Fame, Feeling & Flamingos: how consistency helped Very hit new heights

0:28Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. few people. She ran the same Christmas ad two years in a row. I found out why she did that and the amazing results it's led to and also how they've extended into retail media and also introduced lots of new initiatives that have made very absolutely fantastic this year. So without further ado, let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Jess. So Jess Myers is returning to Uncensored CMO. Welcome back, Jess. Oh, John, thank you so much. It's an absolute pleasure to have been invited back for a second time. And I think it's almost a year ago we spoke last time.

0:58and what a year it's been. What a year it's been and we're going to get into that year but I have to first of all compliment you on winning whatever competition is going for best merch, right? Because tell me about your top because this isn't just any top, is it? This is an exclusive new top you're sporting. Well, this has been created especially for the Uncensored CMO podcast today. Being a challenger brand, of course, we're always testing things and this is a test making its debut. As I was thinking about getting ready to come on today, I spoke to the team, right? We need to get organised, think about the great things we want to talk about because there's so many.

1:28But first of all, I obviously need to be wearing the brand and coming in a flamingo jumper. We only had a children's flamingo jumper on sale at Vary. And so this was custom made by our friends at the gate, ready for today. So let's make it sparkle. Let's make it sparkle. So bets on this appearing next year, hot on the Christmas trending list. Well, keep your beady flamingo eye on what's coming up. There's a great path ahead of us. And who knows what other merchandise will be available for sale on Vary next year. I realise anyone watching this on YouTube will get an amazing image right now of the flamingos here.

2:00So anyone who's listening, we've got a beautiful setup of flamingos here. And we'll introduce them in a minute because they've all got their own names and story and everything else like that. But what I thought would be lovely is just to connect back to the year ago and bring people on the journey of what's happened in the past year. One of the bits of a conversation I absolutely loved was how you approached joining Vary as well. And you talked to me about your 90-day plan. And I even remember the five things you said as well because you talked about engaging the organisation and talking about the biggest challenges, biggest opportunities.

2:26You had lovely phrases, what's precious that shouldn't be broken? How can our teams work together and what would you do if you were me? So you had a lovely approach to your start, didn't you, and how you engaged the business. I thought it was absolutely wonderful and very inspiring. So how's it gone since that, you know, awesome start that you had? Well, it's amazing. So I've had this incredible two-year journey at Veri and it's been just such a joy to be part of the business. You know, two years ago was when I first joined retail. Before that, as we talked about, I worked in financial services.

2:51So a big part of my induction plan was getting to understand retail and be a retailer two years on. There's still a lot to learn, but we've definitely made some incredible progress. So if I look back over the last year, the things that I feel most proud of, the team absolutely smashed it on. So first of all, we've had a year of Flamingo consistency. We launched last November with our Let's Make It Sparkle platform. And we've had a year of consistency when it's come to delivering the advertising. We've launched the House of Flamingo, which is our fashion platform. We should definitely talk about that because it's absolutely fabulous.

3:20about eight months ago I got promoted so I'm now congratulations thank you very much thank you um so I'm now the chief customer officer at various I sit on the executive team for the business and it's just such an honor to be able to represent our customer and our colleagues at that senior table so my role now looks after all marketing and all creative like it did before I also look after all of e-commerce digital product customer experience data insight and analytics so from a marketer this is like the marketer's dream because you've got all the the toys in the in you know and the tools and the toolkits where they bring lots of things together and one of the great things we're able to do and bring you all those tools together was launch the very media group which is our retail media proposition and that launched in september and as well as all of that we have added a new partner into our flock or into our flamboyance a collection of flamingos is called a flamboyance now i didn't know that that that sounds like not made everyone said Did you make that up?

4:13No, I didn't. Flamboyance. Flamingaling. A flock of flamingos is flamboyant. A flock of flamingos is called a flamboyance. Say that quickly. So we welcomed in Zenith, who are our new media partner, and we've done some incredible work with them since they've come on board. So, you know, what a year. Yeah, amazing. Well, congratulations on the new role. Maybe let's start there because I'd love to find out how that's gone. So what does that provide in terms of challenge for you as an individual and your leadership and approach? What challenge has that given you in terms of stepping up into a broader role in the organisation?

4:42I think there's a few things in there, isn't there? There's the getting to grips with a new role. There's the role you then play as being an executive leader in the business and then how you bring all of those things together to deliver on the objectives of the organisation. So for me, I've spent my entire career working in the marketing and creative area, but I was taking on board the e-commerce, the data part. But really, as a marketer, your skills are so broad that actually in your role every single day, you already work with all of these teams. You know, the leadership part is about how do you understand it enough to work out how to bring the teams together, to collaborate really well, to really push boundaries and work really effectively.

5:20And so learning all of that and bringing that together has been fantastic and has definitely unlocked some brilliant things for us, not only in things like launching the very media group, but also in the way we've approached trading this year during the Christmas period. So lots of opportunity sitting in there. The second bit then is going to be the role that I play sitting on the executive team you know as an executive team how do we help support our colleagues how do we create vision and deliver on strategy how do we inspire coach and delight you know and how do we help move the organization forward and and and for me in particular how do I be the voice of the customer across that table because the hat I wear is part commercial and part deep customer experience and you know if you start to think about that value creation zone it's how do you deliver brilliantly for the company and how do you deliver brilliantly for customer and that's my job to be able to do that.

6:09So it's been, you know, it's been an incredible journey and I'm really fortunate to have a brilliant boss and great peers. So, you know, it's been a ride. Oh, big shout out. Big shout out. There we go. That's brilliant. I remember when I, I think when I first kind of got a role in exec as a marketer, it can be quite a big change because suddenly you're no longer just talking about marketing things. You're talking about more broad business things and, and your colleagues have come from very different backgrounds, operational background or finance or, or sales. And it's a very different environment, Any kind of advice on how marketers thrive in that kind of executive role?

6:40You know, when you start progressing through the marketing role, you start to get to the next senior role. I want to get the next level, the next level, the next level. And, you know, you start to think you get to the top of an eye. But actually what you're after is T-shaped leadership. So a marketer's role is to understand the role they play to galvanise the organisation and drive the business forward. And what does your role need to do to help improve and influence and meet the objectives of all of your peers across the business? because a market needs to understand how does this business make money what does risk management look like how do we work the financial team how do we work the distribution team you know as few a few of many and so you know the role is about how you can connect all that together and it gets back to the first 90 days again you you go i went round again i knew these people already but the question was how do we need to work together how can we make our teams help our teams work together better what are our collective objectives as an executive team and how do we move forward together so as marketers i'd say you would progress throughout your career continue to be curious understand how the organization works but once you get to the the top of the eyes if you say be it actually you then are faced with a t yeah the t is about how you get the harness the organization because i've always think marketers should in theory make brilliant exec members because like to make anything happen you have to understand the customer and you have to understand how the organization works and how things get done and actually i think marketers when marketing is one of those roles it does connect the whole business doesn't it in a way that maybe some other functional roles don't so you've got the amazing ability to kind of connect things up for people you've got you've got an amazingly broad skill set in marketers you'll have you know it's we always talk about marketing about being art and science and art is not just the creative work and science is not just the data work there's you know there's a mixture of both in there and marketers roles really do need to bring that together if that is around inspiring galvanizing an organization behind a unified brand purpose that's one thing if it's about how to make customer-led decisions that's another part if it's about how to balance the commercial nature of the business and actually you know there needs to be a balance between the two of them because if you're doing the perfect thing for the customer that might not meet the needs of the business so actually how you balance those with data and insight influencing people bringing people on the journey with you and making sure that the marketing is just a is a vehicle to accelerate growth you know there's a lot of skill set required in that which is why probably you draw the conclusion that cmos make very good CEOs.

8:54Well, I think so. Not enough of them there. So like we're rooting for them because I think they should be great CEOs. And I think you've probably provided the best articulation of a customer audience I think I've ever heard when we chatted last time about HunCulture. It's absolutely amazing. And you also mentioned there as well, you know, your job being to represent the customer in, you know, in the exec team where kind of decisions get made. How's the HunCulture? What's happened to HunCulture in the last year? It seems to be the topic. We started talking about hun culture and then itv came out with an entire hun culture survey and suddenly the huns are everywhere but they were always there they've just been called a you know an audience so the huns were brilliant so let's it's probably worth talking back you know we covered this in the last conversation so i guess insert link here i won't go over too much of it again but we started talking about you know the brand and the role we're going to need to play you know it's this started really from the roots of the organization and who we are so our purpose is to help our families give get more out of life so we wanted to give more some meaning um and more for us it all boiled down to you know quite simply there's good and there's very good and so very good there's a you know there's a vibrancy to it there's a vitality to it there is especially at christmas there's a glitter to it there's a sparkle that sparkle is that moment when the customer finds that absolutely perfect item that they're looking for and that's not necessarily for themselves that's for other people and that comes of course to the heart of of our customer you know on our huns so we've taken a enterprise uh value-led piece of segmentation so the science bits of where who are our most most valuable customers you know exactly what they look like where do they shop how much their wallet do we have where else are they shopping you know you know all the demographic information we overlaid an attitudinal segmentation to it to understand you know hopes and dreams and wants and fears and kind of exactly how do our customers behave and there's a real nuance to our customers that we could capture an essence known as our own you know this this customer is incredibly hard working she works hard in her job she works hard when she's looking after the family she's incredibly generous Christmas is her time right she is out there in her best dress she is hosting for the family she's absolutely bossing it around the Christmas table and with her decorations she's thinking about gifting and thinking about being generous generous you know and she's had a quite challenging time and she's definitely experiencing the cost of living crisis and so our customers have and i know you love you love this last time a glittery resistance that's brilliant i just that's so good isn't it glittery resistance which is of course sparkle yeah so when you start to think about that customer and you start to think about huns hun culture speaks to it perfectly so that's when we said well there's very good there's hun culture that's sparkle and that's where the let's make it sparkle platform came about and we refer to very in our customers as flamingos in a flock of pigeons so this is where the flamingos came from so kerry cherry and terry were born as our flat amigos and i guess they were they fly and they're you know the rest is history they do don't they and and they're impossible to to miss as well which is lovely and they just bring joy don't they i mean that's the other thing is it's just as you describe the audience It's like I'm smiling just listening to you because you can imagine them and imagine the joy that this kind of thing brings.

12:10There's nothing you don't smile about when you see a pink flamingo. Yeah, it's just such a beautiful sight, isn't it? And just so warming. And also pink is just a lovely colour as well. And it just, you know, stands out. You describe this as a sea of sameness. It will not be lost on you that pink is also one of our distinctive assets. Our pink and our pink cube, the flamingos coming together. We have some brilliant tools in our toolkit. It was born to be this way, wasn't it? It was born to be this way. Now, we're having this conversation in, I mean, you taught me a new word, by the way, the golden quarter.

12:41I hadn't heard that before I had the conversation with you. But how important, I mean, I'm guessing it's very important, but how important is Christmas to very, or to retailers in general? It's incredibly important to all of us. You know, when you speak to retailers, you'll probably find most of them will say that the 10 weeks leading into Christmas is when they'll do 40 to 50 % of all of their sales. So it's an incredibly competitive time. and we spend the entire year getting ready for it. I would say that retailer Christmas advertising is our version of the Super Bowl. A lot of money gets spent on it or invested into it because there's a lot of money to be made at this time and a lot of needs for our customers to be met.

13:21So we spend a lot of time agonising over the golden quarter and getting ready for it. And for us and for most of our competitors, I'm sure, there are multiple moments in there as the customers are getting ready to think about this festive period. it all kicks off in early November or even in October this year. It was early, wasn't it? It was early this year. It's been incredibly, Black Friday has been an incredibly long month. Black Friday threw us. No one knew when it was. I don't know what you would have done, I know. But most people are like, when is it? Because in America, I discovered it's the day after Thanksgiving.

13:50So in America, everyone's like, of course, it's just that day. But Thanksgiving moves around. You know, I didn't realise this either. So it meant that our Black Friday depends on when Thanksgiving is in America. and that was very late this year. So I was talking to Sophie Neary and she was at Google and she was saying Fake Friday got like 80 % of the sales of actual Black Friday with the one before. Yeah, and I think Sophie would have said and we work really closely with Sophie and her team, you have got to be ready. Your plans have got to be formed. And we were talking about this before we came on camera, you know, yes, we spend the entire year getting ready for it.

14:24Yes, the plans have been well laid, but yes, it's a digital business. Do we agonise over those numbers every single morning and change our plan accordingly? and Black Friday has been Black November. It's actually started in October. It's 29th of November is when it was this year. The last time we had that shape was 2019. So you'll then try to compare year on year, 24 versus 2019. Yes, there's Fake Friday sitting in there as well. You've got to kind of continue to follow the shape. You then have the last payday for most people before Christmas happen the final Thursday, the night before Black Friday.

14:58So obviously in Black Friday, it all goes off. but it's not over John it's not over at all because we're now going right into the Christmas gifting we've had cyber week this week we're now into Christmas we've now got what two and a bit weeks left until the big day at very week customers can order on the 23rd and it be delivered for the 24th so it is still all to play for and you know it would be remiss of me to say that you know it's never one team or one person in a retail business who gets gets this going it everyone's acquired Yes, the advertising plays a point. But, you know, it's the four Ps.

15:30The product's going to be there, price, place, promotion. The whole team needs to work together. And you'll find no more collaborative time in a business, especially in retail, as we get ready for this important point. But we should definitely talk about the creative because, as you would have noticed, year and year, we've kept some consistency. You have, I know. And congratulations. You know, I want to find out maybe a bit of the background to, you know, to why. I mean, you know, from a system one point of view, I'd go fantastic, well played, you know, because, you know, we know from the data that consistency actually leads to kind of compound effects.

16:02Actually, creative gets better the more people see it. But at Christmas, the tradition is actually most retailers or most advertisers in general will change their creative. So what led to you to decide to keep with the existing creative that you came out with last year? You know, it's really funny. And I was quite surprised that when we launched or relaunched the advert this year, a lot of people come back to me and say, well, that's brave. and Jess running the same advert again, which was taken aback out because actually it wasn't the brave decision. It was the smart decision. And I'll tell you why.

16:34I mentioned Christmas is our Super Bowl. So this journey started for us way back when we relaunched the brand. Actually, this is the first time we talked to System 1. I'm going to give you a lot of System 1 plugs here because I really believe in your methodology. We're going to invest a lot of the company's money to drive great sales and customer behavior. over this period in the short term and also in the long term as well. Why on earth would you launch an advert and a big platform without testing it first? It just baffles me as to how that happens. So we ran the script through system one methodology.

17:05We had some really great feedback. We created the ad, we sent it live. And last year we had a 4.7 star rating, which was brilliant for us launching it first. So the advert ran, the campaign went through. January we come back and do do the review again. And we found that from a system one testing perspective, we looked at our brand tracking, we looked at our Connor metrics, we looked at all of our customer lifetime value internal models, and across all metrics, the work had absolutely smashed it. So as we started to think about going again this year, it was a data led reason why on earth would you not run the existing advert, but with optimizations.

17:45So speaking of optimizations, we wanted to make sure we were reaching more of our target customers this year really driving effective effectiveness and efficiency and so rather than having a 60 and a 30 like we did last year we wanted a 40 and a 20 so the first point of court system one we came back to the team and said right we'd like this to be a 40 second advert please run this through your system and tell us which were the most effective efficient joyful parts of the story that we can weave together and that's what we did so the 40 second advert you're seeing now has been optimized through system one data to make it the most efficient and we went from a 4.7 to a 5.4 star rating you did you did which is really good isn't it so and presumably with the slightly shorter edit that frees money up to buy more media does it give you more coverage it does so we've got the 42nd advert out there brand advert we've got a 22nd version of that brand advert as well so that's been smashing it so we obviously won system ones out of the week you did second time in two years with the same advert so i'm really proud of the team for that we're in your top 10 you know last year we also found ourselves in Cantar's top 10, second most persuasive out of the week.

18:46The team just scooped an Effie for the campaign. Oh, really? Yeah, a silver Effie was one for the Christmas work last year as well. So we knew we were onto a winner with it. But as well as the brand adverts that you're seeing, the Gate and our creative team have been incredibly clever with how they've used the really effective animation set as well. So we've also got three 20-second adverts that talk about gifting, gifts for her, gifts for him, gifts for the kids. And if you look really closely, I'd like to say eagle eye, but the flamingo idea of you would notice that we have used the animation sets from different adverts so black friday toys a bit of berry pay have all been christmased up and we've got those back out again so that's really showcasing how the team have been optimizing the creative work focusing on consistency throughout the year and as well as all that brilliant advertising for christmas we have got a ton of newness that's been launched this year as well so it's never been more and it's true because people kind of think consistency means it's boring or it's not fresh or it's not new but actually when when you've got a consistent idea as powerful as yours you can play with it and and the point is people recognize it and they feel that familiarity with it and that's that's what makes it so powerful so the fact that you went from 4.6 to 5.4 um without well changing changing the edit but not a great deal about the creative just shows that actually consumers love it even more this year than last year is and i think it's sometimes lost on me as to why you know why do marketers not do this more often why good question why do you know you don't think about i think it's your Andrew Tindall who said this you've got to start with a cracking idea right the compounding effect of consistency doesn't work unless you start with a really strong idea you know we had a really strong idea and therefore we said well how do we optimize this and make it work even harder I think I've just drawn the conclusion that there might be a few egos kicking around in the marketing industry and we seem to think we need a new advert every single year but we you know that great creative wears in it doesn't wear out and actually the the smart choice is to optimize what you have and get out.

20:39You don't always need a new advert. Yeah. I mean, it's funny. You're right about the feedback on being brave. I mean, weirdly, that was my response as well because it is counter our culture. I think maybe it's because we have annual planning cycles and we have annual budgeting. Therefore, we go, oh, next year, we're going to make a new thing to replace the old thing. We don't stop and think, well, if the old thing works really well, why not do that? Why don't you take that production budget and either get it out into more channels or even optimize it further into media and get more of your target customer's items on it?

21:05100%, exactly. That makes a lot of sense. Now, the other thing I did as well, We're slightly guilty, I have to say at System 1, of talking a lot about style, which is long-term brand building potential, of course. But in the golden quarter, spike matters a lot, which is our short-term sales potential and fluency. Because one of the things you've done brilliantly by creating the Flemingos is create something that people can see that it's you. And it's undeniably. I mean, the thing is, whenever I'm at home and I'm watching the Christmas ads, I know when you're on. It's impossible to miss because it's pink and Flemingos everywhere and all the rest of it, which is great.

21:34So we cut the data slightly differently this year as well to look at the top 10. Well, we looked at all the ads, but top 10 ads based on short term and fluency combined. We sort of did this grid, which was fascinating. And you came out fifth in that list as well. So what was interesting is we had, I mean, the rundown of the list would be Audi was top with Kevin. That's like seven or eight years of investment. Coke with their AI version of their trucks. The AI version. The AI version. That was surprised everybody, including me. Because I was like, I had that down as a bit of a, why would you do that?

22:02but actually what I learned in that experience was the consumer doesn't care how you made it. Like we got obsessed, go, oh no, AI has messed up the Coke ad. They didn't care. They just loved the trucks and the jingle and all the elements of it. If the trucks and the jingle, it's just so iconic, isn't it? Oh, totally. Yeah, exactly. And then Asda were the best performing new idea advertiser. With the gnomes? Yes, exactly. So again, in terms of hitting the ground running. It's interesting, actually, the average star rating of a new idea being launched, about 3.8. So your 4.6 last year was very good in the context of someone doing something new, which is brilliant.

22:43That's because we put it through the system one database to begin with. Well, it could be a secret source. You'd already learn from it. Exactly. Sainsbury's with their BFG ads did pretty well, you guys. Morrison's came back with a familiar oven glove. I love that. That felt a bit uncultured, actually. but it's just the joy in everyday things and they managed to spot a christmas thing with the gloves that i don't think no one else has spotted and turned it into it was more musical and theatrical this year that in fact they actually used the bugsy malone didn't they yeah yeah yeah it was quite it was uh was it don't stop me now or don't stop believing anyway something like that last year yeah and then they went with a sort of theatrical one this year which which kind of gave them a bit more depth and joy to it which was brilliant um they in fact had i think almost exactly the same result as you as 4.9 he says thinking up to about 5.5 so again similar sort of you know step up with the idea as well john lewis did pretty well actually best scores they've had for five years little cadbury and then coke's alternative coke always do two ads i mean they've got big budgets i think they always rerun holidays of coming with a bit of spare bit of spare media and then they still do a new change i know exactly but i guess if you're bigger than me can but anyway the interesting point about all that was seven out of ten were consistent which just shows the power of which exactly you knew instinctively the power of kind of sticking with a good idea so let's talk about the flamingos i mean you mentioned we've mentioned them quite a lot but um yeah tell me how you're bringing how you how are you using these flamingos because i think a really good example of what you know orlando my colleague caught calls a fluent device and you've created it in a short amount of time and they're already appearing everywhere so how do you use these where do they turn up and and where can i buy one as well obviously you can buy them on barry.co.uk you know you've got kerry here you know she's really retailing at 12.99 and kerry is our fabulous and flamboyant flamingo and then you have coral and coral made her debut in our october toys campaign and she is the fun and mischievous one so you've got two flamingos on the site right now but you know we've spent an entire year building these fluent devices and intentionally so you know when the gate created the creative platform for us we had these distinctive assets we've spent the year getting you know them getting them out there across all of our channels so you know we we started in christmas last year then we had um november with our black friday but then we go into end of season sale that runs us through to about january so we took flamingo animated world sitting there then about february march time we launched our very pay advert which talks about the flexible ways to pay for our customers again another animated fluent option with the flamingos in it.

25:16Then we came into sort of the May-June time when we launched the House of Flamingo, and I'd love to talk about that. So that was May-June time. Then we came back on with House of Flamingo in September, and that was the first time we'd been on TV with fashion in over seven years. That's exciting. October was our toys campaign, which was new, which was where Coral made her debut, and then we're back into Christmas again. So that's a whole year. So I'm just talking sort of TV and kind of broadcast media here. But the flamingos have been embedded across everything that we do. So, you know, through our CRM channels, in the app, across the website experience, it's completely ingrained in Kali culture.

25:53So the word flamazing is still very much part of who we are. I think every other message I get from you has got, well, probably every message has got flamazing embedded in somewhere and on LinkedIn. If I haven't said you're flamazing or flamingo, I've failed. No, no, honestly, it's either a set of flamingos or flamazing or both. But then we started to think about newness, especially at Christmas this year, let's take examples. So one of the moves we made this year was to partner with Zenith. We welcome them into our flock, into our flamboyance. Flamboyance, yes. Exactly, into our flamboyance. And one of the really important things for us is making sure that our media and our creative is working really seamlessly together and building on each other.

26:29And just like our creative strategy, the media strategy is absolutely rooted in fame, fluency and feeling, something else you'll be familiar with. one of the great things one of many great things i absolutely loved about zenith was the part of their philosophy is about making bold moves and we're a challenger we love bold moves we love to find growth mindset entrepreneurial spirit dig in deep innovation so we love their bold moves and one of the bold moves they came up with for us this year was a partnership that we have with itv now at the time you think it's a bold move and now i'm sitting here thinking of course we did that it's absolutely perfect so the idea this year is currently running we did a partnership with ITV where Alison Hammond, Queen of Huns herself, is the very godmother.

27:10Oh, I love it. And Alison is helping our customers absolutely boss it at Christmas and sort out their Christmas dilemmas. So there's a 40-second ad and a 20-second ad. You know, customers are calling into the very godmother and saying, you know, I've got toile coming around for lunch. How am I going to do it? Well, you'll do it with the Ninja Dual Draw Air Fryer. And the ad, again, brings the flamingos in. So ITV are brilliant at how they cut together, you know footage of Alison but also you know there's a point in the ad where it says you know very flamingos have been spotted flying over the UK delivering guests and our VFM formation has come through so that's the Alison Hammond work and great to get our brands involved in that we also of course had our plushy toys so the flamingos are here we're selling those on site now again we're testing flamingo merch watch the space I expect you'll see more of that coming through and then we also launched this year our gift guide so not a catalogue but it is a return to print for us.

28:02We wanted to find a new way to speak to our target customers who might not know who we are. So we partnered with the Mail Metro Media to create an inspirational gift guide showing the depth and breadth of our department store. Of course, the flamingos are everywhere. You know, first order discount codes for our customers, really great use of tech to be able to kind of scan over images and deepening straight into the site for the latest offers. You know, another really great way to kind of test all of that. And as you'll start hearing me talk about a lot of these ways of getting the flamingos out, you'll also hear me talk a lot about our brand partners.

28:32And that's a really important point because as mentioned earlier, we launched the very media group this year and introducing our brand partners is a really fundamentally significant part of all of that. Wow. No, tell me more about that because that's a big deal as well, isn't it? So, you know, turning yourself into basically a media company. Am I right in saying you can do everything from kind of creative production through to execution? Yeah. How does it all work? So we've been doing retail media for a while, actually. You know, we're already experts in it. You know, we've been doing it for over 10 years.

29:00But what we wanted to do is reposition our retail media offering to make sure we are really kind of creating the uniqueness in our proposition and adding the value to our brands and our brand partners. What they're all after is awareness and consideration. And that's a really big part of our plan, too. So retail media is essentially the ability to be able to offer great service to your brand partners and hyper personalised target advertising to your customers whilst monetising your assets. And so we've got a really unique proposition where we bring together our award-winning creative platform plus our unique data set.

29:32You know, we've got about 500 data points on every single customer. And we bring those things together to create either highly bespoke, targeted or broadcast advertising and campaign solutions for our partners. So that is the use of our creative platform. So whether you're, you know, these are creative platform, our in-house creative studio that we have, but also access to our data targeting insight and measurement capability as well. And that's what the brands are looking for. And really retail media is just another media option these days. You shouldn't be able to tell the difference between, you know, where it starts and stops.

30:05So you have seen retail media opportunities throughout all of our Christmas. So Christmas, Black Friday, you'll see it in sale. The gift guide, we had over 60 different brands involved in the gift guide. the work we're doing with ITV and Alison Hammond. So all of these are very media opportunities that not only speak true to our brand, but also gives our brand partners great ways to tap into target customers. I think retailers, particularly the last couple of years, seems to be waking up to the power of their reach because you talk to so many. I mean, how many people interact with you every day?

30:34It must be hundreds of thousands. 1.8 million. That's amazing. So the reach you have as a retailer that other brands could be benefiting from by partnering is enormous. That's it. And it's not just the scale. What they also want is to speak to the target customer specifically, you know, specific shopping behaviours, specific product needs, how we can speak to, you know, how we can connect the brand with that customer and how we can speak to the customer about the brand they're after. You know, there is serendipity in there about how we bring those things together. Yeah. Now you mentioned you dropped in House of Flamingo, which just sounds really intriguing, like it's a fashion house.