Traditional Marketing Is F*cking Your Food Business - Bold Bean Co. Founder & Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer

14:06Bold Bean Co. Founder:We've got a super short customer feedback, sorry, consumer survey, audience survey thing on Google Forms. There's a link at the top of the show notes. If you could fill that out, it would be so helpful. We make this podcast way better for you. So Seth Godin talked about Tony's Chocoloni strategy and the adoption curve that everyone just loves. And he was saying that, you know, to begin with, it was, oh, this, how do people share stories? and he said to begin with it was the bar you know this bar's uneven because of the slavery and the cocoa industry we're trying to fix that because that gets you to a point but at some point you have to as he says cross the castle and if you're thinking about a kid's halloween party we're having this um we're having this tony's chocolate because it's better than hershey's it gives us more status and affiliation and it's just the chocolate that all the other kids are having and at some point you have to cross that thing.

15:03Bold Bean Co. Founder:And I suppose with what you're doing, Amelia, it's like you could have, that soil story may have stuck you in this bottom corner here, but then pizza beans. Sorry, that's really random. Sorry, sorry. But like, do you know what I mean? Like pizza beans, the market, that's accessible to so many more people. By more people eating pizza beans, you're actually solving the soil problem.

15:23Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah, and I would also say that I think that I've become, it's become more and more apparent to me And it's pretty obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn't perhaps obvious to me at the time that people sadly don't care that much about sustainability. And I mean, we've seen that with the decline of veganism over the last few years. And they care about them tasting something delicious. And they do care about functionality. So they care about something that's going to deliver health outcomes, care about how they feel. and essentially humans are selfish. So if we led with that message, it also implied, and I don't know if this is something we spoke about in it, it's like if you lead with these messages about sustainability, it kind of implies a compromise, like buy us because we'll make you have a better impact on the planet.

16:16Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And particularly around this time, you know, fake meats were huge, but they were a compromise from meat and beans are not a compromise from anything. The beans aren't trying to be anything. And that was our kind of who we're for, is like for the uncompromising people who love delicious food. And, you know, in this context of, you know, a new world where we do want to eat better, they don't want to compromise in their eating. And I suppose that is me as a consumer. Like I'm an omnivore, but I want to reduce meat, but I don't want that to taste bad. For me, beans solved that. and that's kind of what I'm selling rather than eat beans instead of the chicken curry that you want.

17:03Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I want people to just want to eat beans and pizza beans you want to eat.

17:07Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yes. So Jamie's PR person, Al, was saying, kind of links this all together, was saying that in all his cookbooks, 63 % is 63 % veg, vegetarian. So you're actually what he's trying to do. But if he led with the message saying this is a veggie book, it wouldn't sell. So even his barbecue book, which has just come out now, is a lot of those recipes are a veggie. Because his mission is to make people eat healthier. But if you frame that as like a veggie cookbook, people are like, no.

17:38Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Definitely. And our cookbooks, they have, I would say, 80 % veggie-centric. And we have had the odd trolling online from the vegan community in reviews. They're like, how have you got a bean cookbook? and it's not vegetarian and they get really angry about it. But I think that's why the cookbooks are a success is because when we're kind of tempting people in with a sausage and butter bean stew rather than a black bean salad, and we'll bring in the kind of people like my dad who'd be like, oh God, can't have a vegetarian food now. Obviously he's a bit biased, but he eats veggie food all day.

18:19Bold Bean Co. Founder:also the vegan movement was interesting i've got a lot of friends who were vegan who now go to like meatopia like yes it's weird and also i think the only trend that isn't like there's the only trend that isn't going to go anywhere is our need for delicious do you know what i mean so that's like leading with that is is is crazy so okay so brand strategy we've got the fire at the top um how does that like and we'll get we'll get onto the campaign shortly because i think it's great manifestation all this but first like how in terms of like leading the team with maybe we get into the fame side which is could be the content you're linked in whatever like i think you've done an amazing job of through recipes like pizza beans of taking this ultimately niche kind of soil thing that's probably not the best way of saying it sorry that's blasphemous the world's best food yeah yeah yeah um into into this really big thing so like so you have this you know you know what your narrative is you've got you've done the messy stuff how do you then out of my tagline pour gasoline on that fire and make it go do you know what I mean with in terms of driving that fame

19:26Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:yeah I think early days like our our first hire was Hannah who's an amazing content creator and she kind of really did pour fire over that and I think like the naivety I had was such a gift because at the time it was like, okay, well, we're on a mission to make people obsessed with beans. We need to lean into the taste thing. Like recipes had been something I'd been doing already. It was like, let's supercharge that. But in hindsight, now knowing what kind of big marketing teams look like, that is absolutely not the first hire you make. You get a brand manager who's going to be doing X and Y, not a content creator.

20:07Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Whereas actually that's what we doubled down on and we always talk about internally, we see ourselves as a creator. So people aren't following us because they like eating our beans. They follow us because they like following our recipes and maybe they buy our beans. But by doing that, they're like in our brand world. And I think the content is the same as the cookbooks. It's recipe content that makes people love beans. Cookbooks serve a slightly older customer. The online content, our recipes on our website serve younger consumer because that's just how we all consume recipes based on where you where you are um they serve the same purpose of just making people like desire beans and see beans in a new way and build trust with us as the go-to brand and we know that once they do try they will come back because our beans are best so that is that has just been very much our approach and i think it's filtered into okay if we're here to make people obsessed with beans and show them that they can be delicious and lead with taste and all of that.

21:11Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:It also spills over into like our, who we've nurtured in terms of creators. Like we've always been incredibly generous to creators and we've never asked them to mention us at all because our view is, you know, if we send cases of beans to a creator each month, they've got beans in their cupboard and they're more likely to cook bean recipes. Most of the time, lots of creators do not mention us at all, but it doesn't really matter because actually it's nurturing that creator to do bean recipes, which in turn is growing the love of beans. And then often, because the creators are like me, they want delicious food.

21:52Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:They do love our beans. They do give us shout outs and that's really helped. But I think it's been centered around this like kind of this mission and I suppose where we're playing around this the tastemakers in in food and in food it's where we're what we're trying to be as a brand but also where we're kind of spreading our influence yeah no it's fascinating

22:14Bold Bean Co. Founder:and then i suppose playing the fame on the with the bigger brands you work with and we can talk about any of the brands you work with there's some like for example i know we talked about last time too a different example but b &q that was kind of not not sort of you know just kind of doing the rounds in the pubs, you know what I mean? I'm joking, but like... I'm joking, I can take that out. But as in like, it was sort of, you know, my mate had Brian McFadden as a guest at his... Sorry, who's that? Brian McFadden from Westlife.

22:47Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Oh yeah, I thought so, of course.

22:48Bold Bean Co. Founder:So he had him at his 30th birthday, and he got up, I'll show you the video at dinner, he got up on the stage and started singing in front of Brian McFadden. And Brian McFadden was like, what the fuck should I do?

22:59Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:He wasn't singing a Westlife song.

23:00Bold Bean Co. Founder:Oh, yeah, yeah. He was singing some sort of West Side song. But anyway, say a brand is becoming slightly pallid or stale, and they want to reinvigorate that fame. Like, any insight into that? Because I think having that early stage versus the bigger stage is an interesting... Yeah. Well, I think it's also worth just, like, just to double-click on some of the Bold Bean stuff. Like, you know, we talked a little bit about the brand strategy piece. It feels like... Describing it sounds like a process of sacrifice, like all the stuff you're leaving behind. But like what's amazing about Amelia, like I think one of your superpowers is quite quickly it turned into like an generative like imagination, like what could this be?

23:39Bold Bean Co. Founder:And so all of a sudden the things we were leaving behind were one thing, but we would flood it with all these ideas of what would kind of come next. And I actually think the other kind of interesting thing from day one has been this obsession with depth of relationship. I think everyone else would be looking at metrics and just talk about how wide the brand's going really, really early on. But actually everything that kind of Bold Bean has done has been about that depth of relationship, which is one person who is obsessed with the brand is so much more important than multiple. And so that runs through so much of the brand's activity that would feel really counterintuitive to big brands.

24:12Bold Bean Co. Founder:And frankly, even like other startup brands who would kind of go, we've got that customer. Let's go find 10 more as opposed to kind of going, well, one person who's really obsessed with the brand, really educated, really buys into it. It's going to be an advocate. It's going to stay with us. It's going to be a champion of the brand. And so I think that kind of, you know, decision early on was also just like kind of a genius stroke. So more people should focus on depth.

24:35Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:So we never, in that early stage, a lot of startups do just immediately turn on paid ads because they haven't got distribution yet. And we didn't have distribution. Yeah. And we didn't do that. Like, I think that was, I wish I could say, oh, it's just, I decided not because I'm so strategically brilliant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, I, to be honest, I was like terrified of running out of money and I knew it was like a bottomless pit. and it was scary and all of that. So that's why. And then it kind of ended up, I also thought that if we did paid ads, it would compromise our organic social strategy that was working so well.

25:06Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:So that was part of it. But I think that as a result, when you're kind of, when you're trying to reach people based on content they actually want to see, it's going to build like a relationship which is different to paying for their eyeballs. and I've always been so proud of the fact that people like tell other people about ball beans because I think some of the funniness is like I always say people are not gonna talk about oh my god I'm really into um I'm really obsessed with chocolate at the moment that's like boring but being obsessed with beans is ridiculous like yeah it was I mean I'd like to say it's less ridiculous now but it definitely was at the time people were like shocked that I was doing beans it was silly like how can you be into beans and there's something very like I don't know I think people like talking about it because it's sort of it says something very subtly about them but also they're talking about it being delicious they're not talking about how it's really good for them and worthy they're talking about delicious which people like to associate themselves with more than other things but I also think in the modern day I've got this thing that I think consumers are so clever and they realize how um how much they're being sold to they realize how much they're being marketed to and they don't trust brands and therefore like building trust through word of mouth marketing is the ultimate thing and that's what we all want because yeah it's i wrote a

26:41Bold Bean Co. Founder:well just got just chatted about this with nils and we were talking about well two things on that is depth is so underrated, especially today, especially in the world of AI and algorithms. The other thing is gifting, the rule of reciprocity, what you give comes back and being generous. I love that. But I wrote this thing basically saying that brand is ultimately intangible. It's a feeling, it's a story, it's a set of values, it's a conversation shared, whereas everything we're looking at today with the algorithm is tangible. So how many views did this get? And we're seeing this with the backlash of food creators where they're, you know, any man and his dog can basically pop up outside Bleaker Burger and fucking slag it off.

27:22Bold Bean Co. Founder:And basically everyone will comment, go, no, that's the best burger in the world. It will get millions of views. So basically people think they've got, because they've got lots of attention, they've got a great brand. And there's a creator who I know who was getting millions and millions and millions of views when they launched a merch line, sorry, an event. They didn't sell one ticket. but to kind of to that point is where where brand is sorry algorithm is tangible brand is intangible his views are like yeah there's a lot of people that still like it but everyone in the conversation is like oh it's yeah it's been controversial it's to to your point of like people know when they're being sold you know what i mean and i think and it's a really fine line to play at but then depth is something that's very hard to manage how do you measure that well how do you measure that in in

28:05Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:in something but the yeah sorry no no but that's that's it is that like I have been absolutely terrible at measurement and ROI and all of the stuff that a marketing department needs to have I have not emphasized and I've just based it off what I think and hope works however that has changed like obviously Bold Bean is now we've got an amazing marketing director she's built these processes but the foundations were there from a place of like me just being like I think this is right but very naive and not feeling like I needed to I was lucky in that I didn't need to report to anyone on marketing to prove that what I was doing was working I could just be like I feel it's working and so I was kind of given permission there whereas I think for a lot of marketing directors who want to lead in that way if they haven't got like a founder or people they're reporting into that can give them a lot of confidence around doing that it's really hard to retrospectively prioritize that kind of thing well like the famous example of a big business of

29:14Bold Bean Co. Founder:like magic and depth is julia metcalf who at prep would give out if someone was having a bad day have a free pan of chocolame hopefully that cheers you up very hard very hard to measure depth isn't How do you measure it?

29:27Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Well, now we've kind of, we've realized that as we're kind of maturing and building these processes, we're kind of, we have to create intentionality around it. So, and I've been on maternity leave this year. Dee's come in and has done an amazing job at really building the processes and the systems of tracking and helping the team kind of align around campaign moments and all this formal, amazing marketing experience that I had none of. but as we come back in we're trying to build like intentionality around what do you mean by intentionality so what for example we're going to create a thing called magic week where i'm having calls with each of the marketing team for an hour where they're i've got budget and it's magic budget and it's not going to be um there's no easy jet here we go but um it's not going to be creative ideas yeah that's a good one yeah um and i want to them to come up with ideas but not just at the scale of like because a lot of a lot of creativity comes and they might be like let's get do a giant bean in times square or something obviously we wouldn't do that but you know something crazy like that that's like what but actually i believe magic happens in the little moments and for example one of the best marketing things that happened the best linkedin post about bold bean this year has not come from me posting like every week yeah you're an animal three or four five times a week didn't come from me yeah it came from uh a rejected candidate that we sent some beans and that is that is something that like um kate and i felt very like strongly about early days and we've just got it as a process and we haven't really overthought it we never did it to get a linkedin things we did it because we were like that person is probably a fan and we don't want them to have a sour taste in their mouth about being rejected by us so we send them some beans and it's such a small thing but that's like that caring about that that customer essentially and then it got more views it had like I think over the 10 ,000 likes it was crazy this random person who was rejected and for me that like detail is something that is where the magic is and you know it's tiny things like replying via voice note to a um a customer on Instagram yeah or a Sainsbury's buy exactly Exactly.

31:53Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And like all of those sorts of things, but helping each individual team member recognise that magic can happen within their little world. It doesn't have to happen at this like massive, big kind of fame level scale. It can happen in the detail.

32:10Bold Bean Co. Founder:Have you read Will Goddara's Unreasonable Hospitality?

32:13Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:No.

32:13Bold Bean Co. Founder:I think, I know Neil loves it. So he run 11 Madison Park, three star. it's actually applies a lot of lessons from hospitality to any business right and i so i asked him like who's applied magic in other areas and he he says a few things on that he goes your language gives intention to culture so the language you use is really important because that changes behaviors so instead of having a receptionist they had a director of first impressions and that suddenly changes everything so and i said that's like charlotte here she's fucking amazing you walk in i feel like i'm walking into a mission style restaurant it's like hello you know it's not great impression but like you know she's amazing yeah um and then and so i think that's really important what you're saying there amelia about intention and then the other thing is he says magic is just doing something longer and harder than everyone else it's it's actually you can actually kind of patience and actually kind of just force force magic and i said oh Give me an example of that.

33:12Bold Bean Co. Founder:So there's this pet food company that will find out. So you'll stop ordering pet food if your dog dies. And so they'll email you saying, has your dog died or something? Or something like that. I'm going to butch this. And then what they will do is they will sit, because you no longer need to buy dog food if it's on subscription. So they will send you flowers. Again, it's not scalable. Send you flowers. Just say, look, we're really sorry for your loss. and they'll do that at scale but then as will says you know most people who've had a dog will eventually buy another dog there's only one pet food company they're going to and i think those little bits of magic i love that intention to magic yes how do you think about sort of on pulling that thread on fame magic yeah on the bigger scale like well there is it's really tempting to sell like fame is something that happens by chance you know it's something that's really really downstream of the activity and often people then will carry along a path and that last minute kind of go shit why will anyone care and that's where big brands start reaching for celebrity or big budget or or they see fame as something that you can kind of add as the last minute it's actually much more interesting to go back to the start and the origin of fame tends to be where is there a conversation already happening that we might be able to play within you know and and if I took that logic to the LinkedIn post you um said right now like I think the job market is really tense lots of people are applying and so a moment of kind of um you know warmth and care in that it feels like this kind of like pressing on a conversation that's already ready to happen and interrupt so if you want fame we spent a lot of time kind of analyzing well where the conversation is going on right at the moment you know and how might this brand play a role in that agitate it soothe it um provoke it you know reassure it whatever it might be and that really is a recipe for fame versus getting down the line and saying i wonder what the rock is up to and whether he could talk about it.

35:06Bold Bean Co. Founder:So it's infiltrating conversation. Yeah. But I also think there's a really smart thing in what Amelia's just kind of mentioned really casually, but like it's the brand in so many ways, and I say this more as a consumer and like a fan from the outside, has been built, in my mind, by like a series of these incredible objects. So like a cookbook, a plate, you know, kind of Amelia's kind of moments and like talk and some things like that's been kind of built like that. And the brand is now getting to a size where, of course, like metrics are just naturally coming by the size of the business, you know, rate of sales, all this kind of stuff.

35:39Bold Bean Co. Founder:And a team is working really, really hard. And so one of the hardest things to do is to kind of find space, time and permission to do that stuff that's a little bit hard to quantify at the early stages that does feel a little bit like takes a disproportionate amount of attention for reach or whatever it might be. So the idea of actually operationalizing that is something that I think a lot of people walk by. They will just kind of go, well, it should have always happened. And actually, why isn't the culture generating it? And all of a sudden you wake up and you're marketing in a really, really conventional way.

36:07Bold Bean Co. Founder:And the stuff that grew the brand in the first place has kind of been squeezed out of the system because the system's got bigger. There's more pressure on it. So that kind of innovation of saying we're going to hold space for this and hold budget for it to make these things happen and preserve them as a brand scales is really, really smart. And that's the magic week, essentially.

36:24Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:That's, yeah. And this is a test. It might fail. What ideas have you had?

36:28Bold Bean Co. Founder:we can put this out no my team are going to have

36:30Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:the ideas

36:30Bold Bean Co. Founder:sorry what have they presented

36:33Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:we haven't done it yet so I'll let you know how it goes but yeah it's something that I've that kind of conventional marketing playbook is something that I've felt like allergic to I really I really I think and I think it's because when you're a founder and you're on you've done the fundraising journey and you know everyone's on the same I just see for example like billboards and I'm like oh they've sold out they've got private equity they've got vc and i kind of lose but i know that that's like my personal view but i actually think that it's made me very hesitant and i've never wanted to do paid ads and i've never wanted to do out of home and the problem is now we've reached a point where we've got incredible loyalty like our customers come back and back and back and we are obsessed with them they're obsessed with us and it's just amazing um and we're growing really quickly but how we actually still only have 11 brand awareness so we find that out we test it each quarter using yougov um and that is like an online it's actually they do i think they they also test around politicians yeah don't they they'll be like what do you think of andy burnham and then people will do it it's like a national polling really robust like always on national survey that yeah it does so 11 of the country know bulbiness yeah yeah and then what would a brand

38:01Bold Bean Co. Founder:like tony's be or like i'm just trying to get some heinz would be you're never 100 because there's some like random person if someone doesn't know heinz they're probably living in some donkey in scotland or something in the highlands that's mental i know i know that is mental Yeah, okay, so then, okay, so someone like, okay, so Heinz is probably pretty high. 90%. 90%. What would be a brand that's like 50%, do you reckon? Ballpark. But the other way is, nationally, I don't know. Pepinat, maybe? What about Vitacoco? What would that be, do you reckon? Someone's going to be listening and getting...

38:35Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah, no, no, I'm just trying to get some context on how big or small 11 % is.

38:40Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:It's small. Yeah, it's small. It's small. A lot of people are, like, surprised because maybe they are a fan, And so then they're like, what? But like, so that is something. But I suppose we really, you know, we've still only got a tiny percentage. I think it's like 2.6 % of our category. We've got so much to go after. Like we need to go bigger. And it's really hard to scale the kind of marketing that we've done in a kind of, in a big way. Because you can't, that's why it is magic. You've got to like hope, you've got to hope it's going to work rather than know it's going to work. But how do you grow brand awareness?

39:22Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Well, you spend money to get visibility and you do that playbook that every other brand has done. So when we realized we needed to do this, it was... When did you realize that? Well, Dee coming in and... What was her background? So she worked at this, she worked at Kiddylicious, she worked at Gymkhana, Fine Foods. But she's been working marketing for a long time and sort of knows the kind of the classic playbook of how to build brand awareness, build the top of funnel, bring people into the brand. And she's a real perfect like yin to my yang. She's got a very complementary skill set. So we knew we needed to do this, but I've been very anxious.

40:04Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And I think the team has as well because, you know, our most senior marketing hire before that, Louisa, she's from a pure digital background, content creation. She worked at Lab Bible. She worked at Bosch. You know, very, very much same as me in terms of, like, how we grow this brand. It's going to be digital. Whereas that traditional consumer goods marketing playbook we haven't done. But we needed to do that.

40:30Bold Bean Co. Founder:So we're going to get on. What I love is the fact that what you said, mate, is operationalize magic. So you have, whether it's your magic week, I think this will help a lot of people, like, have that boxed off to keep it. so you know you're not the Westlife singer at a 30th party do you know I mean in a few years time but then yeah go go into the traditional place sorry it was actually a very good night and now I'll tell you some stories about that at dinner but it was yeah hopefully you don't want to washed up Brian McFadden rocking up but um he did look quite dapper to be fair but he so then so then in case he's listening yeah yeah yeah he's really into consumer podcasts but he so then okay Aira is an AI communication booking platform where restaurants can manage all inquiries, bookings.

41:13Bold Bean Co. Founder:Aira allows you to take bookings directly from your Instagram DMs. This is literally a world first. It makes the whole booking process super seamless. If a punter wants to ask any question about your restaurant, Aira will answer it. If they want to buy merch or make a booking, they can do it all through Aira. Aira doesn't send them to some icky outside link. This is what I really love. Aira literally learns your unique tone of voice It will speak like you It's an extension of your brand An extension of your restaurant This means people when they first interact with your restaurant It feels on brand This isn't some shitty soulless bot Aira literally collects so much information about your customer Remembers every tiny weeny little detail about their experience And allows you to build relationships with soul at scale It's so sick A feature I really love Is Aira will automatically send out cold outreach emails I reckon send these emails to people who haven't been in for a while, to regulars, to people who've got a special occasion coming up.

42:08Bold Bean Co. Founder:The customer simply clicks the link at the bottom of the email and the pre-filled booking form is already filled out. So all you've got to do is click and you've made the booking. It's so simple. Click the link in the show notes to book a demo. You're going to love it. So you've got that. I'll play it to magic. Ring, fence that. Bang. In terms of the traditional playbook that kind of gave you anxiety, what are those? Maybe you can take this, mate. The principles of it. I don't know what that is. But what are the one, two, three, four building blocks of a traditional marketing playbook? And then we can get into the campaign.

42:38Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah, I think we can talk about those traditional building blocks. But I think the broader sentiment that we're scratching at is it's really tempting. And when you're building an advertising campaign or a marketing campaign, you tend to review it in an abstract. You're watching it on a screen or something like that. But consumers have a really good way of just inferring before they look at a headline, before they look at a photograph of anything, of what certain kind of touch points in the body language of a brand means. Body language of a brand. Yeah. So think about how you walk into like an Apple store and there's no messaging, but you have a certain feeling about a brand.

43:10Bold Bean Co. Founder:And I think that extends to seeing brands turn up in advertising. They just feel like they've reached a certain point in their life cycle. And I think the other thing that's really going on at the moment is particularly like in the UK, there is so much heart and soul going into the kind of food FMCG startup space and some amazing, amazing innovation. At the same time, I think people have observed it and just interpreted it as an aesthetic. And so now all of a sudden people are just kind of taking a look and feel and applying it without any of the depth or a word I think brands will start talking about more is patina, but that time, the runs on the board, the kind of thing.

43:44Bold Bean Co. Founder:What do you mean patina? Patina is like, you know how like a leather jacket after a decade just sits a bit more comfy, it has scratches, but it makes it a hell of a lot cooler. Same with like a leather couch or like an amazing wooden table. like the age is what makes it and we sense it as well and you can kind of tell the difference between a dining table that's from new from ikea and one that's been in the same room in a house for 50 years it feels like it has story and you can't fake it and advertising you know without careful handling can feel very superficial and i think brand people might look at it and just kind of go well that brand feels like it's got venture capital it feels like someone's sold out it It feels like they're just going for scale at all costs.

44:22Bold Bean Co. Founder:It feels not that delicious or cool. It just feels commercial and what have you. So I think what we're talking about is like a playbook that, like, if you don't have a little bit of skepticism about advertising, you just rush into it and you start putting billboards out. All of a sudden you can wake up and the brand will feel very, very different for no other reason, you know, than it's just advertising.

44:41Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And playbook, I suppose the conventional one that we're, like, talking about, like, Toby, like, the funny idea of, like, matching luggage. It's like a very classic interpretation, I suppose, to my eyes, is a sort of what we would do if we were doing a classic sort of let's rinse all of our brand assets and get our brand visible. I want to show you a massive jar. And then I also want to show you brand color yellow in the background and then have like massive copy in our brand font saying we make the best beans or like eat these beans. and that you can kind of almost picture that ad in your head can't you?

45:18Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And then is it like

45:19Bold Bean Co. Founder:what I hate is when you see available

45:21Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Available at Tesco Available at Sainsbury's That's just like

45:24Bold Bean Co. Founder:you've just killed something Yeah You've literally rocked into the party with the sickest leather jacket on Yeah But you're just wearing Crocs Do you know what I mean? It's just like well the Crocs are probably Crocs are quite cool Yeah quite cool now Maybe like I don't know sketches yeah sketches but like it's it's yeah so that's traditional playbooks it's big big billboard with those things on.

45:47Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:But the reason why it works is because Yeah, why does it work? you're kind of, you've got that like, okay, I'm looking at this jar and I'm like, even if you look at it for like 10 seconds, even if you look at it for one second and you're like, you're not interested enough to read it, it's gone into your brain a tiny bit. And I think there's a rule like you need to see a brand seven times before you buy. And then you go into the supermarket and then you start to see, you see a kind of end of Ireland that's in the same brand yellow. Did you see that on the tube? oh maybe and so it's the subtlety of just like that visual memorability that you're like and suddenly you're buying that's and that and I do think that would work I actually do think that would work for us I just think there would be a cost to it and the cost would be that exactly what Toby described it's like that subtle like oh have you guys sold out a bit or like oh that's a bit oh you guys are you guys are there you're not i don't know i think it was someone alison roman said this about beans oh she's a she's an amazing you need to have her on here she's um see me up boy she's an amazing she's an amazing american chef like kind of the the nigella of america sort of thing um and she said talking about beans um it's like when your favorite band gets big it's like you're sort of it's a bit like oh god i saw them first and you're a bit like it's a bit annoying that everyone's into them because you're like but like i was into cmat like three years ago now everyone's into her like it's kind of it's a bit cringe to be into cmat now because everyone's into her but i promise you i was there first but like so that's it's sort of

47:24Bold Bean Co. Founder:that tension that's so i mean we talked about it a lot i think about rock and roll and like using bands as brands i think the words are kind of interchangeable um when you've got like i saw oasis last year fuck me great night but you know they just come on stage and it's just like they they have they are the leather jacket of yeah music do you know what i mean and it's just even everything they did from the top so the bucket hats with the oasis in the thing you know just like the fact the partnership with adidas just all made like just complete sense and that's

47:56Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:like in a band context they're like yeah they're mainstream but like so rich in there okay so so

48:04Bold Bean Co. Founder:well we're going to come on to on to the campaign just quickly so other like so other things that are kind of so the bill the billboard thing that's the traditional playbook yellow jar available at what are the other kind of bait kind of things that would be under a traditional playbook do you

48:22Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:know what I don't really know I suppose I'm like a consumer of this in a way so I've just seen that as the ultimate form I think uh I can imagine like an unboxing video of uh a creator and then you put money behind it it's like I've been buying these and I've lost like 10 kilos because beans fill me up and keep me full for ages and they taste good but I can imagine that that's sort of are selling out it would definitely convert sales i can guarantee if people because people beans do do make you feel great they do reduce your blood sugar spike and health focused messaging will convert people into beans but it's not i don't think i don't want that to be how my brand represents even though i know it would sell i'd make money but at the cost of brand credentials

49:11Bold Bean Co. Founder:so okay two year old what is a campaign yeah because i think there's a lot of superfluous marketing bullshit that's sputtered about and i'm like what what are you speaking french mate um i actually do a bit of french but sorry je m 'appelle daniel but um yeah so what is it what define it so i think this observation was made a few decades ago that like the advertising industry is borrowed a lot from military language and it turns up in in so many kind of different areas and so campaign is a discrete moment of time where you set your site on an objective and

49:48Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:the resources of the brand pour into that wow and that's from the army yeah and they

49:52Bold Bean Co. Founder:there's a whole bunch of other ways just quickly because okay what other ones are there um you're gonna put me on the spot here but there are probably a lot of stuff that we use internally to refer to meetings or documents that that borrow from there it's strategy it's so long ago now it's all kind of been naturalized and then someone pointed out and I thought it was you know um kind of interesting and it probably is a moment of self-reflection for the industry to kind of ask what we gain and maybe what we uh what we've added into our mix by borrowing so much from that but a campaign is um sits under a long-term brand strategy the long-term brand strategy is an all-star we talk about being in place for five years a vision for the brand that's going to be enduring a campaign is a moment of time where some resources are deployed at a specific big job to be done in pursuit of that message.

50:35Bold Bean Co. Founder:Now, big brands will run many campaigns all the time, often with different objectives. So best way to think about it is a bit of activity from a brand with a set amount of resources pointing at a very specific goal for that amount of time. That's beautifully put.

50:51Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And I think that, like, for me, how I, like, learned it was, it was, like, rather than, for example, previously, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'd be like, Dan, you'd be like, oh, Amelia, we should get you back on the podcast and I'll be like yeah sure should we do next week yeah great and I was like no no we need to do it so it can come out in September because that's our campaign moment so suddenly it changes oh I need to savour up this buzz and activity all happening around the same moment for that particular objective because if I spread it out it will kind of reduce it yeah makes total sense yeah because I mean that's how we get guests guests on so we

51:28Bold Bean Co. Founder:just did rick stein that was that was oh he's got some book coming out not some book he's got a he's got a book coming out cooking course um makes total sense okay so then north star vision here campaign say campaigns below it slightly what i know it's resourced to a specific goal for set short period of time set period of time how does that how do people think about linking that to the north star do you see what i'm trying to say yeah yeah well i i think the north star will kind kind of obligate the brand to a certain number of things. So it usually has committed the brand to a consumer group.

52:00Bold Bean Co. Founder:It usually has a vision of what the brand should be. And then you can, you know, might even kind of give a sense of what the brand stands for, its tone and its kind of values. So all that stuff has to be true for the campaign. There's no point in having a brand strategy if it doesn't drive the campaign. So it should ideally simplify some of the decision making around campaign. But the campaign is also allowed to get its hands dirty with a specific problem at a specific point in time and maybe be a bit more, you know, in the weeds of a certain goal. Topical. Exactly. Yeah. Any examples of big brands?

52:29Bold Bean Co. Founder:Then we'll get onto the Bowl Bean stuff. Well, you can think of something like... What's a really good campaign? Well, if you think of a brand, like a supermarket brand, they will have a... And yeah, the Snickers campaign is amazing. But if you think about something... What's the Snickers campaign? Snickers, as in the chocolate bar. No, no, no. Snickers.

52:44Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:You're not you when you're hungry.

52:45Bold Bean Co. Founder:You're not you when you're hungry. But see, that's a really brilliant ongoing campaign. But for maybe a kind of simple business, they sell one thing, you know, They sell to everyone. They sell all the time. If you think about a brand like Tesco, they have their Christmas campaign, which is very much about brand love. Then they have other campaigns that might try and tell you that the vegetable's fresh. They might have others that tell you that their own label is cheap. Now, that all sits under their overarching brand strategy. And there's a reason why Tesco campaigns, whether it's doing a big emotional Christmas spot or value campaign, feel like they're from one brand.

53:14Bold Bean Co. Founder:That's brand strategy. So should campaigns infiltrate conversation? Is that one way of looking at it? Well, then we kind of get into a conversation of like how you build the best campaigns. Because some people would say yes, some people would say no. And, you know, I'm certainly of the view if the extended reach of the campaign, if people see it and that's all they do about it, then you haven't kind of gone far enough. The best campaigns are talked about. Someone takes a photo of it. You know, someone kind of wants to steal the poster off the wall and kind of keep it in their bedroom. Like the best campaigns are remarkable and do stick with you and do get talked about.

53:46Bold Bean Co. Founder:Some other people might make a different case. But at the end of the day, the best KPI for a campaign probably is fame. Did people talk about it? Did they want to share it? Did it infiltrate WhatsApp groups and dinner table conversations? Because if it's just kind of seen and then forgotten, it probably hasn't gone far enough. Okay, so then you have this big campaign at the top. And then what does that funnel down into? So is that like social media, then your retail strategy? Do you see what I'm trying to say? Yeah. So a campaign. So a brand strategy, campaign, moment in a short period of time, whether it's Christmas, Easter, World Cup, and then what's below that?

54:27Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah.

54:28Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:We're trying to, for example, make sure that in September, which we have, we've got secondary space in supermarkets. So when you're walking down the supermarket, we're also at the end of the gondola end, ideally.

54:41Bold Bean Co. Founder:I always wonder why it's called gondola end.

54:43Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I know.

54:43Bold Bean Co. Founder:I just think of being in the Alps. It sounds very wanky.

54:46Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:like getting a going up to eat like a steak oh one of those like a gondola oh yeah no idea maybe yeah don't know but um but also what you really want is branded gondola ends so then you're kind of tying that oh i've seen something there and like you can have a bit of copy so that's an example of how it trickles through but nowadays it trickles through in so many different ways

55:09Bold Bean Co. Founder:i think so because a campaign is bound by an objective not a channel so i can you never have Okay, yeah, that makes sense. You don't just kind of go, we have an out-of-home campaign. You know, Bulbine's about to run an awareness campaign. So all the resources for this point in time pointed at the job of that nine in ten people who haven't heard of the brand yet and how the brand introduces itself to it. So that can be done in advertising, it will be. It can also be done in store. It can be done in moments like this, you know, and there'll be a whole bunch of stuff that's all about awareness. And for a moment of time, you know, a lot of resources of the brand will be going to kind of introduce the brand to that nine out of ten people who haven't met it just yet.

55:44Bold Bean Co. Founder:and that becomes a focus for a point in time. So anything that can be conscripted into that, another kind of irony word, but conscripted into that kind of battle is kind of part of the campaign, effectively. Okay, should we have a little look at the bad boy?

56:00Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:So first of all, I'm going to see if we've been sent any, because the shoot is actually happening today. So let me just see if there's... Okay, so I think... Just show that.

56:12Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah. We'll wait for people listening on audio.

56:15Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:So we'll flash this up. But this is essentially what you've got to imagine is, yeah, you're walking around and you kind of see.

56:23Bold Bean Co. Founder:Have you not seen this? No. Oh, great. Okay.

56:25Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Oh, sick. That is sick. That is so sad. These are AI mock-ups. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll flash on screen the actual shoot, the shot ones, because...

56:38Bold Bean Co. Founder:So just for people listening, it's, how would you describe it? It's someone's hand in an empty jar with yellow nails, which I think is beautiful.

56:46Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I quite like the reverse engineer. Do you want to describe that, kind of the whole idea? Nick was talking about how the biggest boring thing for an ad agency is essentially that sort of playbook of like, we want a huge pack shop because obviously we want a massive jar because a massive jar is going to build that memorability and they're going to go in store and see that if we didn't have the jar there as a small brand you're relying on a lot more but it also limits a lot of what you can do creatively so it becomes a bit of a sort of like boring creative brief but also all the jars i'm looking

57:22Bold Bean Co. Founder:at are empty which implies that you know making obsessed with beans you nail it pretty quickly and then someone's like looks like they're sinking a pint of beans yeah with their tongue in it which is interesting i love the time someone's got them on their head like yeah we'll put it on screen for

57:37Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:people listening but sorry for people watching it's this idea of desperation really yes desperation

57:43Bold Bean Co. Founder:yeah talk to me about that i mean it looks fucking amazing and arresting because again i think what's beautiful is you've taken that playbook we detailed but added your you've added the the leather barber jacket to it do you know what i mean like i think i think that's the way you know i'm trying to say because it's got that also the nails guys yeah but the nail is yellow yeah that's how you get the yellow in there okay so yeah talk me through the thought process from from reverse yeah reverse engineer that well it's kind of you know i i think how long would you say four years that we we met like like i would say a huge percentage of conversation of those four years have been how like marketing can often feel like a sellout kind of moment and there is this amazing relationship between like Bold Bean and its consumer.

58:25Bold Bean Co. Founder:It feels really reciprocated around this obsession with beans and a shared understanding. And so when Amelia kind of called up and said, actually, we think it's time to do this first campaign, we're at 11%, we now need to meet the other nine and 10 people. Given all our conversations have been how like advertising could like without special consideration, feel like a really like, it could be a really dangerous moment for the brand where it feels like, God, have they really understood what I saw in the brand? Do they have understood the mission that we're on? Like all the things we bought into just could have been reduced from the brand.

58:56Bold Bean Co. Founder:So there was definitely a little bit of nervousness around it. At the same time, the job of the campaign is awareness. You know, there's lots of different metrics that you can chase, but awareness campaigns have a particular challenge to them, which is you don't have a shared memory. You don't have a shared dialogue. You know, by definition, these are people who don't know the brand. They don't know what it sells. So we have these kind of like dual challenges of awareness is the objective And the way to do awareness is be brand led, introduce yourself, be really clear and simple about what the brand is.

59:26Bold Bean Co. Founder:But a need to not play out the kind of typical advertising playbook that might actually alienate the 10 percent who all of a sudden think this isn't the brand I bought into. They've completely lost the magic. They've completely forgotten the story that we share together. So that was the kind of dual challenge. And when we're asking ourselves like kind of as a joint team, like the question of like, well, we're going to introduce ourselves to new people. What do we need them to know about us? Of course, some really familiar things might come up. Like we should maybe depict the product in a way that tastes beautiful, because actually that is one of the first things we hear about the product.

59:57Bold Bean Co. Founder:People just kind of go, it's an amazing taste. There's also like an amazing quality story. If you see the product, it just looks radically different to what you would pour out of a tin. So these were kind of conversations of areas we might play when it came to the launch. But the thing that became interesting is, yes, the brand's superpowers taste. Yes, the brand's superpowers quality. but it has another superpower that actually shouldn't be overlooked, even though it's incredibly rare, which is this kind of culture of obsessiveness that sits around it. And not all FMCG brands would have the opportunity to say that.

1:00:28Bold Bean Co. Founder:That's an asset that we have to play with at launch. Just by definition, it's just not something all other brands have. But Bold Bean does. And the more we sat with that, the more we started to kind of think, what an interesting place to play for an awareness campaign. Because as much as people are convinced by an advert telling them something, What they're really convinced by is someone else that they know, you know, or seeing other people doing something. It's kind of like a herd mentality type thing. And the other thing it got us excited about is this 10 % audience that is so important to the brand, so important to the future of the brand.

1:01:00Bold Bean Co. Founder:It stopped the conversation around how do we not annoy them while we do this other goal. It actually made them the stars of the show. So we kind of got really confident with the idea of leaving maybe taste and quality as kind of secondary messages. and instead ran towards the idea of like actually the culture of obsession that sits around this is one of the most powerful things around the brand. And what became additionally exciting is we found a way of depicting that that did have a massive pack shot in it. And so all these kind of rules of like how you get noticed and how you get remembered and people understanding what the brand is, we found a way of like resolving that within this format.

1:01:32Bold Bean Co. Founder:So again, I have made an amazing creative process led by other people and including the Bowlby team that has twists and turns and mistakes and headbanging against the wall and then a brilliant resolution and sound very, very simple and structured there. But that is kind of the journey we kind of went on to get there. And just had that kind of like, you know, that thing where you just see a brilliant idea, like it just is ticking all the boxes. Like we had hard fought what the criteria for a great spot was, but when we got to that, we were like, right, that is ticking all those boxes. I think what's interesting is that you're still, as a brat, if you're looking at the brand for a human end, you're still being yourself.

1:02:04Bold Bean Co. Founder:So like say you went on a holiday with your friends, oh I had a really wild holiday the way you talk about that with your mates in the pub is very different to the way you talk about it with your grandma is very different to the way you talk about it with your boss is very different to the way you talk about it with some random on the street but you still need to be yourself you know i.e like you still they're very kind of authenticity authenticity exactly and I think what you're saying mate is some people you know you just I've seen it with friends as soon as they oh hello like you know they're just not themselves they're not always like that but you know what I'm trying to say or like if you introduce your friends to like I don't know like other friends they start changing slightly I think that happens in brands as well

1:02:44Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:and that's such a good example and it makes you feel weird like you don't know them and I think that's exactly the analogy actually actually no I had this

1:02:51Bold Bean Co. Founder:so I live with my brother he's got his little no actually fucking looks like he's going to NASA huge he's a lawyer huge space fucking station I've got my laptop and he was on a Zoom call um uh like with lawyers it sounded so boring but he he he suddenly is like oh hi uh hi you know ash um yes great weekend i'm like but it's all that happens in in in terms of in society and i suppose it happens in brands you suddenly think oh we're doing you know the billboard thing is oh we're going to a cocktail party we need to act different yeah that's so true and like and like hadn't thought of it and obviously the art of getting up that right is in a brand perspective

1:03:32Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:well it's still it still feels really nerve-wracking I'm so proud of Deepa who has yeah has really kind of been on that kind of treading that line of she's got such incredible experience and got that sort of but this playbook I know will work but this option is also could really work and she's gone in that kind of be bold was one of our company values yeah um she's gone into the be bold and be like actually this is this has got something to it and I think that's that's really important um but I think things like you know for example I was at the shoot today and you know the cast are bold bean fans they're legit bold bean fans and one woman was just completely fizzing about doing this and she was talking to me all about the recipes and she had bold beans last night to keep her get her full of beans for the for the shoot today and it's like Like, that is so cool that we've got legit fans on our, not just, like, hot people, like, legit hands.

1:04:30Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I mean, they are hot people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, you know, not that they're not hot, they're hot, I promise. But it's okay if they're not hot. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm over-talking that. But they're just people who genuinely love the brand, and that even is an element I'm really proud of.

1:04:48Bold Bean Co. Founder:And then, okay, so, and then what were the ideas you had to kill to get to that? Well, I think we had a lot of conversation more at a strategic level. So almost like you can do some of these soul searching questions with like words on a piece of paper. And like I said, there are like questions around, well, is it most important that we kind of make the brand known by kind of really leaning into taste? Like recipes have been so important. Do we need to show the brand in context? Like, you know, not just in a jar, but on a plate in a serve. Or is it more about like kind of really depicting the size?

1:05:16Bold Bean Co. Founder:There are some like threads to pull on. But to your point around, you know, the personality and who you are and authenticity, it's like it feels like the type of thing you can say on a podcast like this. And like, of course, everyone would nod along to that. But there's another version of events where some people kind of go, no, it's my first advertising campaign. We're spending real money. This is a real grown up moment. And they also get so excited about the opportunity to kind of have that kind of very different thing and forget all the stuff that sits in the brand. Like, I think what's so incredible about the process that this team has been on and, again, like really within partnership has been like the stuff we've ended up leaning on that's kind of going to market feels like stories that have sat in the brand for ages.

1:05:54Bold Bean Co. Founder:You know, the idea of obsession being the kind of thing that sets these apart, you know, being kind of there from day one. Eating straight from the jar. And eating straight from the jar is something that you've talked about.

1:06:04Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Well, it's kind of in my founder story. Yeah. Like it's been there from day one.

1:06:08Bold Bean Co. Founder:You know, and so instead of this being a moment where it's like, right, the brand's completely changing, right, you know, make it really commercial, actually it's gone back to its kind of roots and just found a new way of expressing some stuff that's been at the heart of the brand for a long time. Because that's what we talked about, which I thought was fascinating, is the archaeology of a brand. And actually a lot of these stories are sat in the cobwebs of the brand's mind. how can people go and find those because what i think is also really interesting is the how kind of linking this right back to the beginning is those different stories to tell so is it taste is it you know um kind of not trial but like different usages or recipes but actually it's the obsession is what you've landed on yeah like how would people find those well there's kind of two layers there which is how you go from those three to one and then how you find the content for one i i think the other bit i don't want to like um understate is that early on conversation you know it's quite strategic in the sense of to get some more coffee yeah great it's quite strategic in the sense of like i'll have a coffee not to bore you with no no no you're

1:07:21Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:not boring you that would be for the listeners this is a classic dan moment isn't it just like

1:07:28Bold Bean Co. Founder:um no sorry that was really rude i wasn't meant to be rude at all thank you i just love it yeah I just need some more coffee. You're literally just about to go into your main moment. No, no, no. Well, we're all familiar. I'll do the boring strategy. No, no, no. Sorry. I needed coffee because I knew what you're about to say is going to be banging. I need a stiff drink because I knew what was coming. No, no, no. So you said there's two layers to it. Yeah. And like we just like there were some like when you start thinking about how to move awareness. I don't want to kind of get too technical about it.

1:08:02Bold Bean Co. Founder:But, you know, you just start putting stuff through strategic stress testing. It's like, right, it'd be amazing. Like, if you look at the cookbooks and the content online, it's incredible to see the product in context. And, like, the recipe just kind of sells the product. So when you say just in context, that's like it being used to be used to be? In a recipe and serve on a plate, you know, and it's so appetizing. Let me ask ourselves, like, this is an awareness campaign. Like, how do we advertise the brand, not the category? because I can be kind of really confident that beautiful recipe shots will do an amazing job for beans.

1:08:34Bold Bean Co. Founder:But like, how's the brand incorporated into that? Like, you know, it becomes kind of secondary and you can kind of like debate whether the logo can be big. That's not really going to move the dial. Like recipes are going to really make people want beans and we'll hope that they notice the brand. It's not really that squarely focused on it. The other thing that became kind of interesting is that like you kind of get tempted and like some of the stuff we're exploring is like almost atomizing the product, like just singular beans, like just taking the product because, you know, I'm sure everyone's kind of seen the product now.

1:09:01Bold Bean Co. Founder:Like they're bigger, they're juicy. They're just an incredible raw product that you kind of want to show off. But like atomized beans also look a bit weird and like non-human. And like all of a sudden like, you know, and so you kind of just, the reason why we got there wasn't because three good options. Like it was like actually just putting something through the pressure test of like real money is on the table. How is this going to move the needle on awareness, you know, and like a sincere answer. And that's what kind of got us to this end state. And then your question was like, well, okay, Bold Bean has its kind of story about eating straight from the jar and, you know, that's kind of traveled with the brand and we see it on.

1:09:37Bold Bean Co. Founder:So all this kind of great stuff. Where do they come from? I think most founders tend to know the rituals that orbit their brand. Maybe not always. What do you mean by rituals that orbit their brand? Well, I would kind of call eating straight from the jar, being kind of obsessive around the stock in it, you know, really similar to putting a lime in a Corona or something like that. Yes, okay, with you. And there are these things that people do that just like make the, splitting the G or whatever, you know what I mean? There's like rituals that belong to that brand and they feel like this kind of incredible handshake between the consumer and the product, you know.

1:10:07Bold Bean Co. Founder:I think we tend to spot those. We hear about them anecdotally. You know, founders kind of get a couple of mates texting them the same thing. So it's not the surfacing becomes hard. It's maybe identifying their value. It's like they can become such an incredible proof point. Like for a brand that's trying to like underscore the obsession around it, emphasize how the product has like all these kind of superior aspects like the ultimate proof of that is it's not a can that you kind of strain and watch three times that you're happily eating before it's even touched a pan is kind of like such a profound proof point for that so i think most people hear about them maybe what's not talked about enough is just how valuable they can be the the the bit i find and understanding how so what the whole sort of bug into feature thing of the layer on the top of the beans you know you're talking about how that's like uh well they're like the

1:10:57Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:stock is quite is quite viscous and thick and people could gloop gloopy so with your diehard

1:11:04Bold Bean Co. Founder:fans and the depth and the storytelling they're brought in that's easy to explain i think you've done a marvelous job with the social media being like you know this is this shows it's fucking banging do you know what i mean yeah as you go up from that 11 and say there's more shoppers who are like, they buy the, they see the sick billboards, they buy it and they experience that. Like, have you got a strategy to deal with that? Um, no.

1:11:30Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I suppose if I was trying, if I was hopeful, I would say that part of this, like, advocacy focused model that we're kind of going for is our fans can do that education for us, but also our organic content, like that is some of our best performing content, talking about what the stock is, how you should save it. Our best performing newsletter this year, I think, was a beanstalk video. It was talking about freezing beanstalk. And I think it created like nearly 7K of sales. It's crazy talking about beanstalk. So it's something which we'll continue to talk about. But, you know, we know that actually, once they're in the brand, they'll have the chance to not be scared of it.

1:12:16Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:But there's nothing we can really do unless we were to do... That's so brave though

1:12:18Bold Bean Co. Founder:because you could imagine in a parallel universe someone being like it's so good there's stock on it. Do you know what I mean? As in like being oh no we're trying to go mass get bigger now we need to let people know that problem.

1:12:30Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah well maybe that would be another campaign.

1:12:33Bold Bean Co. Founder:But I don't think

1:12:33Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:we're at that stage yet because people haven't heard of us we can't start talking about stock. It's really good for existing customers because it's like a value add. They're like I'm not just buying the beans I'm also buying the bean stock. So they're like oh a nice excuse to have another order on the on the newsletter but they already love us that it's just a nice repurchase yes thing but for brand awareness it's not the right messaging how do you think about the content because i remember when we when we did the pod in in battersea it was it was i think it was a shoot day i think it was literally just you and hannah then and ed and i was like this is this is like willie wonka

1:13:09Bold Bean Co. Founder:territory like there was like fucking 10 things on the wall of like different recipes but i think we'd oh yeah because nina parker was there yeah yeah yeah um she does saucy doesn't she yeah i love that stuff yeah i love that stuff um but even back then three four years ago there was a real clear like this is what we're trying to do like how's the content strategy changed over the years

1:13:33Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:do you know what i mean yeah i mean i think that it's matured matured maybe a better word yeah um and we think about it obviously you know we're now on different you know Facebook, TikTok you know that kind of thing. There's also our newsletter has become we've got really regular subscribers so it's pretty much the same thing but there's way more thought that goes into it and there's so much thinking you can put into it. So for example we'll have a bank of content that is just everything you're craving during the summer. So a really delicious black bean and watermelon salad with sizzling halloumi.

1:14:15Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And we'll have it in the bank and Marley will post it at the right moment on the right day and it will go wild because everyone wants that in that moment. So it's that kind of thing.

1:14:25Bold Bean Co. Founder:So how would you ascertain what that moment is? So scorcher.

1:14:29Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:You look at the weather forecast.

1:14:30Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah, yeah, yeah. As an example. But I love all this. It's like, it seems so basic, but it's actually, it's so basic. it's complicated in the sense it's like infiltrate the conversation if it's fucking pouring with rain no one wants a watermelon salad but this is genius yeah okay so okay so one thing is is yeah having that so banker content which you know is just 30 bangers but also there's you know

1:14:51Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:there's now a plan and we also we are a media company when it comes to our content a bean media company so when an author a cook food writer has a cookbook coming out their publisher organizes oh, you've got to go to Bold Bean one day and do the bean recipe from your cookbook. And we do that as a collaboration reel with, you know, Georgina Hayden's new book. She was released recently. She came and did the bean recipe from it because we're a platform as well as just like, you know, Mob. Like Ben is one of my best friends and I saw his journey. He was, you know, he was an entrepreneur straight after uni and I saw Mob.

1:15:30Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And if you actually look at Bold Bean, there's a lot of the DNA of Mob. We're obviously not as cool as Mob, but like the DNA of Mob in what we do content wise, because I've learned so much from what they've done.

1:15:41Bold Bean Co. Founder:What have you learned from Ben?

1:15:44Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I mean, I'm always learning from Ben. He's so brilliant. He's a marketing genius.

1:15:50Bold Bean Co. Founder:I bumped into him on, you know, where's all the Vietnamese restaurants? Kinglands Road.

1:15:55Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Oh, yeah. Yeah.

1:15:56Bold Bean Co. Founder:And like he was just asking me a zillion questions. It's like he's just so curious.

1:15:59Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:He's so curious. So curious. And he knows where things are heading. He's got that amazing ability. So I will, I will, it's so hard to say because we've had so many chats over the years where I'll come back and I'll immediately, you know, call up my team and be like, have we thought about doing something in this way? I can't really put my finger on it. But if you have a look at what they're doing, like for example, now he's, you'll notice he's pivoted because he's got this app and it's quite, it's far more about the consumer wanting really reliable, credible recipes that fit into their lives and that kind of like batch cooking, all of that, but still with all those foodie credentials and he has that balance.

1:16:37Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:So I'd say a way that, you know, I, my team have, have interpreted some of that is, you know, we're not just thinking about beautiful, you know, we used to do a lot of like cherry and radicchio and butter bean salads, which you'd see on like Cafe Cecilia's menu. And we're like, oh yeah, that's what we want. But now we balance that out with actually a lot more of stuff that people actually do want to cook. And that's kind of where mobs, what mobs doing as well.

1:17:06Bold Bean Co. Founder:This is what Al said at Jamie's. She had like the four principles is, one is so authenticity, entertainment, move with your audience. So I don't know when this comes live. So Jamie's doing a vertical shot on iPhone, literally shot like that as a new series, which considering he's like being a legacy media, like they move with where the eyeballs move but the other thing he was saying is and it's kind of the ego of not the ego but like sometimes creating stuff that you want isn't actually the best strategy because you know we're going to vespa tonight there'll be something on the menu but most of the people may not want that and his whole thing was be in service of your audience i think that's what bob's done it's actually you know it's really nice making fucking putinesca right i do like putinesca but um but but you know what people want protein people want to get tonk now so do the egg smash thing you know with a pizza slice and that's just like orgasmic on the eyes when you're scrolling you know it's just like that's so interesting that's so interesting because then you have to do a really hard pivot i'm asking this selfishly with the spot because they had a sponsorship business where they had like deals with the card very reliant on ad spend

1:18:20Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And now they've done the most incredible job of they knew they had this trusted brand. And actually, that's what they're servicing. And, you know, he just made the decision not to do any more cookbooks because they're building up just the quality of that app. So that when you go on, any recipe you do is going to work, which is actually unique. Right now, creators can make a piece of recipe content look incredible. It doesn't necessarily have to be a really well-written recipe, knowing that actually you could put that all in one tray rather than having a hob thing. And all these sort of details that make a recipe a headache, but also not work.

1:18:58Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:A lot of people will do a recipe and they'll blame themselves. They'll be like, oh, I'm just shit at cooking. But actually, it's a bad recipe. And there's a lot of bad recipes out there. And I think mob's that trusted space where you can go and...

1:19:12Bold Bean Co. Founder:What I don't understand is when you cook a dish, and you've been sort of aroused by the flavours as you've been cooking it, once you've cooked it, you don't want to eat it? Did you ever get that? That's just one of my... No, no, that's one of my weird foibles. But I was speaking to... I don't know if you know the creator Jack Munn. He does... He drinks at the Saviour, I do. He's like, I've been cooking it all day and my mum's said this since I was born. If I've cooked a recipe, because you've had the flavours, like... Wow, I wish I had that. Yeah.

1:19:39Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I'm like eating it before it's going out and having it.

1:19:42Bold Bean Co. Founder:But the next day, it always tastes banging. so the leftovers always taste better than the the maybe that's one of my weird things but like i'd sometimes i cook a recipe i cook a recipe i'm like oh i'm just a bit i don't really fancy this Thai green curry now but that's just a bit rogue yeah but um so that's so so so yeah being in service of the audience what's the um linking this back to sort of the the bigger brands because i feel like what neil said to me and this is an interesting tension be in service of the audience you know what what's their day look like nils was saying and his whole thing's taste and he's got the there's a should we say who nils is sorry yeah uh nils is the founder of uncommon yeah uh we had a sick chat and um so he was saying i didn't notice he came back with a hungry goodie

1:20:31Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:bag you didn't get one for yours no no so there's some in the car don't worry

1:20:37Bold Bean Co. Founder:the car at my house. Exactly. Not a listener will be able to We need some magic budget first. And then the, but what he said to me was, so he is, is kind of, he's got a really good quote, which is about the author Charles Bukowski, which is like, to do a dangerous thing with, to do, to do, oh mate, I've butchered it. You know it? No. I'm going to have to get it on my phone. It's so good. he says he base it's one of his quote you know he collects quotes which i think is really interesting um and he the reason he collects them is not necessarily to use them it's to build the mental fodder so that when he comes in here to be creative he's got it's just got this like rich resource to pull on but he he was saying you know on the one hand it's like being the tension is like being in service of your audience but on the other side his whole thing he was saying you know people don't need to get it they just need to feel it that some things can't be explained and a lot of your work i think is that you know is is it's kind of a bit like fuck you energy like you either get it or you don't but that might work for big brands but for smaller brands it may not so he goes to do a dull thing with style beats doing a dangerous thing without style but doing a dangerous thing with style that's what bukowski calls art and i think that's really interesting like danger and style like how do you think about danger i love it and like i've you know worked with nils now for almost a decade and he's just a phenomenal phenomenal creative mind you know and um we'll have to edit that out because i don't want him to know that but he's just he is you know best in the world um you know and and a great career partner like i think in the world of brand strategy our job is to kind of like wrestle i i think with actually um some of the stuff that sits behind that which is you do absolutely need to move people but you also need to move the brand and actually finding a way that these two things can sit in harmony is the challenge you can do one very easily um but to do both is the really really hard thing and i think we're now like and both of them have their own kind of criticism if you just move people but it's not connected to the brand the brand just can't feel superficial and we're like great you've sponsored a festival but like why that brand yeah what what the hell like and similarly the brand can kind of obsess over what it wants to tell people, but if it doesn't find a way to make it culturally resonant, then it's not going to move anywhere.

1:23:01Bold Bean Co. Founder:And so the thing that makes brand strategy really interesting is the job to try and find the halfway point between these two and find something that works really, really powerfully and not as a concession, but finds that interaction between the two that is really going to move people. Like, I think the thing that's kind of phenomenal about Bold Bean is that the kind of obsessive story sits on both sides, right like consumers embrace it but the brand fuels it like it's not a challenge to kind of stitch those two things together they work better together than they would individually but it is

1:23:30Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:it is still as you say like that dangerous thing like i did send like these mock-ups to a few really experienced and brilliant marketing um directors and they were like oof this is

1:23:45Bold Bean Co. Founder:oh that's there's so many so much in that when people say that it wasn't like hell yeah i love

1:23:51Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:it and that really that is where the danger lies because there you know is that you know people have the first bean in the jars you know are they always you know all of these kind of different things came in which makes it scary but that also is probably where the opportunity is as well is that there's a reason why like there is yes people don't do this the whole time yeah that's

1:24:18Bold Bean Co. Founder:how does that sort of feedback affect you with your course so how i try and i'm an optimist

1:24:25Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:so for example what i said to d was like when we were kind of pranging to be honest like is are we just like oh you know so much money we're a small brand all of that um is actually this is our opportunity, if it goes the way that I hope and believe it is going to go, it's incredible for us. We can always go back to the generic marketing playbook available at Tesco. We can always go back to that. And that's in the option for the future, but you can't really retrospectively, you know, do something like this, be bold. If you've sold out already, people are like, oh, well now you're trying a bit hard.

1:25:05Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:It's like, this is the only time we can do it. So let's give it a go and see where it takes us because you heard of like jeff bezos's one uh

1:25:13Bold Bean Co. Founder:one on two-way door decision making so one one-way door would be doing the old it's basically one way do is you walk through a door there's no coming back two-way door is is you basically can walk in and come back and he says both most of us i mean he's a clever fucker right did but like he basically says most most of the stuff we fret about is we think it's one-way door decision making and actually most of the time it's a two-way decision so like i thought i'd be like yeah but i think to your point but if it was a one-way door one-way door um you would have gone if you go through that and do the old school way it's it's very hard to claw that back but as you say you can go and do this way oh fuck it doesn't work we'll just do the the bait way do you know what I mean the um no I hadn't yeah that's see it's almost there's there's there's there's the anxiety around it can be diminished when you know you can go back yeah but I yeah I also think that it's we don't we can yeah I don't know what I'm saying it's funny thing happens when you're like consuming advertising that you get very sensible all of a sudden and there is absolutely a time you like someone in that room has to represent the business challenge and and some of the reality when you say consume advertising as like a strategist or as no just the people creating it who are signing it off who are you know paying for it you know there is a need to kind of go is this going to the objective are we going to be able to deliver it or is it going to be work on all the spaces that we need to there is a need to have like quite a rational hat on but we sometimes see the hat on so long that we consume it in such an abstract way that actually the biggest risk for the advertising is that no one notices it.

1:26:49Bold Bean Co. Founder:It feels completely wallpaper, although see it for a second and completely ignore it.

1:26:52Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Or not have a feeling.

1:26:54Bold Bean Co. Founder:Not have a feeling about it. It has no residual impact on someone a second after they've seen it. Because, you know, we're going to look at a small window in the calendar, right? In the totality of someone's year, in the totality of someone's life, it's a very small moment. So actually, the biggest risk that we need to be aware of is no one caring, no one being moved, people forgetting it. But, you know, it's hard to kind of appraise. People, like, don't allow themselves to appraise stuff through that lens. You can be really grown at, wait, is this going to do, you know, all these kind of questions.

1:27:26Bold Bean Co. Founder:But if you just, like, look around for a minute, go for a walk on the street, like, name one ad that you can kind of remember on the walk you did around this block. You know, you'll see 30 advertisements. And most of them are just over-laboured, you know. And I think marketing is downstream of consumer culture. I think consumers could tell you the cliches of today's adverts, what they're sick of seeing, what makes them, what they've just seen 100 times, you know, what's tired. What's that old car adverts? They all look the same. They're all the same. It's like, you know, just driving through some vistas.

1:27:56Bold Bean Co. Founder:It's the same people. It's just like, ooh. Same people, same default. It's just, you know, I think consumers know exactly what they're kind of tired of and what switches off. Get that, is not making it into the rooms that are making these decisions and we sometimes over-engineer and get nervous. But actually, the biggest risk we need to be talking about is like, why the hell would anyone care about that? You know, the benchmark for a great, you know, poster shouldn't be, did it say all the things that we wanted to and workshopped? It's like, will anyone take their phone out and take a photo of that?

1:28:24Bold Bean Co. Founder:Is anyone going to write to the brand and say, can I have a copy of that I want to put on my wall? Like, that's the benchmark you should be getting. Like, there's no other rooms, like bands, you know, to go back to that. When they're coming up with their poster, they're not sitting around and kind of go, is it doing all this stuff? They're like, is this cool? Will people steal it? Will people pay 15 bucks for it at the end of the concert?

1:28:42Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I love that. Because I think that actually how you've just spoken about that is how we try to think about both content and even things like merch. Like we don't want to create a bag that has a huge logo on it and it's just delivering the brand can't huge logo. We want a bag that people actually want. And it's the same thing with content. We don't want content that is, we just put money behind it and it says everything we want to say. we want content that they find naturally engaging. So they're engaged with it. And I suppose this campaign is a way of just engaging them on something and a feeling that it feels natural to engage with rather than, oh, I'm just being sold to, right?

1:29:19Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah.

1:29:20Bold Bean Co. Founder:And I think across the board, you know, from big brands to small brands, we need like a new criteria and vocabulary around the ideas that we're judging. Because we have this very marketing science point of view, which, by the way, is super important, but it's kind of known. It only gets you halfway there. You know, there are boxes to tick but once they're ticked you haven't created something great yet actually what's great is like who's looking at their work and saying are people going to steal this are people going to could we um sell this as a poster you know like that should be the standard that we're aiming for we're in people's lives all the time like how do we move the bar on from just is this an ad that says everything that we need to that people actually care about the what so you when you said marketing is downstream from consumer culture i think what you said it's you know dave trott's he came on the podcast so he's like advertising g basically yeah he's like one of the old he's like 80 and we did a sick podcast they're not going for like three hours and he's he's written amazing books like crossover creativity um uh predatory thinking like he's just a genius and he his famous thing as it links to your point about like trying to be clever in boardrooms versus actually just walking out onto the street.

1:30:33Bold Bean Co. Founder:So he got the Toshiba job early doors for like Toshiba TVs or fridges. And their, what's it like, is it awareness? Your 11 % is the awareness thing, right? So it was like really, really down. And everyone was coming up with these like really clever ideas of like, okay, our computer has all these different features. And he goes, and his whole strength, he says, he's from Barking, and goes, I'm a working class man. I know we talked about this, you know, middle class brands for middle class people at middle class price points. And he was like, no, I just speak like the consumer speaks. So he came up with this thing saying, hello, Tosh, got a Toshiba.

1:31:11Bold Bean Co. Founder:And it just absolutely blew up. I mean, the advert is sick. And they got like, and it's just, and it's like, how do you create something that's really simple and profound? So simple so it goes in, profound enough so it's shared. Yeah. How do you think about the language you use as a brand?

1:31:27Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Well, I suppose if you think about this campaign, the language isn't, there's no copy on it. There's no like actual language. The language is a feeling. But then what was really interesting is how we were then diagnosing, okay, well, how do we take that campaign visual of a massive jar and someone desperate to get that last bean? how do we put that same campaign into that supermarket so that in that context but in the supermarket context you know if we had like a a branded shipper so a kind of a kind of freestanding shelf area the copy on that would have that same expression around desperation

1:32:06Bold Bean Co. Founder:what would yeah what would be the copy on that i can't remember what it was yeah yeah there was a

1:32:10Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:really good one it was like do you not do you not remember like it was like a really

1:32:16Bold Bean Co. Founder:something like

1:32:20Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:oh you can hold two jars in oh you can have two in your hands and four in your pockets like this whole idea of like desperate to have as many as you can obviously that's completely ridiculous but like that kind of quippy little funny line that's going to make you smile it's going to give you the same sort of feeling like that's ridiculous why are you looking for the last bean in that jar that's ridiculous Why are you trying to carry so many beans?

1:32:46Bold Bean Co. Founder:This is a delicious bit of nuance because you see the campaign or the billboards and there's no copy on it, which is, you know, you see it when brands on LinkedIn, they're like, we've just done our new, I don't know, again, whatever campaign. And it's like, and you can see it on the billboard and it's the opening line on the LinkedIn post. So trying to do that feeling piece on the street, but then transferring that into the supermarket aisles, the LinkedIn copy, do you know what I'm trying to say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there is this debate, and we were having this kind of conversation, weren't we, which is the way most people, the easiest way to integrate is to have one asset that does everything.

1:33:24Bold Bean Co. Founder:So it is an image, probably a solid background color with a line, and you can just squeeze it into every shape, put it on a poster, put it on LinkedIn, put it on the kind of point of sale in the shop, and just kind of squeeze it in, and you have consistency. But what you've maximized more often than not is the utility for the marketing team. It's like, great, it just does everything. And there is a real case for consistency. Like it just, to Amelia's kind of anecdote before, people just see this thing a couple of times, kind of go, oh, I've registered it now, it's three times. I think the game we're trying to play is be so good that you notice the first time.

1:33:58Bold Bean Co. Founder:And therefore kind of back yourself to be brilliant in every channel that people want to remark on it. So you can be consistent and then maybe people notice at the fourth time. Or maybe you have a poster on the street that people come in and they feel the need to talk about it at work because it was just kind of weird or they hadn't explored it and they just thought it was so clever or whatever it might be. Or have something that in a very kind of grown-up, sensible shopping environment is just kind of witty, clever enough that it makes you laugh and makes you mention it to your partner and you feel the need to grab the product.

1:34:29Bold Bean Co. Founder:And there's still ways to find consistency within that, but it's not this kind of like dogged one thing that travels across everything. It's an attempt to kind of be brilliant in every context with a bit of respect for how you're meeting consumers. That kind of links to how you talk about your Ibiza trip to your Nana versus your mates at the pub. Yeah. That's so fascinating. Yeah, I thought that's so, like, that nuance across the, I don't know, touch points, another wanky way of saying it. You know what I mean? What are other, like, conceptions? So say there's, I think, the power of seven, whatever it is.

1:35:01Bold Bean Co. Founder:You know, you have to see something seven times. Well, fuck that. Just see us once, mate. You know, this is who we are. what are other kind of tripes like that or like common archaic ways of thinking that you think not necessarily with bulbbing but just in general could be abolished I do really think it's about like just being slightly more ambitious with the with the criteria applied to work not just does it say what we think it needs to but does it say what we think it needs to in such a way that people want to steal the poster or they write in and we've had people email us and say can I get a copy of that ad that you did for so and so because they like it and like That is the bar that advertising should be aiming to hit.

1:35:41Bold Bean Co. Founder:You know, so I think it's about kind of pushing beyond, well, we've just done what we said we need to do. We said the message. It looks nice. It's ticked all the boxes that marketing needs to tick. And just pushing for a higher level of cultural impact. That would be the biggest thing I'd kind of advocate for. One thing I want to explore is creativity in the sense that you guys work remotely or flexible working. You live in Barcelona. And then I think you guys are mostly in the office, right? We're pretty flexible, but yeah. You're pretty flexible. Like how, so how, what are the strengths and like the pros and cons do you think of for creativity of being remote versus being in the office?

1:36:22Bold Bean Co. Founder:I think that's an interesting conversation.

1:36:24Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah. I mean, I would say that I've worked like my whole career remotely. Same here, yeah. So I don't really know what it would be like. Like I can so, I definitely see the value of brainstorms. And I think you need to create environments online which still allow brainstorms and still allow people to be heard. I think personally, I can speak for myself and my experience is that I feel like time by myself is when I'm the most creative as well. So there's advantages of being remote where I, you know, will be by myself a lot and then can let a thought go somewhere i'm not distracted by small talk yes that's that's an advantage but i think there's definitely there's a cost to being remote as well like you're not gonna have like oh what about this oh what about this but but the marketing team do come together we have times where we prioritize that and it's very active in that kind of let's be creative so yeah i don't know if i've answered no no so it goes back to

1:37:25Bold Bean Co. Founder:that intention thing you were saying right at the beginning of like if you if you have the intention to be i don't know it's interesting like some people say to me like brainstorming sessions are really good other people say it's the the idea comes when you're in the shower you know in the in the solitude um how's barcelona like giving you a unique uh yeah how does that develop your taste

1:37:46Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:do you think so I now view the UK consumer market like a tourist and I I love that like I am just fascinated this I'm like I noticed the changes so quickly like I kind of came back and um my sister just arrived and we met at the pub and she was carrying a matcha latte and I was like oh my goodness I did like how did I not know this about you that you were now a matcha like you're my big sister this is weird I felt really weirded out because I felt like I know the match market you know my best friends run Jenki and they've I've understood their consumer and everything like that's not my sister and I was so weirded out by it and we we made it like a joke that she has to like you know next time she has to tell me yeah yeah you can't do that Are you electrolytes next?

1:38:42Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Like what's going on? But I think that I love that I'm coming in and being able to observe things with a bit of distance about how things change because I am ultimately still very in this world, in the UK, but I'm not. So I love that. But I also feel like I'm more curious about, also I think the level of ambition I have for Bold Bean, I'm now looking at like global brands and what brands are doing in Australia and America. I find that's where I want to get inspiration as well. So what are some of those brands? So, I mean, Fish Wife's a really good example. They're an amazing brand in America. What do they do?

1:39:18Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:They do canned fish. They've got, they've obviously, they've got beautiful branding.

1:39:22Bold Bean Co. Founder:Have you seen the Tin Fish guy?

1:39:24Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Oh, no, maybe.

1:39:25Bold Bean Co. Founder:Mate, this guy's got a million followers and he just opens different.

1:39:29Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Oh, is he reviewing them?

1:39:30Bold Bean Co. Founder:Reviewing Tin Fish. There you go.

1:39:32Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Amazing. But yeah, that's a great example of a brand doing something, just like how they're storytelling, how they're kind of engaging with their consumers, how they've made something like that aspirational cool. I find that really inspiring. So, but I think that being in Barcelona does give me distance from the brand in a healthy way as well, because I, you know, I can live in the UK and all people do is talk to me about beans because, you know, they haven't seen me in three months and all they've done is see my LinkedIn posts and they talk to me about beans, whereas none of my friends in Barcelona talk to me about beans.

1:40:13So I'm having different conversations,

1:40:16Bold Bean Co. Founder:which is actually, I think, really useful. No, because I just thought, just the unique edge it gives you, and that makes total sense. You almost have the distance to think about, yeah, looking at it through a fresh pair of eyes.

1:40:28Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah, yeah.

1:40:29Bold Bean Co. Founder:Again, applying this to hospitality, one of Oshin's from the Devonshire's rules is every day he does a walk at the restaurant and he tries to look at it through a completely fresh pair of eyes. And I think whether that's conversations or you're in a restaurant setting, you see the same paint at the same time. You begin to not notice the freshness of things. That's mad. How do you set up, like, because how's the food culture there different to here in terms of just the Spanish, like in a city in Spain?

1:40:58Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I think there's this really traditional food culture in terms of how they shop groceries. But everything is very quality focused and every consumer is very skilled at identifying quality. And that is why when you go into a Spanish supermarket, everything is transparent. You can see everything that's inside everything. And that's because you will see an old granny in the supermarket and she will go through every single bit of jamón and select the jamón that she wants from that. and it's British consumers do not do that they just grab the next one on shelf and maybe someone will look at the sell-by date but generally we don't have that cultural knowledge around quality ingredients so that's a big thing um and I think you know if you go to Barcelona menu you will have pretty much the same menu in most restaurants even like the cool trendy new restaurants they've all got an iteration of uh gilder which is the olive anchovy um thing you would have seen that derby's yeah yeah very you know fucking banging it's infiltrated it's infiltrated london a little pepper they'll always have one of those they'll always have a russian salad which is like a potato salad they'll always have a kind of tuna tartare and a croquetta and after a while you you get, I mean, it's made me so appreciative of London food scene.

1:42:22Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Don't get me wrong, there are great restaurants in Barcelona. It's very well priced. You can go out and you'll have a good meal. But the kind of innovation and the amazing food culture that is in London is unbeatable. And you go out for a meal in London, you're like, that was flawless. And also, I feel like the kind of the detail around the furnishings has been thought about in a way, and the staff and even the uniform, like they think about it as like a whole experience in London because it's so hard to stay alive. You need to really stand out.

1:42:52Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah, it's this, so I was talking to Nils about this, about his love of restaurants, which I didn't realise. There's a flight, not the flyer, the little leaflet with all the restaurant recommendations around here, which I think is really cool. That is really cool. I'm probably going to steal that idea for my summer clubs, but just like a little hungry guide. But it's like where to scoff, where to like get naughty, where to, you know, if you need caffeine fixes and it's just these little recommendations which i think is really like cool do you know what i mean but one thing he was saying to me is like the study of restaurants as like kind of like where culture the romanticism of them is is is really interesting i know in your in your archaeology you work with a lot of chefs um how does that play out into the brand do you think like that almost not the rock starification of chefs but there is definitely that energy in london you

1:43:42Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:know after you know i'm trying to say yeah yeah i mean links to fame stuff i think that it's sort of already had its like role i'd say it's in some way it's already had its role because it because the chefs led me to beans and thinking seeing beans in that aspirational way i don't think you can kind of influence chefs in i think they're all doing their own like artistry the really good ones that you can't control where they're being influenced from obviously we are we are beginning to work with like restaurants and generally restaurants that are kind of using our beans because they're really high quality but I would say the chefs have already had that influence by even helping this brand come to be by helping me see beans in a aspirational light and I you know continue to love seeing beans on menus but I think chefs are doing their own thing I don't think they're they they're so focused on quality ingredients they're so focused on they're looking at a menu in LA, they're not looking at like me on Instagram making pizza beans.

1:44:45Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I wish they were. And they, you know, suddenly were. Pizza beans were on festival menu menu.

1:44:53Bold Bean Co. Founder:I saw it. I was like, fuck me. Like, it's so clever because it's like everyone loves pizza. He doesn't fucking love pizza. I don't know anyone who doesn't love pizza. One thing I wanted to ask you about, and we're not going to be able to talk about, but M &S have launched their, can we talk about that? Yeah. Yeah. So they launched their version of a bean in a glass jar.

1:45:12Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah.

1:45:12Bold Bean Co. Founder:And it could be interesting, again, kind of wanky, but branders moat. Maybe you can come on this, mate. Of like, what's the initial feeling when you see that, I suppose? Because I think this will help a lot of founders. Yeah. You know, because it's probably the thing everyone's scared of. Yeah, definitely. Especially in the consumer space is anyone, and you've seen this a myriad of times, the supermarket realizes something's going well. they create their own matcha they create their own beans they create their own premium chocolate like what's talk me through when you saw that what's the feelings yeah I think it was terrifying

1:45:49Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:seeing the sort of I suppose immediately I was like oh my god how the hell did they get that so cheap but um and then it makes it seem like oh my gosh and what does it taste like is it like Like, you know, it was definitely scary. But I would genuinely say now it's been a few weeks and we've spoken about it and we've had a response from our customers and lots of people have tried them. And luckily, apparently they're really bad. So that's really great. Don't sue me for defamation, M &S. But they're serving a different purpose. Like M &S are not doing this to, I don't believe, to move people away from Bold Bean because they won't be able to do that with this product.

1:46:31They're trying to bring people into beans

1:46:33Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:and that's actually a good thing. And M &S have their own label strategy, so they are kind of seen as different. And I know, I think that it's just reminded us, you know, we have got an obsession with our product and having the very best beans. And for me, this has proved that that is, it's been worth all our time and investment in having the very best beans because even someone can replicate something that looks very visual, visually similar to us. And some people have credited, you know, our success to putting things in a jar. And this has proved that actually it's not down to that. It's down to more than like the premiumization, visual, you know, peripheral cues of a jar.

1:47:13Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:It's down to actually that experience and also that brand love. And the way that our fans have shown up for us has been so amazing. And some, you know, some creators have even been playing back, like the things that we're doing at a very deep level around our mission and what we stand for and why we're here and the sourcing that we put they're defending us with such vocabulary like that has been so such fuel for us and confidence for us to know that actually it's all working and yes these things that visually look very scary can actually make you just feel more confident about other things that you're doing um well okay then it's playing that in sort of a bigger brand

1:47:57Bold Bean Co. Founder:context where there is more more competitors in in the set so for example maybe jd sports could be a good example um like there's a you know jd sports there's gym shark now there's all sorts of different people doing something similar you're also probably competing with the hipster store in central london like how do you think about brand as a moat if that's such a wanky way of saying it But, you know, how do you think about that as when more people come piling in? It's a great question. Like, I think when we use JD as an example, we're describing probably a more conventional mix, right, which is that classic marketing job of how you position against your competitors.

1:48:37Bold Bean Co. Founder:Right. I think that's a very familiar one. I think the own label experience, there are analogies for that all across the line, which is like, OK, someone comes in and they look like they're stripped out excess elsewhere, but kept the best of it. and they're now doing what you purport to do at the cheapest possible thing. Like that is probably a scarier thing than, oh, we've just got more competitors. I think most CEOs and CMOs are really aware there will be competitors. We just need to know what makes us distinct. And that's probably where the five Fs and having a point of view on what you stand for and who you're for is the way you kind of, you know, chart your course.

1:49:14Bold Bean Co. Founder:But there's a more existential one, which is what do you do when someone kind of arrives and they're like, well, we're doing exactly that, but it's half the price because we've done away with this ancillary thing that you probably, consumer, don't even care about. You know, the idea of brand as moat, it probably sounds like, oh, is the colourful label going to be the thing that protects us? Will people just like the label more? But that's actually not that. I think it comes down to these questions around depth and coherency, which is the idea of obsession runs through the entire Bold Bean brand.

1:49:43Bold Bean Co. Founder:You know, it's changed the brand identity, absolutely, but it has changed the sourcing, the recipe, the product line, the format. And so if you talk about brand being mode, it probably is that coherence around a singular idea because it's really hard to pop up one day and cultivate that obsessive lens. All the very tricky decisions made to be a brand for obsessive, there's multiple decisions and it's very hard to do that at a cut price. So I would say like having a really clear point of view as a brand and obsessively to kind of use the word in two different contexts, run it through every element of the brand is the ultimate mode because that is very, very hard to duplicate.

1:50:19Bold Bean Co. Founder:So that's what you were saying to me earlier about the vertical. Is that linked together? You know what you're saying about going... Well, exactly. And it's like you can easily put beans in a jar, but can you build a brand that is obsessed with creating a culture of bean obsessives and run that through every decision the brand makes, from the sourcing to the cook to the irrational decisions that the brand has made over this time? That's really hard to replicate.

1:50:43Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Marks and Benzer won't ever be able to do that for beans because they have so many things they need to sell. so that's kind of you know they won't be doing uh they won't be able to do this billboard campaign they won't be able to show up on socials they can't do that stuff and they can't also their product developers are on to the next shiny thing that they're doing they're not going to be obsessing over every harvest and every kind of thin skin and testing every batch of beans because i mean maybe they are sorry mns well done if you are but like it's exhausting and like it takes a lot of motivation from my team to do that and they are extremely motivated by what we're doing so they do do that but mns are you know creating the next truffle mayo sweetie thing that's gonna go viral on tiktok like they they've got more stuff to do i think that's a moment truffle oil

1:51:34Bold Bean Co. Founder:is a bit of a scam i do like it's fucking like i mean this is rick stein said that as well so i'm definitely clipping that but like it's just what the fuck is that about but that's a moat and if you want to take the view that that comes from the brand strategy kind of you know obsessing over obsession then brand can be a moat in that way but i think if you're just looking at your packaging branding is moat then then you're a bit you know at sea so do you think most because what seth godin says a brand is not a logo yeah and i think loads of people think it's just the packaging yeah and even this is what perry was saying to me he goes i write my i was down in cornwall with him i write all my brands probably has a different you know it's of your 5s whatever their own way of doing it but it's like that when you have that in place it's actually just off a singular document the packaging is kind of not inane but like it's this is great important there's this great thing about like good advertising makes bad products fail quickly and wait wait say good advertising can make bad products fail quickly yeah because think about it the ad campaign we're talking about here is about to go out.

1:52:39Bold Bean Co. Founder:It's about to kind of make this claim that people are obsessed over this and, like, all of a sudden doing crazy stuff like eating it straight out of a jar. Like, if that didn't correspond with every element of the brand, then we would drive a lot of people to trial it, and they would trial it and be very disappointed. But the reason why we're confident going out with that message is because if you look after under every surface of this brand is another proof point of obsession. You know, having now kind of heard, like, Amelia, talk about sourcing and how yields and all this stuff and cooks and all this stuff is constantly being optimized.

1:53:12Bold Bean Co. Founder:That's the stuff that's impossible to recreate with if your business is much more diversified. So it's that depth again. Yeah. Wow. And so that's a bit that's really hard to replicate. And so brand strategy can be this clarifying force, which is like, it's not soil, it's obsession. That's what we're after. But it's then if you grab it, and you make it the whole kind of like operating force for the business and use it in in every conversation that becomes a moat because that is so hard to replicate it's almost depth is moat essentially yeah wow a couple more things and then we'll wrap this up this has been fucking beautiful um what have been like i know i love how just candid you are on your linkedin like what have been some of the mistakes you've made

1:53:53Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:this like last year or so on linkedin or no no no no no not on linkedin i just mean

1:53:59Bold Bean Co. Founder:like you'll do some posts being like these are the mistakes we've called like this what the issues we're going through and i think it's really refreshing but like what are some of the i also

1:54:09Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:love linkedin mistakes everyone loves the mistakes but like i think it's just reassuring because i

1:54:15Bold Bean Co. Founder:think ultimately i think a lot of us are making decisions with not with imperfect decisions with imperfect information and sometimes that can go wrong like what have been some of those for you

1:54:25Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah, I mean, one I spoke about recently was that I was so convinced that we needed to do dried beans. And Rosa spent months finding the right packaging supplier that could bring in our raw material and put it into a nice little thing. We had Clara working on the design of it. We analysed the copy. What are we saying about this? We even had a video shot of how to cook dried beans from scratch. And then we were like, okay, before we launch it, let's soft launch it. 500 units with our community and we'll get like feedback and understand how to talk about it. I was just so convinced that dried beans, we are bean obsessed.

1:55:05Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:We need to have dried beans.

1:55:06Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah, what was the, so the why behind that was, so the bean obsessor piece, but then commercially, was it like you could get it in supermarkets?

1:55:14Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah, yeah. Also like dried beans, premium dried beans in supermarkets. And our beans taste so much better. And they're always from a fresh harvest. and that kind of makes them so much easier to cook and it will transform that cooking experience. And in America, it's happening and all of this. And we sent it to 500 of our like most diehard fans. And like, everyone was like, oh, sorry, I haven't cooked it yet. Like months later, like none of them used it. And in the end, we were like, okay, this would be mad for us to launch right now because it takes so much resource and actually focus and distraction at the cost of growing what we're already growing.

1:55:53Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:And so we had to pull the plug and we'd ordered like 100 ,000 units of stock, spent thousands and thousands of pounds on the labels. Because I was like, yeah, let's make the best to do better. It's the right thing to do. And it wasn't the right thing to do. But I sort of feel like I do make those mistakes. like we we make them very regularly but I don't I don't I often can't recollect them because I never like dwell on these things I don't think you can as a founder and I'm sure you have this done it's like you something bad happens and if you're going to be like dwelling on it and mulling over it you're just not going to have the energy to get out the next day and and grow the business you need to be seriously resilient and almost be an optimist because otherwise yeah it will be really hard.

1:56:39Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:So I often forget about these things and then I'll be like, oh yeah, I forgot about dried beans. I'm not dwelling on the fact I wasted loads of money on that and loads of time because we learned that journey.

1:56:51Bold Bean Co. Founder:Yeah. What about some of the old mistakes you've made in your career maybe? I just think it's interesting.

1:57:01Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:We did a really bad job for this brand.

1:57:05Bold Bean Co. Founder:It's about to launch. You don't have to say this specific brand, but I just think for people listening, learning what to avoid is a really interesting... Give me a sphere. Narrow it down. So any mistakes you've made across... I don't know, in terms of that tension piece between creative Bukowski quote, which I've completely forgotten again. But, you know, the do something in fucking style versus do something which has an objective at the military points. Like maybe that's gone slightly wrong or pushed by brands to do something that actually didn't end up. I think there's probably two areas, like two big lessons I've definitely learned in the last kind of five years or so is one, you know, I talk about these kind of brand building fundamentals, which is like, who are you for?

1:57:52Bold Bean Co. Founder:What problem do you fix? And where does it all get to? I think what I've learned to put more emphasis on now is in every organization there's a slipstream. You know, there will just be a cultural problem and a brand strategy that is so much more viable in that organization than others. And it usually comes down to maybe the brand's history or taste. What do you mean by a slipstream?

1:58:17Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:so like uh like for are you talking about for example if you were to what you identified i suppose if you take our like brand brand fire and us analyzing for the uncompromising like i was in all of that and my beliefs were in all of that whereas if we could have created a very different brand that was like health yeah focused but i wouldn't be i wouldn't be able to preach that and sell that in the same way so it's like it the version of it was in my like slipstream yeah

1:58:49Bold Bean Co. Founder:exactly whereas as opposed to something that goes against the grain every day so there might have been a version of events where we just looked at all the data and said oh my god the health brand is the right strategy and from a head point of view that would make so much more sense but if it can't really be um like consumed by the business or the founder it's just not gonna work as powerfully so that's definitely been something i've learned which is that oh sometimes you might have to leave something that feels really right and has a really strong data case to find something that's more comfortably embraced by the business.

1:59:17Bold Bean Co. Founder:You know, or ended up something which was really abrasive, you know, like, oh, it's a challenger food brand. Like, where's that kind of like punchy grit? And actually, the kind of new challenger playbook that Bold Bean's written is to be much more convivial, to be much more generous, to be comfortable with company, like so many like new, like, there's probably another whole another conversation around how like Bold Bean's kind of written a new challenger board like playbook, which again, is just because it feels, you know, I don't want to speak as attorney, but like it feels much more you. And that are probably underweighted in some early strategy thinking.

1:59:48Bold Bean Co. Founder:Any other mistakes? Yeah, probably lots. Well, we've all made loads of mistakes. I think that would definitely be one. Look, I think the other thing about strategy, and strategy is so satisfying because like often the output of what I do is a piece of paper and all hangs together really brilliantly. And we've done the hard work and it just all hangs together. It's really, really great. And I think early on in my career, that would be the satisfying end of it. Execution kind of comes, bye-bye. And so when I look at, like, things that haven't gone quite as well, it's not because I think the brand strategy has been proven to be wrong.

2:00:23Bold Bean Co. Founder:Because, you know, there's so many people you're collaborating with on these things. They're signed up. You've got a lot of smart people who end up saying we're going to embrace it. The ones that don't work, you know, they look back and kind of go, you know, it doesn't get a perfect mark is when the execution hasn't been there. Maybe it's just lived in an advertising campaign or, you know, in a different, it's just been very discreet, as opposed to this whole idea that's transformed a whole business.

2:00:44Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Culture, basically. Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting, like having buy-in from a company, culture. Like I care so much about culture and how my team feel about things that we do. But that's like a really active choice. and it's, and you know, I've created this business, I care in a different way to maybe a marketing director, a big corporate who's like, this is genius, we're going to do it. And then actually it's not felt by the rest of the business.

2:01:09Bold Bean Co. Founder:A hundred percent. And so the projects I now really get really excited by is often the first thing we're doing with a brand strategy isn't the big brand campaign. It's rewriting the company values or it's writing a pitch deck because we've actually found a way of articulating the business and something else. So that just is when you're like, oh, this organization is really going to embrace that. And that really is what like. So actually the brand strategy links to the culture, essentially. Oh, 100%. I thought they were kind of two separate, siphoned things. And probably people do probably think that.

2:01:38Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah, they do. They think it's like the only purpose of it is to make consumers buy. But I think what they forget is that employees want to connect to something bigger and have clarity about what they're doing and purpose. Investors do. Buyers do. We don't tell them. We don't lead with the message. we obviously show them a lot of data but ultimately they're going to lead with their hearts they're going to say i'm going to give bold bean a shot because probably part of them we've got into their like belief system and i think everyone every human's a consumer including employees so i think you know our whole like people our whole business strategy is underpinned by the brand strategy which is like bean obsession and um you know why people get up to what i i believe when i went on maternity the reason why my team was so incredible as you know besides ed doing an amazing job but the team aren't motivated by me like sort of you know saying you need to work they're motivated by something so much bigger than me and a lot of that comes down to the the purpose and what we're trying to do and their own genuine bean obsession rather than like wanting to do a good job for your

2:02:46Bold Bean Co. Founder:what are the things you've got right and wrong about getting that culture and then linking it to the brand's strategy, do you think? Especially with the flexible work team. I think that's really fascinating.

2:02:56Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Well, I think it's about, in terms of if you're talking about flexibility there, it's about compromise on other things. And it's not necessarily about what isn't working about it. It's about how you're actively, intentionally trying to rebuild connection, trying to make sure you trust is like a default in the business. It's like all of these things that people are scared of when it comes to remote work. You're just being purposeful about how you prevent, you know, the fallout from there not being any connection.

2:03:32Bold Bean Co. Founder:So what would that look like on a weekly basis?

2:03:34Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:So on a weekly basis, it's, well, it's more like a kind of quarterly basis. It's thinking about tiny things. Like when you show up on a video call, you know, So how are you, are you looking at the, are you looking at the person talking or are you typing? Are you looking at the little camera version of you? Hide that. When someone's talking and presenting, they can't see, you know, if they can't see you actively listening, you're going to have to overdo it when you're on a video call. Whereas in a room, maybe you'll feel like a soft, soft thing. It's like tiny detail. You need to think about like how you're going to build rapport and confidence as well.

2:04:13Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:you know react with an emoji on a call like all of these things which we take a lot of care about and you know we'll give feedback if someone isn't presenting themselves in their best way on a call because it might be having an impact on the rest of the team i was so without knowing that without

2:04:28Bold Bean Co. Founder:money life i would like literally just be a squad on instagram it was really bad but yeah no no so those so that especially when they were talking about boring things like ops i I was like, fuck this, I'm checking out. Like, ops? Yeah. Just final thing just to put on that thread, because I think, you know, we have, we, my small team will be at freelancers. We, I mean, I don't even have a weekly call with them, which I think is really bad. Like, as in, I know they want, we need to start doing that a bit more, especially if we're trying to do this grown-up stuff. But I'm just like, go. Like, I don't even plan my week.

2:05:03Bold Bean Co. Founder:I'm just like, just go, and then I'll just text me, which isn't the best thing. So, like, what, so I think that's really interesting. So like having intention, intention and depth are kind of two words that have blossomed today. So I think that manifests in the small things, the emoji, how you show up, like any other like tidbits on that? Because I just think.

2:05:22Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:Yeah, I mean, we all are encouraged to share. We have like hashtag being real. R.I.P. be real. I don't know if that's the thing anymore, but we created it and, you know, we shared detail about our lives, our personal lives. you know oh i'm working from a cafe this morning and just have that kind of connection you know charlie um charlie hanks she does these amazing wellness wednesday sessions where she she facilitates uh a kind of meditation or maybe an activity or some journaling about confidence one session and we're all brought together on this essentially she's an external person she works no she's one of our team she's an amazing amazing charlie chief bean champ so things like that like make such a difference um but also I think when you are together like making sure that you're not you're you are really present so for example here today you know I went for breakfast Lucy we weren't being I haven't been really productive today I've actually just spent time really doubling down on human connection whereas you know you know I think if I was coming to the I'd kind of be like, okay, shut up.

2:06:34Uncommon Chief Strategy Officer:I need to work now. Like that's honestly, whereas I'm like, do you know what? This is my connection moment.

2:06:39Bold Bean Co. Founder:Actually, it's more depth by being in Barcelona. That's so powerful. That's so powerful. Guys, that's been fucking amazing. And I think it's just, we've managed to tie the thread between the strategy, the campaign, the culture. You know, I think this leather jacket thing is just gorgeous. And I think depth gives you the leather jacket. jacket when you rock up to a cocktail party so thank you absolute joy thank you so much we'll get some dinner now let's do it oh final question how do you get in sainsbury's

2:07:15Bold Bean Co. Founder: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