Why Your Brand Isn’t Growing (And What Actually Works)| We Are All Marketing | Special Episode

0:00You just need to post it. Like this is what I was going to say, posted is better than perfect. Just post it because it's going to die within 24 hours anyway. You can't out market a fat product and you've got to think about all the facets of that product. The most successful thing I've ever launched in my entire career is Methods, wild rhubarb and it smells insane. People would literally throw it around their house before people come. Yeah, it's still like, it's still the number one bestseller. Standing for something is super important for brands. So understanding why you exist and what your relevance is within culture.

0:31So not just considering, you know, what are the product attributes? Why should somebody want to buy us more than once because it's a good product? But actually why do we exist? Who should care about us? And how do we then vocalise that? But tell me a time when you had an idea or one had an idea in the business that totally blocked. It was like a big failure. Oh, I've got a huge one. Oh, there you go. Thank you.

1:24Thank you.

1:54Thank you.

2:28Hi everybody, thank you so much for coming this evening even due to the horrendous tube strikes which are ruining everyone's lives. Welcome, come in whenever you're ready. This is a live podcast recording so if you don't mind just popping your phones on silent that would be really helpful, not the end of the world but just yeah, if possible. Really really excited to have you here all tonight. It's a very special evening in collaboration with My podcast sponsor, we are all marketing. So I'll hand over to Vic as well in a moment just for her to talk to you about what she does. But for those who are in the room who don't know me yet, my name is Zoe Fox.

3:06I am the host and founder of the Getting to Grow podcast, one of the leading to UK's FMCG podcasts that's chats to founders, all within food and beverage. So why they started, how they started, ups and downs, what went wrong, what went right, what they wish they'd done differently, loads of kind of really good nuggets of information. So please do follow me on Instagram or wherever you do listen to a podcast for some amazing content. Quick show of hands, who has listened to my podcast before? Okay. And that's great, actually. I like it when lots of people don't put their hands up because it means I'm like reaching new audiences.

3:44So actually, that's great. And who in here works in marketing versus founding a business or like running their own brand, all that kind of stuff? okay wow so yeah a good kind of level of marketeers and advertisers in the room this is that's not my bag I am crap at my own marketing and marketing I'm definitely a sales girly that's what I do in the day I'm head of business development at a company called the coconut collaborative we do the most delicious plant-based yogurts and desserts out there um so um please do as I said give me a follow um on all your platforms as well but before we dive in um I do have to mention my brand new bit of merch which is my getting to go craps this is my first bit of merch ever and like as a founder of something brand whatever it is service it's so fun when you get your first bit of merch like i am obsessed with it um and i like always run in a cafe i'm doing london marathon next year so i'll be running in all red offs shouting about my podcast to everybody that's staring at be running around the circuit um but um they're they're up for grabs tonight for the three best questions at the end so do have a think about what you might want to ask um the panel um and i do have a few spare so if it's desperate desperate then please do ask me because i do have some because i definitely want you all running around clapping common or wherever you live um with them as well but um they are also made by the amazing victoria um who's also been called victoria um she has very kindly sponsored part of Getting to Grow as well and giving me the caps and they say inside all about them as well so if you are looking for merch they're from a brand called Brandstamp so definitely one to check out but as I said tonight is all in collaboration with We Are All Marketing so Vic introduces herself so much better than I possibly do but she is been on my podcast sponsoring it now for two seasons she is the marketing guru the gal for everything you need so um vick would you like to introduce yourself print come up to the stage

5:45yeah so i think when we first met and talked about your podcast i was like uh what are we doing about sponsorship a testament to how great zoe is about this development then she then is to sell the idea back to me so then i'm like um but yeah no it's been a delight and it's been great to kind of get in more in with the FNCG Challenge for the community as well. What we do is we assemble functional freelance marketing teams and creative teams to tackle whatever your marketing challenges are with the view that unlike bigger agencies, you can be really agile, you can make it really work with your budget, how that works.

6:25And sometimes that is just when you're a screwing senior, who knows their shit, who's just going to sail in and answer all the questions you have when you're in that business or people who are just going to come in and go do you know what i know exactly what you need for seo and social um and we worked with as i said we we did the um cloud repositioning and uh brand that you'll see on the shelf today which is smashing it by the way our rate of sale now in supermarkets is so good so the rebrand and the refresh is looking amazing so thank you for that and it's pulled fruit and revenue yay yes um and we've also recently worked with my life and we've got a whole bunch of other brands so we'd love to chat to anyone who wants to talk to their marketing also there is a qr code here sorry i'm sat in front of it um which we have a free kind of brand diagnostic so if you want to sense check how things are going for you um do that and we'll give you a personal report which will give you the kind of focus area to look at for your brand um and separately anything else you need

7:30And it's all thanks to Vic who have pulled in an insane panel here this evening. So I'm going to let you introduce you guys yourself as well better than I can because yeah, you've got some amazing backgrounds that I can't wait to dive into. So we'll start with Sarah at the end. Sure. My name is Sarah Warman. I worked at BrewDog for 12 years across various things, including I was their first marketing hire. I did sustainability. I ran the side of business for a year and really enjoyed my time there. I'm now fractional CMO. I'm working across a number of different brands across both FMCG and in some new spaces that I've not been involved in before, which is really exciting.

8:07I have a degree in marketing as well, which I'm one of the few people that actually studied something that they ended up doing. So that's quite fun. But yeah, that's that's me in a nutshell. Mace. Hi, everyone. I'm Mace Alansari. And I actually started agency life way, way moons ago. and I moved client side in my first role working across different kind of sectors and brands within FMB I then did the Penhaligon's which is kind of retail and luxury and then my last in this marketing director at Subway running the brand and the MPD and insights and then I recently joined as interim marketing director at Stonegate so quite squiggly within the industry but we actually love what we're doing and I think it's really important that you know we kind of have those experiences we get to share them today so you've got really like rebellious kind of going against the grain marketing at brew dog to like a very kind of like bougie upmarket panhaligans it's obviously gorgeous fragrance she is bougie we love it who doesn't love a bit of booze um and then holly i'm holly ricks uh i've worked across the big bad ugly from like massive diashio gsk's duluxes of the world to super tiny challenger brands CBD startup that you've heard of um to Method and Ecova which I really hope you have heard of um Method is like my third child and that was kind of again like always client side as opposed to agency side but all around FMCG and I kind of particularly like the unsexy brands I've worked on sexy brands and actually the unsexy brands way more interesting getting slightly nitty-gritty of it yeah like cleaning products and period care like cool yeah yeah which I guess isn't spoken about as much because you're right it's not like the sexy kind of what people want to hear about no but it's actually I think it's more like creatively interesting definitely um so I want to ask you all what your first ever job was bringing it right back to the beginning it might not have even been in marketing so what what did you all start out doing Sarah we'll go for you first well my first paid job I used to fill pots with peat and sand at my the herb farm that my mother worked on in the summer holidays and but my first actual job um was um I used to clean rooms in hotels that was my first job and then from there moved into um retail loved my jobs in hospitality so I did a lot of bar work a lot of waitressing I think everyone should do that when they are starting out in their career it's really important to get that experience customer service and then I studied marketing and then my first job and was in a fashion events company after I graduated.

10:48Amazing so loads of different I agree I think working in like a kind of very service early starts gives you a lot of like what's the word that I'm looking for um like resilience to things because you're thrown if you're thrown in situations you're thrown into jobs and you're like you just have to get done. Yes and I think it's really important to get that initial understanding of the customer and how important that is and how that relationship is so important to pretty much any career you will end up having that respect for the customer and so I think it's a it's a really valuable experience for anyone who's sort of like entering their career to actually have a stepping stone into hospitality it's so important and hospitality needs that kind of those people to come through in their careers as well so yeah big champion for that absolutely amazing i actually worked in retail at gap which no longer exists but then it's come back again yeah it has had a good rebrand who's doing their marketing yeah i mean it's it's yeah we don't know yet but i started off doing weekend work to your point and i what i guess drew me to it was the customer facing you know to your point like if you can deal with good situations bad situations or the ugly situations you're pretty much set up um and then it was everything else was a little easier after that when you're at the front line right to hospitality retail I think yeah it's really important to have that grit kind of ingrained from the beginning yeah that was my first proper paid job and then as I said I kind of quickly went into the the ad land and that set me up I guess in the non-conventional route I'm you know I still believe that there's different avenues of entering from a marketing perspective but actually what that set me up with was doing the squiggly career and that i was able to understand the kind of creative side the production side the kind of strategy side and having worked on multiple brands like johnson and johnson mastercard tiffany and co so i had the ability and the agility to understand how to take the challenges and the opportunities um while not owning the brand and the thinking of it and then realizing very quickly i wanted to be on that side of the table and leading those conversations um so yeah and then i moved to client side amazing and holly well unlike sarah i have no marketing qualifications whatsoever we won't hold it against you yeah i actually have a biochemistry degree which is my interesting fact wow that is a really interesting fact isn't it yeah um and i joined i didn't do a year in industry because labs bore me and i like people uh so i did like an internship at dulux what was then showing my age now ICI paints and I joined them on their internship and basically I learned how to do marketing at Dulux okay so like I made their color card I signed off tin plate cans to sign off packaging like actual like aluminium sheets yeah yeah um I wrote POs on carbon paper good times good times simpler times and it was in slough oh i was born in my first in my first job i worked for a guy i shit you know sorry about swearing it's fine you can swear for david brent in slough yeah my father called slough the armpit of berkshire which is unfortunate if anyone's i'm really sorry um maize for those very early kind of first jobs what was the moment that really sparked your interest in brand and marketing and was there a particular like campaign role or that set you on this path how interesting uh went on the agency side or brand side uh brand side yeah so brand side so it uh i guess the context for my first brand role was interesting it's a company called mhl shaya which i can't see anybody but in case anyone does know it show of hands yeah of course you would know tony but it's one of the largest franchise companies based in the Middle East and I had joined to run the brand called Pinkberry which is a frozen yogurt from California and so it really helps to be in the Middle East with the heat right so and frozen yogurt kind of a nice complement but the company was really focused on opening stores so very operator led very property led and there was something called the brand and customers on the side so I it was really exciting and it was the first time where I said, oh, we need to look at the MPD, we need to look at customers, we need to look at the guest experience, all of these things.

15:17And I did a brand campaign that had no product in it, had no sales, no promotion. And it was like, what are you doing? And I think it was that piece of doing the education job internally, just as much as it was externally, that really excited me to say, thinking about the good old days, you know, before Les Bonet and Peter Field, which was like, we need to build a brand for the long term while we're kind of genuinely trying to driving the business in the in the immediate um and that was really exciting because it was an uphill struggle you know an uphill struggle to really do that convincing job and just start that i guess parallel pathing um so it was a lot of fun a lot of creativity there was no technical roi behind it it was like we need to actually start developing a proposition around it and having a point of view and living and breathing it and and brand is massive because yes you're buying ultimately you're buying frozen yogurt and you're buying whatever it is that you see but you're buying that kind of like you're buying into the lifestyle like look at fragrance ads like you can't smell through a tv right but they still make you want to go in and go oh i'm intrigued and i don't want to feel and touch it so you're right it's all about that kind of experience that you give the customer when they're sat there looking at it yeah um and sarah looking back at those kind of early stages of your career when you were starting at like BrewDog days, what was something that really shaped your approach to marketing today?

16:36I mean, BrewDog is known for its like very rebellious kind of like out there marketing. So what would you say kind of in those early days at BrewDog, did you think and learn that shaped how you kind of work today? Yeah, I think standing for something is super important for brands. So understanding why you exist and what your relevance is within culture. So not just considering, you know, what are the product attributes? why should somebody want to buy us more than once because it's a good product but actually why why do we exist who should care about us and how do we then vocalize that what are the causes that we should get involved in so you know for example brew dog was almost always very about the punk mentality and i think one of the things that i really enjoyed when i worked there was the vote for punk campaign whereby we gave everyone a pint of punk if they voted during the general election so we were not aligning ourselves with any specific party but we were advocating for people to use their democratic right to vote which was extremely punk in the kind of the concept of of brew dog but at the same time it was a massive sampling opportunity so it was a way for us to then get people to come and try punk ipa in the bars that we had across the uk and it did drive quite significant traffic whilst also doing something that was extremely tied to the brand and the reasons that it existed in the first place.

17:53So I think, you know, to answer your question, I think it's very much why do you exist beyond the realms of just your product? Yeah, and I think that's really interesting because sampling is so impactful and beneficial and people don't like to be sold to. Whereas if you do it in a way that's like, oh, we're going to sort of gift you for doing something good, but also have this, and then maybe, you know, later down the line you obviously love it and hopefully buy it again. But you don't kind of forefront your entire message with that. Exactly. And I think when you're a small brand as well, you can't just pay a brand to stand in waterloo station and hand out cans of your product and that ultimately doesn't really give you much of an experience so doing sampling in a way that actually connects the consumer to the brand in a way that is that resonates and puts across the message that you want to put across um is a much more effective way of utilizing sampling rather than just handing out products willy-nilly yeah just like the best question gets my cat i'm technically like selling them my podcast but I'm giving it as if you'll remember in a back that's how I think about it um and then Holly before we get into kind of like your the big campaigns and the big growth stories that you've done can you share an example of your first experience in building something for a brand um whether it's smaller like a scrappy project and what you took away from that experience well I suppose if we go right back to Dulux um it would be the color card so when you go into a b &q or a home base um and again that this the days of you know the colors that go we know the colors that go which again a shame wage um but treacle tartan does go with forest green so the um creating that color card is it's the most important piece of the brand collateral because it's what you're helping someone choose and navigate an insane range like G-Lux has got all of the colors so it's not like you go to Aaron Ball and there's a curated bunch of colors it's actually really really hard and people get overwhelmed and I'm sure we'll come back and talk about insight but that was like a really important insight around actually I actually don't know where to start with this and the color card putting that inspiration in there making sure like I know a lot about how to print a color accurately I've forgotten it all but that was really important because that is the it's the direct representation of the product that you're actually buying um and I think the the takeaway from that is also the importance of emotion yeah because I did a lot of color naming as well never got holly berry away um trademark issues but like the power of you we would always have a like often a pair so you'd have like a word that denotes the color very clearly and then a word that's a bit more emotive and people and you can see it in the sales data people buy the ones with better names basically or the more interesting and yeah I always bet on the horse yeah it's got a fun name so that makes sense yeah it's the exact same kind of psychology or something but yeah like and then also the power of like visualizing a transformation there's a reason like changing rooms was one of like cult television but showing what a room looked like and then showing what a room could look like with nothing but a lick of paint is super powerful um so yeah making a little color card uh the hours i don't think i've ever spent since the amount of time on one thing and i'm quite jealous of that yeah um and as i said you've seen so many brands go from like will outgrow that scrappy challenger phase to a more household name and Sarah if you could give one piece of advice to a founder and a marketer maybe sat in this room to scale fast but smart what would that be that's tough um I think I think knowing exactly what why you're why you exist in the first place is super important and that gives you that true north because if you just start scattergum you know we think with this we think with that and change it all the time nothing will stick so I think you need to know your true north and make sure that you stick to that so that you can grow in a trajectory whilst not sort of getting distracted but you also will be able to then find the things along the way that are culturally relevant within that so I think having that guiding principle is super important and all the brands that I've ever worked across and the brands that I really respect as well they have that and they know why they exist and they're really confident about that so having that confidence to commit to that is really important and if it's not working then pivot and change what that direction is but don't you know scatter gun it all over the place because it just it will just end up confusing your consumer like the color card you don't want it to be overwhelming and confusing because you're saying all different things at all different times so i think having consistency of messaging is is massively important and all brands should be committed to that can i just build on that i think especially when you're talking to the founders in the room i think it's also really hard to then scale up yes right yeah you you then struggle in order to the kind of scale if you are doing the scattergun if you don't have a strategy to kind of build on and that you're working towards then it's really difficult to then kind of expand and expand quickly it's hard as well to grow a team yeah they don't know exactly what direction they're traveling in so having that it means that you can then scale and grow with a team that are a hundred percent behind you on that mission because they know where you're headed and why yeah definitely I'll say the exact same thing and it's like getting really gliding around who your consumer is and like you shouldn't be afraid of targeting that i think we we are a bit of like oh let's just target everyone if i could count on my hands the amount of times that founder said oh we're targeting everyone i'm like stop just stop it right now but getting understanding who they are and what they really care about yeah what matters to them and then why we exist like i always start with the why do we exist because no one wants another carbonated drink it's it it's why do you exist what you're going to do that's useful informative or entertaining and that that adds value because fundamentally consumers need they don't need more stuff they're not looking out for you you need to kind of break through that with something disruptive and be you know have utility for them but i suppose the other thing that i would build on in terms of like the purpose piece and like your true reason to exist as a challenger brand is like this is like important advice for founders in particular i've seen a lot of times founders get bogged down in oh well so and so competitor's doing that or so and so competitor's doing that no one cares no consumer is going oh well they've done that but they've they've responded like that that's not how consumers think or behave that's not how they buy or shop it's it's getting out of this mentality of the fight that you're having with your enemies the enemies are just noise and context it's kind of interesting but it's not your north star and it's your fight is who is your monster what's your big ugly gnarly category defining monster that you're going to go after and if you keep that as your true north i would say what's our fight what are we fighting here um and that is maybe some examples might be useful but like does anyone know what i mean by monster versus enemies like your enemies are your competitive set um so for example at TOTM which is a period brand I work on at the moment our enemies are other kind of eco space organic or mainstream period care brands that's not interesting that doesn't oh what I'm in cup doing oh what I'm always doing it's kind of irrelevant our North Star our fight is about female health and what are we doing to improve female health and yes we've got a better product you should all buy it not you um but it is that is day to day when the founder goes oh but someone says doing that and there's a really good example at the moment so it's tangent but there there's two other brands that are inviting the legal action against each other they're spending tens of thousands of pounds fighting each other about greenwashing claims and we're just like ha ha see ya we'll just do this over here yeah and stay in your lane stay stay in your and don't get distracted that stuff is going to distract them and they will die they'll kill each other doing it so just don't get involved i'm gonna just this isn't the next question i have actually now kind of on it it makes sense but like brand fomo is massive and you are constantly distracted and i think as well with social media just as in like your personal life but let alone your business life you are and of course challenges are going to come up and you're going to get you know more people entering the market what would you say is it's so hard because also like you are the the stimulation around it is massive right like you see something and you're like oh my gosh maybe we should be reacting like this so how would you say to combat brand FOMO and how how do you keep to your north star how do you because it is so hard it's easy to sort of say keep to what you know make sure you're hounding in that conversation like honing in your your consumer and what exactly is that you're trying to tell everybody but what would you say is your reason and how do you clear cut through the noise who wants to answer is that fight yeah so james watt who founded brewdog he had a really good test for anything so if anyone came to him and said you'd like to do this he would put it through the brewdog filter which was um could anyone could any other brand do this and is this completely aligned to our mission so it has to be completely aligned to the mission and it has to be something that BrewDog, only BrewDog can do.

27:30And if the answer to those is the wrong answer, then you don't do it, you move on. I love that. So it was a really, really valuable test to be able to put everything through to say, right, could anyone else do this? Yes, therefore it's nothing to do with us. Yeah. And then the other thing I would add on top of that is more importantly is the why. Like, because if you're saying yes to this, you're saying no to something else. And so you need to kind of outweigh that, you know what I mean? So if you're going to go off and do this, respond to something that your competitor is doing, okay, because you're going to get distracted, is that kind of worth the squeeze, right?

28:04So you need to kind of then figure out, especially if it's not on the plan, if it's about the brand FOMO, you need to then also, as a marketeer, say, okay, actually, it's much more compelling because of all these reasons, but we're going to have to give something up or it's going to delay something else. And I think that sometimes we get distracted by the shiny toy, which is sometimes if it's relevant, great. And if it's responsive, but then if you're getting pulled in this direction, that means something else is going to give. And I think we sometimes forget that. The other side of that is obviously budget.

28:32So if you're on a tight budget and you're a startup, you don't have a lot of money. So if you're saying, oh, we're going to spend two grand on this thing, can that two grand work harder somewhere else? That's ultimately the test that you have to put that through for a challenge and startup brand. Definitely. Budget is such a hard one because when you have so little budget, but you want to make the biggest impact, which we go on to later, so I won't ruin that question. But yeah, it is that early days when you're trying to cut through the noise. It's really difficult. And across all the brands, you've got Brewdog, you've got Penhaligon's, you've got everything that you're working on as well.

29:08what would you say is one tool that you've used across no matter what brand you kind of always come back to as a tool that you use within your the way that you guys work from your successes I think something that Holly said earlier is about a customer and I think customer research is often overlooked and I speak to a lot of brands who are like we don't really know you know what our positioning is and I'm like have you asked the customer they're like oh no how can we do that So actually just turning around and speaking to your customer, going to where they are and understanding what their drivers are, why they are buying a product, why they may have moved on to a competitor.

29:46It's super important and something that no founder should ever lose sight of. You should always be talking to your customer. When I worked at BrewDog, something that we had to do as senior leaders was something they called dogs on deck, where you had to go and do shifts in the bars. So all the senior team would go and do bar shifts. So then they could actually talk directly to the customer, understand why they didn't understand the range or what they didn't like about a product. and be able to then take that back to your desk job and understand why you do what you do every day. So I think the customer piece is something that I'm having a lot of conversations about at the minute, understanding who the customer is and what their kind of drivers and motivators are.

30:21Definitely. I think that customer piece is so important. And I started out in, I'm not marketing at all, as I said earlier, I'm all sales. But I started out doing field sales. So I had a van of granola, my mum will remember, and I used to drive around London selling granola out the back of a van and it was like pissing it down I got nose after nose after nose but I learned so much about like the customer and what these delis and these farm shops wanted and why they weren't choosing my granola um and being that close to my customer I could adapt I mean I was a team of like we were very small three of us so we could adapt quickly which sometimes brew dog and you know massive companies don't have that agility but understanding your customer your right is so overlooked and actually we should have all done field sales and even at coconut cloud today i think we should do more feet on the street going in and talking to a farm shop in devon for example that does sell it because actually that time and it's really and you know there's a lot of market research out there and data that you can pull but there's nothing as beneficial of having a conversation of someone that buys your product yes um so yeah i really i really agree with that kind of the insight piece and data and yeah i I reckon if I asked probably loads of brands, when was the last time you did a customer research kind of insight, they'd be like, I'm not sure.

31:35I think also one that's been in the news recently that's gone the opposite direction is Jelly Cat. So I don't know if you saw that they withdrew a lot of their products from a lot of independent retailers, who were the brands who actually gave them the opportunity to grow in the first place. And withdrawing them created a huge amount of backlash because I don't think they really recognised that their customer, both the consumer and the retailer really valued the fact that Jellycat was quite this it felt like an independent brand that was in a lot of independent stores so they got a huge amount of backlash from these independent stores being told oh you can't serve Jellycat anymore because you're not good enough and the letter went viral it was really bad wasn't it so that that goes to show what will happen if you do take that sort of decision for your brand without considering the customer.

32:22Also, again, building on customer research, if I want to play devil's advocate and then say it should be data informed and customer led, but at the same time from a corporate lens, sometimes you get so bogged down with all of that. It's finding that balance and that Venn diagram of what does the brand represent and how do you make sure that you're true to your values, that you're distinctive enough that why are they coming to you and why your customer is buying it and understanding it and then at the same the third angle from a corporate perspective is and what's the impact right and so how do you kind of build the business side of it too um so to your point it's like how do you find that balance of it just can't be i guess one of them it's a little a little more kind of balancing and sometimes one lever goes higher than the other and you're having to kind of pivot whether you're small or on a corporate level it's like sometimes i've got too much data you know and that analysis is paralyzing us because you're actually not able to kind of like well let's do some more research and let's find out what and sometimes you have to go with the gut part and say right actually the brand represents this we need to start bringing it to life and activating it and don't dilute the idea like i've worked in some big companies um and chloe wherever she is will attest to this like diashu you can test the shit out of something and it dilutes the idea and it just becomes really meh whereas you've got the other end of the spectrum with the startups who are like oh I'm not spending I've literally had that conversation recently and Isabel's actually done research for us on TATM and I love it I'm like oh my god I'm ready with my notebook I can't wait to like learn about those consumers because it's it's real conversations that have changed everything about what we're doing like I thought I had the strategy locked down nope and you've got to kind be open to learning for consumers i think a lot of founders in particular want to see what they want to see yeah from the data or from what consumers are telling them and like listening to that information i think is really really critical because it's so easy to be led down well i've got this data done all this we spent all this money we've got all this stuff we need to use all of it you've got to use it all a it can dilute it but b you need to have some real conversations with real consumers that are buying your product because you can get some absolute nuggets out of it like a tiny example look at the dc data we've realized that oh actually we don't have any maternity pads on the website and lo and behold that's when we lose customers because they're out of the cycle of the brand yeah literally the cycle and that's a really easy fix that's just yeah yeah of insight launching a opportunity pad job's done yeah yeah yeah like thinking about kind of stuff that maybe yeah to you isn't like as easy to think of because you're right you're bogged down in so much information yeah and speaking in terms of like making like bang for your buck if you are a small brand and you're wanting to stand out at a low cost kind of high impact way to create some kind of like buzz around the product what would you what example would you give for somebody to to do something to to yeah because there is a lot of noise out there and everyone's trying to be disruptive so what is the next level on disruptive like there's so many disruptive brands but actually what is what is coming next and what would you suggest really hard question i mean i go back to the product um you can't you can't out market a product um and you've got to think about all the facets of that product so the most successful thing i've ever launched in my entire career is method wild rhubarb antibacterial that is delicious i don't eat it but the smell makes it delicious exactly exactly smell of that stuff and coming back to could you know could dettle do that absolutely not and that's a question that i ask a lot of the time could you could someone else do it and is the juice worth the squeeze and on all the rhubarb.

36:23We launched that. Yeah, that's sick. I know. But it's pink and it smells insane. People would literally spray it around their house before people come around. It's still the number one best seller. And it's because it's the whole package. We had a whole team that worked on product experience and I worked on brand experience. But we had someone that worked just on fragrance. She went to a from a perfume house and that is going the extra mile to surprise and delight people with the product experience so there's only so much like marketing tactics can do but for me you know product is one of the you know it's a key marketing yeah and I think we lose sight of that sometimes actually having a a really great product that is super distinctive actually is a marketer's gift and that makes everything much easier i think so what would you say so obviously in terms of the marketing you did around that particular spray yeah obviously you're right the product sells for itself i didn't do much yeah no hardly any budget that yes that i find really interesting how did it just then move well it went into tesca and people smelt it you had you'd have people like smelling it off the shelf and this is before purdy and fig were i think i was gonna say yeah now obviously and um it was just it look i did the pack design it's it was pink and it had petals on it and we talked about killing killing with kindness killing bacteria with kindness and it sold itself it's like in covid so obviously we pandemic profits were actually up when you work at a cleaning company in a pandemic um and we instead of taking those profits we we spent a lot of money on different initiatives which is coming back to why you exist and what your purpose is and methods was to spread joy so we actually delivered boxes like care packages to people on the doorsteps and it was super lo-fi you know it didn't cost as much but that was our way of giving back like you've bought us in your droves people were hoarding it you know like toilet roll and it's we made jumpers we talked about merch we made lilac jumpers with method on it i want one yeah exactly um and they went mental and we were giving them out to people to clean in um and we gave a bunch to influencers and people were desperate to get hold of them making it enough of them because you just didn't expect it but it's just like little brand product touches that are surprising and delighting and we're all surprised and delight consumers but it it works i would say that's for me like one of the most disruptive kind of tools in your arsenal is to actually just go back to the product and you guys what would you build on that one yeah i think i totally agree that the product is if your product is rubbish then it isn't going to create that conversion and i think um it's super it is super super important when i was a brew dog it was we did we did always want to create a lot of noise as well around that product as well because it was a very busy marketplace and it was also growing a lot in terms of like you know the landscape of beer so it was difficult but I think for for us at the time it was really important for us to find those those those true north stories and then find how that was culturally relevant at that point in time so how do you then find a moment that is relevant to your brand that you can have an authentic conversation or statement within so not just randomly sort of popping up within a context of a another story but actually finding you know what where that true north exists what is happening in the world that your community cares about and when i say community i don't just mean we want to market to gen z because obviously that's not a thing but actually saying like attitudinally what does your customer care about what is actually relevant to them regardless of the stage that in life that they're in what is actually you know politically you know societally what is relevant that you can then have a say in because that is how you get that buzz that is that is how you create those opportunities yeah and i guess i would take it because you talked about brand experience i would talk about guest experience adding on to that so if you don't have a great product but if you don't have a guest great guest experience that adds so an example at penhaligon's you know you've got a great product which sells itself which is amazing but then how do you tap into the customer to make sure that their actual experience is really amplified in store and that's where repeat and frequency comes in yeah and so it was all about then how do we create the best guest experience in those four walls right to kind of make sure that the products and the brand kind of comes alive through the guest experience and that they are having that kind of very personalized profiling experiences that elevated it had a bit of you know kind of aspiration and inspiration at the same time that was so unique to just what and Halligoods could do that no one else could do.

41:23If you've ever watched Undercover Boss, you've seen this in reality where these bosses have like spent millions of pounds on amazing marketing and they know exactly what their product is and then they go into the front lines of their business and it isn't actually being realized on the ground. So I think as a marketer and as a founder, it is your responsibility to make sure that you are connected across the business and understand, you know, what are the pain points and the opportunities as well across the customer experience and how can you then positively impact and support those other teams as well?

41:57Yeah, because it has to work hand in hand. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I always have challenges and opportunity and fun conversations with at least with the ops team, right? Because I'm like, yes, marketing can solve everyone's problem, but I can only bring the customer and I can have the conversation and the tone of voice and the communication, but marketing can't solve a operational or a guest experience problem. We can identify it as an opportunity to evolve, but if the product isn't good, you know How do we solve that if the experience isn't great, but you know marketing can't cover all those things, right?

42:27So I think it's really important to identify where is that pain point within the business and a lot of what marketing and Marketeers can do whether it's through research or insights or you know diagnostics and auditing is actually it's not the marketing part It's this other piece of the puzzle that you know through the funnel that kind of connects it And so it has to be a connected and piece of the puzzle that comes together. And we've spoken so much about all your successes, like your three very successful women and ladies and fabulous women in marketing. Have you got any failures? So talk to me about some of the times when...

43:05Everyone looks at me. I didn't actually mean to at all. I was just looking at you. But tell me a time when you had an idea or one had an idea in the business that totally flopped, that we could learn from it, that was like a big failure. Oh, I've got a huge one. Oh, we love you. So a few years ago, I came up with an idea when I worked at BrewDog for an idea to bring awareness to the gender pay gap. And we'd got to the point as a business where we had parity at a senior level, as well as juniors, where we could genuinely talk about this. So I'd actually come up with the idea years prior. but I didn't put it forward because we had far too many men and a gender pay gap that was not really you know something that we wanted to sort of promote so once we get to that point where we could justifiably talk about it because as a business we were in a great position I'd suggested that the flagship product was a blue product called Punk IPA I suggested that we launch Pink IPA which is a pink version of the same product but it was 17p less or whatever to represent the gender pay gap now that as as a story is actually quite strong but the big failures there were two massive failures and I led on this product at project and I had the full support of everyone but they let me lead on it because I was a woman and I was in marketing so I was like great have all this confidence everyone's behind me the first failure was that I didn't listen to some of the women who saw it and didn't like it and I think I should have spent more time listening to more of those women who saw the concept before it went like lots of women did actually like it so did lots of men but I don't think I paid enough attention to the voices that didn't say the things that I wanted to hear so I learned that at that point the other thing is when we launched it the tweet did not convey the story well enough and that is the big learning that I took away is that actually now we live in such a high turnover economy for communications you have to nail that message in the first in the tweet essentially in what was 140 characters at the time because if you don't nail that you've lost people and it'll either fall flat because you'll confuse people or you'll get cancelled if you've really fucked it up like I did so I think that was a great experience for me in that you know we apologize we we explained what the purpose of it was and why we'd done it and actually there were a lot of people that when they read the blog post they got it and they liked it but actually it was very it was a struggle to get people to read it because we failed in terms of that initial communication we didn't really do the best job we could have done there so i took a lot of learnings from that and i think you know it's unfortunately one of those ones that people look back and they go pink iva who are you behind that but you know i take that as something that i learned a huge amount from that and i i i utilize those experiences every day it's been a great idea thank you yeah um so i'm gonna talk about another kind of flop that didn't work but i'm not going to mention the brand just because probably it's a little uh contentious but i think it's about i think the biggest learning for me is when you work again in a corporate level so maybe less from a founder but the principle applies which is when you take something that is given to you and maybe not go through the rigor of torture testing is it the right for the market is it right for the consumer is it right is it part of our north star and it's sometimes very difficult to navigate those conversations where it's like oh well it will work globally and so we just need to make it work uh and then from a business perspective if it flops because it doesn't hit all the things because it's not relevant it's not based on a insight it's not based on our strategy or proposition um and it struggles to to kind of deliver the bigger the bigger idea and i think usually you you kind of align to well this is the corporate kind of way and you kind of have to pick it up and i think that's a struggle when you kind of don't have the opportunity to unpick it um so i would say that yeah that's always challenging when you work in a larger company or on a corporate level you kind of have to pivot and then make it happen or pick up the pieces when it falls apart and kind of say right okay like how do we go back up again and rework it I'd actually say like on the flip side of working in I think when I when you say big flops I immediately just think of all the startups that I've worked with all the scale-ups and it comes back to probably spending money that you don't have or putting all your eggs in one basket that it's just too important you can't I think I think my learning is just being more tentative about that in general so one startup I worked at I kind of diligently did everything the founder said and he basically couldn't afford it um we landed a massive massive idea um that went mental did zero for sales it wasn't really supposed to but we couldn't afford it not to so right just like being really unclear about the i won't say it because it was it's also a bit contentious but like with um with budget when when it's got to really align on what the objective is and the objective for me that was brand awareness and like like buzz um and it delivered on that but the business objective was to drive sales and when it went live we got loads of PR coverage and it it kind of went a bit crazy no one bought the product that's bizarre to me that it did get so much PR coverage and it did it was it was but it was a PR idea it wasn't a a D2C idea and you know we'd come off the back of some campaigns or we'd done stuff with influencers and you can literally sit there and watch watch the the consumers flood the shoppers flood to the website and this wasn't that and that misalignment on spending like six figures on a small brand was yeah a bit of a mistake and then we wanted to do it again and red flag red flag um but i was like no the ship hasn't sailed we don't have to do this and we did pull it at the last minute but it took me putting on my big girl pants and saying I don't think we should do this at the 11th hour when the other founder married founders other red flag um was really set on this idea and it was I was like I'm not I'm not doing this again I can't take it yeah and with those like big big PR campaigns big marketing um you you know, you put all your eggs in one basket as such.

49:43With the 2025 landscape and looking at maybe 2026, as we're kind of near the end, I guess, of 2025, do you think that those big kind of bold statements have the same impact as they used to? Or do you think now we can look and go, actually, how can we now change something that's like, again, that like above the disruptive, like what's coming? And do they have the same impact as they used to, those big bold statements like you know you've seen them i think the pr landscape is really tough at the moment like getting coverage is really really hard i've just had uh pr agencies pitch on two different brands that i'm working on and it's it's really hard you can see that they're kind of leaning on a lot of the old ways of thinking of like we'll make something or we'll do an event and expect people to come to it and i just don't think that's going to fly anymore So an example on TOTM is that we're hosting a roundtable tomorrow, launching a petition to change legislation around period care.

50:50And coming back to this concept of brand utility, it's what are we doing as a brand that's useful to consumers and what they care about? And actually, Isabel helped me work this out. because where's isabel where is she yeah um so isabel runs curious to clear which is a kind of research collective and we worked out that what we were going to do this petition about wasn't actually what people care about um and we've pivoted and changed it to something different and that is also the other insight that came out of it was that and we know this already but consumers don't care about infighting between brands that you really don't like it especially in the challenger brand or the eco or the ethical space so like stop and at eco we had it tons it's like no one's no one's knocking on png's door or telling unilever what to do um but because we're whiter than why you get all the complaints and they really don't like it in that space consumers so actually rather than petitioning something that would actually put a few noses out of joint we're hosting a round table tomorrow with we invited all the brands in the category to join us and collaborate on something which is probably enough what retailers and consumers want to see um they did tesco specifically told us to stop being so neggy and i took that really personally i was like maybe i am a bit neggy um and yeah i don't know what the point was but there was a point in this I think it's about those small moments yeah right I mean that's how I would kind of categorize is that there's always going to be big campaigns or big ideas going through but it feels like where it will resonate are in these small moments rather than the big flashy kind of what are you doing that's useful exactly and then that can actually be a passion that no one else could do yeah yeah I think the other thing is PR like you say is a completely different landscape So my first like actual marketing job was at a PR agency.

52:54And I actually did an internship at a PR agency prior to that as well. And one of the jobs I had in the afternoon was go and pick up the free sheets. So the London Light and the Metro, they don't exist anymore. In fact, half of them don't even exist online. So the number of outlets for press coverage has diminished significantly. There's also a far fewer number of journalists. So you've got less people to pitch, less outlets to pitch. So your pitch now has to be far more relevant and you're competing against probably more brands than you were prior as well. And I don't think consumers care as much either.

53:26They're not reading Stylist and working out what brands to buy. It's all online. They're cutting through. Yeah, exactly. So I think where we used to do a picture story and you'd come up with like, God, something floating down the Thames, for example, which I've never personally did. But, you know, a lot of brands have done that. It's a great effect. um you can't do that now so what i what i recommend to brands is if you're doing a pr piece maximize what you are doing around that so create a ton of content that you can then use in your organic and your paid in your crm so you're maximizing all the other elements of marketing that you can do from a pr sort of activation so that if you don't get press coverage it wasn't a waste of time because i don't think you can do pr on its own now because it just it just doesn't exist enough as it used to and there's yeah you're right i was just thinking about that they're like the the lack of outlets now for the pr coverage you're right it has seriously diminished i mean well a lot of it's now for the channels and platforms right yeah so i mean like that's where now whether it's source of news whether it's content whether it's you know the pr it's coming from the platforms um and that's that's why i'm saying it's also these moments that i think that are these sub kind of communities or brands are actually being able to tap into that's kind of where you're forming against you know you're paid and you're earned right and you're organic don't get me wrong I still think PR has a really really important role to play I'm still a massive advocate of it it's my background you know I love the element of brand storytelling that you can do through PR I think it's super super important I just think it's much more integrated amongst a lot of other different elements of marketing compared to what it used to be it's much more complicated now versus what it was 10 15 years ago well then it's just having a much more integrated approach exactly right rather than having a standalone yeah like an omni yeah yeah definitely and looking at um like corporate kind of challenger and it's they are completely different like i've only ever worked in small biz i don't think i would do well at all with any red tape i'm like super autonomous i like being told to like go away and come back and and not like kind of micromanaged and not being a number like I'm known, I'm kind of personal, etc.

55:37What's one thing that big corporates could learn from like startups? So obviously these corporates were a startup once, like Marks and Spencer started as one stall, right? But now obviously that's decades ago and we're living in the world where they're not like that. And then what could startups learn from corporates? Because it's such a special... I don't like using the word family in business but there is such a sort of like family element to being in a startup where like you're all involved it is personal and you take the wins and you take the you know the losses together and it's very emotive and kind of also very reactive but then big corporates you might have more budgets you might be able to make bigger impact there's like different parts and careers and cons to each so what would you say would be one thing they could like learn from each other and yeah Polystar.

56:22um so i've worked as a big corporate and i come back to what i was saying earlier about over testing and diluting the idea and it's so slow actually uh wherever sonia is i used to go with sonia at gsk there she is at gsk and um so i've sold toothpaste and slimming pills and nicotine patches and getting people to quit smoking is actually where i discovered purpose marketing and I was like that is that is what I'm doing getting people to stop smoking which is really tough um and but the problem with the way that businesses like that they're juggernauts getting stuff signed off a stage gate process or you know if anyone knows what stage gate process is uh it and it just takes months and months and months and I recently went back to consult for which is now what gsk consumer healthcare is as a separate listed company and i was i actually couldn't believe how wild it was in terms of the decision making and they were like oh can we have a quick meeting to talk about that thing that we need to talk about for a meeting next in two weeks time and i was like you pay me a day rate i can do it today we don't need to talk about talking about it and i like meetings for meetings oh my god it was wild and i just found that absolutely archaic but that's what they can learn from and that like hustle culture of the startup of a small business the way you do care i think about like working at method and ecover everyone gave a shit about what they were doing everyone cared and you just don't get that when you work in a big corporation but in terms of the way around sammy and i were talking about processes earlier and I'm working with a brand at the moment where no one did the artwork for the new product and I'm having to pay through the nose to get products shipped to a shoot tomorrow in packaging because it's launching on Monday and it we have no assets we've got no content and but it was no one's responsibility to sort out the artwork so everything is shunted and late because we haven't got a simple process on how new product comes to market no one was thinking oh what's the lead time with the packaging or what's the you know how how long are we going to get a pre-production sample that just was that didn't feature but when you work in a big corporate company there's a gorgeous gantt chart yeah that has that all laid out that's true yeah and i guess that there's a sliding scale right sometimes it feels like the kind of startups are here and big corporates are here and it would be great if actually everyone can kind of learn from the pros and cons there should be like some comments yeah exactly you need to kind of jump in yeah but the problem is it's always a bit of a culture clash though exactly when i worked at method and eco for um loads of people came from jazio myself included um and other bigger companies and it is a bit of a culture clash to begin with but it does work because when you incorporate there's people that know how to do shit well then it becomes really seamless and that company scaled very quickly went through awful toddler years but all of a sudden they were the leader of the category because everyone had their shit together yeah culture is an interesting one i think you you do need that person to come in to put process in but it's also like if everybody in the business is still in that like toddler kind of phase as you call it it's really hard because it's especially if they come in on their own I think like you almost need to hire like a head of and a head of and a head of to the heads of and then have that to feed in because you have one against like say 12 to 15 it's really difficult like to kind of bring in that culture especially when all you might know is get shit done no process I need this here tomorrow oh my god like that kind of like mentality so yeah culture is like a really a really interesting topic I think that I definitely want to dive into more because I speak to so many fans obviously on the podcast and they hire hire slow fire fast is kind of the thing that I hear a lot um when it comes to that yeah like get the right bums on the seats absolutely who's coming on the bus who's coming on the journey and that was a method principle as well like I it took me six months to get into method I wasn't pregnant at the beginning I was seven months pregnant eight months pregnant I actually started at method because it took so long I did 10 rounds with them and that's utterly ridiculous and I don't advocate for that yeah that is pretty mental yeah I've probably been like I don't want it and it means that actually you persist yeah you only get all you go I do care yeah but it it there's a whole there is a thing about hiring and getting the right people that are values aligned and if you if you if that culture clash doesn't work doesn't matter whether it came from big or small it's more about attitude definitely and we spoke about like you know trends and i think this relates in social media heavily but also other parts of like the world as well but there is so much trend and going like viral is etc you know the big buzzword and whatever everyone's going viral and get as many likes and things when do when would you say it's right to jump on a trend versus to not jump on a trend because I think like sometimes it can be beneficial if it's you know within what you're doing and maybe it has you say like your your north star relates to it in some way in the sense that it could be around like your messaging but when do you know because I struggle with this even with podcast content right so like my the aim of my podcast and the content is heavily founder-led it's like really business-led it's stories it's educational nuggets people come to my page to learn but then I see something on maybe other podcasts that's like for example I love Sophie and Jamie's podcast like um you know newlyweds or newly with their parents now and it's so not my podcast or my business but I like the stuff they do that brings maybe more viewers into oh what is that and I find that really hard so how would you say even for me as a service versus like a product when to know to jump on the trends and and when to know to like not?

1:02:30I think people are too like sensitive about this personally. I think just JFDI, like I don't think you can be too, like people, you just need to post it. Like this is what I was gonna say in terms of the like corporate and a challenger brand, what they can learn from each other, posted is better than perfect, just post it. Definitely. Cause it's gonna die within 24 hours anyway. Like no, the longevity of social posts is so short now that people have probably not even seen it. So what risk is there to just trying it? But I think the filter for me is, is it relevant? Like, is it relevant to you and your audience?

1:03:04So there was when Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift got engaged, not something that I actually gave a shit about, but the NHS did a post about the app. I quite liked it because it was relating the app to an audience. The amount of likes they got, it was fantastic. And I didn't see it. What was it around? I can't remember if it was something to do with like the benefits of the app versus you as a user or whatever right being able to access your appointments and your test results etc etc so it put it into the context of a product that they wanted to sell to an audience who would care about Taylor Swift's engagement oh it was a charity one that was awful oh yeah no that one was different but this one it felt like they were targeting an audience with content that was relevant to them in a way that actually talked about the product attributes that they wanted to share and the amount of likes and the amount of engagement they'd got was really strong it wasn't like they just posted about it and was like cool congrats taylor like it wasn't irrelevant like it was actually relevant so i i thought people being a little bit oversensitive because everyone gets very very sensitive about the nhs let's be honest but at the end of the day i think if you can find a way to post about something that is relevant to you as your brand and relevant to your audience what's the harm the where i draw the line is ai slop so i where i draw the line is just creating something that looks like it was produced by chat gpt obviously because all of it looks the same and it blends into what every other brand is doing that's where i draw the line i think it needs to be authentic to your brand and different to what anyone else is posting yeah i mean i think it goes back to your point about the brand promo bit like where do you know if is it relevant to the brand that no one else can do and say and then how how do you make sure that you jump on the one as long as it's not harmful right it's not going to have a backlash but then the reality is it's you're not doing it for the sake of going viral you're doing it because it's a relevant moment for either you or the customer right and if it goes viral that means it's great it resonated yeah and do it quick yeah yeah i think that's the thing as well like if you're gonna do it do it then if you've got someone in house that can just knock that up great yeah if you're yeah going through rounds of approval yeah it's done oh stop yeah i think Wimbledon is a prime example of a big organization that they pushed out hundreds of pieces of content this year throughout Wimbledon because they were so on it and they had lots of people working on it but from a corporate perspective I don't think they can use the excuse anymore that they have all these like layers of of approval because Wimbledon's proven that that doesn't need to be the case it's just an attitudinal shift internally in terms of how you approach something like that yeah but they set it up right it didn't happen by mistake no they set it up they were very intentional with it exactly and then you have the resource exactly right yeah but this is only from a corporate perspective in terms of like what they're capable of doing but from a startup perspective just post it yeah see what happens yeah what's the worst that could happen yeah i think you're right sometimes you can get so yeah you can blame me yeah as important as the tips the channels that we spent time talking about this evening um the shape as we've spoken about as well of the marketing function and the funnel is changing what do you often see marketers in challenger brands struggle with especially those in smaller teams focus okay like you're always trying to do a million things on a shoestring and with limited resource and it like what is the tooth worth the squeeze you can't do everything well you're doing lots of things really mediocre hate to break it to you do one thing really well like when we wrote the agir briefs it's like what is the one thing that we need to communicate what is that single-minded idea and that's something that stayed that stayed with me what is the one job to be done for example in your whole brand plan that you're going to dine your sword over and really really commit to because you always get someone go oh what about this trend or what about this packaging that needs reworking or that's fine but don't divert from the main keep the main thing the main thing basically would be the main thing i would say that that small brands really really struggle with like time in time again like i've seen it so many times don't have adhd as a brand just do just do one thing really well yeah fingers in too many pies yeah and to your point then if you flip that narrative one step further which is are you doing it because it's what the founder wants and what they believe versus what the customer said right and listening because the problem is like well you know i've asked my you know daughter or son and they think this so therefore this is what we need to do but actually you're not listening to the guest or to the research inside so again it's being informed enough um it's planning for the unplannable so you are planning ahead to say right this is what we are going to do and we've got a 10 contingency of the stuff that we want to jump on because it It happens and we can't miss that opportunity.

1:08:08So having that opportunity to do it because you've built it into your plan to have that flex is super important. Yeah. And for the marketers in the room, talking to your founders, what are we not going to do then? To your point. So, OK, cool. We can do that. But what comes off the list that allows me to do that? Because fundamentally as well, we forget the definition of what it is to be a challenger brand, which is to behave and be disruptive in a way that is bigger than your means. and that is absolutely valid when you're talking about oh we should be able to do this thing really really quickly and easily and we should be able to do that yes you can't do 10 of those though you've got to do one of those things yeah you're speaking so i'm just finding this is really interesting because i am that person that's like why can't we do 10 things yeah i literally go i go into my sales and marketing meeting and i'm like so i need this this this and this and they're were like no and i'm like what yeah i need all this and i need it tomorrow guys i've got a pitch and they're like well i did not tell me a month ago and i'm like like i'm very much like a foundry brain like entrepreneur than i am like processy and thinking like why can't i get yeah that is how i work so this is like i should be listening to my my team a lot more then because this is clearly like the legit stuff yeah um and got a few more questions before we move on to some q a from the audience to have a think about what you guys want to might be asking obviously the camps um so sarah looking ahead how do you see the role of brand really changing so at the moment like brand has always been something that i think has has been why you've bought the product ultimately like you bought into the brand but i think actually going forward brand will stand for a lot more like we've got sustainability coming into it now we've got so many more avenues so how do you see the room that that what do you see kind of as the main like growth driver here and what do you think the consumers are going to start to want to see more of yeah i think like we've said throughout i think it is that having that having that reason to exist that has um activism or um societal awareness built into it and knowing what that means to your consumer so I think having an attitudinal reason why your consumer will care about you as a brand will become even more important and I think at the moment if I think about the brands that I buy is that they're the ones that actually stand for something that I care about and they don't have to ram it down your throats like it doesn't have to be like you know that they are actually you know being extremely noisy about that all the time but if you look at Lush for example closing all their stores to protest around Gaza that was extremely linked to everything that they've always stood for it was extremely consistent with their brand people know to expect that from them not everyone will agree with what they did and as a result it was mildly polarizing in a way but in a way that they knew would connect with their audience so I think you don't have to necessarily choose Gaza like it doesn't have to be that that kind of serious in terms of the causes that you stand for but you do need to have a reason to exist beyond just we want to make money because we're selling an awesome soda you have to have a reason that people will believe in you and a cause and a purpose beyond just the bottom line yeah and i love that you brought that up because to your point they started off with doing the watermelon soap for example we're trying to generate so to your point it was at the core being of their value and their purpose and i'm tapping into and their audience really resonated with it they've been very consistent they've been very vocal and they've been very protective of it and i think to your point the reality is that well what's the next step right you can't just live in that world you have to keep on evolving and building on it and i think that was really powerful and i think resonated a lot with it so that how do you it was a huge impact for them to close for one day all their uk sites because they felt very meaningful right that they that they do have the power and they wanted to have a greater impact rather than just selling that then they could you know generate and sell to charities like well what is as an organization as a brand do we stand for actually we can fundamentally switch off the lights literally and metaphorically they close the doors um yeah that is a very kind of like one end of the spectrum in terms of extreme i think it can also be like you can do it in a positive way as well it doesn't necessarily have to be quite so serious and quite so emotive you can do it around things like sustainability so who gives a crap is a great example of a brand that actually does talk about sustainability but they've also done it in a way that is very kind of chatty and friendly and entertaining so you can do these things it just depends on what your brand stands for and why it exists in the first place and putting your brand narrative around that so that it's consistent you know whenever your brand has an interaction with a consumer.

1:13:04Amaze with consumer behavior shifting so quickly what's one trend do you think brand builders in the room should be preparing for over the next five years? I mean, I think it's already started, but I would definitely think about, you know, your community and having those small moments. I think really leveraging on that and kind of optimizing as a brand, you know, where do you fit in and where do you resonate and how can you, I mean, it's like there's now sub-communities, right, within each one. And then, you know, if it's around purpose-driven, is it about sustainability? Is it about the values that you can kind of really optimize?

1:13:34I think that, if anything, that hyper-localization and personalization is, I feel, really powerful because those communities then become your advocates right and they then help to kind of build and either amplify your voice and so I think from a marketing perspective I don't think we could lose that lens of you you can't target everybody right so you have to really think about who it is you know who are your core audience and what are those communities and how do you kind of add that value exchange definitely and Holly if you had to place a bet what do you think will matter more for successful brands in the future breakthrough innovation product or production or consistently living your brand values and purpose well I think we all know that like breakthrough innovation can make or break up a brand product category but I'm going to call the consistency klaxon because it's just like what Sarah was talking about you and i'm i'm a stickler for this because you can't have this scattergun approach to oh we're going to talk about this today we're going to talk about that today and if you think about all the things like brewdog for example has talked about over the years you could say oh that's a lot of different things but they're all aligned to a core kind of punk ethos and mission and having that locked down in fairness will fuel the breakthrough innovation because you're talking consistently about what your consumer cares about about what you the reason your reason to exist as a brand and you'll you'll make breakthrough innovation in that space if you're doing if you're living consistently to your your brand values and and showcasing them in a way that is timeless and consistent because you think that consumers and i've heard it i hope you hear this a lot like in teams from founders um on linkedin oh i'm bored of that let's change it let's do something different yeah you can change the execution or you can change a color or whatever but fundamentally if your brand looks different one week to the next no one's buying you you've just lost all your little shoppers and you you have to keep showing up and saying the same thing because consumers memories are really really really short and you've got to disrupt them in this like attention deficit world that we live in where people are bombarded with messages and I think now it's something ridiculous like someone's got to hear a marketing message 11 times it used to be seven in my day um in the first three seconds yeah for them to take that in and if you're not being consistent and saying the same thing you might say it's like different ways but then that's not going in um it's like if you can't land it with your your pink IPA example you can't land it really quickly and repetitively yeah then you might as well not bother I think you need to get comfortable with getting sick of hearing the same thing coming out of your mouth yeah over and over again because you're not talking to the same person over and over again you're talking to new consumers every single day so you do have to say the same thing until you are absolutely sick of hearing your own voice saying it because ultimately that's the only way you can be certain that you are consistently appearing with the same message in front of all of those consumers again and again and again yeah yeah but even to your point whether you're looking for new customers or the existing customer yeah you're still fighting for that top of mind right so like even if they know it the reason we're repeating is because there are hundreds and thousands of brands and messages every single day every single hour that they're being bombarded with yeah so even if they know your brand doesn't necessarily mean that they're gonna say top of mind mmm I think that's the biggest thing is you know the funnel the funnel exactly it's just like you know and and we all know or we talk a lot in marketing is that 95 % of your customers aren't in market now to buy your product so when you're doing this and you're bombarding these messages it's not because you're gonna buy it today or tomorrow or you know convert when you think of you know whether you care about the funnel you don't care about the funnel the reality is you know you've got to keep on being consistently saying and drumming the beat for later so when they are in market to buy they're gonna be like oh I actually remember you know through dog did this PR stand or they did a sampling and they talked about voting oh yeah okay i'm going to order that next time right and so it's this constant need to kind of keep that consistent messaging so when they are exactly when they do need you or they resonate with the you know activation that you've done you've created a little piece of you know their heart or in their mind and so they're like actually i'm going to go for this brand because it resonates with my values right or with the purpose or the product or the experience was really great great and that's where the marketing has done its job yeah absolutely um and i am very sick of my pitch for coconut yogurt no i'm joking i'm obsessed with my job so it's fine but i um yeah i do sell the same coconut yogurt every day and i'm like i know this like inside out upside down how much do you eat a day a tub no i'm not joking like i love it like i'm genuinely obsessed also with the product which really really helps um yeah it's amazing um so if any of you have any questions on how to do any of this you've got to speak to Vic because she is your gal for everything as we spoke about so definitely definitely get um in touch with her because she knows everything and can put it into like context into a lovely Gantt if you want or or if you don't she's really good with Gantts actually is she okay great she's I never I didn't see a Gantt at Coconut because I was like obviously as I said sales side but yeah her processes were like so good and I was like this is what we need we need someone like just owning this channel yeah like a grown-up I when I was I'm not a grown-up I'll think of that as when I when I worked on Typhoo um I literally went to Vic and was like I've just inherited a pack artwork I don't have anything else to be working with team of one nothing nothing existed just a board directors I thought this was this fear-free tea idea was a good idea and I was like cool I can and run with that but I need some stuff Vic made all of the stuff yes yeah that made it actually work definitely um just a very very quick I've got like a quick kind of fire round which I like to do at the end so I'm going to pick um one of you to answer them I've got five questions Maze overhyped trend you ditch overhyped trend I would ditch trying to go viral agree I agree Holly what's one tip you would give to marketers in the room today um if they can only have one can I swear yeah don't be a dick um nice like that is something that Vic and I consistently talk about it's a really small world FMCG marketing yeah and uh it goes around like everyone talks and you will not get jobs in the future by being a dick it really really is so insolent and the same goes for founders and creating great places to work um if you go on glass door and you look up any company just just behave like a good human and that takes you so so far definitely um sarah best campaign you've ever worked on um i think the one we talked about uh vote for punk that i really like that i really enjoyed that we did that three or four times and it worked really well every time because it was consistent with the brand and it did the job it meant to do and it was great for sampling as well so I really enjoyed every time I worked on Vogue Park.

1:21:07Okay and now you're all going to answer this one and it's just one word. One word that sums up good marketing in 2025. Consistent. Creative. Creative. Community. Steve. Hey. Steve! I'm very Steve! Thank you so much. I've seen you've been taking your hands this evening. Now, over to the audience. We're just going to have to shout because we don't have microphones this evening. So, who would like to go first? Come on, get those hands up. I can't see any hands. No, Vic, you can't have one yet. This lady here. What was your question? She's not going to be a single woman. I'm not going to say the Phil I would have filled with fam.