6 Unilever Evidence-based Secrets: How To Effectively Tell Your Story on Shelf

44:58So you have to be careful and make sure that what you're what you're picking from the portfolio of offerings that come from the retailer are going to work i'll say um but look for me the big lesson is is that you've got to understand your retailer you've got to then make sure that you're tailoring the mix to the shopper and the relationship that that shopper will have with that category and your brand if you're a highly established brand and you're trying to drive you know large pack sizes it's one it's one strategy if you're an emerging brand entering into a sleepy category that people have been shopping on autopilot for for generations you've got a different a different challenge tell me the difference between the brand plan and the marketing plan because i think brands get confused with that and which one comes first do you think well i'll start well i so i think the difficulty on that is different school different people will call different different things right yeah i would start with what is the strategy right what are the four or five things you're trying to do yeah to kind of at a business level what are the marketing objectives that sit underneath those business objectives yeah and how are we going to achieve that so i always start with the classic question of what are we trying to achieve right and i do think that too often you end up at a channel conversation like oh we need to do social media why do we need to do social media we need to do more kind of outdoor why do we do more out of more outdoor i think the question for brands must be what are the jobs we need to do what are the things we're trying to achieve and then build the plan that achieve those and one of the things that god anyone who's spent time in big corporations knows the first thing that gets cut in any in any conversation is the marketing budget right because it's a variable cost right you can't cut the factory you can't cut the people so actually it's much easier to kind of go well let's just stop that campaign if your campaigns are built on a solid logic of what is the business objective what are the marketing objectives to achieve those business objectives or what are the channels we're going to achieve to achieve to ladder up so to speak then it's easier to get there so i'm always i believe in starting and i do quite a lot of work with the brands i work with on brand planning and on actually kind of building marketing plans, right, that come from clear strategies, is you've got to start with those fundamental business objectives.

47:26One of the objectives is when a task goes, okay, right, what's the number, what's the objective, how are we going to measure it from a marketing perspective, and then what are we going to do to make that happen? And I think the whole thing for me about measurement and consumer insight is one of the areas that some challenger brands don't spend enough time thinking about. You know, I'm a big believer in really getting close to your consumer and really understanding them. Getting really close to your consumer and understanding them. So I think, you know, we were talking as we were grabbing a coffee beforehand about the danger of the kind of the London, the London centric food scene, right?

48:06In the end, yes, it's important to win in London, right? And what is it? You know, 12, 13 % of the UK. But actually, you've actually got to win at a Tesco's somewhere between two towns, right? Or on the outskirts of town. Or a Waitrose, you know, in the middle of, you know, name a county, right? Suffolk, right? I think in the end, you know, when you own a brand or running a brand, what's really, really important is that you understand at a granular level, what do consumers think about your product right what do they think about your brand what do they think about your competitive brand what are their frustrations um and the reality is most brands have social media following most brands have databases but not enough brands are asking questions of those consumers boimi our beloved sponsor by helping build the fastest growing challenger food drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockists, your first 100 stockists to wholesale, Boemi are the platform to categorically speed that up.

49:14But if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger, Boemi are also insane. They make field sales marble smooth, silky slick. They're just epic. Ollie's, Ollie's been on this podcast twice actually. They saw a 29 % uplift in sales when using Boemi to check major malt listings availability. Insane. 29 % uplift by downloading an app. Insane. Lucky saying, my boy Aaron Duff is coming on this podcast in a couple of weeks. weeks he uses it to manage a team of 30 people and they've like you say have unlocked 500 draft listings by using bowie me look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland hi guys super super quick one so so excited look for years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called islands chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at load of wholesalers we've got milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is hungary's merging with hc consulting um my boy harry clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute g they do brand strategy new business business and account management but why i really love working with harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is harry was actually the founder of the boozy isolate brown pops he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if you're a brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode what questions should they our listeners be asking to get more insight on on their consumer base that could actually map upwards to achieve those objectives but i think if you start at the objectives and you work down like if you've if you've got clear marketing objectives right which is sorry when you say marketing objectives so sorry for sounding like a luddite here but so you're you're basically saying do the brand plan first i'm saying do the business strategy first and then ladder that into marketing objectives and then communication objectives and then channel choice you know start at the absolute top of we are trying to grow yeah let's say you've got a new innovation so let's take a brand like fern and rosie another brand so let's say fern and rosie want to launch a new variant of um of jam right well let's say fern and rosie want to go into a new retailer right what's the financial target right we're trying to achieve x hundred thousand x million how are we going to achieve that what are we going to do to make that happen and then you literally work through the line which like what are the tactics from promotions to unpacks to to media to retailer media to brand collaborations to social to deliver that objectives too often i think brands go okay as a brand what do i need i need to be big on you know instagram and tiktok and i need to have a website i need to grow my database like well hang on step back what are we trying to do right what is our what are our actual business objectives therefore what are our marketing objectives that come from those and then how are we going to achieve those with what channels and i think you know you know lots of the big corporations are really good at putting in kind of big granular processes that take you through that brand planning cycle and i do think that brands need to really begin their their years as we enter into a new year with, you know, sit down, do a swap, work out, what are your strengths?

52:49What are your weaknesses? What are your opportunities? What are your threats? Where are the kind of opportunities for the brand that we want to win in? How are we going to achieve them? What are we going to spend to do it? And what channels do we need support to make that happen? I think that kind of, that granular, I mean, God, it's boring. I mean, you know, the brand planning process that you'd have to go through at Unilever was excruciating and it took months, right? but ultimately it gave you the rigor to make sure your plan stood up and you were doing things for the right reason it's fascinating how there's like when this william kendall was talking about this brands go through this gestation period where where founders are a bit you know they've most not all i want to make a caveat of this they have this kind of yeah william called it a gestation period in this this almost scatty there's that ready fire raid you're trying to find the product market fit so it could be like you know a lot of the brands i interview or fans i speak to they're initial idea isn't the idea that makes them famous so you've got to try to throw this throw lots of shit at the wall basically the market will give you the feedback and then you you tailor you tailor tailor that works to a point maybe once you get into weight you know that will get you into your planet organic yourself which is your harrods waitress potentially but then you get to another point and i always say it's like a brand's like a toddler growing up right you get to a point where you can't be like that you've got to be sit down and have that rigor and it is boring but basic and boring but it does take you to that that next level i think you know i i've not i'm not great that bit that bit of sitting down to do the actual planning i don't find that interesting um but i think you're so right in in terms of brands doing it in terms of so you are you talked earlier about you saw about asking someone to define creativity creativity for me is about defining a framework and then breaking the rules within that framework And I think that the great, I think if someone says, you know, just be creative.

54:45Like, so I worked with What If Innovation, right, which is one of the leading innovation consultancies, now part of Accenture. And we used to go into run brand processes with people like PepsiCo and Unilever and Procter & Gamble and Biosdorf, all the big corporations, to help their brand people think creatively about a particular challenge. You would always fail in that process if the task upfront was not defined well enough. if you were not clear about what are we trying to be creative about, what are the parameters around that process, you didn't have a hope in hell, right? And we used to, you know, they always did a sort of, before any process, right, the first step was pause in lots of the processes that you never had, be like, what if had.

55:29And it's like, just stop. Just stop and think for a second. What are we actually trying to do here? Once you've got that, go nuts. right but if you're not clear on on absolutely what you're trying to create that sort of that rigor you can't be creative you have to have that constraint to then do that and i'm a real you know it's funny it's not one of the things like you know it's what unilever changed about me you know in my i was two degrees in art history i you know my i was when i arrived at unilever i was one of the creative ones you know it's always on all the brainstorms always doing all the kind of mad creative thinking, the breaking the rules, you know, building campaigns, like getting Naomi Campbell to wear rubber gloves for washing up liquid campaign, you know, all sorts of crazy stuff.

56:16But you know, what Unilever taught me was if you don't get the rigor right at the front, God help you. And I think that is, you know, the thing that really changed, you know, me, you know, as a kind of a human being was understanding that need to kind of button things down before you kind of start getting creative so no no the framework framework and then break it yeah i love that that's that's ultimately linking this back to chefs right is like the framework of so tom gave the example of i'm going to make a pork chop with potatoes that's the framework for example i'm going to break the rules by doing x y and z but tom had to know if tom had just i think if tom had just had a plate just a fucking plate like a white plate what's the frame what are you trying to break any old shite could go on the plate right but when he knows pork chopped potatoes that framework allows you to break it and do something create something new and i think that's the thing about cooking right which is there are some fundamental tenets of cooking yeah and every time that i've ever had the honor of standing alongside during a you know broadcast or whatever it is with a top chef you know what makes their cooking interesting is when they show you how they're messing with stuff.

57:31But the thing is, is that all, not all, but most of them have a classical training that allows them to understand some of the core principles around the way ingredients work, the way ingredients play, what you can do, what you can't do. Now those students may be wrong, right? And there are times when you'll kind of acknowledge that maybe that's not the right way to do stuff and people will completely invert processes. But ultimately, you know, if you take, there was something at Unilever, which I always loved, which was called, I think it was called rigorous creativity. And it was this idea that great jazz musicians and great dancers understood classical music or classical dance.

58:17They understood the tenets of the industry within which they operate. And I think that for brands, you need to understand the tenants of the industry, the dynamics of your category. Then you can break them. You can't break everything all at once, right? Because then the whole thing falls apart, right? So if you are a jam, right, you have to be sweet at some level, right? You have to produce a strawberry, right? You have to appeal to a certain kind of palate. you can't do something that's what you can do something so different but it's going to take the consumer quite a while to get there rigorous creativity i love this so it's almost like you know jimmy hendrix has to has to learn how to play the guitar before he breaks the rules i was listening to a podcast with jimmy carr uh which was really good you know the comedian jimmy carr and he was saying how he wants to create a course where kids can learn how the the the comedy and you know we think of comedy and you're like oh my god there's a guy just goes up on stage and they're funny again back to rigorous creativity is you are learning as as jimmy carr said create um comedy is just pattern recognition but the beats of a joke are the same a comedian has to do the the reps on stage to get to get that drilled in work out what the the framework is are you a one punch kind of comedian like jimmy carl are you more of a storyteller like a john bishop um or are you crafts like kevin bridges work out what the framework is then break the rules and i think yeah what you've this is sick this is amazing i'm loving this um it's so true because i think so many people go into it without doing that rigor up front as you said it's the biggest lesson from unilever once you know that rigor then you can break the rules so one of the weirdest so between Between Unilever and founding Great Blue Chefs, I ran a consultancy with a great friend who was a guy called Alistair Kramer.

1:00:10It's not a good name. Who still runs the consultancy. It's got a different name because it's a different partner nowadays. But we ran a creativity program for Mars. Right. So Mars said, look, our communication isn't interesting enough. It's not dynamic enough. We need to become more creative. Right. and we ran a program to help them look more intently right and the idea is is that very few marketeers have been trained to actually analyze an image right so you look at an image and they're like and you'll be like okay i can see what's going on but probably no one's ever sat you down and said let's look at an image together so i'm an art historian right and i'm a former star historian who trained to look at you know impressionists the post-impressionists modern art and all sorts of stuff and i would sit in my classes week on week my ba and my ma we would look at an image and we would try and understand what was going on and why had painters made certain choices why did paintings make certain impacts and what drew your eye and what didn't draw your eye and all the symbols and signifiers that were within the image that connected one story to another and why did one image create outrage that you couldn't see today because everything had changed around it and i think that when we ran we actually got in our historian amazing guy called manu who's a professor now at harvard um stanford he came in and he taught these guys to look at paintings and they all just kind of went oh my god i've never done this before and it totally changed the way they looked at marketing materials because in the end And, you know, we spend lots of time talking about finance and strategy and all the rest of it.

1:01:54But actually, we don't spend enough time at the other end of the creative process, really judging the visual impact of the work that we're doing. And it's one of my kind of, you know, I have multiple obsessions. But, you know, one of my obsessions is about getting the strategy right and getting stuff framed up and understanding consumers such that you can create brands. But then the other piece is around actually the texture and the communication of the visual. and are we doing a good enough job with that? Is there an example to kind of bring that alive a bit with the texture piece? I think it's interesting.

1:02:26So I did a big piece of work with January T, J. Wilt Thompson. Sorry. They are an advertising agency. They are one of the original kind of bad men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's usually based in Barclay Square in the day. They're not anymore. And we basically work with Kellogg's. Now, if I say, think Kellogg's Special K, you are imagining a white bowl with some brown flakes in it and milk. It is the definition of deprivation, of culinary boredom. And we were brought in as part of a multi-agency team. So there was JWT, there was ourselves, when I was a great British chef, and Sign Salad, who were semiotics agencies.

1:03:15So they do the deep analysis of images and the signs and signifiers and why people react to things in different ways. Amazing agency. I love. But we all looked at this stuff and we started to analyze the food stories that Special K was telling. We tried to work out how to tell better stories because they had a brand vision which had nothing to do with their culinary product. And what we started to… What was the mismatch? They were about strong women. The brand was moving from essentially diet and deprivation, right, to a story around strong women. And the brand person there was ex-Dove, a really cool lady who basically had helped Dove on its evolution and then helped came in to evolve Special K, part of Kellogg's.

1:04:00and they had this vision around strong women appealing to women who were achievers and were breaking rules rather than about diet and you know sort of not eating and kind of ladies in red dresses which is where special k comes from from a certain generation and they tried to move special k to an image which was actually about power and enjoyment and female empowerment and they did that from a culinary perspective you show a bowl of cereal with milk in it that is not it right you show a multi-layered multi-textual thing with yogurts and pomegranate seeds and the flakes being used as part of a mix with other things and you suddenly get a bowl that is more handmade and is kind of clearly in a home environment rather than from a factory line you start to tell a human story that's different right two very different images right and i think that one of the things that i think in a lot of the food categories that are out there there is so many things on social media in so many of these categories how do you tell a good visual story how do you create an image that is alluring that is yours that is owned is a massive challenge for brands and i suppose i'm really interested in the kind of the visual journey of helping brands define their kind of visual identity um and i think often it's one of those things that's forgotten oh my god i am so so so excited it feels like hungry is finally swimming in the big leagues i can't believe this it's absolutely mental but delighted to announce a big fish yes big fish are part of the podcast perry's been on the podcast three times listeners absolutely love it some of my most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time but big fish are behind literally so many brands in your cupboard in your weekly shop charlie biggum year valley tyrells Clipper T, Goo, Rana, I mean make the list longer than the River Nile.

1:05:55But they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good. They are brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing. Like Howda, the snack that gives back. But even more exciting news, Big Fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenger food and drink badgers that are destined for big things. the raconteurs the movers shakers buccaneering visionaries so look if you want to speak to big fish and just have a chat get your brand in front of them then drop me a message my mate louis from local beer amazing beer was in their office aka la fish bowl uh last week chatting to perry freddie and the big fish crew so drop me a message if you would like to speak to them rude health just did a rebrand and i think there was some talk about getting rid of the lips right which is the infamous lips and uh they brought a lady on i know who's a good friend of mine actually tessa stewart i don't know if you've met her at all anyway she's great so she does she actually in terms of getting to know your customers well she will actually go and sit in the sainsbury's and say what do you think of this do you like it yes or no because i think another thing is brands especially in london can get in what i call a brand bubble whereby they they're so engulfed in the brands that they can't actually step out and see you know i always say go and do a uh go and do a meeting or an mpd meeting in a tesco like halfway in between bracknell and some other place right because that's where you'll see what oh of course they don't want this it's too niche right but but anyway she was saying that they were going to take take off um the lips and camilla who is the founder was like absolutely not we that's that is the texture to the brand it adds all these these layers of of of texture i think that's a great example how let's let's explore the parallels between the history of art and analyzing art and and brand building again we haven't even got into food but this is so interesting how can people listen to this what's some of the lessons from that you've picked up from just studying art to brand building that you think would be great for our listeners i often sit on the floor in galleries of my children um you'll see me sitting at that Tate Modern, you know, Tate Britain, National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, wherever it happens to be in London.

1:08:18And you sit down with them and you say, what do you see? What's in front of you? And I force them, play a little game, to tell me what they notice. What do they discover? What can they, what's drawing them in? What's happening in the picture? How are you analysing it? And I think actually it's a muscle that we don't exercise very often. the art of looking and the art of analyzing things visually. And I think there is, you know, the next time you're walking tube in front or looking at a magazine or online, look at the image and go, why is this working? What's not working about it? What's distracting me?

1:08:56How is it kind of, just take a moment to stop and look and see what's happening. Why are you interpreting things a certain way? Try and look at the kind of the cues and the references that you're using. And look, I think your lip example is really interesting. I remember we did a, so when I launched Axe in North America, the brand director on that brand had recently repositioned a hair care brand called Finesse. And they changed the color of it, right? And it was a fun, it was like, it was either bright pink or bright blue. I can't remember which one it was. And they changed that color and sales collapsed.

1:09:31Like not like 5 % drop, like 70 % drop. because people shopped for the pink one. And it was no longer there. It was a blue one and they just didn't see it, right? So I think, you know, when you change brands, you have to be very careful. And I think, you know, it's interesting. I didn't know where you were going to go with that lips thing because what I thought you were going to say was when you spoke to consumers, actually they didn't care about the lips and even notice the lips. There are times when we think certain things are really important to consumers, but actually they're important to us.

1:10:03And I think there's that kind of classic game around trying to work out what our consumers latched onto and what are they not latched onto. One of the weirdest projects I did, the last project I did for Unilever UK before I went abroad, was migrating GIF to SIF. And it was a sort of an early attempt to look at European harmonization and the idea of brand name change, which was, you know, utterly fascinating. And we spent months trying to work out how to communicate one letter change to consumers in a way that wouldn't lead to complete pandemonium. And at a time when the Daily Mail was going nuts about, you know, Europe, you know, straight bananas, round bananas, whatever it happened to be kind of pints going, et cetera, et cetera.

1:10:49So the idea that we're going to change a brand like GIF to SIF was potentially kind of hugely dangerous. And it was all about understanding, you know, actually with consumers, what do they care about? What do they not care about? How did you make them feel relaxed? How do you make them feel like the change was just not worth worrying about? And we came up with a campaign that made sure that no one battered an eyelid. And that was all about understanding consumers and what would upset them and what wouldn't. It was interesting. We had a moment where the ad agency said, we've got this celebration.

1:11:21It's like a celebration. It's like, hey, the name's changing. Let's celebrate this. And we were just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We need to make the consumer feel like this is not important and they can handle it. How did you do that? So the ad was the two things which always stand out for me. One was a brand where lots of people were trying to pronounce GIF across Europe. And they were like, you know, they were like this kind of not quite sure what it was. And then you see the UK consumer just pick up this bottle and be like, oh, Sif. Just walks up. I remember this. Yeah, yeah. What year was this?

1:11:55This was 2001. one and it was an ad which is basically built upon the idea that the uk consumer like yeah whatever i don't i don't remember that then because i was about five years old so of the brands of the migration stories it's one of the early ones right and and the other thing we did was we wrote to all the people we had on our database who we knew were the old like over 60 consumers of jif cream which is the original kind of format of jif uh and we gave them a kind of buy SIF and get a free roses of Britain tea towel. So it's a tea towel with all the different types of roses on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:12:31I've never had a redemption rate like it. Handwritten letter signed from the chairman with a proper stamp on the front cover, Conqueror paper, went out. Amazing redemption rates. We understood the consumer went on how to communicate with them, what they wanted, what their buttons were, what would appease them. And that's what we went after. And I think, you know, when you're doing these kind of brand changes, you really have to understand the consumer. because otherwise you can make horrible errors. How can brands understand, challenger brands, understand their consumer better? Like what are the questions they should be asking?

1:13:05How do they do that? For me, it's about non-leading questions. It's all about non-leading questions. Like, oh, why are you buying that? You know, what do you think about that? You know, why, why, why, why? You know, it's actually just about playing the naive card, right? So, you know, when I was in North America, I spent my time just traveling around and because I have an English accent, people are like, oh, you don't understand anything. And I'd be like, I don't really understand what's going on. Tell me something, right? And they would explain stuff in a really basic way, in a way that they probably wouldn't if they were talking to a fellow American.

1:13:35Yeah. And actually that ability just to say, to kind of be like, just explain this to me, tell me more. And I do think that actually that sort of, you know, I think too often, you know, spending time at Shalve, asking, you know, asking for, you know, open questions, using systems like SurveyMonkey to kind of, you know, get feedback from consumers. It's really not, I mean, honestly, my one challenge would be, if you are a brand and you have social media and you have a following and you haven't run a survey, make that the number one thing you do tomorrow. Because ultimately, just ask some questions.

1:14:08Which of the following words do you associate with this brand? When you look at this brand packaging, what are the words that spring to mind? Open field. Just those two things will tell you. Is your brand communicating what you want to communicate? Which are the following five things? If you had to pick one, it's most important to you, right? Is it B Corp? Is it, you know, palm olive free? Is it no added sugar? Is it sustainably sourced? Is it, you know, used by chefs? You know, what is it that actually makes people go, I want this? This is not expensive. And one of the, you know, in the old days, you had to book a focus group room, get a train moderator.

1:14:46you went behind a mirror truth is just get out there stand in the aisle ask some questions run some surveys online and keep running them you know the what you said there and i love it is founders we talked about the brand bubble which every founder gets in you yeah the founder thinks about their brand 24 7 the team think about that brand 24 7 they go to the same office every day the little switch what you said could you be a foreigner so i think if if the founder says right i'm going to be a foreigner today to my brand and just that reframe in your head the way you go into that conversation allows you to ask dumb questions allows you to break down the the the kind of the tether from you to the brand and actually look at it slightly more further upstream objectively and that's we can do the creative rigor and i think there's always a benefit with being a category specialist right i think it's a specialty specialist in terms of like you know someone who's worked in soft drinks all their life right yeah they'll oh that doesn't work in soft drinks that this doesn't work you know they'll they'll have that deep kind of understanding of the dynamics of the market right that's really important but ultimately you do need to ask the basic questions to understand what consumers think what they're motivated by how they value your brand and i think it will always challenge you know some of your assumptions i mean i'm i'm I do a lot of work for brands where, you know, we run surveys, we try and do understanding, we try and look at what the brand's doing.

1:16:16And, you know, that really, I think, helps understand what is true that you're right about and what isn't. And that doesn't mean, you know, it doesn't mean that's not, you know, you take a brand that's an emerging challenger brand. It may not currently be communicating what you want it to communicate, mainly maybe because your messaging isn't right. You know, You're sharing all these things on social media. People may be liking them, but is it moving the brand forward? And it's very easy to get that intelligence. You ask a few questions, you put a few visuals up. It's not expensive. What other lessons did you take from being a historian of art and art to brand building?

1:17:00I love stories. I'm all about you know if you get me in a gallery and you ask me about a painting I love you know I'll tell you a story about that painting and so I took my kids around Tate Modern this weekend and we went to see there was a photograph of the Raft of the Medusa one of the most famous pictures in the Louvre which is of this horrific um raft of survivors of a a crash basically they're people who were abandoned at sea after shit went down i think about 18 something and i always forget whether it's by jericho or delacroix but i think it's delacroix um but i'd have to check um and essentially you know i told the kids the story of what is this moment what is this you know what is the image that's shown is the people on the raft looking out onto the horizon because they think they've seen a ship that's going to save them, right?

1:18:04And it was painted in reaction to this horrific incident that was all over the French press. And the artist wanted to capture it to show complete outrage that this had been allowed to happen, that there weren't enough lifeboats on the ship, that the captain had abandoned these people, and that people had basically ended up as cannibals, and we're eventually saved. And he captures this moment in this pyramidal structure looking out towards where there is a moment of hope. And for me, great paintings tell stories that you kind of go, wow, that's really interesting. And I always remember as I came into Unilever and as I've kind of gone through and all the work I've done is, I love a story that captivates and that you can imagine.

1:18:48And that's always been what I, You know, it's why I founded Great British Chefs, because I thought there was an opportunity, a story to be told, something to inspire people about. And I think that for me is, you know, the visual literacy piece and the importance of storytelling were probably the things I kind of took out of it. What brands do that best, do you think, in terms of getting the visual and the story to tell or sing together? What brands do that best? i think brands are so in so inconsistent on this stuff right there you know it's funny you look at brands where you know you look at things that have won awards right big campaigns where you go wow you know that that won an award and i think then what happens is the next brand manager comes along and changes all of that or changes the to the next thing i think where challenger brands can be so successful is that they can work out what story they want to tell us and then consistently tell it and i think that's the kind of the thing that for me really interests me is when you've got a brand that is able to consistently tell a story so one of the most interesting brands i work with at the moment is yumbug so yumbug is a young startup they're two cool founders who are basically trying to inspire people to eat insects as a protein so mints burgers uh and strips so So kind of things you'd use in a stir fry.

1:20:16And the amazing thing about what they're doing is they're having to challenge people to completely unthink insects, right? Because insects are something we try and get out of our houses. They're scary. There's no positive connotation, you know, in the kind of general narrative around insects. But in fact, we need them to keep the planet stable. And they're doing an amazing job of trying to inspire people to eat insects. And it is all about storytelling. It's about working out how you tell a narrative of why should we eat insects? And it starts with, look, people have all around the world, people do eat insects all around the world, and they are more sustainable than basically anything else.

1:21:00And it's a really kind of, you can tell in a way that's tongue in cheek, you can tell in a way that's like, you know, you're the weirdo for not eating insects. And they do a really nice job actually of telling that story. And they've got a pop-up just around the corner from here at the moment. And I think it's a really interesting example where they've got so many negatives, right. That they've done a great job of working out a flip that into a kind of really interesting positive. Know the framework, break the rules. I love that. The creative, creative rigor. I'm just, I love kind of following my curiosity.

1:21:34Why do you think humans are obsessed with art since the beginning of time? Like. I think we try and make sense of the world around us. I think in the end, you know, there's a huge difference between, you know, sketching and drawing and recording things around you. The two different questions. Why do people create and do art? I think it's a way of understanding the world around you and communicating what you're experiencing and feeling. It's one method, right? Not everyone uses it. um i think great art is when artists tell incredible stories about their time in a way that kind of a bit like a brand condenses all of the thinking and shows you an image that just challenges and provokes you to think differently about the world in which you're in um i was so you know we we took a sabbatical with the kids and my wife and i were traveling around latin America.

1:22:32And one of the things we did while we were there was we painted quite regularly. And I'm, you know, I did art A level. Jesus, you know, if I said, let's do a drawing competition, it scares, drawing scares me. I'm not good at drawing. I did printmaking. I did, you know, I did much more kind of bold, gestural kind of work. So drawing and painting is terrifying. My wife's amazing at it. I'm terrible at it. Kids are great at it. And actually, when you sit down and paint an image, you remember details that there's no way you would remember if you just sat there. So if I literally, I was talking to the kids, because this time last year, we were in Argentina, right?

1:23:11And we were sitting in Valdez Peninsula, which is a peninsula off the coast of Argentina, where there are about a million penguins. And we went to a place where there were 300 ,000 penguins and just wandered around. And we sat there and drew them. And I I can see in my eye my daughter, who was six at the time, with her sketchbook drawing this penguin who was as far away from you as far from me now. And I know if I said to her, draw that picture, she could draw it, and I could draw it. I can picture every single detail of it, you know, because we sat there. We actually paid attention to that moment and that visual.

1:23:51and I you know I think there's a real lesson in that for for branding and communication is that you know there is a need to to really pay attention and to think deeply about you know what you're communicating how you're communicating and you know will it will it spark joy will it spark interest um and I think the act you know I was talking earlier about the idea of you know the role of our history so the act of looking and stopping and analyzing um is really really powerful and it's not about being a good painter it really isn't you can you never ever show any of the work you've ever i've never shared on any social media channel or to any of my friends any of the 30 watercolors i did and they got better over time i'll say but it's not about that i can literally i can picture the hills that we looked at in the argentina i can picture the um the penguins we painted those the tortoises like all that stuff that we kind of observed in a way that i wouldn't if you'd just taken a photograph i'm trying to what you said there about kind of creating art to understand the world better and then also i think people going to go to galleries to understand or interpret interpret the world better and i i don't i've never studied the history of art right so i could be completely wrong here but it feels almost potentially that like brands are have spewed out of art in terms of because i think also we buy brands to understand the world better and to say something about ourselves right so for example i buy nike i'll only buy nike air force one trainers i've always start weird kind of foible of mine but um they say something about me like that just do it that action orientated it helps me understand the word better so if you zoom out maybe would you say that almost brands are an extension of art.

1:25:38There's always been a huge relationship, you know, most famously with Warhol, between art and brands, right? And obviously, you know, Warhol and the Campbell Supes, you know, lots of artists have worked in the commercial space at various times. And lots of artists comment on the commercial world, both positively and negatively. I certainly think that, you know, we delude ourselves slightly if we think that every brand we buy is a reflection of ourselves. Yeah, I agree with that. There are some brands or some purchase decisions, I will say, because I don't think loyalty is a foregone conclusion.

1:26:24There are certain purchase decisions we make that are designed to reflect who we are as people. That is 100 % clear. But I do think there are times when brands delude themselves into thinking that every purchase decision is about who we are as people. And if you actually look at your own purchasing, you will realize how inconsistent you are in terms of your values. Right. Because, you know, if you are, you know, if you take sustainability as an idea, right. what percentage of what you buy is truly sustainable, right? There will be certain brands you buy, oh, they don't use palm oil, or they're produced in the UK.

1:27:11And then at the same time, you buy, let's say, a famous brand like Coca-Cola, which is, you know, massively destructive environmentally. fundamentally um and i think i think there is a game here whereby you know some purchase decisions are actually about fulfilling a need at that moment in time to in order to help you move through the day right i need a coffee i need you know some i need to pick up some more oats right i want to get some milk right some decisions are just you just purchase stuff Some brands you will be like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I like that brand. But, you know, price plays a big role.

1:27:57And very few people, very few people are completely loyal to one brand in any category. I mean, you think about it, right? Yeah. You know, there's certainly like, you know, I might always have Marmite in my cupboard because I like Marmite and there is no replacement. But, you know, I've got, you know, a number of different jams. I've got a number of different, you know, things I pick up in different places, you know. i'm not brand loyal to to many food stuff partially because as a foodie i want interest and i do think that's one of the kind of um conundrums that food brands face is that if your target audience is foodie how do you make sure you're part of that interest how do you drive ongoing engagement hi there guys thank you so much for listening as always means the absolute world to me before we jump into this episode i need a really big big big big favor.

1:28:46I have pitched us some massive guests, humongous guests, and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough. Please, please, please just hit the subscribe button on Apple or Spotify or follow. Ultimately it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations, equals hopefully better insights for you, which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well. So please hit that subscribe button and yeah, enjoy this episode. let's talk about great british chefs um as we said it was a a tipping point in in the zeitgeist that has changed the way now looking back how we think about food how we think about chefs let's go back one step and almost look at the framework you were trying to break Like what was your why for creating Great But Chefs?

1:29:40Like in 2008, what was the feeling? Why did you do this? So a simple idea, which is we felt that chefs had incredible knowledge of how to cook better food, but no one gave them a platform to do that. And we felt there was lots of content emerging that was from people who had big profiles on TV, who were kind of self-taught, knew lots of stuff, but we felt there was a missing opportunity to get the real experts to tell people how to really create great food. And our argument was no one knows how to create food better than the people who day in, day out are cooking the greatest food in this country.

1:30:25And we went out to find 12 chefs to begin with, And we created an iPad, iPhone app for Apple. And we deliberately targeted chefs across the UK. So we had Nathan Outlaw down in Cornwall. We had people like Martin Wishard in Edinburgh. We had Simon Halston down in Torquay. We deliberately didn't have 12 chefs in London. We could have done. there were you know hundreds of chefs in london who were brilliant but we want to tell a story about the food in britain and the story that people like simon halston would be telling from a seafood perspective or nathan outlaw would be telling from a seafood perspective or what martin wishart would be telling from scotland was fundamentally different to what was happening in the capital and so from the very beginning we started with those 12 chefs and by the time I left in 2019.

1:31:25We must have had, you know, well over 150. We launched Great Italian Chefs as well, which was 50 of Italy's Greatest Chefs. And what we wanted to do was to tell the story of each of those chefs through both better information about them and also through the recipes that they were creating. And we basically went into an SEO war with BBC Good Foods, Jamie Oliver, Delia Nigella, and spent, you know, pretty much 10 years building a community of over a million followers across all our platforms and unique visitors of over 2 million on a monthly basis. And we did that through a rigorous understanding of SEO and a content strategy, which was nothing short of, you know, militant in how focused we were.

1:32:19And what we did was we just decided what keywords we wanted to own, what recipe areas we wanted to own, and we built the content to win those wars. So we had, you know, we take a single protein, we'd explode that protein, we would make sure that we had all the landing pages, all the content that would essentially mean that when someone searched for, you know, salmon recipes, something very basic, we'd be there in the top five because we had really strong range of salmon recipes that were all different, they're all complimentary. and we would then have starter salmon recipes and easy salmon recipes dinner party salmon recipes sous vide salmon recipes but we built out content in a really granular way and we basically made sure that people found us and the people who found us were by definition foodies because we created content for scallops and monkfish and sous vide and you know all sorts of techniques and ingredients that you would only cook if you were a foodie.

1:33:17And so we had this kind of self-built funnel that every day new people came onto our site based upon a certain block of content that would appeal to them, right? You don't search for scallop recipes unless you know how to cook, right? You don't search for pheasant recipes or pigeon recipes or rabbit recipes. And because we were never publishing a magazine, every time we added content, we go and see a chef, We go, we need a few more duck recipes or we got any venison recipes. We have a little venison. We seem to be lacking in this area. So we just kept bringing in chefs based upon where our content holes were.

1:33:53So the content just grew in a way that was completely strategic from an SEO perspective. Whereas all the poor people who are having to publish magazines every month needed to come, hey, here's the next turkey recipe. Once we had our perfect roast turkey recipe, we didn't need another one. That was our turkey recipe. right so we then added all the outliers to allow us to basically just keep building the most diverse recipe content database that we could have we then optimize it in order to make sure we were found and it began as a content-led business where we were charging money for um buying our apps very quickly became clear that that was not the business model and because because people in those days didn't pay for content and i still don't really pay for content it's very hard um and so we moved to a brand sponsorship model and we had strategic partnerships with one brand in every category we identified so we basically had a matrix of all the categories that we wanted a brand partner so you know in pasta we had barilla in rice we had tilda in tonic water we had fever tree uh in in chinese we had chinese ingredients we had lee kum ki we had um strategic partnerships in travel we had strategic partnerships in insurance we had strategic partnerships in literally every single block you know irish beef and lamb um alaska seafood then norwegian salmon you know we we had different people willy's cacao like literally you could literally go through the grid we had a grid and we knew we needed a brand in each box and they were our partners and they own the content in those in those areas so when someone searched for you know duck recipes it said choose Gressingham right when you hit um an olive oil recipe it said well obviously choose Philippa Barrio it's the best right so we had this way of basically making sure that brands could own the premium content online and we built a model which is to begin with brand partnership driven we then did a load of research so we were running two surveys a year um for about four years where we tried to understand the 14 million people who are foodies in the uk uh we would give webinars before webinars were a thing and we'd have three four hundred people come online to hear about brand people to hear about what was happening in the world of food what was changing and we had the data so we'd run national research and sort of happen nationally we would then have great british chefs research we'd overlay the two in order to understand and we'd charge for that was that a way to monetize no so we so if you were a brand partner of ours we gave people deep insight into what was happening with their audience and what they believed and what they were thinking and we then sold the advertising and the brand partnerships off the back of it we used it as a biz dev tool so it's a biz dev tool and we use that to go and speak to people and go right here's what's happening here's not what's happening what was the hardest because i've found with i've now got four sponsors for the podcast which is great right but getting the sponsors as it was was like well i mean it's amazing we get to get to use gs1's office now it's brilliant but i know how hard it was getting the first one like you just i was pitching to maybe 20 30 pitches just to get one sponsor loads and those what was that what was that moment in time that almost that trough of sorrow which i like to say that that moment of time you've you're in the trenches like talk to me about that period what was that like so there was an amazing meeting still picture it i drove up to ocado with uh my coo a guy called tim rosenberg a great guy and uh still a good friend and we drove up to see jason gissing one of the founders of ocado managed to get a meeting with him through hooker by crook and we got in there and there was a principle that i'd been taught which was if you're trying to do something make it real right bring it to life so we had this meeting with jason we told him the story of great with a chef we told him you know about the fact that what we were about was about creating recipes that were just better than any other recipe you've had so if we had a recipe it was just better right because it was cooked by a chef a chef knew how to do it then you had to make that recipe special and so i brought to that meeting a chocolate sorbet that i'd made myself uh it's a Bocca de Lupo recipe by Jacob Kennedy.

1:38:09And we ate that sorbet in the meeting and we brought it to life. And Jason was like, you know, you guys are crazy. Love what you're doing. Let's do something. And we didn't try and make it too real, but we made it real enough that he could see what we were talking about. And we brought a little bit of magic into that meeting. And that was the first deal we ever got. with Ocado. Ocado and Bart's were literally about the same time. And I remember at that moment in time that I knew if we hadn't got that deal, I wasn't convinced I'd be able to convince the funders to keep going. Because we'd found some super annoying thing the accountant had screwed up and messed up our VAT calculation.

1:38:52And there was like suddenly a 30 grand hole in the business. And I'm like, oh my God, what's happening? And, you know, the moment where it was like really kind of, as all startup owners will know, there are moments where things are really rocky. and it was one of those rocky moments. I knew as I left that meeting that we were going to be okay. But, you know, I put everything into that meeting. And those, I love, that's one of the things I love. I love those meetings that are really binary, right? It's the ultimate kind of gambling moment where you've got to somehow pull everything out and make it work.

1:39:23And preparing for those meetings is a real, is, I think it's one of the great joys. Yeah, it's, I mean, we had a similar thing. So I would do what, I'll send you some samples for a brand called Islands Chocolate I don't know if you've heard of Islands I saw them all they're in loads of Michelin restaurants they're used by Gordon Ramsay uses it in his restaurant Heston Blumenthal Tom Kerridge loads of Michelin stuff we position ourselves as the chef's chocolate but we went the subject line to Icado was fresh it was in November time last year fresh cookies warm hot chocolate that was the subject line I was like, could we come in and give you some fresh cookies?

1:40:02So we go in with this hot chocolate machine, freshly baked cookies. And then the listing goes live this week. Very serendipitous. I want to talk about what's one chef you've worked with so many that is sort of was so impressive. It changed the way you viewed the world. Impossible. I mean, we were over 100, you know, closely. And, you know, the early founders will always be those first 12 will always have a special place in my heart. But, you know, there are so many that I've had so many great experiences with over the years that there will always be, you know, like, I remember going to see Nathan outlaw for the first time, you know, first chef to get two Michelin stars for a fish only restaurant remains one of the great restaurants in the country.

1:40:47He remains one of the great chefs in the country. You know, that, you know, Nathan will always be kind of extraordinary. Marcus Waring, you know, one of those real signature chefs. But, you know, Tom Akin, you know, I mean, all those guys, Nuno Mendez, Alfred Prasad, one of the first chefs to get a mission star for an Indian restaurant. Martin Wishart up in Edinburgh, again, breaking all the rules for kind of, you know, Scottish food. Lisa Allen up at Northcote. I mean, there's a whole, you know, there's so many. And the thing is, there's just, there's so much great food. and one of the things actually I do which I love is every year I organize a dinner for the NSPCC which is in about a month's time I think month's time today which is we raise 300 ,000 pounds on one evening for Childline and we get to bring five chefs to the room and over the years we've had all the great chefs from outside London come and cook I think famously we had Sat Baines come who always has a spoon in his top pocket it's a very flat spoon I mean it's closer to being a knife than it is a spoon.

1:41:52And he had it in his top pocket and the auctioneer kind of spotted it. And they ended up auctioning the spoon for a thousand pounds for a laugh. And it was like one of those, you know, for childlike, you know, sort of moments. But I mean, what I love about those chefs is that they are all highly entrepreneurial. They're all passionate about what they do. They work so hard, so hard. And, you know, the truth of the matter is is that every day a new group of people walk into that restaurant if that food isn't great that day they don't stand for anything bad reviews that day etc every day has to be brilliant it's the most it's one of the most brutal industries i can think of and i have so much respect for those guys who work day in day out to create amazing food um and it was an honor to to cook with some of them to uh to eat at many of their restaurants uh and to learn from them and be able to tell their stories what are some of your favorite restaurants do you know my i always jokingly say that my wife and i have what we call culinary add uh which is we just never go back to the same place because this is too much and we have two young children who who complain every time we go out um so you know i think you know we are we are constantly um trying new places going to new places i recently subscribed to vittles which i love which is uh i mean people some people think it's quite pretentious but it's like off the beaten track restaurants we went to a place yesterday which was a it was basically a supermarket in walthamstow that just had i mean absolutely amazing sri lankan food we bought it home right you can't it's hard my wife's sri lankan right yeah yeah yeah so we've got a lot of time in sri lanka when we can i like go there once for two years and um we you know we had amazing frank food it was an off the beaten track place in the middle of waltham stow we walked in we spent a hundred pounds on ingredients for our cooking and stuff for our and a takeaway which was just amazing you know kottu and chicken curry and all sorts of aubergine and idlis and all sorts of incredible stuff so i we're always we're always just looking out for new places and discovering new places so it's not i i don't have we don't we literally don't have a single place we go back to regularly what is the one that you've been to like twice or three times so there's always um so the only of the big michelin stars i've been to right be to a number of times would be nathan's because it's in cornwall and if ever i'm down there i will make that you've been to cornerstone and as you know it's uh tom yes tom brown who's worked for him so tom brown amazingly cooked my wife's 40th at our house oh really he's amazing chef yeah yeah so i've been there twice i haven't been there for far for probably four i I went there when it opened, the day it opened.

1:44:42Yeah. Tom, before it opened, Tom came and cooked my wife's 40th. And I think he's an incredible chef. Yeah. But I haven't been back there, right? And we just, we drop in and out of places. I think we're more likely to go back for a very specific type of ethnic food that we love, that I need to have, like, I'll need to have every now and then an amazing ramen. So I live in Islington, Canada Yao. The ramen there is completely world class, right? So when I need a really good ramen, I will sneak into Canada Yao. It's actually those sorts of places that I find myself kind of like, you know, a friend of ours owns Columba Kitchen in just off Regent Street.

1:45:25And again, we will go back there for certain dishes. So I think we kind of return to kind of for dishes and cuisines more than we do restaurants. What are some lessons from chefs, as you said, chefs are entrepreneurs or very entrepreneurial, that is applicable to founders, like brand founders? I think the culture in restaurants has changed a lot. There's a big project called the Burnt Chef Project. The industry is an industry which has had a complex relationship, I would say, with substance abuse, complex relationship with gender equality, a complex relationship with looking after the mental health of their employees.

1:46:05I think restaurants have changed a lot in the last 20 years in terms of the way that people work in kitchens and the environment they create in kitchens. um i think they have learned over time the need to create a real sense of family and a real sense of shared community and i think they are now much better at that i think they are really good at acknowledging that every day is a new day as i said earlier every day is a new day where someone tries a dish for the first time they've heard you know the the cod with chicken roast chicken at Tom uh Tom Brown's place is amazing well they've heard about it they've read about on Instagram they've read the review but when they walk in that's the one time they're going to eat it and I think that lesson of like every dish has a different consumer every dish is served once you know on that that moment is is special I think that is something that at times when we're running a fast-moving consumer product where you're selling thousands and thousands of things actually you can forget that fact that in the end it boils down to one consumer buying your product sitting down at home and trying it and chefs don't forget that because the person is just out there i think one of my obsessions and i think where brands under index is sampling they you can get these agencies to do it but my my my whole belief is that that moment is like and it can be make or break for a brand and sampling needs to be almost like a chef or a waiter at a restaurant giving that experience to someone if you can do that as a sampling session as a brand and i think i think that's a really interesting one because actually i think sampling is a great place where you can tell great stories um you get you know we're talking earlier about you know consumer feedback being up and close with consumers you can get that kind of you know that proximity um to you you know, to your customer base.

1:48:02And you do realize, you know, when you hand over that sample and they go, yeah, it's not for me. That's real feedback, right? And I think actually there's some really interesting stuff being done about alternative business models around sampling, whereby actually brands taking stalls in various places and pop-ups, you can make those cost neutral if you run them right. And I think there are ways in which you can make giving consumers, building that community getting people to try your stuff really a great way of doing stuff wrap this up in a sec but i've absolutely i've loved this ollie um how would you make it cost neutral because i because i know with islands there's a lot of people what want to under index their spend on sampling they think it's well we'll get an agency and there's nothing that winds me up more than you go into a store an amazing brand you see a student who'd rather be is on their phone yeah and it's just that that really winds me up and it's how would you make it cost neutral so i think sampling in retail is never cost neutral unless you get the right promotional activity and you look at the total p and l of having that listing and therefore it's an investment to deliver the return in the medium term um i think there are good examples where people are building you know let's say young bug right really good example they've done a pop-up it's lasted three or four weeks people have paid you know 100 quid for dinner for two to eat insects right it's a great brand building thing they put opinion leaders in they put people they want to talk to about it they work with other brands they really like uh they've raised their profile they've got pr people have written about them and the cost of the ingredients the staff nothing else is paid for by people sitting down and eating that meal right now that's a one-off example could you do a chocolate themed restaurant the same thing where people pay to experience the brand yeah you probably could right you know that's been done before um so i think there are ways in which you can build retail experiences that cover their costs let's leave that there um yeah it was absolute pleasure thank you so much no problem appreciate that no problem thank you so so much listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you like that episode only of you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much

1:50:53Outro Music