:that. to have a small team, but usually there'll be
Speaker:some sort of leadership. There'll be a higher up marketer who's looked at
Speaker:the strategy and stuff like that. At what point do you get brought into
Speaker:companies? Are they, are they sans marketing entirely
Speaker:Again, it just depends. Size of
Speaker:company, size of marketing department, where they are in their, You
Speaker:have to say journey on a podcast, don't you, at some point, where they are in their journey. So
Speaker:it hugely depends. So they might be bringing out a whole range
Speaker:of new products. They might have just been bought out by a larger organization.
Speaker:They might feel that they might have a change in marketing and
Speaker:feel like it's a fresh start. They might feel like
Speaker:marketing is not really going where it needs to. They might be using
Speaker:an agency and they want to change an agency. So there's a whole raft of
Speaker:things that It just depends on. Predominantly,
Speaker:it's when they come to the realization that
Speaker:they're doing stuff, but they're
Speaker:just doing it. They're not really getting anything out of it. They're just doing
Speaker:it because they've always done it from a marketing perspective. And
Speaker:they haven't connected those dots in that the
Speaker:worst thing, and this is the necessary
Speaker:evil kind of thing of being a marketer, it's like, the
Speaker:worst thing you can do, the first thing you want to do as you go into a
Speaker:business is change everything. Give you a markset. Logo's crap. Colours
Speaker:are crap. That's rubbish. I'd change that. Yeah, I'd do that. I'd
Speaker:do this. Generally, it's the worst thing you can do
Speaker:unless a company's failing and it needs to reignite itself. because
Speaker:you're losing all that brand equity. You're losing the
Speaker:thing that has got you to where you currently are. That
Speaker:visual perspective. Even if you don't like it. Even if you don't like it.
Speaker:So change nothing. It's the worst thing you can do is just start
Speaker:You need a valid reason. Figure out the landscape, sort it
Speaker:out, you know, make some plans. But yeah, like I think if you get
Speaker:a brand that's changing their marketing
Speaker:manager or CMO or whatever every 12 months. You
Speaker:see this kind of like timeline of it looking different continuously,
Speaker:you know, to the point where like two years down the line or three years
Speaker:down the line it's unrecognizable from the brand that had been established for
Speaker:Exactly. Absolutely. You know, if
Speaker:you just say the word brand, you start to think about brands
Speaker:that you probably own, you have, you use, you buy from. And for
Speaker:you, they're really iconic. They're memorable, whether
Speaker:it be a logo, a slogan, a color, whatever. And you
Speaker:don't disrupt that. There's a reason that if I say to you chocolate and
Speaker:purple, you're only thinking of one company. You
Speaker:do not change that. Yes, small tweaks, innovative, play
Speaker:around with it a little, use your brand assets. But don't
Speaker:disrupt the apple cart for something that people recognize. Even
Speaker:if you feel it's rubbish, it doesn't matter.
Speaker:As long as it aligns with your positioning in the marketplace and it's recognizable, that's
Speaker:Yeah, totally agree. It's hard though. Yeah. Especially
Speaker:as an agency that typically repositions brands. So
Speaker:we'll be brought in at a point of repositioning where
Speaker:it's like, okay, it might not be as heavy as just like, well, we're completely changing
Speaker:everything, but we definitely want to change the look of how we want
Speaker:But that's great from a creative perspective. That's fantastic. But
Speaker:you know, if you're going from, Let's stick with chocolate and purple.
Speaker:If you go from chocolate and purple to, oh, we're going to make it dusty
Speaker:pink. Well, if you're going to do that, it's like you've just demolished
Speaker:100 years of building something that if people just
Speaker:say purple, they'll probably think of Cadbury's. It's
Speaker:nuts that people want to change that. But a refresh, a different creative approach,
Speaker:absolutely. Have fun. Because if you're having fun, if
Speaker:you create something that's memorable, if you create something that you enjoy
Speaker:creating, The chance that it's going to stick in people's minds. Yeah,
Speaker:There was a
Speaker:thing I wanted to talk to you about, which was this kind of like small team, small marketing team
Speaker:mentality, which we discussed before the podcast is
Speaker:quite typical of like companies in
Speaker:construction. It's very rare that I speak to any brand
Speaker:that's got more than eight people in their marketing team,
Speaker:and typically one or two of those people are kind of split over several departments anyway.
Speaker:Graphic designer, for instance. I don't know. But,
Speaker:like, I'd love to hear your kind of best practices. We've kind of already touched
Speaker:on it a little bit in terms of, like, you know, if you could swap out or
Speaker:do these different things, but best practices, like, and
Speaker:what do you see working with these companies that have got, like, smaller teams, and
Speaker:Oh, for sure. I mean, number one,
Speaker:number one, it's speak to the owner.
Speaker:Speak to the person that makes the main decisions. Talk
Speaker:to them more. Say, what do you want to achieve? Because
Speaker:I bet they haven't been asked by a marketer. Yeah, it'll be
Speaker:on a board somewhere. It'll be in a presentation somewhere. But it's like, where do
Speaker:you want this company to go? What do you want to achieve? And
Speaker:that, like we spoke about, you turn that into an objective.
Speaker:So you know what you need to achieve as a department, as
Speaker:a one-man band in marketing, whatever it might be, particularly if you're small. The
Speaker:business wants to achieve that. Well, with the resources we've got, with the budget we've
Speaker:got, we can help you achieve that in this way,
Speaker:depending on budget, resources, and time, et cetera, et cetera. So
Speaker:second one, which is linked, is say the N word more. Say
Speaker:It's not that kind
Speaker:of podcast. Say no, because
Speaker:you've got an objective from the main person, right?
Speaker:So someone comes in and says, I've got an idea for you. Here's
Speaker:a little job for you. Can you just do this? Will
Speaker:it help us achieve this overall objective that that person just set,
Speaker:you know, your boss set? No, it won't. Can't
Speaker:do it, sorry. Or if you want us to do it, if it's
Speaker:that important that we do this, we'll shift this thing
Speaker:that's going to help us achieve that objective, but you need to go and tell them why
Speaker:we're moving that thing. And if they say it's okay, no problem. So
Speaker:say no, feel free to say no, because most of the time, marketers
Speaker:will be doing stuff that aren't aligned to that objective.
Speaker:And then the third and final thing, and
Speaker:I've mentioned it throughout this, is there's three things that
Speaker:will allow you to achieve an objective. That's time,
Speaker:budget, and resource. And make sure whatever's set,
Speaker:it's achievable. Because going back to our discussions
Speaker:of as a marketer, you need to know everything about marketing and do
Speaker:every single discipline in marketing. Like if you're a creative, you need to
Speaker:know every single social media platform, every sort of frame, every
Speaker:sort of lighting, all that kind of stuff. Of course you know it. Everyone
Speaker:thinks you do all those disciplines, and you can't. And
Speaker:budget, and time, and resources will determine what type of
Speaker:objective you can achieve. So make sure they're set with
Speaker:Yeah. I think that is my, I mean, I've never, so
Speaker:time, budget, what was the last one? Resource. Resource. because
Speaker:resource could be like, what do you have at your disposal? Essentially, like, what can you
Speaker:what can you use either internally or externally or whatever? That's massive. And
Speaker:it's the premise of a it's the start of a really good brief, first of all.
Speaker:If we can get all three of those things on there, that'd be
Speaker:that'd be amazing. Because from a creative point of view, I
Speaker:want to know when the deadline is, I want to know when the production schedule is
Speaker:sort of like in for, I want to know how much you've got to
Speaker:spend on this because yes, I can make it for five grand, but it'd be way better if it
Speaker:was 50 grand. You know, it'd be so much better. I can send one
Speaker:of my guys out for a day for five grand and it's going to be all, it's
Speaker:going to, you know, we'll do the best we can. But really we
Speaker:need that extra O on there to make it
Speaker:spectacular, to fit the objective. So
Speaker:we need the time, we need the budget and the resource, which is like, what do we have
Speaker:at our disposal? That could be locations, it could be whatever. I'm
Speaker:going to use that. There was another thing that you said earlier, I'll have to look back
Speaker:on the recording, obviously, but you said something else. I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker:going to use that. That's really good. That's why I like speaking to marketers
Speaker:While you think about that, on that time money resource thing, two
Speaker:things on that. The first thing being that Basically,
Speaker:smaller companies are screwed when they're up against
Speaker:bigger companies. They like to think they're not, because going back to everything's free,
Speaker:you've got free channels for distribution, you can create content for free, so
Speaker:why don't we just do it and it won't work? Well, you
Speaker:put that extra O on from a bigger organization that
Speaker:comes to you to do it correctly and distribute it correctly, and
Speaker:it looks a lot better than just doing it for free, then they're
Speaker:going to win every time. They're going to get more awareness, have
Speaker:more market share, They just are. So the smaller person's
Speaker:pretty screwed. So don't set your heights. It's all right to
Speaker:have missions and visions and blah, blah, blah, all
Speaker:that kind of stuff. But set your objectives so they
Speaker:are actually achievable and realistic for the size of your organization, for
Speaker:the budget that you've got. The second thing, and
Speaker:it's a hot tip, is that if you're in a meeting and
Speaker:you're not listening, and you're falling asleep, and someone says,
Speaker:well, what do you think? just pick one time, money,
Speaker:or resource and say, well, it depends on
Speaker:one of those three things. And it works every day. It doesn't matter what
Speaker:the question is. It doesn't matter any question. Well, that surely depends
Speaker:It works every time. I'll have to remember that one. You
Speaker:triggered something there as a little thought. You know, when you're talking about
Speaker:the underdog, we like working with underdogs. You know, obviously,
Speaker:it'd be great to work with the big brands. But a lot of the time, there's so many hoops you've got to jump through, they
Speaker:might as well not have a creative agency at that point. They don't need a dissident. Dissident
Speaker:exists to disrupt and to flip
Speaker:brands' expectations, whatever. So, we
Speaker:used to have our old phrase was our obsession is
Speaker:indifference, which I thought was quite nice to be fair. That still
Speaker:works. We love being different, love being creative. But
Speaker:we changed it recently based on something I
Speaker:think we might have even been talking in here. or doing something but
Speaker:I came up with this concept of different is better than better and
Speaker:that's specifically related to the underdog. Which
Speaker:is you're here, your competition's up
Speaker:here, they've got more money than you, they've got more resource than you and they've got
Speaker:more time. And so if
Speaker:you're trying to do the same thing or better than them, you
Speaker:are either going to really, you're going to really struggle, it's not going to be
Speaker:as beneficial, like either completely spunk your
Speaker:budget and your time and your resource, or it's not going to
Speaker:be doable. And you're not gonna get the results that you want to because they're probably because
Speaker:they're a much bigger competitor, they're already really well established, they're much
Speaker:better established, it's not going to work. So you don't want to be better
Speaker:than them, you just want to go different. So rather than trying to go up here, you want to go in
Speaker:a completely different direction, do something different. And well, the beautiful thing about
Speaker:that is, and that could be something simple as just going on different platforms. Obviously,
Speaker:from a social media agency, we're always thinking about platforms and how you engage with
Speaker:your audience and and things like that, creative campaigns, you
Speaker:can, you can still do cool stuff with like, like little
Speaker:to no budget. And when I say little to no budget, that's usually 10 grand and
Speaker:less and something like that. For a lot of people, that seems like that's probably quite a lot of
Speaker:budget. But when it comes to production, it's really not. Or
Speaker:so or marketing in general. But you
Speaker:can still do really, really cool stuff with that kind of thing. You've just got
Speaker:to think outside the box and be a little bit more creative. And That
Speaker:way you know you're picking up customers in a place where
Speaker:they're not being picked up by your competitor because you're kind of playing in
Speaker:a different field than them and you can have more buy-in,
Speaker:I guess, in that field, you know. And that
Speaker:could just be something as simple as, well, you know, I'm going to go again, bring
Speaker:it back to social media. We're going to go all in on TikTok. I'm
Speaker:going to be very consistent, very creative, and very original on
Speaker:there. And that's where we're going to pick up the
Speaker:lion's share of the stuff that's left over from this competitor, because
Speaker:they're not doing that. Something like that. And so it
Speaker:kind of triggered that kind of thing. And So it's been
Speaker:our tagline for a while, but it really, really relates to the underdog, the
Speaker:person who's like, you know, fighting to be on
Speaker:But they still need that strategic piece beforehand, you
Speaker:know, that target market. And yeah, you're absolutely bang right.
Speaker:You can't, if
Speaker:the organisation with the main market share's up here, and it's, you
Speaker:know, million pound business and you're down here and you're fighting
Speaker:for your life, basically, then one, you've got no choice other
Speaker:than think differently about things. But two, if you're trying
Speaker:to replicate what they're doing, it's impossible because you
Speaker:haven't got the budget, you haven't got the resources, you just haven't... You don't
Speaker:look like a NAFA version of that. Yeah, absolutely. So why would you want to?
Speaker:And you don't want to be like your competitors. Yeah, absolutely. Ride off their coattails.
Speaker:Learn from what they're doing. But don't ever try
Speaker:and copy them because you're not them. And
Speaker:you're not the size, you're not the scale, you're not the scope. You haven't got the
Speaker:inventory, you haven't got the Qdos yet. do
Speaker:Yeah. When it comes, when it comes back to strategy though is, you know, I said,
Speaker:like, you know, let's, let's, let's, let's go all in on TikTok. If none of your customers are
Speaker:on TikTok, don't do that. You need a strategy first. Like
Speaker:don't, don't just like randomly pick a thing to do and
Speaker:go, right, we're going to do this. Like have a bit of informed research beforehand.
Speaker:But that's what, that's what marketers fight against as well. You know, Oh, I
Speaker:noticed this thing on TikTok. Oh, we should be in this publication, whatever
Speaker:it might be. That's great. And it might work
Speaker:for your competitors. It doesn't mean it'll work for you. No. You
Speaker:know, the chances are it is the right channel if your competitors are
Speaker:on it, but don't take that for granted. Do your due diligence, you
Speaker:know, do your research, speak to your clients. Yes.
Speaker:You know, what channels do you use? Why do you come
Speaker:to us? Ask those questions. What can we do better? You
Speaker:know, if you were on your phone, how
Speaker:can we disrupt your day? You know, I can't remember where
Speaker:I heard it, but it was either in a book or a podcast. And
Speaker:they said that good advertising needs
Speaker:to consider an individual that
Speaker:has had a rubbish morning, kids are screaming, no
Speaker:sleep, it's chucking it down with rain, just
Speaker:managed to get them to school on time, know you're going to be late for work, stuck
Speaker:in traffic, tyre blows out, have to pull
Speaker:over on the side, roadside, get your phone out and
Speaker:you know you need to get this sorted but you get something else on your phone and
Speaker:that's how distracting you need to be. That's how impactful
Speaker:your creative needs to be. You need to be so
Speaker:disruptive that somebody doesn't care that they've had a terrible morning, a
Speaker:flat tire, they're late for work, the kids are screaming, they've got a headache, they're knackered, they
Speaker:Absolutely, yeah. I mean the chances are they're going to sort the tire out because they're probably
Speaker:on a motorway. It's dangerous, you know, health and safety and that, but
Speaker:In terms of the actual, like, the landscape of marketing
Speaker:in the industry, so you've managed 20 years so far,
Speaker:is that right? In construction. Are you seeing
Speaker:a trend? Are you seeing some kind of, you know, what
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, it's going
Speaker:to be the obvious and the unobvious answer. So AI is
Speaker:going to be, like, AI, not as we know
Speaker:it, that's how I'll put it, because AI has
Speaker:been around for a long time and by AI, I'm
Speaker:categorizing a lot of things that aren't actually AI in that bracket, because
Speaker:a lot of things we utilize, we class as artificial intelligence, but it
Speaker:isn't. It's like an if this, then that type of concept. Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker:But we're already using it. It's already on our phones. It's already in our
Speaker:daily lives. And that's only going to get better and better. But
Speaker:the way it's going to help construction specifically is in the boring, the mundane,
Speaker:that we don't even notice it tasks. It's not
Speaker:going to steal anyone's jobs. It's going to help people. It's going to
Speaker:be that personal assistant on your shoulder that makes you better. So
Speaker:that's one thing that's going to change things. So
Speaker:I'd say get on board. Learn these things. Stay
Speaker:up to date with the latest tech and innovations within
Speaker:that space. And the second thing
Speaker:is marketing hasn't changed, and it
Speaker:never will. It will always be, you
Speaker:need marketing, market orientation. You need to understand your market continuously.
Speaker:You need a strategy, and you need to set objectives. And you need your
Speaker:tactics around four key areas, product, price, place,
Speaker:and promotion. And that hasn't changed. And
Speaker:people like to come in and say, marketing's changed. It's the
Speaker:year of change. Marketing is completely different to what it is last year,
Speaker:and next year, and all that kind of stuff. It isn't. Some
Speaker:of the channels change and they will always continuously change and
Speaker:digital is a huge part of it. And anybody that
Speaker:says they need a digital strategy is out of their minds because it's
Speaker:a marketing plan with a strategy and digital is part
Speaker:Yeah. I mean, I still, I still find it fascinating when
Speaker:people say like digital marketing. which I just, surely
Speaker:It is just marketing. Digital is a form of that, a
Speaker:huge part of it. But there's loads of other things that go into marketing. Like
Speaker:is pricing digital? Yeah. No, not really.
Speaker:So it's just, it's craziness. On
Speaker:that, I'll probably get shot for saying this, but the Charleston Institute of
Speaker:Marketing actually had a module and that module was
Speaker:called marketing and digital strategy.
Speaker:And it's like, what are you doing? Just marketing
Speaker:I just, yeah, I feel like digital and when you, when you put the sort
Speaker:of term digital in to anything really, but especially marketing,
Speaker:When it's like, oh, you need to start thinking more about digital and how we, how we move
Speaker:away from analogue. And I'm just
Speaker:sort of thinking like, it surely analogues the more
Speaker:obscure of the two now. It's the catalogues and print advertising
Speaker:and stuff like that. And anything that's
Speaker:not physical, it
Speaker:always seems a bit strange to sort of consider digital to
Speaker:be still like a new, it feels like, I think it's just the
Speaker:way it's, the language around it still feels like it's
Speaker:If we go back to those touch points and
Speaker:saying that one touch point, one piece of creative, one
Speaker:output, it's not going to change the world. You need loads of
Speaker:touch points over loads of different channels and categories to
Speaker:stand any chance. And they need to be part of the customer journey and do
Speaker:particular things to get people on that journey to a conversion point. So
Speaker:if you take print advertising, outdoor,
Speaker:they've certainly got a place and they do a certain thing and that
Speaker:isn't going away. It's not dead. My radio is not
Speaker:dead. It's, you know, it's transforming itself. You
Speaker:still advertise on radio and particular industries do better on radio
Speaker:than others. The TV is making a comeback as well. Absolutely. And anyone
Speaker:that thinks that TV advertising is dead, it's wrong.
Speaker:It's still there. And there's numbers and figures and stats that show
Speaker:that. Unfortunately, it's still massively expensive, and
Speaker:not everyone can afford it. And that's why people with the big
Speaker:budgets do better. Because TV
Speaker:advertising is probably the best for brand visibility that
Speaker:you can get, for brand awareness and visibility that
Speaker:you can get. And anyone that thinks that's different, why
Speaker:did Google advertise on telly? Why did TikTok advertise
Speaker:on telly? Why did Uber do it? It's like these massive
Speaker:organizations, which are pretty much purely digital, they
Speaker:still use print. If anyone hasn't had a
Speaker:piece of direct mail from Google that says £30 worth
Speaker:of free Google ads when you spend £100. It's like
Speaker:Christ. Well, there was a, you know, a resurgence. And
Speaker:I think it's still kind of going. I think people are still just can't be bothered to put their hands in their pockets
Speaker:about the lumpy mailer, you know, and like handwritten letters.
Speaker:And there was like a sort of time about two or three or four years ago where everyone's
Speaker:like, right, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to disrupt people by doing
Speaker:all this kind of stuff. And it was like handwritten letters and lumpy
Speaker:mailers and there was one or like sort of hybrid versions of that. We
Speaker:were speaking to someone not so long ago, weren't we? And they were, they actually send
Speaker:out a display pack, which has got like a screen, which plays
Speaker:a video. It's like, it was like a piece of mail. And
Speaker:I think that's brilliant. And we never bothered to do it. We always said we were going to and then
Speaker:never did. Because then, because we always worked out, especially early
Speaker:on in the business, like what that would cost me right now, we'll
Speaker:just stick it on Google ads. or Facebook or something like that,
Speaker:and it worked better. But I think it's
Speaker:still cool. I think some of the more traditional methods are still really cool.
Speaker:But I think now we can just lump it all into marketing. We don't
Speaker:need to specify. But I think it's
Speaker:cool. And to be fair, we were on a caravan holiday a
Speaker:couple of weekends ago and there was no
Speaker:internet or anything like that but there was a telly. So we started watching like
Speaker:film 4 or some sort of thing and I'm not used
Speaker:to adverts at all because I have every possible paid subscription where
Speaker:I don't watch ads. And I was watching these ads, I
Speaker:was thinking, these are brilliant. These are great. I've kind of, I've kind of
Speaker:missed some of these, because I sort of put my marketer's head on my creative head
Speaker:and think, that's quite clever, actually. How have you managed to do that
Speaker:So it's the curse of being in the industry, though. You look at
Speaker:things very differently to other people. And you see, particularly
Speaker:when it comes to advertising and the output, I
Speaker:certainly do, and I know a lot of other people do, you see it very differently.
Speaker:You see it for, oh, that's how they've done that. Oh, that aligns with
Speaker:that. Oh, that output. You go in store and it's very similar to
Speaker:that. And that's the linkage and things like that. And you start to see those
Speaker:things. Whereas somebody that the advert is
Speaker:made for, we just think, that's brilliant. I'm going to go and shop
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's just all of a sudden, just
Speaker:like, I mean, YouTube is the best one for me, because I will literally
Speaker:watch a YouTube video, it doesn't matter who it is, they recommend a product that
Speaker:I'm already in need of that product. I don't do any research, I go straight to that thing.
Speaker:Yeah, that looks like it serves my purpose. There was one, I've been
Speaker:kicking myself all day. So we've been raking out a couple of our cameras recently. and
Speaker:I saw this is really nerdy for the production guys but
Speaker:you could basically have an attachment sort of top handle which we use all
Speaker:the time but it got a button on it so you could press record which we would typically
Speaker:have like a side handle to do that. And I
Speaker:was like where the hell did you get that from? I will scour
Speaker:the internet to try and find this particular handle which looks really cool but
Speaker:it was just a YouTube it's like this is a really cool handle as well it was like all part of a thing I'm
Speaker:like That's where all my money goes, essentially, is YouTube influences
Speaker:and advertising and stuff like that. The worst bit,
Speaker:though, for me, is the adverts. From a marketing
Speaker:perspective, you think it's one of those, like, sort of tactics that's
Speaker:kind of frowned upon. It's the kind of annoying marketing, the
Speaker:sort of go-compare, that kind of thing. You think, yeah,
Speaker:I get annoyed at myself that it's worked. You know what I mean? I'm like, surely
Speaker:Yeah, exactly. And if we weren't marketers, we'd probably go in, oh,
Speaker:GoCompare is so annoying. It's in your brain. It's in
Speaker:your brain. So if you think insurance, it doesn't matter if it's annoying. It doesn't matter
Speaker:if you hate it. As soon as someone says insurance, you're GoComparing
Speaker:And that's why I hate it. Because I've always been
Speaker:a sucker for a salesman, even though I've worked in sales. I'm
Speaker:a sucker for a salesman, I'll buy anything. And it's the same for
Speaker:any kind of marketing tactics. I'm like, you won. Yeah, easy.
Speaker:It was easy. Pete, was there anything during the
Speaker:recording that I haven't asked you that you think would be valuable? Is there anything that
Speaker:you'd like, anything at the end that you just sort of think, I wish you'd have asked me about this. I
Speaker:Plus a bit extra, yeah. We've gone round the houses, it's
Speaker:been a lot of fun. I think just continuing on
Speaker:the insurance part of it, if
Speaker:anybody wants to know why creative is important and
Speaker:what you bring to the table is massively important, just
Speaker:one word, meerkats. Like, can you imagine sitting
Speaker:in a room like this with a board of directors and
Speaker:saying, right, okay, this is going to be the campaign for the next 10 years,
Speaker:we're going to have meerkats. And what they're going to talk about
Speaker:is the fact that people are going to their website and not our website. Brilliant.
Speaker:It's not going to happen in a million years. You're going to be thrown out.
Speaker:Yet, look where they are. They've gone
Speaker:from strength to strength on that. But you look at that from an integrated campaign
Speaker:perspective. Toys, online, offline,
Speaker:in cinema, outdoor. It's phenomenal. And
Speaker:that shows the power of marketing done correctly. You
Speaker:just see the output. But I bet there's a lot of work gone behind that. It's
Speaker:Yeah. Do you know what? I haven't even considered. all
Speaker:the extra sort of activities like the toys and stuff like that. You
Speaker:All you need to do is use our, what
Speaker:do you call it? It's like a comparison site. It's like use our
Speaker:comparison site, buy insurance, which you're going to need anyway, we'll send
Speaker:you a toy and your kid will love you. Yeah. all right, you've
Speaker:It's mad as well, isn't it? Because as a business model, they're technically
Speaker:slightly more expensive, I think, than if you just went
Speaker:direct. So it's like, pay more to use our
Speaker:products, but obviously it saves you a lot of
Speaker:So if one thing that I think
Speaker:we haven't covered is kind of what a good campaign
Speaker:looks like, really well thought out and yeah, the Meerkat one
Speaker:is good and you look at Cadbury's and what they're doing and
Speaker:if you look deep into what Cadbury's are doing, it's all about sharing and
Speaker:love and coming together at the moment and their adverts are linked
Speaker:to that and that will be going on for many a
Speaker:year. But one of my favourite, if
Speaker:not my favourite, is Snickers. Okay. You're not you when
Speaker:you're hungry. There's some notes and that kind of thing, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And
Speaker:it's a global campaign, right? And
Speaker:they've used influencers or famous people, should
Speaker:I say. I don't know if you have chocolate influencers, but they use famous
Speaker:people in their campaign all over the world for
Speaker:different countries. Similar theme, similar
Speaker:style, use all the brand assets, use the different colors. They
Speaker:use the nuts, the caramel, the, what is
Speaker:it, nougat, or is it fudge or something in it? Yeah, where they break it and it
Speaker:comes apart. Yeah, absolutely. They use that. They use the golden background.
Speaker:Then you've got the print ads. They use scratch cards. They
Speaker:even went as far as to go to Google and say, right, OK, give
Speaker:us the top 100, I think it was, misspelt words. We'll
Speaker:buy them all. We'll put our money on those words. And
Speaker:when people misspelled that word in a search, the
Speaker:first thing that came up was an ad for Snickers that says, you're not you when you're
Speaker:hungry, misspelling. And all that was misspelled as well. Oh
Speaker:brilliant, that's so good. They went that extra mile and thought about
Speaker:it and thought okay well how can we, we don't just want to put it online. You
Speaker:know they had a YouTube pre-roll and
Speaker:it was a pre-roll for a music video done by
Speaker:the artist. and it was not then when
Speaker:they were hungry. It was only when they ate the Snickers that they became that actual band.
Speaker:And then it went into the actual tune. I mean, it's phenomenal. And
Speaker:And this is the thing with a great campaign is it can last forever, can't it? Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker:If they brought out, if they brought out, the company's brought
Speaker:out the monkey playing the Phil Collins song, like
Speaker:today, I'd be like, yes, that's a good advert. For sure. You know, stuff like
Speaker:that can just last forever, can't it? Takeaways then from today.
Speaker:Just for the listeners at home, just to summarize. Strategy,
Speaker:super important. Get your strategy right before you go into any of your tactics, any
Speaker:of your kind of activations and stuff like that. We talked a
Speaker:little bit about working in a small team and
Speaker:how bringing that back to the owner and get
Speaker:those sort of top-down objectives can be
Speaker:massively beneficial to your strategy going
Speaker:forward. I think that's really, really important. And
Speaker:if you're struggling with any of these kinds of areas, hire
Speaker:us to do it for you. We'll figure it out. We'll figure
Speaker:out all that stuff. For sure. Awesome. Peter, it's been an
Speaker:absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thanks for traveling from
Speaker:up the north to come and see us. And now
Speaker:I'm going to go on your podcast in about 10 minutes time. We've had a little break.
Speaker:Yes. So if you watch this one, Head
Speaker:over to Peter's. It's called Construction
Speaker:Disrupted. I can't speak today. Construction Disrupted, right?
Speaker:Go check out that episode where we talk about other stuff. Yeah, other
