Espresso: Sir John Hegarty Life-Changing Marketing Principles

0:00The bit I want to go back to John is when you said advertising is I think it said simple and deep or simple and profound. simple and profound so when that simple message goes into someone's head like so i've interviewed seth godin a couple of times uh and he's one of my heroes and i asked him a question of like what what what makes consumers but i think the question was what was true about marketing 400 years ago about why people buy things and what will be true in 400 years time that was a question like the the timeless rules he said people will buy anything for three reasons status i does it give them status affiliation and connection so are we in you know orbit together and uh or freedom from fear so you know you're going to make a decision if there's a tidal wave coming you're going to get out there and and i'd love to explore that with you about how from your perspective writing those words or making that profound yet simple message how do you think about what's your version of that why do you think people do things well because i think i mean i have a phrase which is My one is, you know, principles remain, but practices change.

1:06Yes. Fundamental principles do not change. You know, I mean, if you want to look at humankind, I mean, we've, you know, people, you know, you can take very, let's call it 250 ,000 years. We've evolved. We've developed. And just because we've invented digital media in the last 25 years, humankind has not fundamentally changed. It is exactly the same. We've got wealthier. We've got more of that. We've got more things. We've got that. So those fundamentals don't change. But technology tries to convince you it has because it wants you to prefer that bit of technology versus that bit of technology, whatever it might be.

1:47So you have this sense of it's all different. You know, Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen F, Gen Z. It's all bullshit. It is total bullshit invented by research marketing companies trying to make clients feel insecure. And if you go into the background of those people, so what are their beliefs? You look at them and you go, you've just described an 18-year-old or whatever. And that's what I was like when I was 18. Somebody said to me the other day, they said to me, oh, you know, young people don't watch television anymore. I went, no, I didn't when I was 18. I didn't watch television. I was out. I was trying to meet as many women as I could possibly meet.

2:31You know, I wasn't sitting in front of a television next to mum and dad. That's what they were doing. I wasn't. So this idea that it's all fundamentally, of course, certain things have influences. The use of the mobile phone has influences. You know, technology has an influence on us. but we haven't fundamentally changed and it's important to understand that. There are three things we've been obsessed about since the beginning of time and that is access, speed, the future. All right? We've wanted to access more because that made us more secure. I could get more food. Yeah. Look at that. Speed, I want to get there faster.

3:16so we got on a horse you know as opposed to you know we started out walking crawling then we walked then we ran then somebody said get on a horse you go even faster we went from an axe to a bow and arrow that went even faster from spear to a bow and arrow and so and then the future we've been always obsessed about the future what's going to happen tomorrow am I going to be able to feed myself you know our ancestors could track an animal they could look at a print and go oh that animal passed here at about two hours ago so i could track it and catch it all right if it's like oh no that was three days ago gone so we've been obsessed with those three things since the beginning of time we haven't fundamentally changed now technology around us changes we still want stuff faster we want more we want access to more and we want to kind of understand the future access speed speed access the future yes three things that we suppose that all three of those things ultimately link to survive for the fittest is our desire to survive survive survival we're understanding the future of survival how do you think brands play a role in like evolution well when you say evolution what do you mean by evolution as in in our desire to constantly that idea is to constantly improve yeah they they make it easier for you yeah i have a mobile phone, I'm connected.

4:38I can connect to you faster and I can connect to more people. So it does two things, speed and access. It can't predict the future. We're still obsessed with that. People are trying to tell us they can predict the future. I remember somebody going, this was about six years ago now, there was a whole thing where Google had done some algorithms and they'd worked out that we were going to suffer from flu or something because people were buying more cough suites and the well look i can predict the future and i remember the senior marketing director of very very large famous organizations telling me and say john it's amazing we can now predict the future and i'm working with google on this and we can look the algorithms and i'm apart from the fact that i thought he was fucking stupid yeah i went i i saw you know he really had drunk the kool-aid and and obviously google had done a very good job at selling him and i said so you can predict the weather and he went what do you mean i said well obviously the weather drives all kinds of purchasing decisions you know if it's raining i buy an umbrella yeah if it's sunny i buy some you know an ice cream you know and and we we but he kind of believed that they'd done it but that's the one thing that you know always frustrates there are a lovely phrase which says there are no facts on the future and um you know we we have people who are constantly we all the time prediction prediction but i predict this i predict that we we you know i suppose ultimately the reason we want that prediction is a form of safety safety oh yeah two months free yeah that's what espresso sponsors unleashed are offering they are supply chain gurus and offer inventory management that talks to your e-com and accounting software it's helped islands cut admin time in half get granular clarity on your margins know where your stock is don't miss availability brands like candy kittens tarquins gin minor figures and trip all use unleashed and i reckon you should too as i said two months free in the show notes click there and you're gonna get two months for free