Lawton Tubes: From Sales to Social Media – A Journey of Transformation in Marketing
In this episode of The Build Up, Dan engages in an insightful conversation with Rob Lawton, affectionately known as the "King of Copper" and a key figure at Lawton Tubes, a family-run business with a rich history dating back to 1918. Rob shares his journey within the company, detailing his transition from sales to marketing and the strategic shift towards engaging directly with end users, rather than solely focusing on distributors. The discussion highlights the importance of social media in modern marketing, particularly how platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn have transformed the way brands connect with their audiences. Rob emphasizes the value of authenticity and passion in marketing, recounting successful collaborations with influencers and the impact of engaging with the community at industry events like the Installer Show. Through their candid exchange, Dan and Rob explore the evolving landscape of construction marketing, the power of networking, and the necessity of adapting to new trends while maintaining a grounded, approachable brand identity.
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!
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Buildup. This is the podcast for marketing
Speaker:in the construction industry. I'm
Speaker:Dan, the creative director at Dissident. We've been working with construction brands for
Speaker:a number of years. It's an exciting and rapidly evolving industry, and
Speaker:that's why we created a podcast dedicated to the weird and wonderful world
Speaker:of construction marketing. I'll be speaking to leading brands, other agencies,
Speaker:creatives, influencers, and startups. This is the
Speaker:resource I wish we had when we first started out in the industry. Thank
Speaker:you for being here and welcome to The Builder. Welcome
Speaker:to The Buildup. I am Dan, I'm the creative director at Disson. I'm joined
Speaker:today by the Duke of Copper, Mr.
Speaker:Robert Lawnton. Thank you so much for coming. We've
Speaker:had a good chat ahead of schedule. Hopefully we've got most of
Speaker:our conversations out of the way so we can focus on some topics, but
Speaker:I'm intrigued and we'll go into kind of how
Speaker:we met and how I came about yourself and Lawton Tubes
Speaker:a bit later on. But if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, what
Speaker:you do and a little bit about Lawton. How far do you want to go back? Not
Speaker:too far. I want to go back to anywhere that's pivotal would
Speaker:Okay so I've been at Lawton Shoes 21 years. Okay. Which
Speaker:is a long time. So you started when you were 10? Yeah
Speaker:I just need to sort my hair out. And I
Speaker:started in a salesman's role really, working
Speaker:in a family business. So For those who don't know Lawn Tubes,
Speaker:where have you been? We've been around since
Speaker:1918. So it's a really old company. I'm
Speaker:fourth generation and the fifth generation has joined the business. And
Speaker:it's me, my cousin and my brother. So
Speaker:the three of us are on the board. We've also got other directors as well to
Speaker:have a happy mix. Started in sales and
Speaker:then Where I am at the moment is marketing,
Speaker:but also still in charge of international sales. I think last
Speaker:count's 42 countries that I sell into. So yeah,
Speaker:but I wasn't an out and out salesperson. I started off
Speaker:in logistics. I always wanted to do marketing, but absolutely flunked
Speaker:my A-levels. And it was great. It was about
Speaker:getting the right product, right place, right time. Not overly complicated. But within that
Speaker:degree, it was all about strategic selling
Speaker:and strategies. So I think that sort of started
Speaker:me off down the road of where I wanted to be at. I spent a year in
Speaker:the middle of my university degree literally just living out
Speaker:of a suitcase, going around the country in
Speaker:hired cars, thrown in a deep end, and I had to
Speaker:take data from a lot of companies and analyze that
Speaker:data. Anyway, so cut a long story short, I got to learn
Speaker:how to talk to people at any level, from a cleaner all
Speaker:the way up to board level. I wasn't necessarily born into
Speaker:the construction industry, but being in the company 21 years, you
Speaker:learn what's good about your product, you learn, maybe
Speaker:some people do, maybe some people don't, but I learn at
Speaker:all the different levels. So from an end user, which would be an installer,
Speaker:all the way to business to business. Now our business is business to business, we
Speaker:sell to distribution, who then sell on to
Speaker:the end user. where we got to today in
Speaker:terms of marketing is we quickly realised that we
Speaker:weren't filling that gap if you like. We were meeting
Speaker:installers but we were doing it on a golf course where you're only three,
Speaker:four people in a team and that was our window of
Speaker:opportunity to meet people. So we were
Speaker:spending money with our customers because that's the
Speaker:thing to do. and you spend your time, and you've
Speaker:still got to do a lot of that, right? You've got to tell them about the product, you've got to get
Speaker:the price right, you've got to do everything they need to do and more.
Speaker:But what maybe some brands don't do is interact because
Speaker:they don't see the direct benefit. But that's what I've been doing
Speaker:the last three years. So I've only actually been marketing director at the company for three
Speaker:years. believe it or not. And our social media has only been going three
Speaker:And since then, and so am I getting this right? That there's
Speaker:been a big emphasis so far on recently on speaking
Speaker:to the end user being really engaged with those guys as opposed to just
Speaker:So we're quite We
Speaker:were probably size eight, something like that, in
Speaker:the industry for our products 15 years
Speaker:ago. We've had massive growth. And now we're joint first. To
Speaker:some point, we're actually leaders in some of the industries we do. So
Speaker:not saying that we're pulling back on looking after our customers and
Speaker:doing the marketing with them. But we quickly realized that,
Speaker:do you know what? We're not doing stuff for the end user. So
Speaker:the focus did move on for three years. I didn't
Speaker:have Instagram three years ago. We didn't have any ambassadors
Speaker:or influencers, whatever you want to call them. I
Speaker:never thought I would be doing that. No. And I think a lot of companies don't
Speaker:do that or shy away from it. And it's actually been great
Speaker:working with Pete. Yeah. It's been a really good thing for us. PB
Speaker:Plumber. Yeah, PB Plumber. And it's
Speaker:not just what you get from using an ambassador like Pete, but
Speaker:it's the way that it opens doors. Yes. I'm a massive advocate
Speaker:of networking and chatting to people because you never
Speaker:know what comes out of a conversation. So
Speaker:that was all new to us three years ago. But now I think
Speaker:we're doing all right on social media. So
Speaker:I'm not going to switch that off. But I think I need to now
Speaker:focus. You've got to keep all the balls
Speaker:juggling up in here, haven't you? So we're doing a bit more
Speaker:of a campaign back on LinkedIn. So part of the marketing
Speaker:strategy was to realize what
Speaker:social channel should be for what audience. And I think a
Speaker:lot of people don't get that. They just repost on the same post
Speaker:When you're in a B2B situation like you guys are, so you've
Speaker:got your end user, you're marketing to your end user and you're marketing and having conversations
Speaker:with your actual customer, which is a distributor, a retailer.
Speaker:So you've got essentially these two different conversations that you're having.
Speaker:Sometimes they can be the same, but most of the time they're not. You're speaking
Speaker:to the end user, which can have a different feel.
Speaker:It can have a different look to it. And it can have a different approach, can have a
Speaker:different even language. And then you've got the
Speaker:conversations that happen with your customers, so your retailers and distributors. And
Speaker:that might be a very different conversation. So it's really nice to
Speaker:be able to, the fact that we've got these different platforms that you can
Speaker:kind of go, well, OK, it makes sense that LinkedIn is probably to your customer.
Speaker:And Facebook and Instagram and TikTok are
Speaker:probably to your end user. But your
Speaker:actual customers, your distributors and stuff, will be on there as well. It's changing. So
Speaker:More installers are moving on to LinkedIn. yes
Speaker:absolutely because because with um the
Speaker:the the why do you go on social media um is
Speaker:the question isn't it but uh When I
Speaker:started on it three years ago, it was more about the social
Speaker:aspect. So a plumber helping a plumber or an air
Speaker:conditioning installer helping another air conditioning installer. And suddenly, you're
Speaker:not just in your local patch, which will be competition, I
Speaker:suppose. You can now engage with people all over the UK
Speaker:or even outside the UK. So you're fitting a boiler you've never fitted
Speaker:before. You jump on socials. And do you know what? Very quickly, someone
Speaker:will help you. And that's what I loved about Instagram in particular.
Speaker:It's a community. But they're moving on to LinkedIn. And
Speaker:I make my own decision on why they're
Speaker:doing that. And I think it's maybe to engage with the people that would
Speaker:possibly might recruit them to help them with their brands. So
Speaker:they might not be on Instagram, or they might be on a personal level.
Speaker:Because Instagram might be run by a marketing company. Absolutely.
Speaker:Whereas LinkedIn, you can connect directly with people. There
Speaker:might be marketing companies sitting behind on some of the accounts, certainly on the
Speaker:company page. What people don't get and what some brands don't get, actually some
Speaker:installers love
Speaker:the product and actually giving something back to them in
Speaker:either compliments or they've done a good install and stuff
Speaker:like that. They actually love that more than actually getting paid in some instances.
Speaker:So when I started dealing with Pete, PB Plumber, three
Speaker:years ago. He loved to come around the factory. Now he
Speaker:just turned up. Yeah. I was like, Oh, I wasn't there. And he got
Speaker:tour. And then I was like, Wow, we were all like, Oh, we've
Speaker:had someone come around filming. I was like, Oh, we never had that before. Yeah. I
Speaker:quickly realised that's not a bad thing. So we had him back and I did
Speaker:the tour with him. And we got introduced. And I said, well, marketing, dah, dah, dah. And
Speaker:at some point in conversation, he turned around, Rob, I've been using your product since I
Speaker:was 17. Amazing. And he said, I really want to work
Speaker:with you because, and I don't think a lot of brands maybe get
Speaker:that, that some people have been using your product forever and they
Speaker:love the product so much that the passion is there. I mean,
Speaker:I'm quite a passionate guy and I think to be a marketer, you've got to have that passion
Speaker:as well as the creativity side. But I
Speaker:love the passion and energy he brings. Yes. And that's because
Speaker:it's genuine. Yeah. It's not necessary because I'm, you
Speaker:know, for whatever reason doing other things with him. I think, and
Speaker:that's how we work really well together, because we're both very passionate about what
Speaker:we do, you know. Yes, it's a family business and
Speaker:Yes. I guess I imagine you're passionate about what's, you know, what's
Speaker:going on with the end user as well. It's like this product
Speaker:is helping loads of different people do their job and do it really well
Speaker:and do it sustainably. And it's just a great product. Yeah. And being
Speaker:able to, I get really excited for, for our, for our brands
Speaker:that we work with. when we see stuff on socials you
Speaker:know people are reposting stuff and they're not being paid to do any of this stuff they're just kind
Speaker:of excited about the fact that they've used a bloody wall plug or some
Speaker:bit in a toilet or whatever and they're going this is this is yeah
Speaker:that's amazing i love the fact that you're so passionate about that bit in the toilet that
Speaker:you've put in and that you've posted a video about it i think that's wicked yeah no
Speaker:one's paid you to do it and i i get a buzz off that as well i think
Speaker:it's really cool i think it's just a community isn't it so i
Speaker:And I think the more passion you exude, the person you're with will exude
Speaker:the same passion. If you're monotone, dull and boring, the
Speaker:meeting is going to be quick. And your presentation is not going to be great. And
Speaker:you're probably not going to do business with each other. But if you just don't ram
Speaker:it down the throat of somebody, what you do and all the rest of it, but you just do a
Speaker:Yeah, you brought up an interesting point. I hadn't thought about this until just
Speaker:now. The fact that I'm starting to see people that
Speaker:we're engaging with on behalf of our brands on social
Speaker:media, so potential ambassadors, influencers, micro-influencers, whatever. I'm
Speaker:seeing more and more of those pop up on my LinkedIn as well. I spend most
Speaker:of my time on LinkedIn as opposed to Instagram, personally,
Speaker:from a personal brand perspective. And so
Speaker:there is quite an interesting kind of way to get in
Speaker:front of marketing managers, marketing directors, and agencies, because
Speaker:there's not many of them on LinkedIn. So they're cutting through. They're standing
Speaker:out quite a lot on my feed of like, oh,
Speaker:this is the kind of stuff that I'm seeing on Instagram, but now it's on LinkedIn. And
Speaker:I quite like that, because usually it's just jargon and
Speaker:Let's add the rest of it. I think for an end user, Most
Speaker:of them are self-employed. How do they get in front of the right
Speaker:person? Or how do they get noticed by
Speaker:the right person? And it's very competitive on social media.
Speaker:I mean, I don't have massive followers, and I
Speaker:don't do it for massive followers. I just want to
Speaker:connect with the right people. But you don't see many people
Speaker:like me sitting on social media or on Instagram day in, day out,
Speaker:watching what's going on, interacting, chatting. Yeah,
Speaker:I don't know. I think this is a point that I wanted to sort of
Speaker:get to. We have mentioned Keelan at some stage that
Speaker:Lawton tubes make copper. Have we even said the word copper
Speaker:yet? I don't think so. OK. By the way, this is the first time Keelan's
Speaker:on the camera. We've got a Keelan cam going on there.
Speaker:We've talked about tubes, and I'm not 100% sure if
Speaker:we've even mentioned the fact that You guys only make copper, is
Speaker:Very recently. So everyone says, is that what you do? But
Speaker:copper in itself as a tube can be used for so many
Speaker:different applications. So just quickly, we do plumbing and
Speaker:heating, air conditioning and refrigeration, medical gas, and
Speaker:then any other application you could possibly think of, which you'd go
Speaker:into a nuclear submarine, it could go into distilling whiskey. There's
Speaker:such a plethora, I love that word, of things that
Speaker:you can do because copper's got, it's great conducting electricity, great
Speaker:conducting heat, it's antimicrobial. There's so many great things
Speaker:about the product that it can be used for pretty much anything. Now,
Speaker:literally just launched our latest product, which is that press
Speaker:fitting here. So that's a fitting that
Speaker:goes onto a tube. You'd use a gun to fit it,
Speaker:but we've now launched that. See, this is the thing. Three years
Speaker:ago, we weren't really doing much marketing, so we weren't shouting about
Speaker:You get on with it. Graft, keep your head down. We were eighth
Speaker:in the industry. We're now equal first or first, depending on which market we're
Speaker:in. and we worked bloody hard to do it but we
Speaker:didn't sort of shout it from the rooftops but that's not what the
Speaker:marketing's for today we're not we're not still not trying to shout from the
Speaker:rooftop look at us aren't we amazing yes we're just trying to do the right thing
Speaker:yeah um rightly or wrongly um and i
Speaker:and i try and keep it real uh and and down to earth
Speaker:because i think i like to think i am quite down to earth and the whole i think the family is
Speaker:yes what got my attention what i thought would be really why i thought it'd be really cool
Speaker:Cause I saw from, from my own eyes, I saw, um,
Speaker:a director of a massive, I would say massive company.
Speaker:Cause this we're a team of six, you're a team of 150. So I would say that's
Speaker:pretty big, a team of a massive, uh, direct
Speaker:for a massive company, getting out on socials, being relatable,
Speaker:being fun. And also like, um, like really
Speaker:engaging with the end user and the network of
Speaker:um, personalities in the industry, plumbers and engineers and
Speaker:stuff like that. Yeah. So it was great. When, if
Speaker:you go to, if you go to the installer show, you get, and
Speaker:I'm walking through with like brand ambassadors for the, for the, you know, and
Speaker:just friends in the industry or the, or the marketers or the, um, trades
Speaker:people and stuff. I'm walking through, we're having a good time. We're looking at the different stands
Speaker:and you can't walk past, um, lawn tubes without
Speaker:some one of the guys that I'm with coming up shaking your hand say how's it going
Speaker:like a thing you're busy speaking to about six of the different people that I
Speaker:know that are the names in the industry and
Speaker:I'm like you know and but it's also banter having
Speaker:a laugh um you know and there's instantly jokes go
Speaker:like flying around and you just sort of think There'll be other
Speaker:sales directors, marketing directors, MDs of the
Speaker:companies that are there that won't turn up to install a show. You
Speaker:know what I mean? Let alone be engaging with the end user. Um,
Speaker:and I thought that was really interesting. And what, of
Speaker:course, what grabbed my attention, if, if, uh, if anyone's familiar with
Speaker:the, um, the, the marketing that you did ahead of, um, install a
Speaker:show through the guys from, um, the impersonators from the office and
Speaker:things like that. And I was looking at that stuff. I'm thinking that's interesting. And,
Speaker:and I'm, cause I'm, you know, there was, there was some people that are just having,
Speaker:they're just getting on their phones and they're talking about the product. They're talking about the fact that they're installing the
Speaker:show and stuff. I wanted to sort of get you on because I wanted to
Speaker:sort of like peek into inside the mind of the man
Speaker:Do you know a lot of that is with Pete? The two of us bounce ideas
Speaker:off. Okay, that's interesting. Um,
Speaker:yes, I come up with some quite, we talked about some earlier. Um,
Speaker:and, and actually my new thing, uh, is to do more
Speaker:collabs with other brands, uh, uh, as equally
Speaker:as out there in terms of engagement and the marketing
Speaker:from a marketing point of view, not necessarily from a product point of view, but originally
Speaker:I wanted to do stuff with companies that were associated with the product. Um,
Speaker:And then I've sort of broadened that, and I'm actually trying to engage
Speaker:a lot more with Installer Show themselves. Lyrical is
Speaker:the company behind it, which is owned by the 19 group. I've even got up to the CEO
Speaker:of Installer Show. And actually, I
Speaker:don't do that purposely in some respects. It's just me. I'm
Speaker:just, yeah. Maybe it's my passion, maybe. I
Speaker:don't know. well you just imagine you're just approachable
Speaker:you just start calling people but hey do you fancy doing this well i
Speaker:i just walk around and be nosy yeah if nothing you'll have to stop me
Speaker:if you don't want me to be nosy but i just did it this morning shannon bless
Speaker:her in her house i was straight in there wasn't i what's this what's that
Speaker:do yeah i loved it loved the sofa i
Speaker:did love the poplar sofa um sorry shannon's our marketing manager
Speaker:and she's on the keeling camp give her the wave um recently how
Speaker:many weeks you done now But
Speaker:this is the thing, you just don't know out of a conversation you have
Speaker:what will come out of it. So, so what I'm trying to do, um, and there's some
Speaker:other brands out there are just brilliant. Uh, and I love what they do as
Speaker:well. And I just thought, well, do you know what? We're not associated necessarily
Speaker:directly with each other, but we've both got the same concepts,
Speaker:ideas, and we want to make, um, the show
Speaker:the best as it can, because I've actually got quite a vested interest financially in
Speaker:installing the show, because it's not cheap doing exhibitions and
Speaker:it's not just about the space nor the rest of it, it's manning the stand, it's
Speaker:the build up to it. So why the hell would I not put all
Speaker:my effort into making it as best
Speaker:as I can? So there always is going to be
Speaker:the underlining, I need to do more, I want to do more business, but
Speaker:you don't have to ram it down people's throats. So
Speaker:we've got some stuff that's going to come out next year. Hopefully, if
Speaker:they all come out to fruition, that'd be really cool. Yes. The
Speaker:office thing, Pete suggested actually, because he's very much into his 80s.
Speaker:And I know, I think the office is not quite 80s, but it's old
Speaker:school. Yeah. I don't think neither of us knew
Speaker:how successful it would be. Yeah. It
Speaker:was a bit risky but we've done that now. We had Frank Bruno the year before. Oh is
Speaker:Yeah the real Frank Bruno as I understand. I've got him to say proper in copper
Speaker:as well. And that came out of just doing
Speaker:stuff. So we helped... I can't remember how we got into Frank Bruno. I
Speaker:think we had somebody come and do a comedy
Speaker:thing at one of our Christmas parties. We were then saying, well, we
Speaker:want to do something different, install a show. And then he said, well, you know, why
Speaker:don't you go and get a celebrity on? Then I went
Speaker:and met Frank down, because he was raising, he's
Speaker:got a charity where he's helping deprived people.
Speaker:and people with mental health issues use shadowboxing and
Speaker:fitness to help them. So he's got a centre down in Northampton.
Speaker:Yes, Northampton. And
Speaker:the boiler was knackered while we were there, we were chatting. I think we raised a couple
Speaker:of grand at Christmas party. I just wanted to go and present him a cheque and
Speaker:just meet the guy I suppose. And while I was down I got chatting
Speaker:to his PA and he said, oh yeah, the boiler's knackered. And
Speaker:I got in the car and I was driving back up north. I went down with Pete, did I go with Pete?
Speaker:I can't remember, no I don't think I did. And I was driving back up the road and
Speaker:I thought, hang on a minute. I'm in this industry, why can't
Speaker:I just help these guys out? So I immediately started ringing some
Speaker:contacts of God and I thought, you know what, we'll get a couple of boilies and I'll talk
Speaker:to Pete and I'm sure he'll, because we've done stuff with other charities,
Speaker:Warriors of Warmth is one that springs to mind where plumbers give up their time
Speaker:to help out other people. And do you know what, I love that. So
Speaker:why not support that? So then we went and did a couple of boilies and
Speaker:we did an install for them over a weekend I think. Because
Speaker:it's charity. And then we got to chatting and I
Speaker:said, Oh, do you know what you're, you're the dynamic, they're
Speaker:not dynamic. So what's the word I'm looking for? The age group for
Speaker:for plumbers and heaters, engineers is his
Speaker:demographic. That's what I was looking for. I said, why don't you come along
Speaker:to the Installer Show? I'm doing it in June. You
Speaker:know, there might be some other avenues there for people to help you
Speaker:with your charity. That's the way I looked at it. Do you know what? He ended up
Speaker:coming on the Tuesday, gave up three hours of his time. We had
Speaker:a queue around the NEC to take photographs with him. He
Speaker:put himself really out there and that was just brilliant. And
Speaker:do you know what? Some people thought we'd planned that. That's just serendipity,
Speaker:yeah. It was just taking, well I wouldn't even say it was opportunities, it
Speaker:was just a load of things
Speaker:that happened over a course of six to eight months that just worked
Speaker:But also from a marketing point of view, you
Speaker:know, if you're heroing, we do this with some of
Speaker:our brands, if you're heroing What is essentially your
Speaker:perfect target? Target avatar. This particular plumber,
Speaker:super excited about, you know, UK manufacturing, super
Speaker:excited about the product, really passionate about what they do
Speaker:and how they do it. And if you're kind of going, this is,
Speaker:this is, this is our guy, this is our girl, you know, and
Speaker:sort of heroing that. Other people then will, you know, will aspire not
Speaker:only to be like that person, but then will also aspire, well, if they're using those
Speaker:kinds of products, maybe I should, if I want to be like that. Uh,
Speaker:and, um, so, you know, actually sort of
Speaker:putting these people upon a pedestal and go, well done, you know, we do little
Speaker:bits and bobs out for our clients in terms of like, you know, getting behind. We
Speaker:do, we do a series called behind the trade, which we talked about a little bit earlier, which is
Speaker:literally just going for, for, for the longest time, for the
Speaker:last, you know, if you're forever, no one's really
Speaker:given a shit about the trades. you know, they're just geezers and
Speaker:women that are doing manual jobs or what was, you know, that
Speaker:was the sort of the general public's perhaps perception of
Speaker:And ultimately you're selling to these guys because they're going to use your
Speaker:product. It's also great engaging with the buyer of the company
Speaker:that you want them to stock your product. But ultimately if
Speaker:the guy's not happy with your product or, um, there's
Speaker:a substitution out there that's better than yours. You've got
Speaker:Yeah. And I mean, um, Ali from
Speaker:Stabila, um, explained this really, really well in an episode. It's that push
Speaker:pull marketing. You've got to have the pull marketing from the end user. So you're marketing
Speaker:to the end user because you want the end user to then go to their retailer. And
Speaker:hypothetically say, where the hell can I get this? Yeah, I
Speaker:want this stuff. But then also, you've got
Speaker:the push marketing, which is pushing it to the retailer to say, hey, you probably need
Speaker:to stock these. And what a lot of people miss out, a
Speaker:lot of brands miss out, is sharing the
Speaker:messaging from the end user to the
Speaker:retailer. And that's what LinkedIn's really good at. Great. And the
Speaker:website. What we're trying to do, you know, we
Speaker:haven't done it yet. But we're looking to, you
Speaker:know how like a salesperson, let's say it's a very typical sales scenario where
Speaker:a salesperson goes into a retailer, a
Speaker:stockist, a potential stockist, let's say. Let's say it's one of the big nationals
Speaker:and say, you should use it. You should get our products. Here's my PDF. Here's
Speaker:my PowerPoint presentation. on all this different stuff. Yeah
Speaker:absolutely and it's all kind of branded and it looks kind of nice and stuff like
Speaker:that. Well a lot of the time they miss is, and let's
Speaker:not say this is the best way of doing it, this is a way that I've thought about, is
Speaker:like let's actually talk about who wants
Speaker:this product, not just about how what all the benefits of it and
Speaker:the price range and how it sits in the market. Let's talk about the fact
Speaker:that I've got a load of different social posts here that are
Speaker:in this presentation that I can show you, little videos going this is the amazing I
Speaker:can't wait for this to be out in the in the shops all this kind of thing actually
Speaker:talking to the end user and you know doing things like doing
Speaker:a like a test you know a test phase where you
Speaker:send that product out to 50 people and you get their honest honest responses on but
Speaker:not only on social media but for you to be able to share in your marketing
Speaker:Um, more so these days that the people that you want
Speaker:to stop your product actually want you to do that end
Speaker:Absolutely. And a lot of people will be missing that trick because
Speaker:So I don't know, pick something that that there's a
Speaker:lot of in a supermarket, for example. I
Speaker:know soup. How do you get your soup brand to be more
Speaker:outstanding than others? Yes, you can make it look pretty and all the rest of it. But
Speaker:ultimately, you've got to get somebody
Speaker:to want to buy that product. It's not just about positioning in
Speaker:the supermarket and all the rest of it. Yeah, so we
Speaker:do very much like that. I just
Speaker:didn't think people were going to be over excited about copper tube.
Speaker:It's really difficult to make a household product
Speaker:for the construction industry. And it's a lump of
Speaker:metal with a hole in it, sexy and engaging, but
Speaker:Absolutely. I think you tapped into the fact that a lot of people don't
Speaker:realise that that a
Speaker:lot of trades people are proper nerds for the stuff that
Speaker:But they actually do want to know more about what's behind the brand
Speaker:Absolutely because I mean they've got options haven't they and it's like anybody
Speaker:you know so trades people I'm not everybody's gonna
Speaker:be like this of course because not everybody's into like clothing and brands and stuff like
Speaker:that but You know when you know um like Keelan for instance might
Speaker:be interested in a particular brand not because it's the best quality not because
Speaker:it's made in the right ways or whatever it's because he's interested in the
Speaker:history and and there are some elements that really
Speaker:speak to him as an individual and that's why he's going to buy that brand. There
Speaker:might be three or four other brands that are way better quality that are cheaper but for
Speaker:some reason he's picked that particular brand and that's great marketing. So,
Speaker:but tradesmen are exactly the same with the tools that they use and all the materials and
Speaker:stuff because they have choices, but they
Speaker:just need to figure out which one is the best for them. It might not be the best one,
Speaker:it doesn't matter, it's great if it is the best obviously, but if they've
Speaker:got a particular product or material
Speaker:that they use, that they think, this actually speaks to my values and
Speaker:So sustainability is a big thing. And we
Speaker:were talking to some senior people at
Speaker:some big nationals, and more recently than
Speaker:not, and they said it's less about price. Yeah. The big
Speaker:thing now is, is this recyclable? Is it coming from a
Speaker:recycle source? What do I do at end of life with the product? It's
Speaker:becoming a big thing. And we picked up on that. And
Speaker:obviously, the product always has been, it's nothing new for
Speaker:copper. It does originally come out of the ground. And there's a
Speaker:sample of something that comes out of the ground. And I go around colleges, and we do the talks,
Speaker:me and Pete. But 80% of everything that
Speaker:comes out of the ground is still in circulation because it carries on being infinitely
Speaker:recyclable. And so we're highlighting
Speaker:that more than ever before. Because the substitution products
Speaker:From an outsider's perspective, Lawton tubes and yourself are
Speaker:in big names in the industry, you know, specifically install
Speaker:the show, social media, even though like the actual following on
Speaker:social media isn't huge, which you typically don't get with
Speaker:brands anyway, as a rule. It's usually individuals that
Speaker:get big followings. you look at Richard Branson and Virgin, Richard Branson's got
Speaker:way more followers than Virgin. So that's always going to be
Speaker:Maybe we could speak about that. But obviously like LinkedIn, for instance,
Speaker:is a very good platform for personal brand. We'll talk about that
Speaker:another time. But so you, you're renowned
Speaker:from my point of view of social media marketing
Speaker:taking a vested interest in that but also I think like
Speaker:like sort of bootstrapping it you know you've not I don't I got the impression you've
Speaker:not hired an agency to go and like us to produce like you
Speaker:It was me and I was juggling so I know I want yeah
Speaker:I do as much as I can myself but I can't create
Speaker:websites I don't do SEO yeah So I then go and
Speaker:find a business that would help me do that and support me on doing that. So
Speaker:I think I got up to about 15 companies. So I had a stand builder, and
Speaker:I've been working in for years, great, great chap, a chap called Lee, based
Speaker:up in Manchester, and he creates stands. Because I know what
Speaker:I want, but I don't put stands together, even though I was building some stands.
Speaker:Certainly when I was exhibiting in Dubai in the early days, I was actually there building the
Speaker:stand. People were looking at me going, Rob, but you're the boss. Why
Speaker:are you building a stand? Why
Speaker:not? Get involved, mate. Because then I know
Speaker:Is that a bit, I don't know, you say? No, I think you've got to, at some point, you've got to still be on
Speaker:the tools. I think as a director of a business... We're
Speaker:very hands-on. You've got, I think, otherwise you become disassociated
Speaker:a little bit and you can, like, sort of less, you
Speaker:need to still sweat the small stuff, I think, as a director. I've
Speaker:always found that from reading books and
Speaker:speaking to other like creative directors, for instance, you've got to,
Speaker:But you still got to be on the tools to some
Speaker:extent, you still got to know what, what, what
Speaker:the process is of something you want to do it because if you don't know what the process
Speaker:is, how then can you make rounded judgments
Speaker:And communicate with your team who are the experts in that kind of thing. Yes, that's true. You
Speaker:know, you still need to be able to... It's hard to let go though. You've got to be able to speak the lingo. I
Speaker:found it very easy to let go. Really? Yeah, absolutely. I don't
Speaker:I'm a big delegator to be fair, but yeah, because
Speaker:it's maybe a family business. I don't know. But we do have great people in our
Speaker:team that we implicitly rely on and trust is there
Speaker:100%. but we're still very flat managed. So we'll pick the phone up. I
Speaker:will not walk past someone's desk that's ringing and not answer the phone. So
Speaker:suddenly, occasionally, you'll get me answering cold calls on the
Speaker:telephone. But that's just, I think
Speaker:that's just, I think my parents did a great job of bringing this
Speaker:uh but down to earth. Do you know what's interesting
Speaker:like I I from an outsider's perspective I
Speaker:you know was it 100 around 150. 1918. 100 sorry 150 like staffed
Speaker:um. Oh staff yeah. Around that
Speaker:I had no idea uh and it felt um the the
Speaker:sort of feeling that I got that's not I'm not saying this is a feeling that you give off
Speaker:is is it's a smaller family-run um
Speaker:business and that's not that's not to mean that it's not like um as
Speaker:successful i mean like it just feels more grounded as
Speaker:a as a company the brand feels more grounded um that's
Speaker:probably down to the fact that the the messaging you put across is about the
Speaker:values it's about the people uh and it's not it's
Speaker:less about just glossy products and stuff like that that's an interesting take
Speaker:It's about having the right product at the right price, but you've
Speaker:got to have all the trimmings to go with it. You're approachable, you're
Speaker:engaging, you listen to your customers at any level,
Speaker:whether it's the end user or the distributor you're
Speaker:selling it to. The big thing I'm doing now is collaborations
Speaker:with other brands because I also think that's important. So if
Speaker:I want to sell to ex-company, the fact
Speaker:that, yes, I've got great products and I'm engaging, but I'm also associated with
Speaker:a load of other brands. Yes. That's like an endorsement in a way. Yeah,
Speaker:absolutely. So I'm doing a lot of that at the moment. And
Speaker:then and we're going to do more about, obviously, sustainability
Speaker:is a big thing. And I think everybody in the whole world should be
Speaker:looking at what they do and how they do things, not just necessary
Speaker:in our industry, but generally. Yeah. So
Speaker:I think going back to the shows and
Speaker:the social media, they're the two things that I think that are really sort of standout parts
Speaker:of your marketing and your networking and approach to engaging. Very stressful.
Speaker:Which made the most difference do you think in
Speaker:the last three years? So we've got Installer Show that you've been doing for two, three years that's
Speaker:Which has had the most impact do you think? So
Speaker:if I didn't do Installer Show, I was to
Speaker:grow my export market. The
Speaker:different audiences in different countries and different ways of doing things.
Speaker:So I didn't think, say for instance, the Middle East,
Speaker:which is one of our biggest markets, that was very much about people
Speaker:and impression of flesh. It was still old school. So
Speaker:exhibitions was a big thing. So we started exhibiting
Speaker:and no one knew us. So I remember me
Speaker:and my cousin went out to Dubai. 2000, 15 years
Speaker:ago, something like that. And I've never been to the Middle East. No. So
Speaker:culturally, it was completely different. And I've got
Speaker:to start again, because hang on a minute, no one knows who we are. We
Speaker:got product everyone uses, but our product is now here. So
Speaker:exhibitions was was the main drive. And
Speaker:then in the UK, because we're already known. But
Speaker:we hadn't fulfilled that gap of engaging with
Speaker:the end user so much. The They
Speaker:both happened at the same time in the UK. So I was already
Speaker:doing exhibitions, but I'd never really... We'd done some in
Speaker:the UK. So there was an air conditioning exhibition we
Speaker:were going to, but that was about launching product. Social
Speaker:media, we just... LinkedIn's been
Speaker:going longer than I thought, but I hadn't been on it. We
Speaker:just... I've done four websites, I think, in the last 10 years. So
Speaker:I think a lot of energy went into the website about people
Speaker:being able to find us on the internet. But obviously the world's changed. Nobody sits
Speaker:in front of computer now. Everything's done on a mobile phone. Absolutely. Apps. We
Speaker:did an app. We were quite innovative. I
Speaker:did an app so you could and
Speaker:installed it could work out working pressures and stuff like that. Oh, that's cool. Putting a
Speaker:couple of bits of information about the tube
Speaker:and what pressure, what temperature we're going to run at and it would tell you the, so we
Speaker:did an app, but apps have sort of fallen away because you can
Speaker:now just you can put a website onto
Speaker:your iPhone now, can't you? Yeah. As a shortcut. Yes. I
Speaker:learned that the other day. So you don't really need apps. So I think they're
Speaker:dying off. Yeah. So you've got to keep reinventing yourself. But
Speaker:yeah, so Instagram and LinkedIn all
Speaker:happened with Installer Show, all sort of came in together
Speaker:because we, and using PB, all the three
Speaker:things all happened at the same time. Planned
Speaker:or not, that's up for debate. But I
Speaker:think having Pete, or having an ambassador, you
Speaker:need to utilise him or her. And to do
Speaker:that, well, how are you going to do that? Exhibitions is still the best
Speaker:way of putting yourself in front of people. And in the Stalder
Speaker:Show, I know there was other, and I talk about the Stalder Show a
Speaker:lot, but there are other exhibitions, but I just didn't find them
Speaker:In-store is the biggest one of the year, isn't it? Didn't used to be. No, that's
Speaker:why I find it bizarre. You think, from
Speaker:a non-tradesperson's point of view, I'm looking at Tool Fair, I'm
Speaker:No, but we go to all of them pretty much. Do you? Do you
Speaker:exhibit or do you? No, no, just to like, we get hired to
Speaker:shoot the content there for the brands that we're working with.
Speaker:But I, these days- You're more than welcome to come and do some stuff on our
Speaker:stand. That'd be cool. Most of the time, but these days, I just go for
Speaker:a schmooze. I just like schmoozing and speaking to the people. And a lot of
Speaker:the time, like, like Screw Fix Live, for instance, this Friday, um
Speaker:this might age the episode yeah because it's not going to
Speaker:mount for a month yeah yeah i'm only going there for a social uh
Speaker:because uh molly's shooting there um so uh you
Speaker:do become friends with people yeah well it's like what one of the guys that we
Speaker:were with with a couple of different brands like carl chance a really really
Speaker:good guy speak to him on socials all the time he lives in southampton great opportunity
Speaker:for me and him to catch up you know and install the shows very much like
Speaker:that the club is social that pointy runs is
Speaker:I'd like to make sure I go and a lot of the
Speaker:ambassadors if you like go along as well. I
Speaker:didn't think it was weird. I'm starting to find a little bit odd
Speaker:that Because you're the face of the business, and
Speaker:I don't believe you so much that I'm what you said I was, but... The
Speaker:The most... Copper King. Yeah, the most famous... Copper man.
Speaker:I'm just a normal Joe Bloggs. And
Speaker:some people won't approach you. It's weird. Some people will approach you and go, oh, can
Speaker:I get a photo? And I never thought that would happen. And I'm like, well, OK,
Speaker:And do you think that's made a difference, though? That's what I want to get at here. Do you
Speaker:think you being... kind of a face of the business, being
Speaker:approachable, and not taking it too seriously. Do you
Speaker:think that's actually made a difference? I do take it seriously, that's the trick. What
Speaker:I mean is, you know, not taking yourself too seriously in terms of
Speaker:like, okay, well, I must be best behavior, super
Speaker:You have to have those, but I know what you mean. Maybe.
Speaker:I just, I think, If
Speaker:I like, for instance, Shannon joined the business, what, 11 weeks, 12 weeks
Speaker:ago, is it now? Shih Tzu passion and energy. Yeah. And
Speaker:I love that. And especially in marketing, you've got to have that. You've got to be
Speaker:very creative as well. I think
Speaker:you're right. I think I've consciously always
Speaker:wanted to do marketing and sales, I suppose. And just
Speaker:being on the stand, I think you should. Maybe
Speaker:some of these bigger brands that are international, it's difficult because you've
Speaker:got thousands of people working for you and you can't do that.
Speaker:Because we're not, I don't class this as a big company in terms of
Speaker:turnover, staff turnover. And do you know what? Our turnover of
Speaker:staff is really low, but our numbers are low. I
Speaker:think 140 people is in a I think it's a mid-sized business. Is
Speaker:Not a small company but not a big company but I think because we've got
Speaker:and everybody's interconnected and we are trying to
Speaker:improve communication and I think nobody can ever be perfect on the
Speaker:way they communicate and we're going through that sort of coaching process with
Speaker:a lot of the staff and ourselves reflecting on ourselves. I
Speaker:think because of all that, you can take time out to
Speaker:go on the stand. And we do put quite a
Speaker:lot of staff, and it does have an impact on the business, because we're all working the
Speaker:show. But you know what? For three days, and it
Speaker:On your feet all day, talking to 10,000 people, and
Speaker:it doesn't finish at the end of the show. You've got to carry on in the evening. You've got to get
Speaker:I love it, I relax, but I
Speaker:need to be fresh the next day. I've got too much invested in the show
Speaker:and in the company that I don't feel like I can do
Speaker:I'm talking specifically the sales managers, they forget
Speaker:every year that you're not supposed to get spannered. on the first
Speaker:I don't like people that I pay like ambassadors to
Speaker:work my stand to do that either. That would really turn me
Speaker:off. Or come out and turn up hungover and stuff like
Speaker:that. Yeah, that's just unprofessional, I think. But you know, everyone's
Speaker:different. And the two guys that we had on our stand this
Speaker:year, they were actually three. Pete's dad worked the stand, bless
Speaker:him, in his 70s. And he worked wicked he
Speaker:was he was we did his key rings i gave you some but i'm going on the table but
Speaker:he was doing the engravings on a on a stand there we go so
Speaker:take take it out of there yeah um so so
Speaker:i don't know if you can see that but or not so we we one of our
Speaker:things that we just do is solid copper uh we had
Speaker:lawton shoes on one side and proper and copper the other but the other sides are blank and
Speaker:george bless him uh would would hand engrave anything
Speaker:you wanted on on the key ring and that will sit on your on your van key
Speaker:ring Um, he, he worked so hard. I
Speaker:You'll have a lunch, get a toilet break. But he was just so loving it
Speaker:and the banter and the gay. So I think if you do
Speaker:the engagement and the passion and show yourself as
Speaker:whatever, you'll get it back. uh and i think that's why the
Speaker:stand is so successful i don't think there's anything really clever
Speaker:that i'm doing that's that's that's out there well i was gonna ask
Speaker:you i think it's just normal or am i not being normal i
Speaker:don't know i don't i don't think anything you do is particularly normal um well
Speaker:um you know when you you
Speaker:really take an interest in social media. Specifically the shows, you
Speaker:know, you're getting people like Frank Bruno over and stuff like that, and you
Speaker:get in the office guys. Were there other people looking around?
Speaker:Were there lots of other people doing the same kind of thing? Or would you think you were
Speaker:I think installers show themselves capitalizing on
Speaker:that in the right way. I don't know many
Speaker:exhibition i've done quite a few because i do international ones i don't see
Speaker:the engagement so much from other companies that run exhibitions
Speaker:as much as i am from from lyrical which is the guys that
Speaker:run installer show so that's great um and
Speaker:i'm actually working with them and a couple other brands to try and help
Speaker:the engagement because um As
Speaker:the show gets bigger and more and more people want to exhibit
Speaker:it, it gets a bit of a bun fight. So, yes,
Speaker:it's there, it's a business, it's got to make money, but you've got to have standards that are engaging, otherwise
Speaker:it's just going to get people not wanting to come. And I
Speaker:don't want that because we see installing shows as
Speaker:a great thing for us as a company. I'm
Speaker:hopeful that it rubs off on people. I mean, it did. Some
Speaker:of the other stands probably not exhibited before. And this is where
Speaker:LinkedIn is really good. So we put out what we've done. Yes. We
Speaker:do the build up to it. And I think it has
Speaker:rubbed off, whether that's because of what we're doing or whether it's just what
Speaker:other people do. But we are seeing other brands doing
Speaker:mascots doing, and we haven't done that yet, but we will be. getting
Speaker:celebrities in, trying to do something more engaged
Speaker:on the stand. I mean you could just do spin the wheel, but everybody
Speaker:does spin the wheel. There's some brands that have
Speaker:unfortunately gone to the wayside that were doing really great on their
Speaker:branding, really engaging and I
Speaker:think There are quite a few of them still doing it. I
Speaker:think there'll be more each year. And I think that's great. Yeah,
Speaker:because at the end of the day, that's what it's about. It's about engaging with the end user.
Speaker:Do you find yourself on in the in the areas of marketing that you do, do
Speaker:you find yourself wanting to differentiate from the like the
Speaker:rest of the industry? Are you always thinking like, I
Speaker:Yes. Yeah. Because, you know, the
Speaker:office guys, like I know we're talking about the installer show quite a lot, but I
Speaker:think it's a huge part of marketing for the construction industry. Like if you're in
Speaker:if you're in that market, Um, you know, everybody's getting,
Speaker:you know, you see it more every time I go to a show, there's more brand
Speaker:ambassadors, there's more people on the stands that you see on social media.
Speaker:And you guys came out of the woodwork with two impersonators from from the office.
Speaker:I mean, I don't think there were celebrities much before. I
Speaker:Yeah. I mean, like, like, like last year we, we got, um, uh,
Speaker:we were working with a, uh, one of our, uh,
Speaker:sort of plumbing, uh, brands. I won't mention their names. I don't know
Speaker:why. Um, but, uh, you know, they had a gladiator on,
Speaker:on their stand for a particular period of time. So I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. You're talking
Speaker:about Mountain, the, the, the strongest man. I don't know who, I can't remember
Speaker:his name now, but anyway there was a gladiator on
Speaker:their stand and I was, and then I'm sort of going, I'm doing my sort of
Speaker:rounds around the shows and I'm like, oh there's another sort of B-list celebrity and
Speaker:See, I didn't purposely do that. Yeah.
Speaker:And that Frank thing which we discussed earlier was a
Speaker:I think you've got to have a stand that talks
Speaker:about your product, but in an engaging way. I
Speaker:never thought when we started doing the bending challenge, and again, Pete is
Speaker:a very big advocate of traditional pipe. So
Speaker:bending is traditional plumbing, not necessarily using
Speaker:press. And we launched with him the pipe bending challenge.
Speaker:That's what they do all day. They don't want to come into a... bloody exhibition
Speaker:and Ben Moore Pike. But you know what? They're
Speaker:quite competitive. They love to show off their skill. And
Speaker:actually, some people don't know how to bend since college, maybe. And we
Speaker:have apprentices having a go. We have people that have
Speaker:been in industry 30 years having a go. We
Speaker:have people that aren't even in the industry at all wanting to have a go. It's just
Speaker:But I'm doing it in such a way that it's engaged. It's working for
Speaker:you guys. I remember one of the first shows that we, I
Speaker:ever saw Lawton Tubes had, I can't remember which one it was. It had either been
Speaker:I can't remember, it might have been an older installer show. Anyway,
Speaker:we were opposite you guys nearly, you were undying. Sorry, is
Speaker:your company? No, no, no, we were shooting for one of our brands. So
Speaker:I was on their stand shooting content or whatever, moving
Speaker:around. I remember looking over, not knowing who you guys were at
Speaker:the time, and just thinking, fucking hell, there's a lot of people around
Speaker:that copper. like the and it didn't I didn't there was
Speaker:there was such a buzz around the um around
Speaker:the the products and around you guys and stuff I was really really
Speaker:engaged and everyone was really excited about like what seemed to
Speaker:me like a load it was a load of tubes you know and
Speaker:but you would I remember there was some bending going on and stuff like that and I was thinking this
Speaker:Maybe that's why we've done what we've done because it's not an overly complicated
Speaker:product. It hasn't got bells and whistles on it. It's difficult to
Speaker:differentiate yourself from the opposition. Maybe
Speaker:that's the reason why we've done such engaging stuff subliminally. I
Speaker:I'd love to tap into what's made it so successful. You know,
Speaker:what's made, what's made, you know, because it was, it was a cool looking stand.
Speaker:And it's changed since
Speaker:then. I mean, you know, things have changed since. I'll try and remember what that show was,
Speaker:I mean, the colour's great. Copper in itself is just
Speaker:a beautiful material. Do you know there isn't
Speaker:actually a Pantone for copper? Is that right? The nearest to it
Speaker:So it's really difficult from a marketing perspective. And
Speaker:thank goodness, technology's moved forward. So now we can have common
Speaker:foil and stuff like that. But before that, it
Speaker:would be antique gold. But that with
Speaker:Yeah it looks cool in here doesn't it Key? You need to get some copper in the studio. Yeah
Speaker:I think you should. We
Speaker:could change the white to copper if you like. That'd be pretty cool yeah,
Speaker:well we could do like a limited edition like Lawton dissident
Speaker:sign, I think that'd be pretty cool. uh
Speaker:we're in we're running the risk of of beating around the bush
Speaker:when it comes to like marketing and kind of like takeaways and stuff
Speaker:like that but so you've got launch tubes that
Speaker:you're doing something interesting you're doing something that a lot of the bigger corporates aren't doing
Speaker:and it's and it's working it's engaging with the end user in a in
Speaker:a massive way, I think. You go into the shows. What's one
Speaker:of the things that you think you've implemented in the last three years that's actually made
Speaker:a real noticeable difference that surprised you, do you
Speaker:think? Is there anything, like, in the last three years that you think, that worked bloody well?
Speaker:I think having an ambassador worked far better than
Speaker:I thought it would do. Just one? Yeah,
Speaker:we've only got one. Only got one? Just one. But he's the best in
Speaker:my eyes. I think he's, he's very committed.
Speaker:He's very professional. Um, he's not
Speaker:doing it so much. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's money.
Speaker:It's, it's business at the end of the day, but I don't think he's doing it
Speaker:because he just wants to make loads of money. And I think that shines through
Speaker:on, on, on his channels and stuff. So it's very genuine.
Speaker:So that really works because I think I'm quite genuine. So I think we rub
Speaker:off each other quite well. Um, that was a
Speaker:more of an impact. I
Speaker:originally thought we'll get we'll get an ambassador in, right, we'll
Speaker:get the numbers up on on social media, and we'll ditch him. Yeah.
Speaker:And that'd be it. Yeah. But actually, the opportunities that
Speaker:come out of it, because He's very engaging and
Speaker:he's full of ideas and he's been being plumbing and heating a long
Speaker:time. Actually, he brings a different dynamic.
Speaker:Yes. We know how to make the product. We're really good at it and
Speaker:we know all the things we need to do for it. But actually, looking
Speaker:at it from the other person's perspective of actually the person dealing with the product. I
Speaker:didn't have that. I'm not a plumber by trade, so
Speaker:I'm not on the tools. So having that dynamic actually really helped
Speaker:our marketing and the business as a whole. I think we're
Speaker:in year three with Pete at the moment, and it's working really
Speaker:well. And we're both developing our roles.
Speaker:And then things like starting to give back to
Speaker:those that want to be a plumber by going to
Speaker:colleges and doing tools. Yes. I'm not doing that from
Speaker:a brand perspective. We're
Speaker:doing that really to talk about the benefits of using copper
Speaker:over other materials and Pete then also
Speaker:then talks about being out to be a plumber and he gives some really good advice
Speaker:to young people about what social media
Speaker:should be about. Yeah. And it's a great way of mapping your
Speaker:journey through life as an installer. So you
Speaker:can see when you first started doing jobs and then seeing
Speaker:it. And I think he does talk about the fact he wish he'd done it
Speaker:a lot earlier in his career. Yeah. Social media is great
Speaker:because I think it's any channel. So
Speaker:any marketing is good marketing. And I think you can't just depend on
Speaker:a website, which we sort of did before. And we did a lot of
Speaker:printing of brochures. We very rarely print stuff. These
Speaker:days it's all digitalized and I think having all
Speaker:these different channels available, I think
Speaker:that creates a bigger audience and a
Speaker:bigger engagement. I don't have to have a meeting, you
Speaker:can learn about the products by looking at and you can see the different aspects
Speaker:and I don't think you can lie so much. I'm
Speaker:not saying you can lie, but people can get what they want to take out
Speaker:of it from what you do on social media. And everybody's got different things
Speaker:they want to take out of it. And if you thought about a marketing campaign and
Speaker:said, well, actually, we're going to do this because I think that's what everybody
Speaker:wants. Not everybody wants that. But being
Speaker:proactive on social media, people will take what they want to take from it.
Speaker:And I love the engagement and the chat and the banter on there. So
Speaker:that's the last thing. And then more recently, Shannon's joined us. And
Speaker:the dynamic is going to change a bit more. Big up Shannon. Big up
Speaker:Shannon, because Shannon being a young soul,
Speaker:she'll bring in the more modern way of doing marketing. I
Speaker:like to think I'm there. I'm not an old fart. I
Speaker:am still trying to keep up with what's happening on avenues.
Speaker:You know, WhatsApp's a big thing. People don't like have
Speaker:meetings and stuff. You might get WhatsApp or you get text. It's not just texting. I
Speaker:don't do Snapchat, but I do other social media. And I think Shannon's going
Speaker:to bring a new dynamic of how you
Speaker:can utilize modern technology to help you
Speaker:grow social media. I mean, I still very
Speaker:much like the hands-on approach, whether that
Speaker:changes as we get bigger and more creative, I
Speaker:don't know. but certainly bringing in people in-house,
Speaker:Yes. Some things is worth outsourcing, isn't
Speaker:Well, you've got to look at your skill set. I mean, you can't have 30,000 people working
Speaker:for you in marketing. No. But you can use an agency like you. Gosh,
Speaker:I'm going to now promote agencies, aren't I? Yeah, specifically this.
Speaker:You guys got maybe an SEO. I don't know what you've got. You might have an SEO, a
Speaker:web designer. You'll have someone who's really good at journalism,
Speaker:so could do article writing. Well, for me to do that as
Speaker:a brand, I've got to employ key people to do that. Exactly. Well,
Speaker:that's a massive expense. Yeah, especially if you're not doing a lot of
Speaker:that stuff. Yeah. I think we'll do more and more and
Speaker:challenge a well-rounded individual. So
Speaker:we'll still probably be outsourced, but
Speaker:we'll be more selective. And I've got some great guys
Speaker:and girls that we use. Again, I don't
Speaker:know if that's come out of chance, we'll just communicate. Don't
Speaker:go through like, oh God, I'm sounding old now, yellow pages and go, right,
Speaker:I need a plumber, I'll go through the yellow page and find a plumber. I'll do a lot of recommendations through
Speaker:word of mouth, which is why network is great. So
Speaker:going to exhibitions and just networking, just do it. Even
Speaker:if you've not got a stand, go to the bloody shows. Get out your
Speaker:I love it. Networking is massive, isn't it? And this is the thing about social media
Speaker:as well, just to, um, just to get this
Speaker:point across for a lot of people is, is, is, you know, like word of
Speaker:mouth, networking, social media is exactly that.
Speaker:I don't see the point. It doesn't matter where you're on a golf course, cause you're on
Speaker:an organized golf do like we did the other week, which is great fun.
Speaker:uh or you're in an exhibition and you don't say anything and just stand there yeah
Speaker:what what's the point of being there no what you're
Speaker:the wrong person if if you're doing that yeah absolutely um
Speaker:i've engaged with some i was on a couple of charity golf days this year um
Speaker:and there was one in particular i went to and
Speaker:that was you know it got some of the biggest some of the biggest names in uh
Speaker:some of the biggest brands sorry in the industry and they got the sales directors and all
Speaker:that kind of thing i'm chatting to some of those guys or whatever And I'm
Speaker:always surprised. I mean, I'm a LinkedIn guy anyway. And
Speaker:a lot of the time, yeah, fair enough. I'm building my network because that
Speaker:is good for my business. But
Speaker:I'm always surprised how little
Speaker:these guys interact with each other on social media. And
Speaker:I'm sure it's because they're busy and they don't want to be on social media, and that's absolutely fine. Social
Speaker:media is not for everybody and I completely appreciate that. Weirdly, it's
Speaker:not for most of my team, even when we're a social media agency. A lot of us
Speaker:don't actually spend a great deal of time on it. Ourselves, for
Speaker:ourselves. Um, but I'm always surprised how, how unsocial
Speaker:people are on social media. And so they're all, they're
Speaker:all marketing. They're all, they're all just push, push, push, push on
Speaker:Sometimes people that get into marketing role, it's always like being not the
Speaker:main part of the business. So actually, do you know what, why
Speaker:don't you do the marketing? But you might actually be an accountant. Yeah. Or
Speaker:something like that. And suddenly you're doing the marketing because you feel like
Speaker:you should be doing the marketing. But it doesn't necessarily have to be big brands. If
Speaker:you're like us, we were growing at such a rate
Speaker:in terms of size of business. You
Speaker:were so busy being hands-on, getting the product, satisfying the
Speaker:customer, that the marketing side of it or other aspects
Speaker:of the business don't really get thought about as much. It's only
Speaker:when you've, I wouldn't say matured as a
Speaker:brand, but have done that surge of
Speaker:growth and you've got to a comfortable place
Speaker:you want to be in sales, that actually you can start thinking about other
Speaker:Yeah it's it's our marketing is often seen as a luxury um and
Speaker:it's and it's one of those things because that's now my job yeah this is the
Speaker:thing and and i think this is this is where we can you can sort of
Speaker:push the narrative of like you know marketing is is the
Speaker:first step in sales yes you can send some people out to retailers and
Speaker:say hey do you want to look at this product and that's that's a really really good thing but if you haven't
Speaker:got the marketing in place and the end user has no idea what your
Speaker:It's not massively a big expense having a social media platform either is
Speaker:A website can be expensive but having an Instagram
Speaker:It's time and effort and the resource you're going to
Speaker:put to it maybe but you can do it yourself. I mean I'm Obviously,
Speaker:that's what I did. I set my social media channels up
Speaker:for the business myself. I'm still doing them. Is
Speaker:It depends on your positioning. I think the way that you position the brand, I think that's absolutely
Speaker:fine. Um, I think if you're positioning a brand in a particular light,
Speaker:let's say if I gave the example of, um, I
Speaker:don't know, every time I try
Speaker:and give an example, it's either one of my clients or one of our competitors, uh,
Speaker:or our client's competitors. But let's say, um, it's Bosch.
Speaker:Let's go for Bosch because that's a nice, easy one. If Bosch started doing
Speaker:social media, the way that you guys do social media, it would like
Speaker:sort of it would be their position would be really weird because Bosch are
Speaker:all about like the the product the
Speaker:engineering but the way but and and you guys
Speaker:are to some extent but if they took your approach which is a little bit
Speaker:more personal a little bit more um individual it
Speaker:pushes you in front of the brand quite a lot that
Speaker:would look very strange for them. And it would be a bit, like,
Speaker:But then the whole of the industry for tools, for example, we're talking
Speaker:about tools, they're all very similar. Yes. That's how the marketing works.
Speaker:I'm pretty unique. I don't have anyone in my
Speaker:So I've got pretty much a blank canvas. I
Speaker:think it's going to be a bit of a challenge if any manufacturer wanted to
Speaker:do Copperbyte and market it because I've
Speaker:sort of set the precedence really a little bit. So that
Speaker:was quite unique for us. That was good. I just happened to
Speaker:But to answer your question, your marketing, the fact
Speaker:that you're saying that you're still very much involved and you're also kind
Speaker:of like sort of customer facing in terms of the
Speaker:marketing, that works really well for your brand because you are
Speaker:just really uniquely positioned to speak to the end user. And
Speaker:being the fact that no one else in kind of your sector is
Speaker:really doing anything like this, it just works incredibly well. You
Speaker:Yeah, so LinkedIn, we do more serious.
Speaker:I think that's right. We separate out. We
Speaker:can do TikTok. I
Speaker:think, do I like TikTok? Probably not. But I
Speaker:see that as the fun fun. It's just
Speaker:bordering into stupidity in some instances on TikTok. And
Speaker:then Instagram. So you can be creative and fun. But
Speaker:Yeah I think you can still have personality. You can still have personality but you don't don't
Speaker:be an idiot on it. It's it's a different way of communicating isn't it
Speaker:Yeah well I can do it two ways I can do it through the company on LinkedIn but
Speaker:So I personalize it by Shannon will
Speaker:post on on LinkedIn about on the corporate on the company page
Speaker:about what the company's doing and it could be reasonably and
Speaker:then I'll repost it but I'll put my comment on it yes and
Speaker:put my personality into it yeah I think that's that's
Speaker:probably the best way of explaining it it's it sucks that isn't it
Speaker:because you know the the problem with LinkedIn not the
Speaker:I suppose it is a problem in some respects, is you have to have a
Speaker:different strategy. So you can have strategy for Instagram, strategy
Speaker:X if you use X. And they've all got slightly different algorithms and all the rest of
Speaker:Yes, yeah. Well, we're kind of there or
Speaker:thereabouts. We specialise in only a few of
Speaker:the channels as well. We don't touch X. We'll
Speaker:do it, but we won't say that we're the
Speaker:experts in there. Same with Snapchat. I think that's got to be in-house. I
Speaker:think TikTok, to some extent, should be in-house. Is it just Snapchat for branding? Yeah?
Speaker:Yeah, it's a communication platform, isn't it? I don't use it so... Probably
Speaker:No, well, I don't think TikTok's really my audience, but there are people that
Speaker:are big on plumbing and heating and that, that are more on TikTok than they
Speaker:are on Instagram, and vice versa. I
Speaker:think one of the things that they don't do is,
Speaker:I think the way that we treat TikTok, because I
Speaker:think a lot of people will say TikTok is for silly, we
Speaker:don't do a lot of phone footage because we're a production company. And
Speaker:most of our clients, they're never really hiring us to do what we call UGC,
Speaker:like create a content type thing. Everything that
Speaker:we do is for the most part, like relatively high production value stuff.
Speaker:And a lot of people will say like that's not applicable to
Speaker:TikTok. TikTok should be gritty, it should be real,
Speaker:it should be phone footage and it should, you
Speaker:know, because as soon as you see anything that's like high production value, it
Speaker:My argument to that is... But unless you're doing like, if your product is
Speaker:like trainers, you'd be on TikTok because you
Speaker:I think everybody should be on TikTok, but... Maybe I'm just a bit old school.
Speaker:The thing that, because my thing is like, you should... I
Speaker:break this rule because most of our clients aren't on X, but
Speaker:I usually say, why not show up everywhere? It's not
Speaker:going to do you any harm. No, true. Good marketing is good marketing. Exactly. But
Speaker:also, you know, fair enough, like TikTok, there's
Speaker:a thing where some people will say, you need to be doing gritty, raw,
Speaker:personalized videos that are a little bit more low budget, otherwise
Speaker:it looks weird. My problem with that is if you're a brand
Speaker:where that type of content is
Speaker:bad for your position, you shouldn't be doing that. But
Speaker:And even from the point of view of your internal
Speaker:comms, and just getting your staff
Speaker:and your team members geed up about the products and about the
Speaker:business and it goes back to that kind of like marginal gains thing
Speaker:that like the sky is the sky team did the cycling team like you
Speaker:know an extra one or two percent actually like long term when
Speaker:you get when it gets to the end of the you know the that's all the things you've
Speaker:been doing one two three percent five percent gains on uh
Speaker:productivity and and yeah um and staff retention stuff
Speaker:like you save a shitload of money you make a load of money and i think that's really cool so
Speaker:and everybody wins from that because you can keep paying your staff and you can keep improving
Speaker:I think you create a better vibe and a better buzz within the business. Because
Speaker:everybody knows the direction, everybody's working as a team, everybody's
Speaker:being more cohesive, the communication is great. I
Speaker:think it's just you spend so much time at work, you've
Speaker:got to enjoy what you do. And I think, not
Speaker:necessarily for us, but maybe when I look at other businesses and I
Speaker:talk to people, they're really down about where they were. And I'm thinking, why
Speaker:What a depressing life. We can speak about internal comms on
Speaker:a future episode. I think
Speaker:it might be nice to get Shannon back as well. We talked about it that much, but she's... There
Speaker:you go. There you go. We'll get Shannon back as well. Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker:We would have you at any time. Thank you so much, Rob from Lords and Tubes.
Speaker:What's the best place to find you, speak
Speaker:to you, whatever. What do you think? LinkedIn, Instagram? I'm
Speaker:Go on, go on all of it. Any of it. LinkedIn's obviously me because that's
Speaker:mine. Instagram's still me. TikTok's
Speaker:still me, but more Shannon. You can
Speaker:pick the phone up. You can see me in person because obviously I do all the shows. Go to
Speaker:Yeah. And the odd charity golf day as
Speaker:well. You can catch Rob. Yeah. Well, next charity golf day. You'll
Speaker:certainly hear me if you don't see me. Rob,
Speaker:thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure and
