How To Get a Tesco Listing in 6 months - BOTIVO, DIRTEA, All The Aunties, big fish founders - Brand Building Masterclass

0:02What I want to start with is there's a quote by Tom Gosling who owns an amazing pizza oven a piece of business and it sounds a bit morbid but it's actually kind of very cathartic and reassuring but he says building a brand every day is the feeling that there's a million missiles pointed towards your head but that feeling when you accept that feeling is kind of reassuring and you actually start to enjoy the process so I think everyone in this room building a brand is fucking hard it's always hard you know more than most Perry and but I'd love to know like what are some of the missiles pointed your head right now and how you naturally thinking differently to solve those problems so we want to start with you then we'll bounce it around

0:51hi Ron I'm from the Pativo I'm one of the founders and I guess this this question can be interpreted in so many different ways and I think the missile maybe going on aiming our head I guess as a non-alcoholic brand is probably the category and like the perception of the category and the propensity for tribes within the category which i think is probably one of the big challenges that non-alcoholic brands have where you know we're sort of forced into these boxes of like this person's moderating this person's sober this person is a drinker or whatever and i think for me from the beginning our challenge has been like which box do you fit into and like you know like like are you a non-alcoholic drink are you like are you for so many people are you for moderators etc and I think for us we've navigated that by trying to read disrupt things and and sort of try and create our own category which actually isn't about drinking or not drinking but it's about the kind of first brand which really represents inclusivity in the sense that you can drink drinks with you can drink with alcohol you can drink liquid but not an alcoholic brand and I think for us that is the biggest thing is you know the category trying to force you into boxes and buyers wanting to force you into boxes and you trying to basically avoid those boxes and trying to create something new and the way we've done that is to completely think about the language that we use and language we don't use so you know we never talk about dry jam we never talk about moderation we never talk about drinking or not drinking we just talk about pleasure and experiences and taste and that supersedes different consumers and different categories and different occasions and so that for me is I guess the biggest missile is I don't be pigeonholed too early and then having no flexibility as a brand to do something exciting so avoiding the boxing I guess is ours.

2:44And Perry from your perspective mate you've built brands that start with this sort of die-hard niche and then push out and open the language up change and go into that bigger mass market what's some of the lessons that you've learned about that? joy in terms of missiles in terms of what he was saying he's not being pigeonholed into a category I think in terms of the large

3:11brain's slightly dead, sorry about this I would say that the proliferation of noise and the categories that everyone in this room probably desperately could get into The big thing that's happened is that there's just so many people out there who can now start businesses. And I think 20 years ago that wasn't possible. So the barrier to entry has created an enormous number of people coming into categories. And actually the other thing is that AI has meant that they've actually produced some really compelling and brilliant clear propositions. so I think you know the for me the solution to that has been finding your niche and really going deeper and deeper into a more clear and clearly refined more focused proposition yeah and I don't think that was the case before I think you've got brands like Crust and Malika for example that started out with you know this amazing range and it gets to a certain size maybe we're doing that now but now if you think about it every single one of them products they have gelato or breadsticks or pizza there's someone else doing it brilliantly and I mean your brand is amazing by the way and we have it on the table every day it's sort of inspiration you know it's just brilliant but you're it's very single-minded and it's incredibly simple and very clear so I think you've done an amazing job by that it's bloody annoying how good it is actually but yeah so I don't know if I've answered the question sorry but Brandon well no it's saying go further into your niche.

4:42Yeah. Like to go into that with Cross the Molecular because you did that big rebrand and it feels like that's now sort of spreading everywhere, feeling everywhere I fucking go and see it which is obviously great news. I think because you very kindly sent some of the questions that I didn't read until when I was in the car. But one of the questions later on comes to this idea of being, starting out as a niche brand and being special. Fantastic brand like Miss Kim for example. which you'll discover is a Korean, kick-ass Korean food. So you start out with this, what makes you special is the fact that you are, like you guys, are really, really different.

5:18And, you know, that's amazing. You get to a point very quickly, if you're you guys, which you are, you suddenly start scaling, and suddenly that specialness becomes a problem. And I think a lot of brands start out and try and broaden quickly and do lots of different stuff and then they forget what actually made them brilliant in the first place so yeah i haven't really answered your question at all there i mean i think what we've done for that so that kind of question around how do you move from being a sort of indie cult brand to moving into the more mainstream that's a challenge that we're currently navigating as a brand that's just moving into sort of grosser and stuff from delis and you know we're now in the top 100 we're just you know in waitrose and card etc but you're not quite on that mainstream edge yet and for us like the strategy is like one key thing which is don't forget like don't forget your core like don't forget that the people that are driving your brand are the early adopters they're the people who took you on really early they're the ones that told their friends about you they're the ones that are super foodie that are kind of quite like leading edge so never forget them and I think you know we invest massively in things like independent off trade even though we don't necessarily make money on that channel because that's a place of discovery and a place of like story building in a place of engagement which is really really important to us so it's really investing in that core even when when you're building doesn't necessarily become the most profitable channel and then on the flip side like really when you're moving into the volume place so you have like your kind of brand building core that you should never forget but at the same time you need to also invest in the other side which is your volume game so you know what are the big groups you're investing in like what the serves are gonna like really sell like in those spaces because you need to basically engage your core in the niche prestige places but you need to get the volume in those mainstream like grocers or groups and restaurants etc and it's a very different strategy you're not talking about craft and provenance in you know the mainstream restaurants that have 70 sites you're talking about elderflower and apple serves because that's what you know people are just flavor driven rather than story driven so it's about thinking about how you keep both at the same time.

7:24I think Andy let's let's go to you mate some you know I think we were talking on the phone last week about how I think one of the things you do is not many people know you know mushrooms right now it's still very nascent and I think what I love on your website even when you sell it so you sell it by benefit so peace calm whatever fill in the blank but um but I'd I'd love to know how you focus on changing the message from that die hardcore group to opening up so you can push mushrooms mainstream. Yeah, I was actually going to start by asking a question. Do people know what functional mushrooms are here?

8:03Show of hands. Yeah, it's so interesting because if I asked that question four and a half years ago when we started, maybe one person would have put their hand up. and it's quite incredible how like you're saying Perry it was such a niche thing to know about like no one knew what functional mushrooms were so we started with an immense barrier which we named mycophobia which was the fear of mushrooms no one understood what they were because no one had been taught they were so we've now gone into a place where you know like you're saying Dan is we went for the die hard people the people that really care about quality and efficacy um you know Dirty started in a place where my brother and I lived a certain way of life and we wanted to pass that on to others and that's why we created these Dirty products and to get that customer to get people on board it was just about education so we turned ourselves into the authorities of functional mushrooms unfortunately we got called the mushroom brothers like the Mario brothers but in doing that people trust us right and that matters for the diehards they care about the science they care about does it actually work they care about the efficacy but now as we look towards more the mainstream so we're now launching into high street retailers such as we just launched in holland and barrett this week we're launching into a big supermarket next year now it's like you say it's the outcome people want to know how am i going to feel not what's in the product is it going to change the way i feel is it going to improve the way i feel people want to shop super quickly and they want that outcome so we're moving less away now from education like everyone here now knows what functional mushrooms are and we are now selling an identity um we're selling a way of life um you know lululemon did it great right they weren't just this functional yoga pants if you wore lululemon yoga pants said very much about who you were who you were as a person and that's how we feel dirty people are you know if someone drinks dirty it means they care about their health they care about their mornings, they care about how they want to feel for the rest of the day.

10:03You mentioned a few things, not peace but more calm. We talk about energy without the chaos. You drink lots of caffeine, it's chaotic. Drink dirty coffee, you feel this calmer energy. So we're now moving to a space where we're selling an identity. Join our community, join our brand and feel a certain way. And if you just sink back into that identity piece a bit more, how do you set Seth Godin who's an absolute G came on the podcast he said people buy products for three reasons or buy brands for three reasons either gives them status and it makes the status that gives an affiliation connection to their tribe their group so then all but with that sort of affiliation or freedom of fear they don't want to be there they want to lose out and I think it's a really clean nice principle way of looking or like lens looking at how brands are built how do you do that with your tribe as you move from those die-hard mushroom maniacs to the bigger wider audience in terms of creating status like what are those three things yeah like to a bigger bigger tribe um so i think we started the brand in a very aspirational light so the brand was found and discovered in environments that were of a premium nature so we were very specific in where Dirty was sold, where it's experienced.

11:23So for example the first retail partner we worked with was Selfridges and we did the world's first mushroom bar and we didn't just want to be on shelves we wanted to create this immersive experience where we could educate, have ambassadors get people to try the product. But Selfridges we actually lobbied for them to pass in the entrance next to Loewe and Louis Vuitton so suddenly like Dirty scene is more of a luxury brand in that light. You know, the next places we went on to menus and Soho House. Did you have to pay for that? Was it just good wangling? Good wangling. I think we were in a situation where we had something that was super unique, you know, functional mushrooms.

12:05The point we're talking to Selfridges, to Soho House, they've never heard of it before, but everyone wants to get into health and wellness because that's the way the consumer was moving. and the way in which we were very like design-led everything was about elevating the aesthetics very much like think of ASOP right how many people buy ASOP because it just makes the bathroom look better and they like their guests to come and see the ASOP bottle we tried to implement that in terms of you know when you subscribe to Dirty when you become a member you get this beautiful glass jar that sits on the countertop you don't want to hide it in the cupboard because it it adds to the aesthetics of the kitchen and when people come in you know because to say you know I drink dirty I'm not a person.

12:42Interesting. Ria I want to come to you now mate and I think what you're doing is incredible it's extraordinary what you've done in such a short period of time and I'll be a lot of people here who are trying to replicate that. I'd love to go back and as I said one I'm so excited about today different brands different stages different categories but when you were coming up with the brand like what how did you how did you what did you do what were the ones three things you did to look at this I suppose I'm asking this for these guys here are trying to get into say a Tesco's in six months so how did you look at the world and how did you begin to create all the aunties yeah and well yeah for those who don't know us my name's Ria and one of the co-founders for the aunties Jack who is also my brother-in-law it sat there and it's just the two of us in the business so we are very early stage we launched in March and we make a hammy for it but I would say so the the whole like mission behind the business was always to be a brand that I felt like I wanted to shop in the supermarket so I felt like the South Asian space specifically had been really dusty for a very long time and actually didn't serve me as someone who has grown up in a family with the regenerations not having lived in India so food has been a huge part of my identity just in terms of maintaining a sense of identity and heritage but it's very much been shaped by different contexts and different cultures and like I grew up eating seasonal ingredients that were spiced with South Asian spice blends and I really wanted to showcase that and so part of that branding journey was like one of the first things I thought about and we did that through hosting lots of supper clubs where I would like cook and make some of these like very fresh, part forward, family inspired dishes and one of those ingredients that we would make was always paneer which was really fresh, she was handmade, we would fold the aromatics like my mum did and it was like super popular, the consensus was that people felt like they couldn't find the ingredient and that whenever they could find it it was like really poor quality and so it was one of those moments where I just thought it was an ingredient that had been really underrepresented for a very long time.

14:51So at that point I was like okay this is like the mission, this is sort of champion heritage ingredients for global consumers and for modern diets and kind of break out the curry house, literally get people using it across cuisine. And so I wanted the brand to feel rooted in authenticity but also quite modern and playful and so we'd spoken a lot about and I wanted it, all the aunties, I wanted it to be like family inspired and so I had spoken to a branding agency that I think my dad had put me in touch with, this is like when I was like it was a pure side hustle and they sent back like a list of 20 names of which I honestly think they got from Chatton GPT and I just hated it and I was like just I'm gonna try doing it myself I went through an exercise for like three months on Canva but I like tried building it out on Canva myself and I knew I wanted like I had the name I wanted it to be like three generations of my family the women of the family who cook and like share their love of cooking and yeah it took those images went to an artist paid her£100 for three amazing illustrations that we have now and then spent like three months on Canva making it look the way I wanted to and then the first version we took to retail was printed and taped by me and glued or just on cardboard and that's it it looks essentially the same as it did.

16:13That's mad and did you go on a Canva course or something because I've tried that as well. I didn't even have Pro and now we have Pro it's changed my life. And then now you're in Tesco, but that's a huge achievement. What have been the unforeseen challenges that have begun to sprout up along the path? Yeah, this is a good question. Jack and I were talking about it earlier because we've not got any sexy big disasters or missiles. We've got really boring ones like the stock isn't on shelf and that is a nightmare. Compliance is a really big issue. even for a small brand of two people who don't have loads of money, you can't just spend thousands and thousands of pounds making sure your product is on shelf.

16:55So we've really leveraged our community, which we're building online largely, to go and do some of that merchandising for us. So we did a big call-out and a big giveaway and got people going around nationally taking pictures of the product on shelf and getting them to literally pull it out of the storeroom onto shelf. And that continues to be a challenge and one of those things that's really boring but so important. like if it's not on the shelf it's not gonna sell um and then another thing a whole other thing is on forecasting like had you told me that like the forecast would be like up here and then they'd actually end up ordering 10 percent of what they said they were going to you'd be in disbelief but like there's a lot of learning there in like understanding how to forecast yourself as a small business especially with short shelf life and if you're in fresh everyone will know the amount of waste that you have to manage and if you're trying to be sustainable and trying to manage that thinking about creative ways you can kind of you know forecast yourself from your internal learnings and Jack has built something very clever on Power BI which basically looks at the average ordering versus what the forecast is and I think it's something like 10 % of what they say they're gonna order they end up actually ordering and that is the work that we do as a two-person business to kind of yeah dodge the missile so to speak.

18:13Amazing and then Emma when you're working more with sort of the bars and stuff what are the obstacles with that? I love the way you're sort of built building the brand leveraging the distribution as you're marketing and I was kind of a wangy way to say it when everyone says that but using the status of the restaurants I know you guys are doing a marvelous job with that and what are the challenges of getting that going like you're stuck behind the bar how do you get on menus all those sort of things. I talk about this quite a lot because I think, you know, like we all, well, a lot of you guys work in marketing and when you do marketing, and that was sort of my past life, you're sort of taught that the first stage of the funnel is like awareness.

18:50You've got to go out and you've got to like tell them about your product and that's sort of the first bit. And I always think that when it comes to, you know, categories where people don't necessarily trust that category because it's infancy or not the products are where they should be, there's the stage before that which is credibility basically and so for the non-art category you know when I came into it you know I'm not actually a I'm not a typical non-alcoholic drinker I'm like an alcohol drinker and that's why I joined Vitebo because I tried it and I was just like what the hell is delicious and I think for me what became really clear was that like we have an entree first strategy and that wasn't just because it's cool to get into nice restaurants it was because I realized that with a category like ours which is not very trusted and it was three years ago when we launched there's a whole stage of credibility and the way to get credibility is to do a few things you can go to tastemakers so people like grace dent or alice lichelle from the ft and get it into their hands and hope they say something really nice about it and amplify that or you go to which we did which was our first strategy and the second one was then finding those places which are the iconic prestige restaurants like st john's river cafe mountain etc getting them put on the menu and then using that as a way to they're going to get other restaurants to do it because everyone wants to see another restaurant taking a risk on you and have a bit of a validation of your credibility and how delicious you are before they're going to take the risk.

20:10So actually our whole strategy was an entree strategy but that was driven by the whole idea of this credibility that we had to build because the category is quite unique because it's so young and also it's so variable in terms of the quality so you have to have that self-credibility before you can move to that awareness stage and now we've got that and we're established in terms of the quality, now we're able to go out and do that volume play and go to that more mainstream concentric circle. But yeah, it's been absolutely critical in our strategy to spend a lot of time on that. And it wasn't the first year or even year and a half was never about volume, it was about how we make this really credible and get into the hands of people that don't just sell stuff because they're getting money from influencers, but people whose careers depend on them saying something is good because it's actually good.

20:57and that was a key key part of the strategy. It's fascinating, I see you guys popping up all over the shop, it's incredible. One thing I'll discuss, I really believe in brand building, sometimes a small innocuous and sometimes a name tweak to packaging or I think Michael from Citizen for Soil was saying, he came on the podcast, there we are mate, and he was like I think you changed the thing on DTC from join by olive oil to join the olive oil club that one little change joined the club and suddenly sales went you know all over the shop in the best way possible what have been some of those things for you like these small little tweaks perry let's start you because you've worked with so many brands um that have led to these massive kind of um upsides in the brand well just before i answer that question i just want to say you three are extraordinary because um everything you've just said is like a master class and it's very rare to find three brands like this.

22:00It's quite an amazing lineup. Sorry about the favourite, but the favourite story is yours and your design process because that's absolutely the ultimate thing that you've achieved, which is that you've differentiated yourselves in such a clever way and I bang on about advertising rather than advertising and you've used every little bit of your brand stories to make your products compelling and different and really relevant and I think that's super clever because you haven't gone and taken the kind of the drug of big money and behave like big corporate so sorry just want to describe what these guys what advertising is?

22:43I mean I've been saying this for 25 years, it's very boring but it does work. And it's not just a cheap sales trick but ultimately in the world of food and particularly in grocery, but it's not just grocery, it's very tempting to spaff a load of cash on big wanky advertising campaigns and sort of think that everybody's interested in what you have to say, they're not. Most of and they're trying to watch TV program and switch through your advert or they're trying to get to work and not be annoyed by some bollocks on them. So what you do is if you focus on making, if you take all the money that you would have spaffed on advertising and you made your product better, and if you did a survey and you asked all of your consumers if you could hypothetically ask them and say, you know, how would you like us to spaff all of our money?

23:35Would you like us to do some advertising or would you like us to make the product better? or cheaper or more available or easier to use. I think we all know where the majority of people, unless they're really into advertising, they're going to answer, make my product better, please, and offer me something better. In fact, we've actually just done this, sorry, brutal plug. We started a sofa business a few weeks ago. Sofa? Sofa, yeah, I know it's all your foodies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we started a sofa business called Splendid. And our mantra there was to say, right we're gonna make sofas that are not shit that's a good start but we're also gonna make sofas so that they last 100 years okay and when they do finally go to the sofa heaven you're all gonna just left with a spring if you buried it you know it's all natural and we're gonna spend zero money on marketing and we're just gonna get our founders daughter Daisy to do a video we launched four weeks ago and last weekend video up about a row and talking about wanky advertising and how companies ranting about how shit sofa companies are and we have 10 ,000 followers on Instagram over the weekend which is insane I mean Rowan is not famous and we've sold 20 sofas you know at three and a half thousand quid a go and so it's the same by the way it's a lot easier making money on sofas and food so do that but yeah so anyway back to the point is the point is you've created you've hustled and you haven't gone down the mainstream bullshit you've done the brilliant entrepreneurial challenger idea of if I can get my product endorsed for free by the hotel what's that I went to that we went to that hotel that's in Nines Creek really expensive spa we pretended we want to be members just so we could get a coffee there but they took us around the spa for a laugh that was funny and you're in there and they're using that to say that they could charge idiots like us you know thousands of pounds to become members of clubs just genius and that mutual reciprocity is absolutely the most important thing you could do at the beginning of your brand is just decide what not to do and the packvertising story is our brains a bit fuzzy too the packvertising story is if you spend your money on the packaging and you want to make your packaging absolutely amazing which you guys have done um that is your best advert and just invest enormous amounts of time you don't have to put money into it even you just have to put a lot of time a lot of effort and we've done on a brand called Teva Tempeh, and hands up who's ever eaten tempeh here.

26:08That's where we fuck all. That's the problem you're gonna have with Paneer. Is that you get these amazing products and then no one's ever heard of it. And they're like, what the fuck? What am I meant to do with that? And you've written on the front of yours what to do with it, three words, haven't you? Yeah, genius. So again, with tempeh, we launched it, and it's sort of same old story, a few things happened. and then Ross and Alex came and said look can we optimize the packaging and we went back to the thing and we just spent a lot of time just moving and optimizing the packaging and now it's going the category like crazy it's turning about three million and it's just he said look I really think that's probably the best investment we made.

26:52How did you guys think about that so I know you I think we talked on the Podimmer about the characters on the packaging I thought that was genius but just detail that for these guys? I mean for me I would say the same thing I always say to people like actually 90 % of people that see your brand is going to see it on the shelf in like a supermarket eventually so like if you're going to invest in anything you should invest in storytelling on your bottle or on your packaging right and there's a couple of things for us one is the yellow wax which seems like so you're talking about little things that really changed our business but I think yellow wax for us obviously yellow has become our identity you know we've trademarked the yellow hour as our like consumption moment but the yellow wax um is so recognizable on the back bar and i've always said when you're gonna if you're gonna do a drinks brand and you're gonna develop something make sure that you're not testing it from one meter away you're testing it from five meters away because that's how most people if they're not in a supermarket are going to see your brand which is on a back bar and people see the yellow wax top everywhere and they go my god you like everywhere there's actually that they're just going to like the 25 cool restaurants in london and if they're quite cool they think you're everywhere because that's where they're drinking and eventually that's when you start to build this like this sort of feeling around your brand that's much bigger than it is and that momentum picks up with investors and with consumers and that's kind of snowballs and the second thing is just detailing so you know um like dan talked about um our brand world so you know we actually have 24 characters i don't know if you guys know our bottle but there's i think 12 characters on our on our bottle and our brand positioning is is what we call artisanal hedonists so it's this kind of intersection between something that's extremely craft and handmade but also has the kind of pleasure-seeking vibe of a hedonist and um ros bachova who's an amazing illustrator who's a friend of mine um created these characters we've got 24 characters and the whole idea behind it was you know you want to kind of see that world and like be want to be in it you want to be feasting in that world you want to be part of that of that kind of that vibe and that's not something that non-alcoholic drinks were doing at the time it was all about moderation and holding back and you know what's drinking you're not drinking etc And actually, it's like, well, actually, I want to drink for now.

28:52I want to have something delicious and be with my friends and connect and have an amazing time. I don't actually want to be moderating. That doesn't feel like an emotional space for me. So we've got the 24 characters. And the whole idea as well was, you know, let's not make it homogenous. Let's not, you know, we live in London. It's 2025. Like, why is everyone, you know, homogenized in all these brand worlds around unalcoholic drinks? You know, we've got 24 characters, different sexes, different ages, different genders, different sizes, different every single kind of person on there is represented and we want every person to be like I'm in there or I know someone who is in there and so that detail is really important for us it's not just about the yellow wax but it's also about being lost in a world where you want to be part of it and you're noticing more and more of the details I just have to say everyone I know Tivo for example, in fact all of your brands you've designed bar wear.

29:47You've designed the interior design. That bottle, people buy that bottle. We buy that bottle to look good as well as taste good. And so you've done a really great job on creating some homewares that happens to also be a drink. And you've done it the other way around as well. And I think, I don't know, I noticed the dash. But your cans are, again, they don't look like soft drinks, do they? I mean, they do now. But no one used to, I I remember seeing them the first time, and that would never work. But it's genius, because it's so distinctive, and it decorates your house. And people want to, things look like, obviously, plug for Miss Kim, same thing.

30:25But it's true, if you make all of your stuff, that paneer, it does not look like a grocery product. It looks like a really cool book in bloody Magnum. Yeah, definitely. Or shop called Magnum. And the dirty thing, it's a fashion brand, as well as being a functional brand. Sorry, it's a usable thing. It's a really good point, and I think, actually, it was almost accidental for us, because the TiVo is not kept in the fridge, and because of that, it means that most alcoholic products have been kept in the fridge because of their shelf life. But ours doesn't have to be for, like, a year when open. So people put it out on their shelf, and it's their olive oil, or on their bookshelf when they come in.

31:02And actually, accidentally, it's become, like, our main touchpoint of discovery is actually people going around someone's house with a dinner party and being like, what is that? That looks, like, really unusual. like you know that looks kind of like a beautiful bottle and people pick it up and it becomes a discussion point so i think that's a really interesting point is like you know let's don't the home is a really important marketing touch point and if you can create something where people want to put it on show want to be seen drinking and it looks kind of gorgeous and that's actually as important as an out-of-home advertising piece because it's intimate it's peer-to-peer it's like a actual valued like point of discovery and it costs a ton of money to get into people's homes on TV.

31:41It costs you absolutely nothing when they bought it. So as soon as they come around and they serve your stuff, they tell four or five people. That is amazing advertising. One thing I want to ask is a lot of people in here, it's very easy to piss money up the wall and do things that don't move the needle. And I think the best knowledge is knowing what to avoid versus what to actually do. Wherever you guys piss money up the wall on your journey and it hasn't actually moved the needle and maybe we can start with you Andy because I know you've done all sorts of amazing things but what stuff didn't actually work?

32:16I got quite a lot. I guess I really care about brand and creativity and I like pulling my art out into the world. You mentioned like fashion brand that's exactly the lens we were looking for when we were designing dirty. It's like an intersection like fashion and wellness is something we've always spoke about. I like to do things that are kind of like small on scale. I like to do like immersive events. You know, you came along to our mushroom morning rave at a bunch of communities. And this stuff costs money, right? A lot of money. And you get zero revenue from it. It's not a Facebook ad. There's no ROAS.

32:57You don't get much return. But what you do get is connection, human connection that isn't necessarily scalable but it's really meaningful. So you know we've done a lot of like big events and a lot of activations that you know some people will say there's a waste of money I actually think it's really valuable and I think it's something we're uniquely willing to take a risk on. I think a lot of money gone down the drain is paying a lot of agencies.

33:31No, I think as you get bigger and bigger, and I think a lot of founders have like, what's it called? Imposter syndrome? Imposter syndrome. It sounds weird. Imposter syndrome is like you start, as you get bigger and bigger, you start to think that you don't actually know what you're doing. And you start to become quite insecure and you think you need others to either tell you what you're doing is right or to give you another direction. What tends to happen is like there are very smart people that are working at these agencies they're very analytical they're looking to they overanalyze is probably the main thing what ends up happening is they try to convince you to sort of change direction rather kind of maybe evolving what you've already got you end up spending a lot of time a lot of money and then you realize this isn't actually the right decision so you sort of pull out so we have worked with but that's not all agencies by the way and not all agencies yeah yeah awkward I think probably the ones that we've decided to sort of work with so I think I would say a lot of money we've wasted is maybe losing confidence in ourselves and thinking we need an expert to tell us what the right answer is but actually we've always known it we just need to tell people you know what you're doing and remind us of that so I'd say like you know probably most money's been wasted in agencies and they're doing these big brand activations are fucking expensive but they are unique and it is different than doing a Facebook app.

34:55Ray, I just gave the agency thing very quickly. Because I mean seriously, I didn't mention that Big Fish is not an agency. We've never been an agency for 30 years and it's a sack of offence at Big Fish to call ourselves an agency. But I completely agree with you. Because the whole point is, and you talk about missiles coming in your head, okay? Agencies are fucked. They're totally fucked. because most of them don't add any value at all. And now they can be just quite easily removed. And I don't think anyone, hands up here is turning over more than 5 million. More than a million? Okay. So when you start spending money with agencies, you're doing something that's done by people who turn over, companies that turn over 20, 30, 40 million, or half a billion.

35:43So the biggest mistake you're going to make is to go in, unless you're very rich and you want to take a whole bunch of risk and do things very, very quickly that perhaps money might accelerate, do not go and spend money on agencies. I 100 % agree with that. And that's, just a quick plug, that is why we take stakes in businesses that we work with. Because, I mean, equity is actually more expenses than cash, obviously. But it's really important that you find the right partner. And so in defense of those people, the overthinkers, I think what's really great is if you walk into a doctor and you've got a problem, you probably want someone who's done 500 heart operations to tell you whether or not your heart's in good nick or whatever.

36:28So do take counsel. A lot of that's for free. You can go and have chats with them and say, look, we're thinking about working with you. What do you think? Most of them give away a ton of information for free up front. We don't. But a lot of people do. So go and use that and abuse that. That's fine. That's part of the sales process. But the reality is, is that you're really renting someone's headspace to give you an objective, provocative view. And what you want to do at your stage is to find people who work in those agencies, but aren't agencies, and go and say, look, you know, we're taking this brand forward.

37:02I can't afford to use you guys, but can I take you for a coffee? And then you can go, I just really like your observations. I'd like any provocations and any recommendations. And that is really good advice. You don't have to take it. But that's, I completely agree. I just wanted to say, yes, you're absolutely right. Great plug for big fish as well. We planned that, but... We're actually at time because food's going to be coming soon. So let's open it up to the floor. I'm sure there's questions. If you've got a question, yeah, raise your hand. So yeah, any questions, please. Hi, I'm Kieran, co-founder of Northstar.

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38:27Hi guys, that was awesome. I'm Kelly, I work at Perfect Head. You've talked a lot about packvertising and out-of-home marketing, like the right restaurants and in-house placements. and you made me think could you create a successful brand without spending any money on paid media is that possible who wants to take that one because i don't know i mean i'm i'm actually a quite big believer in paid media um dirty word um and and the reason for that is like I think that um you can create like quite an aspirational experience if you invest in the aesthetics of your paid media in a way you can't on shelf or you can't necessarily control in on trade because you don't know how someone's going to serve you don't know how they're going to talk about you etc and actually when you're in the early stage of a brand building you can make something look premium you can make it like hell the right story you can stand out be quite disruptive and control that space and I think it's quite difficult to control things when you're a small brand outside of that because you go to supermarket how they're going to put you on the shelf how they can talk about you restaurants how they're gonna list you that you can't stay on top of it and then for me it's the one space when your brand building you have complete control over and later on probably not I think when you're starting out and you're trying to control the stories you're telling and the people you're talking to and the occasions that you want to own it's the place where those stories are built so I'm a big believer in it personally and I don't think you can I think you can do it later on but in early stages I think it's essential Andy?

40:09It's for us anyway and our category maybe other categories are different So I think that paid media is basically made it so much easier to access an audience and it's removed people being bold and daring and it has damaged creativity I think about all the brands that I grew up with and loved. They were these incredible intention seekers that used creativity, boldness and art to get people's attention. I think like right now, if you understand how to make content and understand the algorithm, there's some incredible brands that have launched recently that are building in public, telling their story and bringing people on that journey.