Perry Haydn Taylor, big fish: The Man Behind GU, Charlie Bighams, Tyrells, Yeo Valley, Riverford Organic: How to Actually Get Your Brand Ready for a Huge Exit Where You’ll Make Millions

1:23:59You know, it's not a gin drink. It's not a cider. And it's kind of unfamiliar enough, but familiar enough. That's a really interesting point. Yeah. And there's this whole thing about familiar and different. You know, you need to be familiar enough for people to kind of go, okay, I'll have a go, but different enough to be interesting and new. You know, anyway, that's another thing. so the questions we were asking were okay where does this brand live so we always talk about you know yeah where will our work live that's one of the questions where will our work live and it's like well it's going to live at festivals and everything they talked about was about having fun and actually we're like this is this this feels to us like finland is finland is a very outdoor type of image in your head if you think of in you don't think of indoors you think of outdoors so it was actually tim who said that in one of our workshops he went oh i think this brand lives outside so we went that's great tim that is that is you know absolutely brilliant so we said well if that was if we just said we're only going to be outside what sort of people what sort of activities would we associate with the brand and we said well someone found a picture uh i think katie one of my team said uh found this brilliant picture of these guys having a massive fucking laugh and they were out on this ice with a sort of you know ice hole and they're all sitting around naked you know sort of with a fire and an ice hole jumping in and out of the ice hole drinking not long career obviously and we were like that picture in a word and jam page were like that's us it's not vim hoff you know kind of you know marathons it's having a laugh in the outdoors having fun outdoors doing stuff that then afterwards you kind of you want to you want to refresh or you know enjoy a beer but actually you want something a bit lighter i was like oh my god it felt like this drink if i'd been 18 and this drink had been around and i came out from surfing and i that was the drink i would have wanted you know back in the 70s so yeah we just sort of immediately tapped into it i actually don't know the answer to your question it was just what you've said Perry is brilliant and I think it's it was from a picture yeah this I think people can boil it um a few things on this so the first thing I think is really interesting is where do we live and I think a lot of people will try and say oh we live everywhere and actually when you constrain no when you constrain it down that's when when you constrain it so we live outside so festivals so you know who you're going after and it's massive yeah and it's still but And it's still big enough in terms of that address, sizable, addressable market.

1:26:43It's still big enough. It's not like you're going to, you know, just Wim Hof retreats where there's about 10 freaks who are jumping in ice cold plunge pools, whatever. You're doing good, guys. Keep going, guys. You're doing good. Yeah. I would love to do, you know, they go out, they do all that shit afterwards. Yeah. So that's really interesting. And then I think what is, what is, and it goes back to this, this noticing thing. And it's something I'm obsessing with at the minute. is is is the ability to notice amelia's done it um is is and that's when you find these sweet spots and the fact it's a picture of three or four five people on this ice thing and even the vision in my head is so fucking clear of what that is i'm like that's the brand and then i was which a brand is a promise and a feeling i think it might if i brought it to two things it's a promise and a feeling the promise is that um is is that great quality drink which you have after after a serving refreshment refreshment yeah and a bit of with a bit of a pep up yeah but then but that picture and that that feeling of the ice bath just that is like going through me right now it's just like what's it like to eat marmite on toast you know how can you describe the feeling it's like a facial expression what's it like to drink long crow it's if you could describe it in emotional terms which i think we did a pretty good job on which is it's like flinging yourself into a Finnish fjord and it's alliterative it's like I know what that feeling's like you because you can feel me when I say that people go oh yeah they're almost like and because it's the zeitgeist of everyone loving doing cold swimming etc it was like tapping into the zeitgeist like yeah this is bang on so this is great it's like Amelia tapping into the into the chefs cooking you know because the other thing with with this work which I didn't touch upon is a lot more of the chefs were beginning to cook with beans so otolenghis came into the zeitgeist with cooking beans how are you going to um i know you can't reveal everything that's in the the recipe book but we've got this we've noticed something we know the brand exists outside we're not trying to be all things or people and and or live everywhere so we have zero money yeah yeah yeah we we've got this feeling of flinging yourself in the Finnish fraud and how do you boil that into a packaged brand?

1:29:09Hi there guys, thank you so much for listening as always it means the absolute world to me before we jump into this episode I need a really big big big big favour I have pitched to 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 we went to they went to a finish illustrator before we did the branding and just said look we just did something that just helped to talk about it and it was like as a holding page with any create they actually created a can you know they had a minimum run of about sort of 50 cans or something and they kind of created this red can and i looked at it i was like that's amazing and they'd written the word long crow vertically in sort of helvetica bowl or something like that and they had this red can um uh just as a sort of minimum viable product to talk about and i was like oh that's really interesting isn't it because it's great to have a start point it's so much easier that they'd already tried to do something and i said why why do you think that's not right and we all said what works and what doesn't work rather than i like and i don't like it was like what works and what doesn't work that's the best way to evaluate creative work if i said to you dan here's your brand okay here's a can of long crow um and you go oh i like this if you're the owner i mean i like the red and i like this it's like well does anyone really care whether you like it or not Yeah, that's you as a consumer, I like.

1:30:51But if you're working to a strategy that you've already defined that says it has to be outdoors, it has to be finished, it has to be, sorry, it has to be outdoors, it has to be finished, it has to be, you know, refreshing, it has to appeal to these things, it has to sit alongside this stuff, it has to, you've got a tick list of stuff it's going to do. So then what you do is you evaluate work by saying, we're banning the phrase I like, and we're introducing a rule which says you have to say, it works because or it doesn't work because this is so interesting yeah it's very simple but very important so you then go back to your strategy and you go right here we are here's a bunch of creative work that we're iterating and we're doing together um but we want to make germ page feel like a consumer so we don't want to have to give them the chore of choice of saying uh do you like a or b so most companies go yeah oh i've done three routes a b or c which you like what what the fuck it's your job to bloody well tell us what we've meant to do give me the recommendation you know uh so it's fine to say we've done this one we think it's too much and we think that one's too little and actually we think this one's just right the three bears but it's not fine to say here are three options we abdicate responsibility what do you think i i'm that's just my bugbear about working with companies and yeah so what we did was we went to uh through a process and said having got that strategy Katie and the team um and Sarah you know everyone Hannah all these amazing people I have upstairs they came back to me and they said here we are this is what we've interpreted as being the world that we live in the outside they had pictures and logos they'd come up with illustrations and they basically had done loads and loads and loads of work enthusiastically that said you know school project finland school project leaping naked into a finnish fjord so they had this brilliant picture of this guy kate had found of this bloke leaping up holding his bollocks basically off a boat into finnish fjord went oh my god you found the picture of a guy leaping into a finnish fjord naked off a boat and it was like everyone was like whoa look at him go oh, and it was great.

1:32:57And we're like, that is it. You've absolutely nailed it. So we then created a character. Katie said, do you know what? I kind of want this finish, I think maybe this finish kind of style of very modern, raw illustrations character who is this kind of weird, hairy, you know, long-haired dude chucking his pants off and leaping into a visual. She literally drew this. and we and and she you know she thought you know on the can for example the vertical long crow physically worked because it was the biggest way we could get the logo on the can and when you hold the can you know you can see people that the word long crow is like in your gob like that so that made sense um so it was like well that works because that brand is really visible that works because it looks finished that works because you actually have managed to take this sentiment of It's like flinging yourself into a Finnish fjord on a fine February day, freezing Finnish fjord.

1:33:57You've managed to do that. And actually, the colour red was completely wrong. Why is it wrong? Because it looked sugary and it didn't look refreshing. So actually, the white, we all looked at these different cans and different pictures. What were some of the other colours? Oh, reds and blues and all this sort of stuff. But actually, when it looked at it, it was like, do you know what? White really works. White and black with pink. This pink logo because it had a pink grapefruit taste, a sort of slightly tangy pink grapefruit. And you're like pink in the face when you come out of the cold plant.

1:34:24Yeah. And it just, like the whole thing, it was very semiotic. So you're evaluating the work, not because you like it, but because it says, it's interpreting the brief. And it works because, yeah, I get it. And if you then go into the next phase and you said, I'm not going to show anyone the strategy, but you show them the can in the context of all of the pictures of the fjord and the vibe of people throwing themselves into, you know, not just fuels but also surfing in cold water and uh uh you know and there's a towel with some naked person with a bum on it it says you know long live the outsiders or you know out with the nude in with the up with the old in with the nude and all these kind of things and pants off enjoy yourself and all this kind of stuff you put it in context people repeat back the strategy verbatim and you know it works because they get it it's and that's how you evaluate the package and you don't go off and ask 50 consumers on viper to talk to you about whether or not they like the bloody font fuck that you know you don't do that that's that's what losers do you haven't made a decision in their life what you do is you go joe and page walked into the room and we had this film and we did the whole shebang we one route the whole room they walked in and they said we love it and didn't change a single thing the they the i mean i'm obviously i love them for that yeah but the i think what you've said there about don't go and ask 50 people i think david ogilvy's got a quote which is you never see in parks statues of committees fucking genius you've never seen don't go and see a statue of committees i love that so much but and also then what seth seth godin was saying to me is i was like how do people one of the things i I was asking him and you, what you've said there, mate builds onto his stuff beautifully, but he was saying, don't ask what people want.

1:36:17Don't ask consumers what they want. He goes, he goes, he literally said, this is it speak, speak, speak, listen, listen, listen. So you, you do the talking, not, not, well, what do you want? Because that was just, that's the curse of averages. And he says, watch what people do. Exactly. So what you've done there is you've, and you've watched, watch when you've spoke, spoke, spoke, finish jumping into the fucking finish lake or fraud. uh foid and then or fjord and then and then you don't jump into fjord you'd probably break your ankles about that and think you're fjord massive um and but also what i'm where i was where i was trying to kind of take this is people who are just starting out there's fucking tons of actual lessons in there and i think it where you could do this off you know you're talking about that brand of the thumb as people can do this on instagram you've got to just ask the hard questions well okay yes yes yes yes so what happened with uh again rather naughty of me um in the process of doing the long crow with the team and jen page i was whatsapping the the the tits of stuff to friends which i to make them believe we'd already launched it so i was just whatsapping little videos and going check out check this out we've seen our new which poor Joe and Paige had never seen because I was just using that as my echocardiogram to see whether or not they came back and go wow or because I'm not asking them what do you like what do you think okay check this out and then they're going oh my god I don't know I've done that yeah because you because you're a geezer yeah I just did like a slap I can't do that by the way because I wasn't trained in the art of east end yeah man I went I went sorry biggest rude boy right there the The, the, but no, but I think it's, it's fascinating because it is crazy.

1:38:12What I think is crazy is how these one, a change in words can evoke a huge direction and change in what you actually end up creating. So what do you think? What do you, well, do you like this versus what works and what doesn't work? People can apply that straight away. I can't claim that one, by the way. That's Jamie Campbell came in and told me that last year. and I was like, what the fuck? I can't believe I've not been using that. Are there any others in this gestation period of a brand? Yeah, I mean, I think the fundamental one is right at the beginning. I mean, I'm bouncing around like crazy.

1:38:45God, someone really edit me. The first question I ask anyone is, how big's your business, right? I thought you were going to say something else. No, I didn't. Sorry, that would be really bad. If that's what you're like. so how big is your business and what you what they don't realize is that is a trick question because they all give me different answers and um so if i last night i asked eight people seven people how big their business was all of them probably under the age of 30 one said 50 people no not 50 people 20 people whatever it was one said a million quid one said uh we're making uh whatever it was 20 percent ebitda one said we've done x units i can't remember um you know and they use different metrics i didn't say how big's your turnover i said how big's your business and what you get from that is two things.

1:39:56First of all, is a metric that they think is important. It's like, what are they measuring when I say how big it's a business? Because, but the most important thing is you get an insight into what really they're motivated by. So some of them are motivated by product. So they just, they don't care. I mean, you're like, Jimmy Metcalf doesn't give a shit about money. He famously doesn't give a shit about money. He just gives a shit about product. So he might say, you know, oh, I've got, you know, X thousand products or whatever, I'm probably beyond a bad example. But young people going into business and saying, you know, how big's your business?

1:40:28Sorry. Do you help, Britas? It's me. That's the only thing I've done. That's fine. Thank you so much. Thank you. Oh, happy days. Knackered can. So, yeah. Back to how big's your business. If they say, if they start talking about product, you know they're product obsessed. If they start talking about turnover, you know that they're, if they talk about profit, you know that they're commercially you know so back to your mate you know kp i want to make a load of money everyone has a different motivation but that first thing is is like just intuitively what are they first thinking is important but i didn't say how big's your turnover how many how many you know how many products have you sold uh sometimes people talk about we're in five countries is there a right and a wrong on that no no no is it just to assess the temperature yeah it's just to evaluate what's what they hold important there's a second point to it which is they might be saying it because they might be trying to put the business in its best light so some people go we're growing at 20 yes well well 20 of fuck all is still fuck all so you know so if your turnover is embarrassingly low and it's you've been in business for five years and you're still only turning over four million quid or let's say you let's say you've been going for 16 years and your business is turning over four million quid you're going to go oh well we turn over about 4 million quid and go how long have you been in business 16 years or in our case 30 years you know is that a good measure well you're probably the slowest growing business and you know you're only 4 million quid in 16 years if you're for example a consumer if you're consultancy that's probably fine you might be a you know business that said we want to stay at this we just want to keep making this profit but if you're a consumer goods brand that's probably not so good because you know you kind of need to keep selling more and more and more to keep going alive you know unless you're increasing your price and staying at the same volume you're not really growing so yeah i'd say that that's probably not good so if they leave out the fact they've been there going for 16 years they're the same with formula they might say oh well actually you know we're 50 people or we're in five countries or whatever so you're you're trying to evaluate what metrics are important to them but you're also trying to evaluate what their bias is you might be also trying to work out what what they're embarrassed by, you know, what they're not willing to share and give up.

1:42:53And that might be preventing them from going because they're stuck because of the sort of stigma of not being profitable enough, you know. And, you know, it's very psychologically difficult to talk about businesses that are failing, for example. You know, people will not want to be seen as failures. So they won't talk about the things that are failing. But in fact, that's the first thing they should be talking about because otherwise, how the hell are they going to get better? So it's like walking to the doctor with a broken leg. Yeah, I'm fine. yeah you're not fine you can't walk i know i'm fine yeah well well you know how how are we going to fix that unless you know that you've got a broken leg so so yeah the thing how big is your business is an interesting one or how's business that's another one is the state of business because like where are you now and where you want to get to so back to the kind of questions that you ask are you know i know people we've had people in the business who've asked 30 40 questions to i found out you know recently that we had a we had a questionnaire that we were asking uh prospective clients i was like why are we asking these questions oh because it was awesome it's like well what are we gonna do with that information you know is that just like as a weird ceremony you know and then then someone yesterday turned around go why are you asking me these questions i said because i because this is why i'm asking these questions i need to know what's the end of the rainbow for you i need to know what are the other questions that takes the end rainbow well you know the fact that your standard questions for example if you're a direct to consumer business the things you need to know are things like you know commercially if you're in the commercial part of the questionnaire are you know what's the price of your product you know what are your average margins um what's your average way to purchase you know how what's your average order value uh what's the frequency how often you know they're buying it once twice three four times you You know, is the, what's your customer lifetime value?

1:44:41How much does it cost to acquire a customer? All of these metrics are things that you really want to focus on. And you don't want 18 metrics. You know, most of the time in direct consumer businesses, for example, you've got to like, I need customers. Ideally, in food, you want frequency. Yeah, you want customers that come to your business. So how many customers have you got? How often are they buying? and what's their average way to you know what's their average purchase so those are those are three quite good focuses i mean you could carry on yeah with 50 questions but actually if you haven't got any customers forget the rest yeah so you know i think people are bamboozled by the chore of knowing what to think about first and prioritizing the best people i've worked with i mean one of the best people on the planet when it comes to commercial businesses growing them for sale is David Milner and he has consistently and persistently managed to prove that he knows precisely what to do when he comes into business his agenda is I've got a great business here I need to make it even greater and then it and it's normally a private equity type business and I need to grow it and sell it.

1:45:56Because he did Tyrell's? He did Tyrell's, he did Lily's Kitchen, he did Saint-Pierre and he's now doing Crostromalika. So he what is I'd love to speak to him actually. Yeah, well, I, yeah. Tell you what, if you thought Seth Godin's intimidatingly bright and good, try speaking to David. David is absolutely brilliant, charming and brilliant. Okay, so what does he do that you've seen to get to the golden pot at the end of the rainbow? Like, what are some of the things, in terms of the way, you know, he goes into this business. He's ex-Mars, so many, many years ago. And I think someone like him is the perfect chair for sorts of businesses that want to go through that process of...

1:46:41The salability. A founder has created something amazing, but they've gone as far as they can. And then they need someone like a David Milner, who is pretty rare, to be honest, to come in and tell them what not to do. He's on the board at Dash, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah, Jack was speaking. I spent time with Alex and Dash and Jack out in NA with David. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so what would you say are some of his kind of... Well, he's a very good example of someone who just asks very poignant questions very succinctly and has very little time for people who don't have the answers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because he just, he's like a machine.

1:47:24he just goes like yeah what are we doing how big is the market where's the big bit what will a small share get us will a small share be a big bit of that yes let's do it no let's not do it you know he's very very good i think he what jack was saying to me is he came into dash and said why the fuck you know they tried to do the big um big bottles of dash oh and what jack was saying that we want to get into adjacent another category like we can see there's some growth there i think david came in and goes you're trying to sell a bottle of this at say people four of us are having lunch right imagine coming in going oh do you want do you want strawberry strawberry sparkling water or peach it doesn't work you pop sparkling water on the table because it's accessible to everyone yeah and apparently david came in and was just like cut that what are two things you're focusing on this year you can only pick two yeah he's the king of focus yeah king of focus i saw that kind kind of the 80, 20 world of like, what are we going?

1:48:22And then apparently they just, they're like, we're fucking that right off. That's tennis balls. Those boys are, they're great. I absolutely love them. And we had, we had a real bromance in LA. We went out every night. What was, what was it like in Expo? Expo West. What sort of brands? Actually, your audiences should all save up. At least to go out there once. So yeah, because it's this magical place. what are some of the things that you've discovered there or brands or ideas that really excited you well i mean the first thing is travel does broaden the mind and i know you know that has impact and stuff but look going out there it's one of the biggest mind-blowing huge shows that you can go to you know you can go to siao and paris it's pretty similar but it is massive and i think the first thing is you realize that the world is full of opportunity it's huge and and there's plenty of opportunity for people to do interesting things um so here we are on a little island and we're frankly no one's ever heard of us so in america nobody has heard of all of our brands you know above the big ones so you know we went to we spent a week out there and the first few days i just spent in la going to places where there's like an amazing farmer's market it's been around for donkeys um actually one little business that i want to start if actually if any of your listeners want to do this with me i'd love them to kind of uh call up i've been told this is the worst idea ever but i'm obsessed by it uh it's a little shop which is basically a tourist trap it's a tiny little shop about the size of uh you know about half the size of a sea container and it has 800 hot chili sauces in it different types and they're hilarious and they're you know novelty sauces and it was absolutely mad and you go in there and you know i think how can i've never heard of this so this actually is a tiny yeah it's a tiny little shop and you go in and it's just like hundreds of different brands of hot chili sauce ranging from the hoss's fucking chili sauce of the world it's called to one that's like 120 which is you know they have its chili rating which you leveled my stuff yeah i know seth loves um but it's like this one comes with a health warning yeah you know and then there's silly novelty ones ones in coffins and you know and it's like novelty arsehole incinerating yeah exactly but you know so you go out there and you see normal and you see global but what you realize is that it just it just opens your mind to go thank god the world is huge and you know i might be buried in in what's going on in my bubble and it just bursts out so the show does that and then you go and see the zeitgeist and you can see what's coming on down the line in the next two three years and every year there's a sort of theme um and you know one year it's plant the next year it's you know function the next and and you know you can sort of see whole loads of brands chasing trends and you think i'm not going there where would you not go um weirdly this year i think I was just I wouldn't go I wouldn't go to seltzers I you know I dash will not be going to America I don't think because you know why would you go and sell ice to the Eskimos uh it was it was full of of seltzers and but it was also full of functional stuff it was full of low and no um and there was a hell of a lot I mean liquid death were there in in force so drinks were just off the off the clock going crazy everybody was selling some sort of a bit late to the party to be honest johnny come lately um seltzers and things like that uh so yeah i would not i would i wouldn't be going out to america with any of that stuff definitely not but anyway look you know the point is go going out to america makes you realize just how big the world is but also how big america is and that it just reminded me that i'd be having a conversation with someone and they'd say hey Yeah, we're a brand of, you know, I'm giving you one example.

1:52:33Dr. Bronner's, we met Patagonia and the Patagonia Provisions guys. We met Elizabeth from this amazing organisation called ROC, R-O-C, which is the Accreditation for Regenerative Organic Certification. She'd never heard of Ellen MacArthur, which is crazy because Ellen MacArthur is a global sensation. She was like, yeah, I can't think of her. Who's that? Oh Christ, don't you as well. Bloody hell, damn. Is she the organic certification woman? Ellen MacArthur sailed around the... Fuck, Anthony Bourdain, mate. Ellen MacArthur is one of the global legends of our time. You should definitely know she is.

1:53:08So she set up the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. She sailed around the world. She's the lady who sailed single-handedly a catamaran, death-defyingly fast, and got the world record for sailing around the world in a catamaran. Like, you should watch it. And she set up the Ellen MacArthur Foundation because she noticed ocean plastic. So she has created this insanely brilliant. movement which was all about getting the global industries to really rethink everything about circularity she she is yeah i mean she is amazing but to be fair you know there i am thinking she's a global social initiative she is and she's amazing we work with them but i go you know no one had heard of them i was like what the hell and actually the regenerative organic certification which one of our clients whole earth for example uses because of palm oil they've managed to find the right sources of palm and that sort of stuff you know in america this is big business and big news because they're trying to sort out america's soil problems and you know i'd never i had not really come across these people and the next minute i'm talking to you know i'm meeting with elizabeth i meet the guys from patagonia provisions i meet this lunatic guy from dr bronner's who's got this incredible brand and you just think god we're so small we're sort of here in our little british bubble and actually the world is full of opportunity it's so much bigger and actually also sometimes i do get a bit depressed about the state of the nation you know kind of oh fucking hell we're cocking it all up and then actually go out there and go you know what we need to do is think bigger we need to think bigger and systemically help change exactly what you're saying you nudging little things don't try and solve all the problems dilute some of the problems back to your sort of lucky saint analogy on a night out if we can do certain categories and display some things at a you know reasonable hybrid ratio of you're not going to clean up the whole category but you can start to clean up bits of it then you're going to make an impact and i think that that's the lily pond you know lily pad theory in reverse really well what's well you know you know there's lots of little lily pads that proliferate and suddenly the poles covered i suppose you're not trying to get one big leaf to cover the whole thing and you're going to wait for it to grow forever it's lots of little things come up and suddenly they make a difference it's like i kind of made that up actually yeah i like that analogy but but that's what i feel about um making change making impact whether it's trying to do things like a force for good stuff where you're saying we'd like to display shitty ingredients or whether you're trying to penetrate a market back to adam's thing about changing categories i think doing you know an inflorescence if that is that such a thing you know flowers that are made up of lots of little flowers like a chrysanthemum is it uh where you've got or an allium you've got lots of little flowers and it looks like one big flower but in fact it's just lots of little flowers i think that's the thing is you need lots of little players to come out and go this category's changed uh you know And actually, if you're thinking about things like protecting the soils and regenerating our ecosystems, it just needs lots of people to all do their bit and suddenly bang.

1:56:22Not one big bloody, you know, one solution, one fits all. It's not going to happen. And yes, the big corporates can make a difference, but their supply chains mostly are, you know, are pretty hard to change because they've invested so much money in them. So I was out in America going, I wanted to talk about supply chains to most people. And I realized this is massive. Yes. This is big. Seth's got a thing, which is, if you're trying to boil the, say you've got purple dye and you're trying to plop it in an ocean, nothing's going to go purple. But if you have a little swimming pool, you plop it in the whole swimming pool, it goes purple.

1:56:58We basically need thousands of little brands focusing on swimming pools, like Lincoln this year, Lily pad things. And then suddenly you have this kind of deep roads deep-rooted uh systemic change the what i'd love to talk to you about i think we've talked about is is you've had so many amazing successes with big fish what are some of your kind of favorite failures um but that may have not got out may have not been um the big fuck-ups the big fuck-ups yeah i think i think ultimately another thing i i one of my obsessions is I think we've talked about before is anti-fragility so yeah so you always post post post-traumatic I love talking about failures yeah actually just like describing the particular ones yeah but post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress and it's like I think you've you guys have been doing this for 30 years and I'd love to know like if we could punctuate along the timeline where I think I've reflected on this before um so yeah I I think um every business has to go through you know if you're not failing it's the old cliche you know if you if you're not failing you're not trying hard enough um there's a balance between there's a balance I think that you need to strike of how much failure you're prepared to accept in order to get to where you want to get to.

1:58:24And so, you know, busy fools doing the same thing over and over again, failing and then repeating the failures is a crazy idea. So I think probably the best examples I can use, oh God, it's a difficult one, Dan. I think probably the best example I can give you of failure is where we've been presumptuous and we haven't done what we talked about earlier, which is... spoken to real people outside of quantitative and qualitative arenas. you know as in we've relied on qualitative and quantitative research groups and we've gone ah yes we will we'll cover our arses we'll spend 50 000 quid on some research and and i then say did anyone actually go out to the king's road and actually ask random strangers what they thought i was like no no we got uh we got a blend of respondents and we did some online video work and uh you know we've that that was being very unstructured perry you know we've done that and then things have gone peaked on even though we've had well their research said they liked it why do you think why do you think what is the folly with i i get why people why people do it if you're if you're because basically it covers all this and quantitative research quantitative research is generally done online with a picture of some shit visuals with stupid questions that say, would you buy this?

2:00:07Okay, and I'll get beaten up for saying this because every time I say this, but I still maintain the reason that people use quantitative research in the way that I've experienced it is mostly because they're in corporate organisations with people who have come out of large FMCG companies like Unilever and Procter & Gamble and say, we have to research this in this way because that's how it's done. And if we don't have that, then no one's going to unlock the budget because somebody didn't tick that box. Go to Picnic, one of the fastest growing and most incredible businesses I've ever worked with, they don't do that.

2:00:46They do it differently and they try stuff they see if it works and if it doesn't work they quickly change it and yeah they do better research but they don't do the way that the way everyone else does and so yeah i think the biggest mistake i've done is actually allow myself to be lazy enough to say yeah fine of course we'll do that of course yeah that's fine i'll abdicate your responsibility so someone the other day literally can't believe this somebody the other day we sent some workouts they're going to know who they are and um we had some typography we were changing some typography on some packaging well on the brand so the brand needed a bit of a font of all and the reason they'd come to us was because they couldn't they didn't feel the chairman didn't feel that this brand uh had been well orchestrated and they wanted he we'd done it a few years before and he came back he said look could you have a look at this because we want to grow the business and we want to we've got some plans to scale it etc and we think there's some problems with the recipe and i said yeah great we'll work with you and we came back with the a really well orchestrated and beautiful presentation showed them what we thought it should be and there was kind of unanimous decisions by you know some of the key decision makers that that was great and also you know particularly in this case the typeface isn't going to help your growth at this point the brand's been around for 20 years you know the font isn't what's going to what drives the growth you know it's fairly subjective uh and this team said they ignored the chairman they said we've sent it out for research so we've sent both typefaces out to research to see what consumers think we're going to get the consumers to choose the font and i didn't if they are listening to this i'll be in massive trouble i was like are you serious you know that that is when it reaches reductio ad absurdum as the latin scholars called the reaching the absurd and ridiculous why couldn't someone make a decision about a font that's when you reach a problem in your organization and you say this isn't working yeah yeah yeah you've got people on the front line who can't make decisions what warry said which was interesting is and it's kind of what back to lon caro is he said decision by committee is both right and wrong yes yes it's it's it's wrong in that going out and putting a picture online and asking which type fish should we go yeah with to 50 000 people that is wrong although most people can't tell the differences between two types that's that's wrong wrong and that and also that just gonna that just takes all the brave and courage out of decision making so don't fucking do that and it's also not the thing you should be researching yeah and but then what what um you do need is a group of um i think ray dahlia who wrote a book called principles really interesting book i read it when i was like 18 because it was he was p diddy's mentor and i was like i'm gonna read that i'll be minted by 25 hasn't happened but um you're rich in life he's got a thing saying he um you need a group when you're trying to make decisions at fast but but um you need a group of believable others others so that's you flinging out uh things to your whatsapp group what rory said about david ogilvy's he would write an ad copy he wouldn't go and send it to 10 000 people and say what do you think he'd say he had 15 people yeah my whatsapp and we trusted and i think that is the art of it is it's not saying both it's both right and wrong but if you're going out and saying should we change the typography there should be instead of 50 000 people there should be three people in the room who can just get it do it and then make the decision and move yeah so like say for example um i i did this many years ago i think i might be repeating myself yeah don't worry um i did a talk for some a venture capital company uh asked me to go and talk to a bunch of entrepreneurs.

2:04:52I don't know why. And actually, the theme they wanted was they said, could you explain what it's like to be on the receiving end of the creative brief, the process of being, you know, what's it like to be a supplier to these businesses? Rather, you're saying, what's important for them to understand about you and your company and your process, or companies like you, when it comes to briefing and working with you? Yeah. so i did a little talk about that and uh so i said look you know when it comes to research when it comes to decision making ultimately brave decision makers have to make difficult decisions and exactly as you say they need to know who to listen to and they need to know whether or not they're dealing with their cognitive bias you know are they just listening to what oh i like the sound of that one i don't like the sound of that one is it just confirming their bias or are they genuinely listening to provocations and stuff and going yeah i hadn't thought of that or that's created a sown a seed of doubt that's going to make my my work better because i can now go back and use that because i you know there's an insight there that said oh that looks like shit you know or that actually looks like spam or do you know um if you were to do that that looks like something that comes from you know the colonial past and actually it's bloody racist or whatever you know the things you hadn't thought of that's what you're looking you're looking for stuff you hadn't thought of and you're in some degree you're also looking for blessing and confirmation that you know this is what i heard did i like with longer you know we think this works because we want to know whether or not it's sending out the right signal so there's really good research and there's really bad research and there's it's very difficult you need a whole podcast dedicated to it and you'd probably need to be speaking to people who are not me about about that but i think the fundamental point i'm trying to make about your believers and the people you trust is

2:06:56knowing what the right questions to ask is the key and understanding what you're prepared to do if you don't like what you hear. So you've got to go into research and you've got to go into eyes open and go, I'm going into this because I want it to come back with stuff that either confirms that I'm right or tells me I've got it wrong. This is such a good point. And if you're not prepared to receive those results and do something differently then don't do it if you if you're going into it just to try and support your decision because you haven't got the bravery to go into the board and just give me the fucking money trust me i'll get it done and by the way if i don't i'll give you the money back or you know what are the consequences so so in this talk i basically tried to think you know how can i sort of get this across and there's a bit which is there are decisions that you would abdicate to others and the decisions that only you can make and you can't abdicate you can't delegate and i said how many people here are married if you get those hands up uh these middle-aged people and i said so okay and i put up a slide of three i'm afraid i put three women up because you know i this is a long time ago and i said so which one of these people should i marry and they were like i said so should we go to research why don't i go and research should i use qual or quant to decide which of these i should marry what questions am i going to ask about these three people and why i should marry them it's before dating apps and algorithms would probably tell me which one i should marry i was like you know it's absurd of course you don't go into research and say you know i'm going to marry this person i've got a whole load of criteria it's like you know it's the person who makes you feel that you fall in love with it's the person who you for some unknown reason very difficult to define there is not a list you know i can't list why i love vick and why i'm married to her but you know i didn't go into bloody quoll and quant research and then also the other thing is i've probably got my mate going you know you really need to marry vick yeah you will love this yeah the believable others so you know it's it's like that so just think about it it's like you know what would you do to when it comes to those sorts of decisions those limbic decisions those emotional decisions if it was if it was a person you were having to make a decision about like getting married to or going out with so that's the you know that's for me the difficulty of research it reaches a point where you cannot rely on others you have to rely on your instincts and to know whether it's right or wrong there's a logic path and then there's not then there's an illogical i don't know why but it's what we're going to do the the bit i thought i think you've what you've was really interesting was when you said the x person say it's a founder of a food drink brand does the research others are they prepared to get past their cognitive bias yeah because i think a lot of um a lot of research is based on insecurity thinking am i doing the right thing totally and then so and then when someone comes comes back and says for example someone's got a yellow packaged good like the the packaging yellow and someone says it should be orange but you're so die hard on yellow's your favorite color right yeah are you are you prepared for someone i know this is a bit of a naff example but like someone to say orange and then but but how is there an example although that's a very basic that's a good example yeah crude crude way of saying it but like is there an example of a founder you know who's who's done the brave decision making whereby they've gone in and not necessarily i've got the perfect one yeah they've they've gone in so i think x the researchers said y they've got past their ego and cognitive bias and and then actually changed the direction they're going well it's not mine uh it's actually david milner was working there at the time and um do you remember i don't know if you're old enough but do you remember marathons well as in the race no marathon bar no well marathon was what snickers were called and they were only called marathon in i think in the uk but globally it's snickers this is snickers so what happened was the uk mars team uh maybe uk and europe but pretty pretty certain is uk had Marathon, which was a massive, you know, it was big, Mars bars, marathons, Twix, and all those sorts of bars, you know, huge brands.

2:11:37And the Mars family said, right, we're changing it to Global Brand. We can't have different brand names. We have one brand. It's going to be called Snickers. And the UK team, apparently, and David was saying this to the other day, he said, you are mad. This is going to kill us. You can't change it. It's absolute brand suicide. They said, don't give a shit. we've done the research you know it's gonna it will kill the brand so don't give me shit change it change it nothing happened it was absolutely perfect Pram and carried on yes that is that's the point isn't it yeah yeah yeah and of course it made logical sense like oh my god we're gonna change everyone knows it's called Marathon well actually they changed the bloody name and actually weirdly what happened and my guess and as I remember happening is people go oh no one was thinking about marathons they change the name to stickers go oh my god it's bloody stickers awareness snickers also like the i've one of my things that fascinates me is like the like the way a word is written and how it can evoke so like mcdonald's is the perfect yeah on a matter pier so mcdonald's 7am um have you seen that i'm not a massive fan okay sorry Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:12:47I'm... Dirty grubby. I'm a dirty bastard. Foodie. But 7.45 a mmm. And I'm like, it's beginning to create these sparks in me of like... Well, you are the master of language. Yeah, but like a hot... Not a hot dog, but a McMuffin in the morning is that mmm feeling. And Snickers is... Alliteration. No, but it's that the crunch is almost of the fucking peanuts. The Snickers versus a marathon. Doesn't work, but the Snickers... Yeah, and also... The other... So the other... I know you've actually teed me up perfectly on this, but um because i know and i'm not going to say names but i know someone who has changed their brand name and it has it's gone a bit pete hogg um because it can it can it can it can happen but i interviewed jack stein last week brick stein's son oh wow really interesting guy um and he was talking about one of my i think we both share this relentless pursuit of better this one percent improvement all the time and i'm always trying to get things a little bit better and what he basically said is he was talking about this vanilla trout recipe which sounds a bit yeah vanilla i had marinated trout last night it was amazing trout is it's salmon's better looking yeah it was yeah it's very delicious in fact yeah yeah you know don't let me forget about that yeah okay we'll talk about the trout but he was basically saying that um so they in the seafood restaurant which is the sort of the famous restaurant in padstow yeah yeah nick had this sorry not rick had this vanilla trout recipe and it was like kind of it was a kind of a hero dish it'd been on the menu for years and we were talking jack was i was the question i asked jack is how when chefs come in like how do you balance like this is the way we do things around here but these are the similar dishes uh versus like the new chefs coming in and wanting half the reason people want to go to a company so they want to grow chefs want to try and improve things and he was basically saying there's a hidden curse to the one percent better rule which is basically you start here with with the vanilla trout which is which has proven the test of time and apparently rick came in one day and he'd been in australia for you know or it hadn't been and he was off filming for ages and they'd had like a three or four different chefs come in and had taken this vanilla trout recipe and it would end up over here and he was like without realizing it they'd one percent improvement one percent improvement one percent improvement and then it took rick to come in from the outside thinking well what the fuck have you done to this do you see what i mean and it's something i hadn't thought about oh my god the one percent improvement rule can actually take you off course yeah from the main thing um well well also the thing so i'm just i'm clear you mean you take it too far you take the tinkering you take the tinkering too too far you're just messing around but it's also it's not it's because it's so incremental and it's different people coming into the business as a different chef yeah they're not trying to take it this far it's just it can happen over time and i don't know if that i think that does happen with brands i think the pringles pringles rebrand uh i mean i mean i eat a lot of shit mate so i love you're sort of like a wonderful paradox kind of yeah but the so pringles i'm like because they've they've done too much it's like you know like the minute it's all in vogue to simplify things i think nationwide yeah we talked about that didn't we yes right i could the great bandification the bandification well i did i did a i did a podcast with holly called conversations of inspiration uh where i i did talk about this actually actually she did a good thing she made me she makes all her guests at the end write a letter to their younger self i know that's it turns out i'd never done that before and i'd realized that um that was quite a clever thing by the way you know come on but one of the things that i was doing when i reflected on you know when you're writing your letter to your younger self it's all about advising your younger yourself about what you know and how you do things differently.

2:16:26And one of the things that it does do your head in a bit because you're kind of reflecting on all of these things that you think are important. And actually, one of the themes for me was the great blandification, which is that the life of the mediocre, the middle, the dull, the bloody, awful, you know, decision by committee, the stuff that you've been talking about means that you end up with this utter dreadful fucking mediocrity uh you know and the tinkering because what happens is is brands that are not i say brands anything that has a life longer than the people who started it means it has to be handed over and that those people will either be you know protectors and curators and keepers of the of the guardians of the of the grade or they'll come in and they'll just say well you know i'm a bit bored so you know what am i going to do particularly marketing directors poor things come in especially young and inexperienced ones they want to make their marks and they want to incrementalize they want to make things better but quite often it might not be in the best interest of the business but it's certainly in the best interest of their career path that they go oh you know i'm going to do something amazing i'm gonna do tv advertising i've never done that and now i'm in a brand i've got money hellraiser yeah tv advertising you know it's like oh great and i can move the number from 10 percent to 12 percent of awareness and you go yeah but you know what when you put that on telly you've just relegated it to shit food because only shit food goes on telly or whatever it is you know so i think the incrementalization is is is like if you are relentlessly pursuing better make sure you're doing it on behalf of the consumer not on behalf of your own selfish career or not on behalf your motivation to make things better back to Tom Goodwin is do it for the right reasons focus on the consumer focus on the end user not on something that's going to make you feel like actually I'm just going to use it it's hard I'm going to use this opportunity to furnish my feather my own nest with something that I can then leave this business said two years time ago well actually i did a fantastic tv advertising campaign it didn't well we haven't really had the results yet but hey look at my point yeah no i mean i would do the same if i was in a corporate assessing but the so but then so if you're if you're a bit naive no no no no no it's so true it's what it's part of as i said part of the human condition is to want to grow and to want to leave your markets that's what happened but but it does it back to the vanilla trout as you end up here when you should be here well no yeah no one's going to come in yeah apart from possibly me uh because i'm lazy but no one's going to come in and go my job is to make sure we don't actually change anything because that's brilliant you know so so doing being paid to keep things the same would be one extreme of confidence in saying we must not change that and at the other end of the spectrum is we must change things because we just surely change we have to change things so i'm expected to change things and you've got to find the balance between is back to that question is like why do we need to change things what are we going to hope to achieve what is it that we're trying to where do we think the growth is going to come from what what what are we underserving the consumer with or what are we not doing that we should be doing and why and making those decisions about focus and about knowing you know for example again I won't name the brand there's a brand that we're working with which has got a lot of different products and lots of different categories and their plan is ultimately to sell the business but that business is complex back to where we started, it's complex, it's got lots of different categories, it's got this and that and this and that and they're all brilliant and they're each in their own right, they're fantastic but actually the plan is to sell it to a particular type of business so the person in charge is saying forget about all that stuff we're just doubling down on this one category and the people who've been working that business for 12 15 years are going what but everyone loves this again yeah but that that was the business that you sold me but it's not the business i want to grow i'm going to get rid of all that or rather i'm not going to focus on it and it'll stay around but it's just not going to be the big focus because by doing all that we're distracting ourselves with this big goal so back to what are you thinking about where do you want to be in in three to five years what's your actual focus really good commercial and operational and marketing people make decisions based around that single-minded strategy and they know where they're going and i know it sounds so obvious but my god it's hard yes well the other example is lucky saint so so so lucky saint are like they do one thing well keep the main thing the main thing um just we're just gonna do one skew which can be quite boring for people well which can be quite boring so sorry and i i think that is their north star i've obviously i interviewed luke then two of my really good mates worked there oh right but then with the retailers are wanting mpd to stay fresh right so they've then you know they give us something new yeah the retailers like give us something new so so they've launched a hazy ipa alcohol free to keep the rate retailers sweet so i think and i also love doing these podcasts like because you pick up on things you're not really thinking about but it's like well actually it's like on one hand you need to be laser focused to keep to have this you know to take you up the prudent path of the rainbow one but then you also have this other path which the retailers like give us something new what's the mpd both should be in harmony yeah yeah and i suppose it's like how i suppose how do you get that balance right back to the category go back to the category you know it's not about applicating the you know the retailer may or may not be the retailer's agenda is to pit a bunch of people against each other and make sure they're competitive and that they can negotiate what'd you say pit well you if you're a retailer if you're a buyer yeah you're going to want more than one person in a category because you can negotiate you know you but you're a salad business you're so i'm not gonna have one salad company i'm gonna have two you're gonna create competition because you want to help make sure that you've got negotiating power and all that kind of stuff what you don't want what they don't want is one player so their agenda is slightly different to the consumer's agenda and i'm sure i'm going to get shot down in flames for saying this but but but ultimately you're walking through the door and you're thinking am i working for the retailer or am i working for the consumer oh my god that's i'm working for the consumer so you know salt the retailer they're just they're just a middleman to the end game, which is the consumer.

2:23:20So the good news is that multi-channel marketing now has opened up a whole load of pain for the retailers because, you know, I'll go to Amazon, I'll go direct. I could do lots of stuff. So I'm no longer reliant on a spotty 21-year-old buyer saying I'm in and out on a September buying window. And by the way, they're not there six months later and everyone's forgotten that you actually did an agreement. So businesses that want to grow should think about the end user and do everything they can to focus on the end user what it is that's going to make their lives more rewarding not always just placate a retailer because all you're doing yeah that retailer by the way is probably employing people who are very young very inexperienced intentionally changing them a lot so that they don't get too comfortable with relationships i'm pretty cynical about that but again i'm in so much trouble because you know one of my family members is a buyer but you know i think you've got to be really careful about who you're trying to be to please and focus on the consumer and if you do that then the retailer will actually go do you know what great i mean by the way i'm being very disparaging because actually retailers are brilliant but occasionally you get the olive buyer who doesn't like olives you get the you know you get the the ham buyer who's a vegetarian you know these people are not the right posts um by the way that's true we've met olive buyers who do not like olives and we've met vegetarian meat buyers which which is insane yeah but i think this is a really interesting piece of nuance this is like are you but it goes back to kind of the slightly to the taylor swift andrew weatherhull things are you building there's two paths potentially the consumer path and uh or are you building a brand to placate a retailer and i think that would be a folly Yeah, the two are kind of, I think brands start here on the consumer path, and then they get the listings and they suddenly think, fuck, we're placating a retailer doing these joint business plans.

2:25:19And that's where you get, I think that's one of the reasons brands get stuck at that kind of, you know, that four or five million, or as Libby says, that seven million markets, because you're in this no man's hand between consumer and retailer management. Yeah, I suppose the interdependent nature of retail, let's not say retailer, interdependent nature of finding a route to market by using partners who want to get you there. And it's in your mutual interest to sell a lot of these things. Ultimately, what you want is, as I said at the beginning, it's good for them. It's good for you. That's easy to do business with because why wouldn't we?

2:25:55You know, this is a great product where everyone's making money. Consumers happy. you've got to just get those all you know the graphic equalizer the little no one knows what those are anymore the little mixer the sound mixer of going you know actually we've got the price right the product right the distribution rights in the right places it's at the right price we're doing the right kind of partnerships and promotions and everything just clicks and that is when you know you've got success because it all goes like that if you get that those little parameters slightly out of kilter what happens it's a bit like a bike where one of the spokes is slightly kind of loose and then it and then you try and tighten up the wrong spoke the opposite you don't get the right one and it and suddenly what happens is you go for a race to the bottom on price or you go for it yeah a challenge of brand is like a bike then basically yeah yeah well i'm thinking a wheel wheel no but the first wheel is the consumer proposition and the product and the second wheel is the retailing and so like you're liking your vision yeah yeah yes i'm going like that i think that i think that's interesting because you need um if you're going say say you're a premium say your your first wheel and your proposition is like a premium kombucha brand yeah yeah if your if your back wheel is wilkinson's yeah you know they cease to exist now then that's just it's not going to be it's completely completely broken but if it's a waitrose and uh yeah exactly then it's going to work and then the two things are working in tandem you've completely destroyed my original metaphor but that's fine yeah yeah mixed metaphors are always fun aren't they yeah there's the bike and there's the fucking wheel yeah yeah yeah i could we could go into all sorts of metaphors yeah i mean look for me for me it's about balance it's about equalization it's about saying if you get the balance right for everybody it's everyone's interest ultimately i mean i'm not you know you want to speak to people who are days better than me about all this but if i walk in if i walk into a retailer and i'm on a budget i've got no money and i've got to try and feed my family you know and i'm absolutely you know constantly stressed about cash i'm just going to be thinking about price i'm just going to be thinking how can i I spend as little money as possible to get as much as possible.

2:28:18And I'm a very different type of person to an affluent person who's never even noticed the price. And there's a spectrum. And it's pretty much that. You know, you've got to serve the needs. A retailer has to serve the needs of the shoppers it's trying to serve, obviously. yeah and if you're asda you know you you know or you're little you know you're really really trying your level best to balance price and quality you know you and if it's such a clear arm we want the best quality at the best price and you know and but there are some cognitive dissonance moments there's some things that make don't make sense where people will pay more money uh sometimes house for less but you know they'll pay more money because they believe it's better quality and they don't want to feel like they're buying something that is not giving their family the best you know and that's what happened with picnic when we designed all of that it's now 2600 products now you know it's growing like crazy about trying to make people who are on a budget not feel like second-class citizens by changing one thing the presentation you know of saying do you know what when you buy this uh this milk or this uh sugar all these essentials that that you would normally have to pay you know x for why shouldn't you be able to buy it and feel good about the choices you make because actually when it's in your in your life in your kitchen every day it's not reminding you that you're broke it's actually helping you feel like you're giving your family good quality the best you can and actually why should cheap things look shit and that that was a really simple thing that again retailers i'm afraid i mean god it's massive how can you blame them it doesn't look value what do you mean by that you know it it looks too premium what the fuck you know what it's gotta look cheap and shit why well because we won't sell it it was like you're not thinking about the end user are you one of the questions one of the questions i've been thinking about a lot recently is um matt ridley who wrote the rational rationalist his progress is two ideas having sex with each other which but basically what this morning wait no but whatever what picnic is is two ideas having sex with each other it's working it's the low value of of you know the it's the look of premium the beast with two backs yeah yeah no but it is but that's what that is working i think lucky saint having sex with whoop oh my god no but as in lucky saint the reason whoops working is because more people less people are drinking yeah less people of drinking means uh they're because you know if you drink and you've got a whoop on you know how much it wrecks your sleep uh well i i don't need a whoop to tell me how much my sleep is ruined by drink but yeah yeah yeah they do basically my friends who put a whoop on they're like they have two pints yeah and they're thinking and this is even the week i'm not sleeping it's like they're on a red straight away so it all those midweek pints what we were talking about earlier they're all on to lucky state now because they're like i need to get up yeah exactly so it's like those things i think what you said there of like the low value in retailers that it needs to look low value well why not combine that idea with the idea of premium premiumization obviously because it's their premium thing exactly yeah so but and again you know there's so many arguments for or against this yeah but it only takes one person to break the rules of to fuck up the party for everyone else um and picnic have done that you know so and very successfully so i think i think what works for me in category redesign which is what we were talking about earlier which is adding value to the category what works for me is

2:32:04thinking about how you can make life more rewarding for the consumer in some way shape or form and that's the easiest way you know just ask yourself does this make the consumer's life more rewarding or not how do you it's you haven't done anything clever the final thing to wrap this up is a bit i've loved this mate it's probably about 12 o 'clock the consumer pieces so how do you how do you make decisions with the consumer's best interest without using consumer research well i'm not saying we don't use consumer research that would be insane i think we go looking for insights so the other day there's a brand that we're working with um and our hunch was it was very hard to pronounce the brand name so if it's very hard to pronounce your brand name um how are you going to get them to go to you know how you're going to tell them hello go and go and buy yeah oh hello mate i just tried the other day yeah yeah yeah yeah you really love oh it's the one with the spots on it yeah so we went out down the road here evie uh and and carrie and the team went out and just basically with iphones held up the brand name and said could you just tell us could you just pronounce it and actually they came back and that wasn't the problem you know they could pronounce it they just couldn't remember it and the reason they couldn't remember it was because it's a foreign sounding name and it's not a familiar name it was too different wasn't familiar so what happened also was that because the brand had done a really good job of making the rest of the in this case packaging very standout and really really strong everyone recognized the design the the pattern oh the you know the stripy one yeah I love that.

2:33:54What's it called? Don't know. So, oh, with a stripy brand. Well, hello, Mr. Competitor. I'll just make our stripy. Oh, fuck. That's not insulated, is it? We haven't got a brand name. What are you selling to the next person? Who's going to buy when you go to that Hula and Loki conference? Hello, we've got a brand. It's worth a load of money. It's dotty. It's spotty or it's curly or whatever. You're not going to rely on that. You're not going to invest 200 million quid in taking a risk on a patent that you can't protect. But if it's a name, if I said to you Mutti Tomatoes, or if I said to you Peroni, no one says Nastra Zoro.

2:34:42They go Peroni, but they know the brand name. So the point is you've got to build a brand, which is something that people can actually identify and navigate towards and direct others to. Yes, that's what Seth Godin says. He was talking about how to wrap a story around a brand. And he was saying ideas are spread. So you basically create your product, you wrap a story around it. You then have the way ideas spread are status, affiliation and fear. so if a brand should give you status and connection so you know i put on my nike gym shorts i feel status and connection that i'm gonna have a fucking banging workout versus my lonsdale ones from you know uh sports direct massive different feelings i get status connection i then tell my friends about it they said where brands can get muddled is they they complicate the bit like the name yeah and it's all yeah this person may fucking love whatever that product is but they can't remember the name so the idea the story can't spread and you can't move along the curve like the rucksacks that have unpronounceable names with a circular logo i still can't pronounce but call sort of fjallraven or whatever you couldn't say fjord you know earlier so i think sometimes that difficult to say can be an advantage and sometimes it can't because you know like goo oh that that was a great brand name obviously but you know it was a great brand name because it and the two dots yeah yeah visual umlauts but but in germany it's not pronounced goo it's you know it's umlaut sorry i can't remember but anyway the point is is that it's weird enough it's different enough but familiar uh but but people struggled at the beginning in the middle yeah but it meant something but in english the word if i said to you goo you wouldn't know how to write it g you were like you just got a goo like g double o you know so when i say oh people say what have you ever done this and you go all right bloody goo you know and they go oh god i love that brand yeah and so but they might be thinking g double o and then they see it oh goo is that how you pronounce it so that's that was a pretty lucky strike that one oh there's a brand um but uh the old toasted fags lucky strike so So I think brands that can be, that are, you know, again, back to this, what's the value is like, can I, can I associate that brand name with a whole bunch of stuff instantly?

2:37:14And do I get it? Do I want it? Can I share it? You know, those are the things that you need to measure. It works because they just get it and they can say it and they can, but it's weird enough. yeah i love seth so much he's got so much genius to be he has so many brilliant things to say but you know is it a purple cow you know is it enough is it odd enough to get familiar enough as well that's exactly so i remember one of his great talks he said um about marketing said look there was a town in the middle of bloody nowhere um in america you know and there's some marketeer consultant idiot like me was you know brought in saying how can we put the town on the map you know what do we need to do and uh i remember seth saying i think if the consultant had said build a 60 foot high lava lamp and people will show up you know just because there's nothing else you know just build a fucking massive lava lamp in the middle that doesn't work for bright you know you've seen the thing they put up in brighton does it not no no there's like an air it's like brighton's equivalent of the london eye me and my mates said this out of it it's like it's like this totemic kind of spaceship thing i'm like you can't polish it right back to the lava lamp yeah back to the lava lamp though but you know basically you know something that's remarkable it might not even make sense but it's got to be remarkable yes that gets you gets gets into your head you go wow that is that is odd but i can somehow i'm familiar with it so I went to Seville the other day to see my daughter who's learning Spanish out there and we went to the Cetas, I don't know if you've been to Seville, oh my god, Seville's amazing My parents said it's fucking banging Seville's one, everyone should go to Seville before they die you know, before they die, like not to die, they should go to Seville but there's a place called the Cetas and they've built this insane wooden building and it's just indescribably beautiful and it's just uh the setas to civil and it was it was literally built just just for the reason of something being interesting for people to go to and honestly it makes no sense whatsoever but it's incredible and you go up it in a lift and you walk around this wooden structure and you just go what the fuck this is a viewing platform but in itself is an extraordinary thing of beauty it's a sort of feat of bizarre architectural genius they did this 300 you know 180 show that you sort of sit at the top and the whole thing is just wonderful and i i said you know this is the lava lamp this is this is seville's lava lamp you know seville didn't need that they had all this amazing cathedral and palace and it's architecturally just stunning it's the most beautiful city but yet someone went in rather like the louvre and the and the pyramid and said you know why don't we create a modern version of our you know of our kind of cathedral why don't we create something that is going to take this part of the city you know and get people to come here and that's the same with brands it's got to be remark worthy if it's not worthy of remark it's bland so bland so i interviewed the guy will store the other week and wrote you i need you need to read his books mate so you've got a book called the status game the science of storytelling and selfie how the West became self-obsessed.

2:40:38Oh, fucking hell. Really interesting guy. My reading list. He actually co-wrote a book called The Blandemic, and it's all about architecture. You'll love it. All about architecture. And he was basically saying, why is all the architecture in the world right now so bland? Totally agree. So bland. And he goes around with a guy, the guy's name's escaping. Does he know why? No, yes, he goes around with a guy, I'll tell you. He goes around with a guy who did, he designed the London bus. He designed, you know, the new London bus. Oh, the new one? Relatively new. Yeah, yeah. Not like the old Rootmasters legendary.

2:41:10He did Coal Drops Yard in King's Cross. Okay. He did. Where Google and Smartens are. Yeah, Google Office. And he basically said that the issue is, and this is true with Challenger Brands, it's the blandemic. I love that. Why do brands look the same? Same in architecture, same in Michelin-style food. And it's basically what it is, is that these architects are getting the, architects are making, um designing buildings to impress other architects yes not the consumer and so basically what's happened is you've got all the buildings all these fucking every building is these square blocks all look the same because they're they're they're like well i get status from showing the other architects what i've won an award look at me and this this guy's basically gone against grain apparently everyone hates him in architecture this kind of the guy's name is scary they did cold drops yard um it's not the big guy that firm called big i don't know the names escape me there is a similar there's a there's an architect uh an architecture practice in the i think it might be in norway or sweden or one of those and it's called i think it's called big and they did this insanely brilliant thing where they completely don't adhere to that That's a rule of planification.

2:42:23And I think it's on like a power station. And they built this power station and it's got a sloped roof like this. Where's the story? A massive chimney. I think it's in Norway or Sweden. My memory is shit, but I'll find it. And anyway, it's got this massive chimney because it's a power plant. And the chimney blows smoke rings. That's the first thing. and the top is a ski slip artificial ski slip sick and you know and he's done living buildings and stuff like that and you know it doesn't look it doesn't look like anything you've seen before and it's exactly that point which is everyone wants to be the same i'm sorry everyone wants to be different just like everyone else yeah which means they're not but also i think the way the way the blandemic spreads into food and drink is for example uh i always talk about this analogy but it's like that the blandemic is yes right yeah yeah the way you can create you know bland aside or commit bland aside is that you go and look at your category to to innovate and actually by looking at your category you've then just created a carbon copy of so protein bars for example every protein bar looks kind of similar because they've got to look at the category and okay well let's make this ever so slightly one percent different well it actually looks the same what they should probably have done is gone and looked at those that place in seville or gone and looked at a bit like with this going okay let's get a new drink let's go and jump in finish fucking fords yeah exactly you still got to say it yeah yeah we'll have some fjord training for you so yeah i think you know my wrap up on that would be that there is no right or wrong it just depends what you want to achieve and therefore start with that first question just why the hell am i doing this you know what do i want out of it uh right back to where we became uh started the conversation which is what's my end game here or certainly what's the end game for me and what do i want to pass on to the next person because this is a this is once you start you can't stop you know pringles whatever it was uh you you've got to you've got to imagine where it is that you feel you want to get to by when look back like libby says and say you know in 10 years time or five years time i want to be able to say this i want to stand up at the company meeting and then thank everyone for getting us to where we want to go and say look what we achieved next year and if you if you want to be a mimic and you want to say i want to be the third mouse not the second mouse or the first mouse and you know the first mouse gets caught in the trap kills the second mouse gets the cheese you know and if you want to come along and you know be the third mouse you know fine do whatever it is you want to do and mimicry is a great way of following leaders and you maybe want to surf in the way of the category it's not that it's wrong it's just that it's not particularly relevant to certain types of brands and and the stages that we tend to talk about it's not it's not a particularly good way to change a category because you know why would you change a category if you're doing the same thing you're not changing the category so you're probably unlikely to have a particularly successful business if you're not adding value to something like a category so yeah i think perspectives it's it's all about your motivation it's hence to that very first question is what is it that you want personally as a founder to achieve from this and how you know how do you want this to end up and you know that's pretty true of pretty much everything in life isn't it if you don't know where you're going or where you want to get to any path will get you there it's tom's you know brilliant book about digital darwinism about you know the startup mentality that we always bang on about about what sorry what is this digital darwinism digital darwinism is the book that i mentioned from tom goodwin which is uh you know it's one of the great books around looking back at the history of our digital evolution and you know rather sort of the play on words of you know darwin yeah and the evolution of man and species that's why i i kind of think it's quite similar to you how i know her harari's sapiens you know the wonderful story of how we became uh where we are today as as intelligent men uh as humans um so i think back to this question of you know where if you would start again today your life or your category your business or whatever what would you do differently and why and and the joke that tom starts with in his book which is you know someone in uh i in fact he chooses ireland for this joke you know someone's driving through the island and they stop and there's a chap you know island as in the irish yeah yeah um and he stops he winds down his window and he says you know could you could you tell me the way to dublin and the guy says i wouldn't start from here and it's a great uh it's great it's a great thing isn't it it's a brilliant question you know where would you start if you could start again and why differently what would you do differently and so that is the fundamental thing that anyone listening to your podcast who is you know still i think you you know, you're talking to founders and entrepreneurs.

2:47:24Do they know where they want to go to? And have they got a clear idea of why they're doing what they're doing? And if so, answer that question first before you answer the next question, which is, who are you making this for? Who are you working on behalf of? Who are your consumers? And why do you want to help? What is it about their lives that you are going to make better by doing what it is that you do? and once you know that is you know what do you want those people to think feel and say that that makes you the only person in their life the only brand in their life that's right for them you know not just the best but the only and how once you know that how are you going to make them think feel and say and do those things because you know you could try lots of different things and probably some will work and some won't but if you don't have a clear strategy you're going to end up wasting all your time doing everything really badly and not doing one thing well so focus and then the last thing is which is coming back to the full loop of the first question is what metric what one or two or three metrics are you going to use to know whether it's working or not and that's this question that i said at the beginning which is you know how's business or how big is your business and if you think it's about the number of people you want to employ because you just want to be you know an altruistic business it's for the people by the people and it's sort of almost kind of quasi social capitalism whatever great if you want to restore the soils and you know it's a means to an end and you're not you know you're going to power your money back into that then great if you're a farmer and you want to build a farm for the next generation great if you're a you know a big money-making super capitalist you just want to buy your fine you know it's knowing what you want as a measure for success and that is it that's it mate as always that's probably my favorite one we've done i absolutely fucking love that i think there's just endless the meandering thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you like that episode only if 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

2:50:11you