How confused.com challenged the meerkats on smaller budgets - Sam Day

0:06Welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Now in this episode we're talking about one of the most competitive markets in the world, which is for insurance comparison. Anyone who's followed this market will know just how intense it is. And also, what do you do when you don't have a product yourself, but you're selling someone else's product? Well, it's one of those situations where marketing is all important. In fact, advertising can make all the difference to your success. Now, I'm catching up with Sam Day, who's been the CMO of Confused.com, who's successfully challenged this market and taken it from fourth place up to second place on very limited budgets.

0:40So I wanted to find out from Sam the secret behind the success of the campaigns that he's run over the last few years, how he's transformed their business, and what his plans are for the future. There's lots of experience here and lots of tips and advice you can get from one of the most well-known and successful CMOs in the country. Welcome to the show, Sam. Hi, thank you. Take us back to the beginning. So why did you get into marketing in the first place? What inspired you to do what you do today? Well, one of your former guests, John Hegarty, was a big part of that. I grew up in the 80s, absolutely obsessed with advertising more so than the tv shows i was i thought it was so glamorous it was a funny it was i just you know culling black label or those levi's ads um you know the volkswagen ads hamlet ads all of these things i just i would tune into them and even watch them over and over again and love them and i thought i want to be in that industry and that's why i you know did my degree and then did my night school post-grad diploma i was i was i just desperately wanted to work in this business and i love it to this day and i will die doing it not too soon hopefully but yeah we'll keep you going for a while longer um actually interestingly actually itv i didn't realize it's itv have had this tracker going for many years which is this one question do you think the ads are as good as the programs and they've run that track apparently for 25 30 i mean i'm in danger of quoting it wrongly but it's gone from being really high to really low.

2:02But you're right, back in the day when we were lads, as they say, the advertising did seem to be as good as the programmes and people would talk about them when they're down the pub and stuff. Yeah, you've got a combination of things. It was a water cooler moment that everyone used to have with a, you know... This is before we had water coolers, of course. Yeah, well, is it? And I remember everyone talking about the ads as well as talking about the TV shows as much. But everyone was dialing into the same stuff, right? And so audiences have become fragmented. So has creativity gone? Maybe a bit.

2:31But also I think that combined experience piece has started to go. And so it's harder to share. But yeah, they definitely were golden times. Gold blend. Gold blend. Yes, indeed. There's so many. Before we get into talking about Confuse.com, explain a bit about your career. What roles have you done to date? And I'd love to know what advice you'd give to somebody with the same passion that you have about getting into the industry. How would they get into the industry today? I started at Midland Bank, which most people probably won't even remember now. My first bank account, in fact, yeah. Age 13, yeah.

3:06Oh, the Griffin Sabres. Yeah, Griffin Sabres, yeah. With the bag, and yeah, we all had that. So basically, joining there, they didn't actually have a marketing graduate program. It was just the banking one. And I said, could I be the guinea pig to create one? Because I didn't want to do the Charter Institute of Banking. I wanted to do the Charter Institute of Marketing. But I wanted all the benefits of being able to have them pay the tuition fees. So I did, but I had to do it in night school. And actually, it was really successful. And I think they've now built a marketing grad program. In fact, I met one of the grads about six months ago who just came off the most recent program.

3:41Correct. Which I can't even count how many years. I think it was 27 years ago. So worked on the rebranding to HSBC, which was, you know, I had a small part to play in that. And it was still fascinating to watch. What advice would I give people getting into it is just passion. you'd be amazed at how I don't see as much passion as I have in me, but also that I felt that we used to have. Whether people are trying to be too, I don't know, edited in their kind of outlook or too conservative or what have you. It's like, if you let your passion shine for something, it's infectious. And I do it all the time to infect people that work for me because you see everyone's heads raised get much more into it and also any interviews or conversations or bosses they when they see your passion they realize actually you take this craft really seriously it just becomes really believable right it's not it's not a job this is a this is a calling it's a vocation career whatever you want to call it but and be interested amount of people that i do talk to about you know the christmas ads campaign or or what does everyone think of it like i haven't watched it yet you work in marketing dude you need to have watched it first yeah like that's great advice actually in fact i i i briefly ran some pitch training when i was between jobs and um showing that you've listened to the customer and you understand their business like you say you know listening is huge but also like you say about passion is that at the end of the day you'll buy people are buying people right and you want to know they care you want to know they're really up for it and honestly passion takes you a huge but you know it takes a long long way doesn't it yeah i i mean i get this i'll get this quote wrong but um it's fundamental to my life which is you know people who love what they do do it better is something that henry from admiral always said but um but also if if you love what you're doing you'll never work a day in your life and like sometimes i feel you know i wake up and i go i'm still so lucky to do what i do and I always think that it's important to have that Sunday night test the Sunday night test when you you sit there and if you ever have that feeling like oh it's going to be Monday some you've got to change something right because you should be thinking all right so we're doing this this week right and and you know people will say yes and you need the energy don't you because I mean I mean you know life is tough working particularly the kind of roles that you do they're very demanding right if you haven't got the energy and passion for it it's not going to last long yeah I mean it's energy all through the day it's energy all through the week you know yeah And it has to carry you through.

6:13And it has to be, you know, not something you're just tapping into all day. It's got to be self-generating. So you have to be energized by the work and the problem. I mean, we're problem solvers more than anything else. So if you're not energized by having to fix something, then, you know, it's going to be tough. He talks about problems. And like one thing you're guaranteed to get, aren't you, as a marketer is your fair share of problems. If you had to look back at your career, you know, he says, yeah, we've been there. We've been there. What would you say has been your greatest failure, maybe, as a marketer?

6:45And how did you overcome that? It's very vivid, and it's not actually unique to marketing. So it's my first time with mass people management. So I'd had direct reports of one or two. And then when I was at HSBC and I was looking after direct marketing, I had 12 direct reports. and I was 26 years old, so 27 maybe. And it's a big change, right? It's a big change and you're not really prepared for it. You go on training courses and HSBC did excellent training courses at the time, but live fire, it all goes to hell on a hand cut, right? So I did all the things wrong, right? And maybe everyone feels like this happens, but I was trying to be popular.

7:31I was trying to get involved in everyone's work, but time's up by 12 people and you can't cope. I was imprinting all of my kind of career aspirations and development needs onto them. You know, so basically like, you know, you're thinking everyone wants to be the leader and I'm going to, you know, grow you all on how to be that leader. And people are sitting there going, I don't want to do any of this. I don't want to do that, that chartered industry marketing thing. I don't want to do leadership. Like, so yeah, there was a lot to learn and and actually it really got me to the point where i had my appraisal and i sat in a cafe at monument and i sat there with my boss and i just sat there and i went i have completely fucked it up i mean i have i i don't know what to do nothing's working you know i really feel like i've broken it and my boss just went yep and i knew you would and the fact that you're accepting of that now is you're ready to listen and here's my tips and we we mapped it all out and she completely re-energized me and i went back with a model and you know i had experience and i had a theory with the experience and then i rebuilt from there i mean people will say you're probably still bucking it up but uh but i think i've come a long way from that but it was a massive moment of oh man so what would be so if someone's listening and they're making that one to 12 jump what what be your advice to them?

8:53I'd say that not everyone is a mini you and you don't have to be popular because actually that's not what they want. They don't want to like you. They want to respect you. They don't want you to agree with them. They want you to lead them and give them direction. And actually you tapping into that, you'll have an army of people all moving in the same direction and that's incredibly powerful. You get loads done, you get loads of success, right? And then also just be able to let go right you you you are no longer doing campaigns right and you may like doing that and you may want to keep your hand in but you have to move back and you have to deliver through other people and the second you learn how to do that you realize how much more can be achieved with multiple people around you but it's so much easier to say than do it's so hard isn't it i i i've had exactly i think the same experience as you but i remember realizing that how i want to be managed isn't necessarily how other people want to be managed so if i were to say who are the best bosses i've ever had they'll be the ones that basically gave me enormous autonomy absolute air cover and backing allowed me to fail and learn and improve and if i remember one of my best boss ever had um when i worked for him for three years at the end of it he asked me one question he said did you ever feel at any point that i told you what to do i said oh i don't think you did and he goes well my job was well done i'm like wow that's amazing and and i've sort of i've sort of taken that with me but i've realized actually that model only works in on a few people it works on people like me but most people you know want clear direction you want clear ways of working want you know you know you know what you know want you know want to be managed in it you know in a way and it's it's that was for me that was a that was a tough learning and And the other one, like you say, it's totally the same.

10:42I was working private equity for a few years where very hands-on. I mean, you know, I was the Twitter handle. I created our Facebook. In fact, I remember I designed the company uniform, you know, literally. It was a real hands-on role. And then I ended up kind of moving to a big, more corporate CMO job with a team of, I think, 60 people. And then suddenly, like you say, it's like my job was to maybe get to see the brief. I might get to see the finished thing. The bit in between, other people were doing it. It was so weird. It was like, oh, when do I get to see all this and do all this? And you have to realise your role is very different.

11:21The leadership role is... In fact, I think the CMO role itself, it's so unlike a practitioner, isn't it? Because when you're the level below and you're running the campaign or you're doing pricing or you're doing promotion or whatever it is, suddenly when you're overseeing all of it, it's a very different task, isn't it? Yeah. And someone once said something to me, actually, which was that the shadow that you cast as a leader is very big. And you have to understand that that's the impact that you're having. I do try and be quite an authentic leader. So there may be a little bit of swearing sometimes and there may be a little bit of passion and they'll see frustration and they'll also see extreme happiness.

11:59More of the happiness, hopefully. But you do also have to replay things in your head and just think about how is this coming across for everyone? because the one thing I've noticed is that there's so many different people who get energised in different ways. And sometimes some of the things you say can actually have the opposite effect of what you wanted. Definitely don't get it all right. But I try and just at least create an environment where people have a voice to say, actually, I prefer this or I prefer that or not this or, yeah. Now you've just done, I think, come up six years at Confused.

12:32Yep. I think that puts you right at the top end of CMO tenure. I think the official status is four, but that's the average, and the median's nearer too, isn't it? Yeah. In terms of most CMOs won't see the third year of their tenure. What's been the secret to sustained success as a CMO? Because personally, I'd quite like to know the answers. Yeah, I've been quite lucky in that I've had really good slugs of time. So seven years HSBC, then it was five years at AA, four years at Microsoft, six years REC, and now six years at Confuse. So good amounts of time where, you know, your work catches up with you and, you know, you actually get to see some things implemented.

13:15How to do that isn't so easy. You know, Confuse is a really good example, right, where I came into an organization. It had had like something like five CMOs in seven years. Huge turnover. and it had fallen on tough times last place out of the four and in the category and um and i got to the point where i went and the team were kind of like almost do i need to even learn your name because you know like how long are you going to be here and i realized very quickly that it was a classic case of the long and the short of it right i had to get some short-term gains on the board to buy time to get through the financial year whilst the reboot of the brand strategy kicked in which would probably see some benefits for in 12 18 months earliest and so that really was kind of hand-to-hand combat for 12 months performance gains performance marketing gains were there to be had um some some some profit savings cost savings and that basically meant that we could hit a financial year target and that that took 2018 away so i had a year and then 2019 we started seeing the campaign kicking in and i could balance the long and the short of it but um it sounds really easy six years on in hindsight um but that 12 to 18 month period is when you're most vulnerable as a cmo i i think you've touched on probably the thing that i think worries cmos more than anything else is is is that balancing along the shore i remember in my uh two year tenure uh cmo on lucas aid uh we went through this big reformulation uh had a huge consumer backlash we're absolutely in the shit i mean properly you know sales down 20 percent uh loads of pressure to figure out what went wrong, what we're going to do about it.

14:55And I remember coming up with a relaunch campaign and a whole initiative, you know, for the following summer. So this is kind of in the autumn. So, you know, probably six to nine months away from happening. I remember people saying, Johnny, you should be, surely you should be a bit more worried than you're looking. Now I was under like crazy amounts of pressure. So part of it was just trying to act cool sort of thing. Now we were doing the short term stuff as well, but I had to try and convince everybody that unless we're going to do the right thing for the long term, we're just not going to get out of this.

15:23So I had to get everyone rallied around new positioning, new campaign, new drive in store, the whole thing. All that stuff takes a while. I mean, looking back, we actually probably turned it around in about nine months, which is pretty damn good by any marketing standard. It was about as fast as we could go. But I remember that horrible, it was almost like walking an extremely long plank, right, where you go, I'm going to drop off this pretty soon, right? eventually but i'm still walking i'm still walking but that that pressure i'll never forget that pressure of kind of everyone judging you everyone's looking at the daily sales i mean we were looking at every day is the evidence it's turning around is it turning around is it turning around you know how much do we have to write down the budget by you know how much do we have to cut cost by cut cost by and as a marketeer you feel like you know you feel like you're on the hook don't you you feel the responsibility of the you know entire organization so that's a very i mean in the end I didn't succeed to do the long and the short quite.

16:17Although, you know, fortunately, the head of marketing who was there after I left said, you know, sent me the data to go, look, John, it did work in the end. So don't worry. But I wasn't there to see it. Colt Comfort. I know, Colt, exactly that. But it's very hard. It's very real. I mean, I was in a crisis situation, I suppose, so it kind of exaggerated it. And the other thing I noticed as well is that as a CMO, you are probably the only person that's taking, apart from maybe investors, taking a proper long-term view. You know, most other people in the C-suite are counting the cash or they're doing operations or they're dealing with HR issues.

16:51And it's your job, isn't it, to kind of be able to take a long-term view on it? Yeah, I think that I definitely agree that there's a huge strategic element going on. and i think that the c-suite don't necessarily think that's important for you to be focused on they want you to get some trading numbers in on a daily weekly basis and someone also has to be thinking about strategy and long term so we do get caught in the middle meet the short-term need but also have the eye on the strategy and make sure you'll keep sticking true to it and that is that is quite a tough kind of like pinched role to be in but it's funny because when i was listening you're talking then it it actually something that rings really true in me is you you actually have to have real courage of convictions right because it's the only thing that will carry you through so if you think that you're right on what the strategy should be that has to carry you for a long time so so make sure you've got that nailed on and then it's also important where if you were to go down that route and everything you do and it's guided around that that view and what you were trying to deliver and and you don't make it then you can walk into an interview and go well what happened well this was my plan and it's sound if you go in with a tactical reactive plan to another organization they might just go well you you didn't do your job really did you like you you you danced to someone's tune you didn't make it so so i think yeah the get the plan right so it sounds good just in case it doesn't come off like it's it's it's the sensible right course of action and just have the courage of your conviction because you're the one that everyone else is looking to for courage in the marketing department right the other thing actually i found that really helped me at the time was um obviously under quite intense pressure i actually re-read how brands grow i mean i i big fan of the book i in fact i think i'm one of the first people to read it when byron came over to to launch in the uk so i've been a big fan for a long time and and actually i went back and go i went back to it and go what does the evidence say like you know in terms of what does the science tell me about how I should act in this situation.

19:03And it was incredibly, actually, I found it incredibly motivating, actually, being able to go back to the board, or the exec in this case, and go, this is the route through how we get out of this situation. Don't just trust my instincts on here. Here's the evidence for what we're going to do. And actually, we were also working with System 1 at a time, and we started pre-testing all of the ideas we were coming up with to go, this is going to have a level of confidence in it working so at least it's not uh you and your reputation at stake it's actually like it brings some data to the party because i think a lot of it is about how you bring evidence to the marketing conversation so it's just not like oh sam's had a good idea today you know it's evidence based yeah and and this is a tough one right so for me there's an intrusputable truth right which is that advertising works right it's fundamental because brands exist and big brands exist right and they didn't just suddenly come about advertising drove them there right the problem is it's how you measure it and and that that's not easy right because you're talking about influencing long-term memory structures to use byron sharp's analogies um and different people will respond differently to messages with different amounts of time and there is a creative variance impact on that as well and when when you're spending money businesses want certainty right and marketing it's not necessarily can give you that certainty what it what it can do is it can get you the best course of action right or the or the or the best kind of law of averages or whatever you want to call it so so we then work out the measurement side of things and the best what the best place you can get to really from my mind is is a triangulation of measurement right which is and we implemented this in 2018 and it's quite well known you know so we had we put econometrics into place we had ga but we also created some internal attribution model um to redistribute so conversion path analysis stuff and then we also started doing a b testing right and then you start to see that broadly those results give you similar similar results they might have different numerical factors but they're broadly same and that is helping you understand which channels are helping you where and where you should rebalance right now some people hook onto it like it's absolute gospel because there's numbers and data and it's kind of this is scientific i'm a little bit more let's take it in the round um and that's why you triangulate rather than pinpoint but um i think it's the best that we've got i think it will probably get better because a lot of people are you know coming up with new ways of like augmenting the data but the reality is if you just stick to that and listen to that triangulation of data what we found was from 2018 things got better year on year and you can tweak right because you have one round or one tranche of that and it gets better and then you optimize again and it gets better and it gets better and over a few years you know look how far you've come it's it's just making sure everyone comes along on the journey so it was absolutely critical for me to explain to the board how all of these measurement metrics worked and um you know we had ubiquity helping us obviously as well and um so we had internal analyst teams and external analyst teams all comparing notes together and just basically getting cfo and ceo to understand how it all worked so that they were buying into the you know the hypothesis for the spend um and it does help that really does help actually yeah that's that cfo relationship is critical isn't it because at the end of the day they're setting budget, they're evaluating performance.

22:42I mean, another conundrum I find, back to how long and short of it, is what time period you measure something over, isn't it? Because great marketing accumulates over time, doesn't it? And one of the traps we all fall into is that we keep changing things rather than sticking to what's working, which I think is another reason to have a CMO that's been there more than three months. Yeah, I mean, this is exactly what I face with Confuse, because they'd had Brian the robot, then they'd had the cordon work and then we had we knew we had to launch something new and something new is not what you want to do right so i you know kept the mercedes on purpose right i was trying to keep some form of branding element coming through but um i i'm up against a couple of campaigns or i was up against a couple of campaigns that have got huge longevity compare the market and go compare wow i mean like they've been going what since 2007 or something and you know that that starts to become it creates its own momentum.

23:36It's perpetual. And so they're topping up something that has instant recognition. The second you put those characters on that screen, you know it from your data, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Immediately. The second the meerkat comes on, you see the spike. I mean, I'm fighting against that. And so we're trying to build something longer term, but also doing it a different way because we don't have a character. And I think those two campaigns, you know for different reasons one very popular and the one has a bit of an irritation factor but still works they are the classic example of why you don't deviate because you can then just top up the spend you reactivate if you've gone quiet for a bit um the cut through is tremendous there are loads of other examples of it but but yeah i mean i saw ritson talking the other day about marketers become bored of their campaigns for consumers doing i'm like yeah i don't disagree with that so so true but it's also quite unique market you're in isn't it because at the end of the day without oversimplifying it you're selling someone else's products through a website and that's about it right in terms of so advertising particularly or marketing and advertising is apps is everything you've got isn't it yeah we are a marketing a marketing and technology company right the technology is actually harder than people think but the marketing we are marketing services business we're essentially you could argue we're generating leads right for for insurance companies so um in some respects we're the outsource marketing department so so if marketing is our job we have to be really good at marketing because otherwise they'll use their marketing department right and that that's pressure in itself right because if marketing is your is essentially your your your your raison d 'etre your your product what you bring to the party then you've got to be all over latest testing methods you've got to be all over the efficiency and the optimization of of of you know every every channel that you're working on and then you're doing it with four other people in the in in in in the in the in the in the marketplace smashing hell out of each other the spend levels are high and you know it doesn't get any easier just because the numbers get longer and in fact it's the other way um you know you get cfos all over you with that kind of thing so that that is our business uh we are we we are marketing services business so we have to be excellent and the first thing i said in 2018 when i turned up a confused like this is going to be a world-class marketing department world class which is exactly where they are now it has to be it has to be doesn't it one thing i'm curious about is so whenever i go on confused.com and i'm looking for my insurance i don't always pick the cheapest i i tend to go for well probably the cheapest brand i know or brand that i kind of you know feel good about or or as you know have used before or something.

26:20I've been intrigued to know from a brand point of view, how important is brand when making a decision over price? Because obviously you're competing with three other, you know, comparison sites, all positioned around the best deals. But is that actually how people make decisions? If you're allowed to say, of course, you know. Well, yeah. So, I mean, I can talk in general terms about the fact that I don't think people realize that price comparison is the best example of branding that you could ever see in action, right? So we unify the question set so that everyone is inputting the same consistent data, but going out to 120 insurers, right?

26:55And then you get the results page. So if branding didn't have an impact, everyone would choose the first one on the list and pay the cheapest price. That does not happen. People will search through the list and go below the fold to find a brand that they feel comfortable with with a balance of price point. And that, for me, is the epitome of branding, right? Because I can look at that and very interestingly see the bigger insurer brands, you know, actually can get away with a higher price point and get good conversion of that. Because people will be thinking, well, at least I know that name, or there's a chance they'll be around and pay out my claim, et cetera, et cetera.

27:38And so it isn't all about price. It's actually about a trade-off of brand versus price or value, right? And that isn't that marketing, right? And, you know, I won't say it now, but I could do it numerically. I could look at it and I could... Well, I was going to say, you could pretty much value the nation's insurance brands, couldn't you, by their ability to, you know, charge a premium over the cheapest and comparable policy? Yeah, I mean, it'd be a really complicated algorithm them because uh every insurer goes after a different customer um and there's you know so many questions and so many so many varying policy prices and what have you so but in theory yes i you know i could turn around and go that gives you that much headroom on price and so that equals brand right so how much are you spending on marketing versus policy taken yeah i mean you could do a rough maths on it and and um we have to be careful about sharing data because we we are Switzerland when it comes to that for all the insurers.

28:35But it'd be a really interesting exercise to do if you could anonymise it in some way. It would be fascinating, wouldn't it? One question that I've had for quite a while is your own brand, in terms, I say your own brand, but Confused.com's brand, why would you name yourself after the category problem? I mean, it's like kind of being a builder and going, yeah, we're going to have a ripoff.com site. We're going to play with the problem sort of thing. I mean, is it just me that kind of goes, i'm confused as to why they decided to call themselves confused that was the biggest problem i had to deal with right is uh you know one of the first questions the board said was do we get rid of the name right because no one's confused anymore and this is 2018 right 20 2002 when they when they developed it it was confusing right you had to go through the yellow pages people wouldn't even remember this it was like two nights worth of trawling through the yellow pages getting quotes going through the question set and it was really confusing about whether it was like for like and etc etc people were confused and so they were asking the question are you confused they don't you don't have to be when you you know we've solved that price comparison that that engine solved confusion right fast forward to 2007 when the um compare the market or go compare come in to play it's now about comparison because essentially you you know you didn't know it but you created a comparison engine.

29:56No one even called it that then. So that's what people start knowing it as. So you nailed it when you brand yourself anything with compare in there. You've absolutely nailed it. Your natural search, you know, the brand record. It was amazing. And it's a really, again, another good and big branding question was, so do we rebrand? Absolutely not. You've spent tens, if not hundreds of millions of pounds since 2002 establishing this brand, right? and basically i just did a little bit of research which said my spontaneous awareness was right down my prompted awareness was as high as the other price comparison guys this is a reactivation piece this is a reactivation campaign um and so uh the answer was no we are not rebranding right this brand is still in people's brain people used to talk say i'm confused.com in everyday parlance true yeah yeah epic for any brand but yeah so it was no to rebranding but i totally get the point which is whenever we go into customer research groups you have to get past the first five minutes where people go yeah i'm not confused and actually do you think i'm stupid it's like no it's just this name i've got yeah and that's how we we then decided in 2018 let's lean into it and own it right you know don't be confused yeah be confused.com insurance is confusing sorry what is it life is confusing insurance doesn't have to be god i've only just left and i forgot my line i was gonna say but um but yeah so um that's a real tough one yeah no i can imagine that being a tough one and then in terms of strategy what was your approach because as you said yourself you know and we can see in the system one data you're up against one of the world's best examples of branding characters you know fluent devices uh you know category ownership big spending i mean it felt like over the last 10 years has been a real land grab hasn't there for this particular market because I'm assuming it's relatively profitable as well but there's a lot of money being spent and you've got four major players and I believe I'm right in saying haven't you gone from around fourth place to probably second place over over the last six years so what what was your strategy to combat some very very successful well-spending competitors yeah I mean we basically just had to punch above our weight a lot and essentially that was a rallying call for marketing department you know joining no one felt that they could do it and i just said we just do it slowly right so we close the gap and get back close to second and third place then we'll take third then we'll take second now we'll create clear water from from second all of this is in the effie paper in the public domain um but the um it we it's really easy to say we just had to be really really hyper efficient and effective with our marketing it's really hard to do that's where a lot of the triangulation and measurement really came in to help us as a yardstick to see how things were going really embracing cutting-edge technology uh cutting-edge marketing really you know so bringing microsoft and google really close to us and saying um i really want to get all over the the food so that we used to have a term when i worked at microsoft called dog fooding So which is essentially, you know, you, you trial the latest products, um, before they're really, you know, like beta, um, want to be all over beta trials and just getting everyone into a mentality where you are making sure that whatever you're achieving, even if it's success is not good enough.

33:25Like we have to keep refining and refining and refining because we don't have the luxury, just throw money around and smash, smash, smash spend. And, and actually I remember Tim Parker, who was the CEO at the AA when I worked there, he said the organizations he admired most were Japanese car manufacturers because they would make a really reliable car but wouldn't be happy. They would say, but there's a way of making this electric window smoother or quieter. And I said, that's the mentality we need to instill, guys. We have got to think what worked and then how can we make that better and how can we make it again?

33:58It's like there is no destination. It's just this ongoing or the infinite game, I think Simon Sinek calls it. but um it's a bit like the marginal gain david brail's marginal gains isn't it it you know there's no one silver bullet that goes ah if we do this one thing we'll suddenly you know take out our much bigger spending competitors but actually the accumulation of doing lots of things incredibly well learning and repeating learning and repeating and consistency you've always been very consistent in terms of you know backing what's working it's it's funny you say that because that's literally my line when people say so what did you do confused i was like there's no you're looking for a silver bullet there's no silver bullet like everyone wants a really pithy answer i was like i did a hundred things and we just kept grinding at those hundred things all the time and it was so much was about people and culture as well as technical marketing skills um which is something that people you know do or don't realize is super important is if you have an army of people all motivated focused and clear on the objective and and actually really enjoying themselves and doing their best work.

34:59That's worth three people to every one, right? And so then you learn faster. So yeah, I kind of, I love that there is no silver bullet analogy because everyone just wants a real quick answer to really complicated problems. They do. I know sometimes it's like hard work, learning from what fails, repeating the successes, getting 10 % better every single time. You know, sometimes that is the answer. You know, getting the right people together, working together, employing the right people. It's often down to these things, isn't it? And that's essentially one of the many things that is a CMO role, right?

35:34Is that you are spinning a load of plates and you have to make sure one doesn't drop. And then people are like, well, what do you actually do all day? I just make sure no plates drop. Yeah. Do you know what? People forget that. I think the one of them – I say the one mistake. It's not the only mistake. But anyway, one mistake I've often made when I've written business plans is I haven't built in things going wrong. I've gone, oh, well, if we do this, then we add that, and then that happens, and this happens, oh, look, we've doubled the business. And then, of course, literally day one of the plan, some unforeseen circumstance, some quality control issue, problem at the factory, you know, whatever happens.

36:06And sometimes it's about anticipating and dealing with stuff that could go wrong that no one will thank you for because, like, it didn't go wrong, so they can't see. Yeah, also, marketeers are pretty much eternal optimists. They are, aren't they? Exactly. It's really hard to go. It's a good exercise too, isn't it? Like, I can't remember where I came across this phrase, but someone came up with this idea of doing a pre-mortem on a project. And what they did is before they did anything, they actually wrote the article reviewing its failure afterwards. I was like, ooh, flipping heck. And then, of course, what you do is you reverse into it and go, well, let's address every single one of the things that could go wrong.

36:40I was a genius idea. Yeah, I mean, it's really good when you're in the firefight and you don't have any time and everything's a panic. It probably would feel like a luxury, but if you could get it into being muscle memory or as a tradition, then I think, yeah, it could be effective. We're really good problem solvers as well, marketeers. Maybe it's because we end up being so reactive. You have to be. It's forced on you, isn't it? You mentioned FEs there as well, and congratulations on the FE. What was the big insight in the FE case study that people could take away? I think the biggest thing was the link between spontaneous awareness and actual sales.

37:18right so so we we did a lot of work with ubiquity to to create a link there and that it that's incredibly powerful if you unlock that because that if because spontan awareness particularly in this category can be affected month on month by by the work that you're doing uh the brand work if you're turning that into sales then that's very very helpful obviously it's never you know a one-to-one oh i spent a pound on tv and i got it back within the same month it's like yeah right but i think if you understand that there is a linear relationship between that tv spend or the or the any of the above the line spend and your spont awareness and you know that spont awareness is an incredibly important metric for you as a rallying call then uh then that's incredibly helpful sometimes knowing the right metrics to be measuring is part of the is a whole part of the battle right spontaneously is really interesting actually because i think most people are looking and go oh that's too hard right you know because you got you know i don't know if you're in i've been in soft drinks you go coca-cola everyone comes up with coca-cola first you know what i mean and and therefore it's easy to go wow we're going to have to prompt it because it's slightly lower hanging through it looks a bit easier to easier to shift prompting and it's likely to change more directly but i haven't come across spontaneous being the the closest link but that's well this category is tough right because prompted awareness everyone's in the 90s so that variance is very tight, right?

38:45Spontaneous awareness also, in other industries I've worked in, is much slower to influence or less dynamic, but it's not in this category. That makes sense. And I think it's because insurance isn't something that people love and want to hold in their heads all day long. They are in market a couple of weeks of a year and that is when they're primed, right? And when they're not, they are not holding you in their brain they are they're not carrying around so you do see much more fluctuation it's true isn't it because it is those categories it comes around once a year it's incredibly important for the couple of hours that you go and look it up and sort it out but unless of course you have an insurance claim in which case it becomes the most important thing in the world ever anyway but you know for most of us most of the time it is a once a year thing isn't it yeah and that and that's tough because you've got to be marketing always on because you need to be there for that for that time uh when you are being considered and uh if you're out shouted by your competitors then you you lose some of that mental availability at that crucial time so it's it's a tough category but it's fascinating as well to actually watch your work playing out in front of you yeah yeah i bet now now let's talk about where you're going next because you've just completed a pitch process and i believe you just appointed a new agency um what was the thinking behind going to pitch and how on earth did you select because you had some pretty decent uh a pretty decent lineup in the pitch didn't you yeah we did uh it was i mean it it was actually incredibly exciting right i spent a good amount of time on it we we deliberately went in to do a long list and a questionnaire and then get everyone to take the summer off and then issued the brief in september when everyone's back from from summer holidays uh have a good amount of time then then we'll have a look in six weeks in october at the work and we do some tissue sessions and um and then we appointed leos recently i saw just amazing work i mean it it's such a it's such a such a privileged position to to actually see all the thinking strategy planning and then creative ideas and you know saw the best agencies basically in london right um or not necessarily london but and it really helps you as a marketeer having someone externally looking at your problems and giving you some feedback and some guidance and some tips and what have you um it's like you've got kind of a yeah you've got a little coach behind you giving you a pep but the we knew what the brief was because obviously about winning spontaneous awareness is absolutely critical and we're a mass market brand and we're always on right so for us populist work super important and so we were looking at agencies that have got really good examples of that going on and we whittled down to um mccann leo's and adam and eve and that was the the final three and that was amazing and also difficult in that you couldn't put a piece of paper between them they were all doing amazing ideas amazing work great strategy really exciting and obviously you're spending time in a room with some of the the greatest names in the industry right now and then eventually we appointed uh leo and they they've got you know brilliant examples of of populist work you know mcdonald's is yeah really really cool the ratio ouches and and and the morrison's christmas ad right yes absolutely that is my unsung hero award is the morrison's Christmas.

42:19In fact, it got quite heavily criticised in some parts. But I think it's perfectly populist if you're going to use that phrase, isn't it? Because a soundtrack everybody loves, it's set in a very average kind of typical, I don't know, home that we can all relate to. And it's just fun. And it's got those kind of puppet gloves going on. It's brilliantly done. Absolutely brilliant. In fact, actually, it's not just my opinion. It got a 5.9 star on the system one uh test so it's up there with audi kevin the carrot's up there with m &s uh this year amazing job amazing yeah it's it's funny the first rule of marketing you are not the customer yay maybe it's because it's taught us first everyone forgets it like you know the most and when people criticize things like that they've lost they've lost that thread right is that try and think like the mass populace, and it's really hard to do.

43:15Well, Campaign Magazine managed to do that royally, right? Because they just put Amazon as turkey of the week. I was just like, you've got to be kidding. That was another 5.9. So literally, unanimously liked by the general public. I mean, huge amounts of positive emotional response, and then they made it a turkey. People don't realise how tough it is as a marketeer to put all of your stuff away and try and understand is your target market is disappearing to your target market i mean that's why you do so much research stuff i mean we we used your your your pre-testing stuff for the concepts that we've got with with leos and then we're going to go into much more detailed research testing now uh with groups and um you have to listen to people starting to talk about it um because it's you will get surprised you'll get surprised at what you thought you didn't like or what you thought you liked that no one else is getting and you don't want to make a whole ad put it live and then learn oh totally i've definitely i've been there um what advice would you give to agent you just mean through a pitch process uh you know obviously you the cmo so you're the person making the decision um what advice would you give people pitching in terms of what is a cmo thinking about how are you judging what what are your criteria when you're going through a process so first of all cmos don't spend all day long um with agencies and doing advertising right most of the job is resource resource allocation justification resource business case you know um and then all the other stuff you know you're also looking after large departments of people and they you know have have all that comes with that so there's pressure uh all around.

44:55And so I think sometimes agencies think that this is the big thing, right? This is the big thing that you're going to spend all your day on. It's not. You're obsessed with getting the results. You're obsessed with growing the business. You're obsessed with taking share, competing. That is hugely important. I think that getting the planning and strategy is as important as the creative ideas. And that's what I loved about this latest pitch process was, you know we had some great strategists putting some brilliant work together and they start to show that even though they're not in the business they understand the problems that you've got and this and and then you know that the brief is right and and then you can go into looking at the creative work and making the assessment another killer part for me is that they also working out how they can be an extension of the team because we genuinely operate that like that we certainly confused where um very small brand advertising team so the agency would be an extension of the department so you need to know that they care as much about your fortunes as you know as as their own and uh that you can get on work together right also being willing to challenge i mean there are some people who will be laughing at this point where we had active kind of debates slash piss takes all day long.

46:16But it was because I really want that. And I encourage that. I encourage not to agree with me. Because I don't need a room of people just going, oh, okay, so you must be right. No, no, no, I'm outsourcing advice. Like, please help. And I think there's a danger that there are some CMOs that engender the behavior that agency people should, you know, listen to them all day long. And I think it's not. I think it's that they should actually stimulate us and argue and test our thinking and challenge and that's when the best stuff comes out that's when the best work comes out that's really good advice actually because because you know the reason you're employing an agency is because you don't know the answer very often so you're like help me you know understand the problem that's a really really important one isn't it yeah i i whenever i give advice i always start there which is understand the customer's problem first and then you'll then you'll almost certainly be successful and it's interesting you test it use the system one test actually because i about three or four years ago i just started system one and um met a founder of a relatively large agency and uh it was just he was asking me what am i doing i said i've just started it you know system one we you know we do ad testing that kind of thing and i said to tell you what i'll guarantee you a pitch win and he's like how are you gonna do that i said well as a cmo no one's ever pitched an idea and then said we believe in this so much we've gone and asked all your you know we've gone ask all your customers what they think and here's results and it's you know it's almost got like a a quality control guarantee on it sort of thing i said honestly you'd win a pitch i actually got a call a week later he said oh uh we've got a pitch in 24 48 hours time yeah you up for it and i'm like yeah yeah i said i forgot to tell you the idea has got to be good though so but they won the pitch it was amazing in that particular one actually the idea is a very big um brands they were pitching to in a very difficult category and it was actually a four-star idea and they they literally just had concept boards and uh and scripts and stuff like that, but were able to kind of test it with the audience, you know, get some feedback and they won the pitch against the odds as well.

48:15Actually, at that point, they weren't the favourite. I think one of the big advantages is that you can get to your group quick, your audience quick, you can get feedback quick. And that's the danger, isn't it? It's like pitch processes, sometimes it is a bit of a firefight. Things have to be turned around quite quick. So being able to do that is incredibly important. I think utopia for me is if you can get to the point where concepts can be mocked up to the level where everyday audience don't have to use the suspension of disbelief or their imagination because how many times have we been in research where they just don't understand what you're talking about when you're showing them a you know kind of like a concept or um you know even just a you know a lay down kind of sketch they it's just too much they have to see the completed ad to really know the experience so i think maybe with tech that that can actually help us get to that point as well i know that the leo's piece that they did that was that was really good yeah you know visual for them to use no exactly and actually one of the things we've done up system one is we've perfected the art of uh because we've tested so many early stage concepts now we kind of know what the difference is between early and late stage so we can kind of give a relatively confident prediction now a lot happens between you know concept and production and in fact i i've worked as a client side where it's gone up a lot and i've actually worked in a situation where it's actually gone slightly down where the execution didn't live up to the idea that people bought into early stage.