Espresso - Does it make the boat go faster - Candy Kittens

0:01Morning, morning, or welcome. Yes, I have grown a tash, I have got a nose ring and I am covered in tattoos. I am your barista for the day. Welcome to Espresso Short Snappy Espresso Short Podcast episodes. I've literally downloaded all the wisdom from all the founders and all the brands, like Guder, Tills, Coconut Collaborative, Candy Kittens, Little Moons, Planet Organic, and I've distilled it into this micro, short, snappy wisdom to give you a mahoosive edge on the day, to kickstart your day. So look, without further ado, let's get cracking and enjoy this espresso shot. jamie and ed i i listened to a podcast and you talked about having like a picture of someone called katie clapham on your office wall is that still up there i'm assuming it is yeah so we've got this kind of brand persona if you like and we created this thing in kind of like a brand workshop that we did with the agency um we decided to call her katie clapham because our our kind of model consumer probably lived in Clapham and blah, blah, blah.

1:03We actually went on to hire somebody called Katie Clapham as well in real life. That was her actual name. That's probably a story for another time. But yeah, the idea is that you have a person that you can really relate to and make it a little bit more interesting when you're taking these brand decisions. So you can say, well, what would Katie think of that? And to be honest, we haven't done this for a little while, but in our old office, we used to have a big blackboard that was all about what Katie was up to this week. and we fill it out at the start of every week. So what's Katie watching? What's Katie listening to?

1:34What events is Katie going to? So if you had it this week, for example, you might say that Katie's probably watching the new series of Stranger Things. She's listening to the new Drake album and she's going to Glastonbury this weekend. And that then informs how our brand positions itself for the week to come. So whether it's the social media stuff that we post, the kind of things we're engaging with, where our brand might be. We're launching a new pack this week at Glastonbury Festival with co-op, which is super exciting. So that's like, you would do that because Katie's going there. And if Katie wasn't, then you might think again.

2:07So trying to think about your consumer as a real person, because they are real people, I think is a nice little trick for us. Where that came from, we had a really interesting conversation with an agency called Big Fish, who were kind of like the real OGs in the branded consumer goods space. and they were very very successfully managing the brand for yo valley and they created an amazing ad for yo valley yogurt which won loads loads of awards it was a an ad in the fight that they ran in the final of x factor when x factor was at its peak you're talking like 10 million viewers and it was these farmers you might remember you can see on youtube that jump out of a tractor and do kind of like a backstreet boys type song all about yo valley hilarious advert won loads of awards really really brilliant production but actually all of the yo valley consumers were completely turned off by that because they suddenly thought this yo valley yogurt there's this organic artisan thing that they really felt was safe and healthy for their family had become this big corporation that was advertised on x factor which they probably weren't that big a fan of and suddenly turned them all off and they lost loads and loads of consumers overnight they then revisited that and then created this consumer profile for yo valley called sally valley and the idea is that sally valley potters around in her land rover and she has three kids in school and blah blah blah and she's the stay-at-home mom and whatever and that was how they sort of turned back on to their customer and started to think through her eyes and bring the brand back to where it should be rather than this kind of shiny thing that they uh wanted it to be it's so interesting they lost three million customers doing that how crazy is that it was three minutes it's mental and actually ed said this great thing the other day which sort of leads on from it which actually now i sort of relate to in so many ways of life and i think it's i think it's one of the greatest pieces of or valuable pieces of sort of information you can get is that um and i might murder ed so please correct me if i'm wrong is that um ed knows this guy or that there's a guy has a brand he was a rower and he was in his boat and he used to row the entire time and um every single time him and his friends would leave the boat, they would always say to each other, does it make the boat go faster?

4:21So we're going to go for a curry tonight. Does it make the boat go faster? If it does, okay, we can go and have a curry. Okay, we're going to wear this Lycra today. Does it make the boat go faster? It does make the boat go faster because it's lighter. Okay, we're going to wear that Lycra. And then they set up a company which is called, does it make the boat go faster? So with your brand, you're always considering with anything you say or anything you're doing, whether it's personal life or your business, you're always saying, doesn't make the boat go faster. Thank you so, so much for listening.

4:46It honestly means the world to me. I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day. Let's be having you. If you want the fun episode, it will be in the show notes. A link will be in the show notes for the full episode. Thank you so much. Please leave friends as well. It means the world to me.