Espresso: THE Easiest Way To Build a Creative Culture... "Separate the gold from the lead"

0:00Espressos is sponsored by supply chain software gurus unleashed it talks to ecom and accounting software where 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, Tiny Rebel and Trip, all used Unleashed and so should you.

0:23In terms of this creativity piece, let's stay on this because I think it's, for people listening, you don't need a huge budget to disrupt. I think you've seen it in the big agency side, whereas lots of balladeers allow you and actually permission to have balladeers allows you that gold to materialize and then obviously you're doing it with local but what are some of the examples from your big agency background some of the big brands where the consumer like we will see like a an end product or end activation what was we'll see the gold what was the lead leading up to that i'll give two examples for instance like camden this is camden i'll give you one camden activation we did a couple years ago so i was at ab and bev for a couple years in their in-house agency was that when you they were bought by sorry they bought yeah so i think they camden had come into ab and bev maybe three years before i joined uh maybe a couple years before i think jasper had already left by that point uh or we just we'd sort of crossed over by a couple of months or something um but yeah uh so So for instance, one idea was they're very much into, Camden are very much into sport and women's sport.

1:37And the Euros were on at the time. You ought to just check that, mate, so I had something going. Is that Salon? Yeah. That's Salon, yeah. Yeah, I'm listening, mate. Yeah. So Camden were into, you know, one of their kind of passion points is women's sport. And they're big advocates for women's football and have supported them in many different ways. and the Euros were on, what, two years ago now? And this is not a good example, by the way. I'm just giving you an example because this was, as you were saying, some ideas just come to you. This is one of those ones. So Beth Mead was killing it at the Euros.

2:17I think it was the game before the qualifiers. Basically, she was leading, I think she got five or six or seven goals or something. she was top scorer at that time but there were still three more games to go and I was just sitting on a plane actually coming back from a holiday and I the headline just said like um you know Mead Mead does it again or Mead's on top and I was just thinking like oh Mead's a beer isn't it I wonder if we could do something with Camden town for that so the next day I was like um spoke to marketing director I was like I've got an idea can I quickly pitch it to you um I was like let's do like a golden mead let's do a honey mead for camden town and we should get it should be for beth mead so she was going out for golden what's it called gold golden boot um and just immediately it clicked they were like yes we're doing that so that went into production immediately i think we launched it on the day of the final the um the the beer we did a big launch day down at camden town brewery with the new beer um and i think from sort of idea to launch was it was only like three weeks um and yeah did really well and obviously she went on to become like um bbc personality of the year so that was that was a great that was just a really nice that that not organic idea which just made sense yeah um sorry no no go on i was gonna say one thing i've and this all ties in i'm reading rick rubin's book i've talked about this loads for um it's actually in there about the creative act so for listeners rick rubin's music producer did adele red hot chili peppers um beastie boys uh worked with johnny cash so many people by creative genius and his books the creative way he basically said talks about how creativity is literally all around you but you've either got your blinkers on your blinkers off and reminds me what you said there being on the plane and finding mead paul mccartney was on and this links back weirdly to season then branson drink paul mccartney was on a plane and they were up they asked him do you want salt and pepper and it just triggered off right and that's how it became the sergeant pepper and the lonely hearts brigade whatever it is yeah i'm possessed of the beagle so i've like read a lot on this but it what it shows is like the creativity is literally right in front of you it's just about like taking the blinkers off that was that was a real one-off i'm not i was going to give you another example just to sort of prove the other side which is um so we also had a brief so this was that was that wasn't a brief that was just a kind of always on idea which just happened to be like the perfect timing and then she did went on she did go on to get the golden boot and it was all a success but there was enough so i was also working for stella ratois they brought out stella auto unfiltered and um what the big a the big agency that had done the big sort of 360 campaign i think it was mother actually um they'd done this whole au naturel so in the advert everyone's naked you've probably seen the ad it's like a french riviera style setting and the the guy the guy the guy comes down with a with a stellar unfiltered and everyone in the town is naked and it's like life au naturel.

5:35I've seen that, yeah. Yeah. So they'd set the kind of standard for the big 360 campaign. What do you mean by 360 campaign? So above the line, so TV ad, all the posters. What is below the line? Below the line is like anything sort of content-wise or... Like social media. Yeah. What about on the line? Digital adverts. On the line. Is it on the line? Should we create on the line? No, I'm trying to shit. I thought you were going to try and mix things up. yeah you're on the line yeah yeah but it's true as i ask these questions because yeah yeah i don't sorry yeah yeah you forget that yeah yeah who came up with this line i don't know i don't know where that's from after line atl mate atl yeah it is atl people say yeah atl tfl otl um see it say so yeah we are the creative department was giving the brief like how can we activate that idea right So how do we take au naturel as a concept and do it and do a big activation in some way?

6:37And with that, you know, I went away. And so there's other members of the team and, you know, you go back and you pitch or, you know, you come up with 50 ideas. You pitch 20 and maybe three go forward and then you work on those. So that was that was an example where. yeah I pitched a load of different ideas like stuff to do with you know London Fashion Week and doing another palace collaboration and how can we you know it's all different kind of ideas around nudity which was actually a really fun brief but the one that really stuck with people is I just had this image really simple image of Duke of Wellington pub sign you know that kind of like hoity pompous kind of um visual of a of a duke archduke in like a red jacket right and then next to it i'd removed his clothes and so the idea was like can we strip uk pub signs and that's where we sell the beer and that that was like loved by the team but i had to work on that for about a year to get it to the place where it was buyable for them so that was a real slog but we we got it done in the end and it was great but that's just another example of like throwing a load of ideas and then what have you got a picture of that yeah yeah i'd love to see that yeah no it went live um earlier on this year so we actually um we got artists from as another artist ideas we got artists great artists like ruben dango and bernadette timco to kind of reimagine pub signs in the nude and then we did a big launch event with like a gallery and um sold it off and i think we did um oh what's the name jody kidd she has her own pub so we got her involved and we um made a new version of her pub called the half moon where she was doing a half moon um so that was a really fun campaign they actually just on so it's it's the sign on the pub with the flaps yeah so we actually did we made some real life pub signs yeah and we also did sort of originals that we sold off for auction and then we did posters for the more kind of um just so more people could get involved and buy the prints um but i just tell that story because there was one example which was really quick it just came to me and it was just like perfectly formed and it didn't need much more thought it was just let's design the can and let's think about a launch strategy and then that one it was like a whole yeah that's probably more typical isn't it when you get a brief you go through like as you say a lot of lead to get to an idea that is actually um doable yeah and even then it's like yeah that's a good idea but what what is the framework around that what's the mechanics how do we you know what's the pr angle on that who can we get involved as an ambassador how do we get a charity involved to make it more about giving back and so just building like that visual everyone got and it's how do you build on that to um to really selling the idea across all the channels yeah i think hard there's a difference between hard creativity and soft creativity i mean i wanted to actually ask this to perry next week because i think you need hard creativity to get soft creativity so it's a virtuous cycle right so prime example getting back to the beatles have you seen the get back documentary i watched a bit of so so in that they they may be a song that so you know the song get back get back boom boom whatever yeah that song they're bludgeoning their way through it's like like i'm not gonna do the sounds because just bore everyone's senses but that's hard creativity that is hours in the studio um grafting away so hard iterating failing iterating failing but then you get a masterpiece so you get get back conversely soft creativity and i've just put it i don't know this is actually a thing i'm just beginning beginning to think about i want to ask perry about it next week soft creativity paul mccartney writes yesterday in 50 in five minutes yeah do you know what i mean but it goes but they're both both work but i i genuinely believe you need the hard creativity you need to be putting the work in for those soft moments to boil up to bubble up yeah um which is fascinating but louie do you want to talk about how the the hot as as that kind of paradigm i don't know why i said the word paradigm very um weird um but this framework for hard creativity and soft creativity um i don't know why that was funny that's not funny hard creativity and soft creativity for how you won co-op and yeah so um you know it was a it was a long journey for co-op and to manchester um i mean it started with us reaching out to buyers um which you do you know cold calling buyers is part of the job um and you know you've got to be creative and you've got to do things a little bit differently to stand out so i think for co-op what we did is we initially made them a playlist on spotify but each song told told a story so you know first song would be hello adele second song would be by his name third song would be do you like beer etc so like you look down it tells you a little bit of a story do you like beer etc was that a song by louis collins yeah just uploaded it do you like beer etc but like you know that that got their attention that's better than just a standard email um they like that um and you know then they're like all right cool send us in some samples so I think what we did then is we we sent them a really nice package we put a um an inflatable balloon in there so when they opened it up the balloon floated out and it had a ribbon with a cardboard cut out of Claudia who's our mascot who had sort of like a little message about our beer so again it's just sort of coming up with interesting creative ways of sort of demonstrating the brand and the product um that just makes buyers smile and you know it's slightly different boimi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenge of food drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale boimi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger boimi 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 boemy 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 he uses it to manage a team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using boemy 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 ireland's chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at a 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.

14:18My 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, isolated brand 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 your 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 are some of you can remember some crap ideas well i mean you can usually filter them out yourselves quite quickly right you just know either that's going to be way too expensive or too much effort and time and it's going to do the exact same thing that a spotify playlist will do so it's like you know low cost low effort high impact is a pretty good way in yeah i think so you know ladies just sending standards emails to buyers um you know without anything interesting in there i'm trying to remember a bad idea i think that's a good question like no what i mean it was a bad idea to get hold of people.

15:37Like I remember once, this is really cringe, I'm actually cringing so much thinking about this. At Mani Life, I was trying to get us into Whole Foods and I tried everything under the sun. I tried, I'd gone in with a box of six cross-town donuts and was like, hi mate, I'm camping in the food hall, I'll be down, please see me for like two minutes. I brought a tent and stove with me, like wing face sort of thing. Like it was really cringe, but we've got their attention get their attention

16:08and but once I just thought this is like really fucking a bit weird is I thought right I'm going to get the buyer a Joe Malone like hamper no no like no it was like a full blown like 200 quid hamper I was like oh my and then I basically got home and I spent 200 quid at Joe Malone and I was like oh my god that is like the neediest thing weirdest sort of neediest thing to send I've given it to my mum it's a fine line isn't it it's such a fine line but I always think go it's yes I know we talked about above the line not below the line on the line but it is a fine line it's like and you know as we were speaking to with one of the buyers the other week it's like brands can piss buyers off I won't say the brand name no I think we've been guilty of that ourselves how have you pissed buyers off well I think just too persistent to like it gets like you need to there's yeah the fine line is uh you need to respect that they have a job to do um and they're probably getting hundreds of people like us doing this so to you know to do it you know what a few times we sort of turned up unannounced at the offices with samples um they don't like that they don't they don't like that which retailers or he not say hashtag retailer X retailer X from later I won't have vibed it yeah no they really didn't like that and that's probably an immediate blacklist yeah potentially and it's a good question and we're still figuring out honestly thank you so much for listening to that espresso I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having you boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast share this espresso on whatsapp if you liked it and also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description i spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy it's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink you're not going to get these in a business book so please subscribe and thank me later