MAD//Fest - From contemporary dance to craft beer revolution? - Tom Rainsford, Beavertown Brewery

0:28Welcome back everybody to Uncensored CMO. this year who's Tom Rainsford. He is the marketing director at Beavertown Brewery. I love Tom. He's got so much passion and energy and he's worked on challenger brands his career. He was a co-founder at Gifgaf and more recently he's become marketing director at Beavertown. So I wanted to chat to Tom about what makes a great challenger brand and particularly the role of people and culture, which he is really passionate about. I also get him to talk a little bit about the preview of his talk at Madfest. So no big secrets revealed, but he talks us through what he's planning for this year.

1:00So if you go in there, do listen to this episode. It's a great conversation with one of the coolest guys in marketing. Tom, so welcome to Oncensor CMO. Hello, thanks for having me. Let's start here with a question maybe. You've got a rather unusual route into marketing, haven't you? What's that all about? Yeah, so I did a degree in contemporary dance, which I loved and continue to love. Pina Bausch is a hero of mine. And then I did some stuff after university, did some, you know, different performances at theatres in London and all that kind of thing and then I didn't have any money and needed to do something which I thought would be creative but might be able to pay the rent and an opportunity came up working in marketing which was working on kind of like health care and a bit of health and beauty and stuff got that job and then that was me in the world of marketing really and it's just been a kind of continuation from there of finding different interesting particularly disruptive or challenger brands to work on.

1:54What I love about this is I don't think I've ever met anyone a senior marketer who's actually done marketing as a degree. I mean, I think this is why Mark Ritson is cleaning up right now with his MBA, because everyone's like, yeah, I feel a bit of a fraud here. I'm not actually studying marketing. I better go and catch up with it a bit. I mean, I did finance as well, which is a bit different. But it's incredibly useful, actually, not coming from marketing, I think, because it gives you a kind of perspective on the world, doesn't it? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think I was quite lucky in the first role that I had was very traditional you know you had your product that you looked after specifically you had your budget it sat on your desk the product you talked a lot about packaging and on shelf and you know point of sale so it was very not that new at the time it's very sort of traditional schooling in marketing so I think that kind of helped but I think it's a bit like anything which is like I think particularly from a CMO from a marketing director's perspective I think it's good to take different viewpoints from different perspectives really because ultimately otherwise it's all a bit of an echo chamber and i don't think that helps you make good decisions yeah now we're going to come and talk about beavertown of course but actually your career has been sort of known for being a challenger really to the establishment and actually the the part your career spent most of the time on is gift gaff actually which is a if you think about the tech in you know well or telco industry and how dominated it is by a few players explain what you were doing at gift because you were like employee number four were you got very very early on and co-founded the business as well yeah absolutely so um this guy called gav thompson who had this idea about basically david versus goliath and wanted a fair mutual and simple mobile network i was at t-mobile at the time which obviously then became e further down the line and someone rung me up and said there's this challenger brand we can't tell you anything about it do you want to come and talk to them and I thought well why not I've got I've got nothing to lose um so I met a couple of people I spent my first interview pretty much talking about Gossip Girl which at the time was you know number one tv show I'm not sure why but that is what we talked about and then me and 13 other people so 14 of us launched it in 2009 and then I spent 10 years there very much sort of taking that idea of David versus Goliath and being disruptive in the mobile market which you know It has lots of big players in it.

4:08So there's, you know, space for challenger brands. And that was the position. And we made it into what it is today. I like the David and Goliath analogy. It kind of resonates easily, doesn't it, with the challenge. But what is it that Gifgaf did that made it the David to the Goliath? Can you share some of what made that successful? Yeah, I think there's a few things. I think, first of all, it had a very strong point of view, right, which sounds strange, but often those points of view are retrofitted into a business or a brand rather than being on a i mean it was literally a piece of paper when i joined with some bullet points on it was like eight bullet points right and it was about mutuality gift gaffers an old gala word for mutual giving so it was you know in traditional senses the equity of the brand was baked in from day one so that that's a key part we delivered that through having a different business model so it didn't have retail stores which in 2009 people were like you know this is mad like and and a lot of people genuinely thought it was going to fail we involved our what we call members customers in how the business worked you know way before you know kickstarter existed or whatever else and therefore that delivered against that concept of mutuality and we you know paid them lots of money you know and they donated to charity and all kinds of things like that so the brand really was built out of the concept of people and people power and the mobile network run by you and this idea around david versus goliath and mutuality and it worked because we stayed true to what we were trying to do and i think you know through my tenure there really the core job that i was there to do was to protect the equity that we were building so we did that of course in ways like above the line and below the line and blah blah blah but ultimately it was about the protection of what is the magic that's within that brand and i think that's why then worked so you got i mean you got two big disadvantages there so you've got the big telco companies have got high street presence haven't they they've literally got retail outlets that every one of us walking down the high street will see vodafone etc etc and they've got enormous advertising budgets to make sure that when you're online or you're watching your tv you've got advertising put my 24 7 so how do you fight against those two very very big disadvantages that you had so i think you know it goes back to that classic you can't outspend so outsmart right so we knew that we wanted to make this brand really relevant for people and we knew that there were people that had high levels of dissatisfaction some brands have minus mps scores right which is quite you know quite an achievement so we knew there were huge amounts of dissatisfaction but rather than focusing on the dissatisfaction we actually told them what we did instead and they could connect those two dots so i think making really savvy decisions about how you wanted to talk to people when you wanted to talk to them gave you the opportunity to build a brand supported by great products at price points that people wanted and those hygiene factors work and i guess my whole point of view is great brands are both emotional and rational you want your phone to work when you want to make a call or you know do people make calls when you wanted to make a call or you know go on instagram or whatever but equally you want to have some emotional connection and i think particularly in that market somewhere that emotional connection had got lost in forgetting about people for 23 months until their contract came up and it felt very commoditized and very big brands and just being a different player in that different attitude different body language made us very relevant for people and that relevancy is you know absolutely key and of course mobile it's like people sleep with their phone right do you know what i mean you can't really get much closer so therefore there is a connection and there is a relationship so purely by opening a door to a different world people were happy to walk through i think this often happens in tech doesn't it people forget that people often market the tech and not what the tech does or can do for you isn't it because you think about your phone is your connection to the world connection to the loved ones it allows you to ask a question of the world and get an answer to it doesn't it's an amazing kind of portal into other things but most of the marketing we see is it's got 16 megabits or whatever, or it's like got this much battery life, you know.

8:22The emotion gets forgotten, doesn't it? I mean, it massively does. It took a global pandemic for QR codes to become relevant and useful, right? So my point of view on technology is there has to be a human need and desire or question or problem that needs to be answered, and technology can become the answer to that. Often, when it's technology dictating what should happen, that's where that dichotomy comes in. Now, was anyone wandering around saying, oh, I'd love an online encyclopedia of things that I can go to? You know, no, probably not. But that desire for information was there, that desire to learn, that desire to search for things was there, right?

9:01So I think you have to have that. I also think that tech businesses, not just tech businesses, lots of businesses, but particularly in tech, their internal language and internal way of looking at things pours outwards, right? There is no reason, really, why people are wandering around talking about 5G or 4G or 3G. You know, 5G was called LTE. This is internal language that is then forced on people externally. So, you know, hyperfibre, you know, like broadband, this mega, you know, no one knows. No one understands it. Normal consumers don't, right? I think, you know, it's a bit like, you know, within the world of beer, right?

9:46which is I don't expect or want people to necessarily know all the hops and what the individual hops smell like before they go and make the beer. If you do, that's wicked and that's great and, you know, fantastic. You're that passionate, right? And, of course, the people that make the beer need to feel that way. But a consumer just buying it in Waitrose or going into Young's pubs, they don't need to know that. They just want a cracking drink. And that's absolutely fine. And I think sometimes it gets a bit muddy and you as a marketeer becomes used to the language and suddenly it's on a bus and then it's in the real world, right?

10:19It's a classic one, isn't it? As marketers, we assume the consumer is a lot more interested in our product than they actually are. Like you say, maybe 5 % are actually looking the hops up and really into the process or whatever. But most people just want a great drink, don't they? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what ultimately brands are there to service their needs or answer the question or do whatever that insight is and deliver against it, right? Like how you do that, how you can construct the, you know, SIM that goes in the phone, it doesn't matter. If people do care, wicked, that's great, right?

10:53But not everyone needs to know that. And I think that's quite important. And sometimes I think, particularly in technology, that does get lost. Now, before we get into beer, because obviously we're dying to do that, in terms of how you made the work as well at GiftCode, you did a lot in-house, didn't you? I noticed a lot of challengers do do that. You know, they produce themselves. else why would you in-house rather than do what most you know most businesses do and bring agencies in to do that for you you know we tried a few different things at giftgaff we had agencies for a period of time and then basically i brought it in the house the reason i brought it in the house is twofold one is a cost element which is like instead of paying retainer or whatever it might be i can take that money we can put it into media or we can increase production i'll get that balance right so there's like a sort of economic aspect to it but ultimately it's down to the principle that i believe that the people that are responsible for the brand which is marketing and the p and the wider people that work for that business should be creatively involved right so they shouldn't outsource the responsibility for the creative of that brand now i understand that some brands need to do that because of size because that's what they've done because they don't want to build it You know, and I'm not questioning that at all.

12:06I'm not questioning how other people do it. But for us at GiftGaff, we felt that the right thing to do was to be able to bring it in-house. That didn't mean that we entirely stopped working with, you know, agencies. It just meant we had more options. So therefore I might write something or direct it or some of the team might do that or we might go straight to production houses and work directly with directors or producers or whatever. It just opened up more options to us and we felt that that was the right decision. And I'd argue the creative output that we had, obviously sometimes you look back at campaigns and go, oh, God, why did we do that?

12:44But I'd say in the main, you know, I'm pretty proud of what we did and I think that it was very different and it built the brand in the right way for the success it's gone on to have. Well, I noticed actually in that time you got Creative Reviews, one of the top 50 creative minds in the country, didn't you, as well, was during that time? Yes, that was very nice of them. Yes, thank you, Creative Review. Yeah, thank you very much. So, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, all things are a team sport, aren't they? But I think that's probably the reason a lot of businesses probably don't in-house as much as they could do is probably for that reason, isn't it?

13:14Is what you're hiring is that creative talent. So how do you nurture creativity within a company to achieve the kind of outcome you did? I think it's a combination of things. I think you have to value creativity, right? And I just question whether or not creativity is valued in the same way as the numbers, right? Or whatever might be important to that team. So I think you have to start there. So I think you have to value creative as a process. I think you have to value it and see it not added on at the end or something that people over there do or something you can outsource. It needs to be baked in.

13:52To value it, you need to have it within your value set as a business, right? And whatever your culture is, whatever you think is important and all the rest of it has to be weaved through that. And then on a practical basis, you have to have a different approach to working with people than traditionally you would, right? Which is creative people, and arguably we're all creative, but creative people might have a different way of working than the finance department. And you have to be okay with that. And I'm not always sure that people really recognize that or understand it or want to do it. So I think it has to be baked into your values and you have to have a practical approach as a business that allows that to happen, which may be different than the traditional processes and approaches that business would take.

14:39That's a really interesting idea, because there's so much evidence that suggests that creativity is pretty much the number one thing at your disposal to drive business results. But I don't think I've ever heard of a company that has we value creativity as part of its values, or that has processes that are designed to not be structured to allow creativity to happen rather than, you know, try and deliver operations, let's say. Because there's that tension in business between the efficiency of getting the job done and creativity doesn't work that way. Creativity is not something that you can kind of plan for in the same sense.

15:10You need to create the environment for it, don't you? But it's an interesting idea because creativity is so valuable and yet it's so not often embraced by a company. I think it's a broader problem. I think we don't value creativity in the school system. I think art is seen as like a cop-out and what you do instead of doing something more important. You know, we've got a prime minister at the moment that seems to want everyone to do maths for eternity. Of course, an understanding of maths is important. And AI, of course. Right? Maths and AI. But they're not mutually exclusive, right? So I think there's a huge problem with how we look upon creativity as a whole from very, very early on.

15:48I think from a business perspective, I think we're caught between two stools at the moment, right? And I think that situation has been heightened by, let's use the word COVID, right? Because it started to question the approaches that businesses had. And it had been sort of chipping away in the sort of notion that people might work from home one day a week and all the rest of it. And COVID just blew the doors off. traditionally businesses may not have needed to allow creativity in because that was something you outsource to advertising agencies or creative agencies or whatever now it's slightly different i think and i think that there's bigger questions that businesses need to ask themselves in regards to what is it they want to do not from a creative perspective or not only from a creative perspective But entirely, the proposition that businesses have is very different because the needs, particularly you see that in, you know, people that are starting out their careers are very different.

16:48And actually, what the market and consumers want is very different. So therefore, you have to fundamentally question your approach. That's quite hard to do if you've got a massive drug and all to turn around, right? So therefore, is it easier to just sort of do what we've always done and sort of just give people pizza on Wednesdays than fundamentally ask the question? And of course, you know, particularly, you know, I don't know, I've never worked for, you know, massive businesses directly, but like safety, stability is probably important, right? So actually some of those big changes, you know, do you want to make them?

17:27Do you need to make them? So I think it's a massive fundamental question, basically. I think I've covered the school system all the way up to mass capitalism in one answer. Interesting. I thought COVID was both a constraint to creativity and a liberator as well, because what it did do is suddenly you realise, oh, we can make something really quickly. We can outsource it to the world. We can sign stuff off over a Zoom call rather than have to be in the room and travel South Africa to, you know, oversee the production of it um it did also show we could do some amazing things now i i you know equally we had sort of very you know everyone started doing the same kind of creative there was that too was piano yeah you know in these unprecedented times and you know piano music goes there was that of course but it did show that actually there were so many more creators around the world than we realize existed that actually some stories told very simply by you know people you know telling stories between themselves could be very very powerful you know we could access talent wherever it was in the world no longer didn't have to be in central london anymore it could be done on a shoestring i mean there were a lot of positives that happened but the kobe was both a blessing and a curse wasn't it in some ways i think it just asked questions that needed to be asked that that you couldn't do at such a mass level without you know a situation like that happening where suddenly everyone's told to work from home and you've got to kind of you know muddle your way through it i remember saying to the team i was like look you know i think it was the first day or something i was like look i've never managed a team for a pandemic before right so we're gonna just have to figure this out together i do think that that it did give different approaches and opportunities that probably needed to be modernized that hadn't been for for lots of reasons i think the creativity thing i think is interesting because i think again it was kind of more just covid put it under the microscope right which is the media mix is more complicated than ever there's more channels people want you to spend on all of them right you know huge growth in influencer and therefore influencer agencies and there is creativity happening right to your point you know there's amazing people making amazing things around the worlds in their bedrooms or living rooms or whatever right so it's difficult to work out how that applies to your marketing mix and where to go but i think the important thing is is that you have to embrace it and set up approaches that will allow that creativity and those ways of working to to happen yeah yeah i mean one of the other my colleague orlando actually wrote a book called Lookout, which is really fascinating.

20:14He took many, many years of kind of art history. And what he did is he traced how art changed in response to society. Art's almost like a mirror up to society, really. And as you look through art, you see it reflecting society as it changed. And he drew this really interesting comparison between stages of industrial revolution led to what he calls society looking inwards, hence why it's called the book Lookout, really. But what happens is when when societies are going through industrial revolutions it becomes very mechanistic it becomes very individual um there's there's a lot of power and control going on whereas in as he would call it more right brain societies you know renaissance or romantic periods and so on it's more about the collective it's more about people connecting it's more about community enjoying things together sort of thing but what happens in the left brain phases like industrial revolutions is that's when you see anxiety you see stress you see people warring and go, you know, people divide it into different kind of tribes, that kind of thing.

21:11And that's, you know, what goes often before conflict. And you look at that and you think that's sort of what we're experiencing today, isn't it? That, you know, COVID accelerated the industrial revolution to some extent. And we're seeing the kind of result of that negatively in society, as well as the positive, what it enables us to do. But it's quite profound in terms of the impact, I think, on people and culture. It also, and I'd love to know your point of view on this as well, it makes managing teams harder because whereas before we were together and we understood this is a classic kind of right brain thing we'd understand nuance we'd understand relationship we'd we'd kind of get the joke together we you know if you said something i'd upset me i could talk to you about it on the spot right on zoom that doesn't happen right you don't get all that stuff and it makes managing teams and creating culture harder i think i said that um i said at Mabfest last year when I was presenting that I think that this is the first time since the industrial revolution that we need to really question our approaches to working you know from a Beaver Town perspective we make product right physical product people have to go there and do their amazing stuff but there's an awful lot of businesses that don't have to go to one site a factory site right to make stuff so therefore why is everyone going to the same place at the same time which creates loads of travel issues which creates loads of environmental issues it creates loads of stress because you've got to rush here or rush there or drop the kids off or do this do that and it just doesn't work right like you know i remember when i started my career it would take me hours to get to work because everything was so you know i used to drive and the roads were awful how stupid is that right those moments you're killing productivity I would rather get up at six I'm woken up by a three-year-old and a six-month-year-old but I would I would rather personally like just wake up naturally but you know at six and start working at seven right because I'm already thinking about it but if I have to get on the tube for an hour right or an hour and a half or whatever so so the system just doesn't really work so we have to question it now to your point around managing you're absolutely right you know you look at the stuff from gallop it's like over 70 percent of your engagement and viewpoint on your work is dependent on your manager so therefore we as leaders we as managers have a huge impact on the people that therefore work for us but i think it's about understanding individuals and what works for that business which means that a cookie cutter approach is irrelevant right because you've got to understand people on a people level which takes time right and and relationship building and you've got to understand what works your business and then set up the you know processes approaches whatever you want to call them to manage grow develop that team appropriately you know the thing that keeps me up more than anything else at night right yes of course you worry about above the line campaigns and results and whether or not you've you know some big decision whether or not you've made the right decision of course we're all human but what really worries me is am i developing my team are they getting what they want out of it uh do i need to be more ruthless with direction in a good way you know it's it's those things because ultimately a business is just the people that work for it and i think that that's some of the problem which is when you go into you know senior meetings or whatever you know it's like sales figures first right and i think certainly at beaver town and certainly at gift girl it was like right let's talk about people right and then go from there because without the people you weren't actually doing a thing that's right that's so interesting i i uh i was chatting to dom at yorkshire tea and they consciously you know they consciously dedicate 20 of all meetings to how are you right and basically they know what you do the weekends they know the kids names they know what what sport they're into, which team they support.

25:10And they actually said the value of that connection and that understanding and that empathy is well worth the 20. 20 % of every meeting is dedicated, actually planned for that, which I just think is just so well done. Yeah, I mean, I agree. 20 % of all meetings are dedicated to how was your weekend and talking about football, right? So that's easily 20 % at the beginning of a meeting. So you could just kind of reduce some of that to fit in people. I think there's a really interesting thing, which is like, how are you versus how do you feel? And I think if you ask people, how do you feel? And how do you feel about this?

25:49And how do you feel at the moment? You'll possibly get a more honest answer than the classic, you know, traditionally British, right? Which is like, how are you? Yeah, great. And it's like... No, you're not. No, you're not. Because I know you worked late last night. I know how much you've got on or you, you know, you've got an issue with your house or whatever it might be. Right. So I think that actually changing the way of looking at people as commodities to look at people as people, which I think is happening, but I still think we could probably go a little bit further with that. Right. And actually understanding that feeling aspect, I think, is really important.

26:27Obviously, at system one, that's what we set our business up to do, in fact. I mean, I think the thing with if you're in the left brain kind of industrial revolution complex way, if all you do is focus on task, you'll never get to the people. And that I think is when the tensions between people happen where someone lets someone else down. It doesn't get resolved. There's no trust. That leads to suspicion. And then you get breakdown in communication. And I see that's such, you know, happened to such a lot is you've got to invest in the people and the trust building as well. I think, I mean, you literally just brought in the word that I was going to use, which is trust, right?

27:03I think if I, you know, went deliberately extreme on it, I'd say that a lot of, I don't know, luckily not the businesses I work for, but I imagine, well, I'll tell you, okay, I'll spin it another way, which is I was in a cab the other day and the cabbie was saying to me, he was talking about his brother that works in tech, right? and he said um yeah yeah like he works from home two days a week but he's got to be in the office three to four days a week so they can keep an eye on him right and i just for whether or not it was just turn a phrase or whatever but i just for that concept of if i can't see him working they're not working right and that goes back to your industrial revolution that goes back to your workhouses it goes back to that commodity approach and how stupid is that like where's the trust in that and if you don't trust people why are they working for you right if you think people are going to just sit at home and do nothing they're probably just going to come to the office and do the same right but they're just going to sit at a desk that you pay for right well let me put my dilemma to you right because because because i totally agree i think there are two things that kind of battle with each other so i totally agree that we should be able to trust people as to do the job how they want to do it and to get it done and not have to check up on them right Totally agree.

28:20Working from home and technology enables that so I can drop the kids off, I can get my dentist appointment done, I can do all that kind of thing. That is such an advantage. The downside is trust is built through people working together, getting to know each other personally and overcoming some of those obstacles quickly, right? So you go, oh, you didn't mean to piss me off like that the other day. And oh, I understand the pressure you're under. How do you foster that if you're not together? So that I think is where the tension comes in, because I've seen teams that have kind of gone into battle with each other that had they been in the same room, that would not have happened.

28:54You know, had they been down the pub together on a Thursday evening, you know, that would not have happened. So how do you get the balance between creating that trust, which requires presence, and then enabling the trust, which means that you can do what you want at home as long as you get a job done? I think my argument and point of view on it is it's not about not bringing people together. It's about not putting them back in an approach which didn't work, right? So if you think about creativity, you know, you take the classic story about Guinness and worth the wait, right? Where did they come up with the idea?

29:28They went to the pub, right? Because that's where the product is consumed and watched what was happening and then, you know, went from there. so i don't think it's a case of of people sitting at home isolated from each other i think it's about understanding the best way to put your team together to achieve um what it is you ultimately want to achieve right and i think that's the thing i think it's like you know no great idea has ever been come up with sitting in a room on a silly desk you know like uh you know five minutes past nine on a monday like so so yes of course we need to bring people together we're human beings We want to socialise and be together.

30:06And, you know, ultimately that's what Beaver Town is about, right? We give people beer to accompany their good times, you know, in a pub, you know, watching bands, whatever it might be. So you still need to do those things. I think that the answer isn't just doing what you used to do, right? Because that's not evolving. And I think there has to be a point, which there is clearly, where people are asking the question and we're looking for the answers. And you can figure out the answers together, right? Like, as leaders, we should listen to people that have different points of view to us. We should try and understand them as much as we can.

30:40And we shouldn't always believe we know the answer, right? And if you can do those three things, then you can construct a better day tomorrow than you can today. Now, you mentioned a bit of time. I'm glad you did, because we've been sat here looking at two cans of neck oil in front of us. And I've got rather thirsty. Why don't we grab a beer? This would be a good time to grab a beer. and tell me about what I'm drinking. I'd love to know a bit more. For those listening, Tom is holding up Beaver Town Neck Oil. This is Neck Oil. This is our number one beer. Give this a little try here as well. It's a Session IPA.

31:15It's 4.3.

31:19Super drinkable, super sessionable. It's really great. It's our number one seller. And I guess the thing about Neck Oil is it's completely accessible. so it doesn't really matter whether or not you're into craft and i'd question the whole sort of concept of craft because it's just gone mainstream right you can buy it in the same places you can buy you know mainstream or traditional beers so therefore it's accessible it's on them it's on the bar where you want it we've seen huge growth it's amazing you know we've got a really um big above the line campaign out at the moment during the summer which is based in the in the neck oil world and what's really important to the brand as you see on the can is the kind of visual identity in the worlds that we do so whether or not it's neck oil or it's gamma ray or it's you know um we've got a new beer out called satellite this week um whichever one it is they all tell a different narrative now if you look upon it from a marketing perspective you could say well hang on a minute like i want uh where's the kind of consistency from it right because all of them look slightly different, right?

32:25And Nick, who's our creative director that's, you know, drawn everything essentially, draws it all by hand. So every time he draws it, it changes slightly, right? So there isn't that coherent, that consistent thing. But isn't the consistency and the inconsistency, if that's not a slight irony? Well, it is. It's coherent, right? Yeah, it's coherent, yeah. Because for me, you can go into, you know, Pub and Young's or you can go into Waitrose or Sainsbury's or whatever, you can look at the range of beers and you can understand that our beers are different, you know, flavours, ABVs, names, etc. But you understand they're a part of a portfolio, they're a part of a family, right?

33:02And that's really important because I think it makes it interesting, right? And it makes it disruptive and it's different to, you know, often, you know, beer brands are like one key beer and more recently they've gone into zeros and various things like that, right? But it's kind of all taken from that umbrella hero brand. we have different brands you know and and if you want to go deeper you can go to our website and get into specials and advent calendars and all the all kind of wild and wonderful things but if you don't you can still just go in the pub and enjoy an echo i mean as we were talking earlier about my very short-lived career at brew dog i was um surprised at actually how accessible a lot of craft beer is because i guess when when you're not into craft beer look at the category i think this must be super strong it must be very esoteric it must be really you know um hard to drink but actually there are some beautifully accessible beers that are refreshing fruity you know uh very sessionable so it's it's it's one of those things in the category perception is it's gonna be quite challenged but actually there's some amazingly drinkable beers and so much choice i mean like you can get anything from like a really stout heavy chocolatey high alcohol kind of stout on one end to something that's almost lager-like on the other end and and that was the whole idea so logan that founded beaver town was in the states and saw what craft beer was doing over there brought it back to the uk well one of his big things was he just wanted a beer that anyone could drink right and that's exactly what neck oil is you know there's a little bit of kind of citrus in there there's a little bit of fruitiness it's kind of you know you can it's got of flavour to it but it's not overpowering it's not too hoppy so it just feels like it kind of ticks those boxes that people want from a kind of lager point of view but just gives a little bit more flavour and a little bit of a zing to it all and that's really where where kind of neck all comes in and it's funny actually because system one we do a lot of innovation testing actually we have this principle that successful innovation is often 80 familiar 20 new and it it got that right didn't it it was like you know if you used to if you used to lagers you're probably going to like this you know it's like a lager with a bit of fruitiness a bit a bit of depth to it but it's not jumping you to something that's so difficult and then but of course once you try this you go okay well i'm ready for a bit more flavor now or you can try the next one then can't you yeah exactly and i think the thing is is for us we just you know we we want to be inclusive in the product upranges and approaches we have you know i heard someone once say what i really like about beaver town is when i go to a party and i hold a can it always starts a conversation i thought how amazing is that right like you know yes of course we you know brands often want to be the hero thing that you know is up there and everyone's like oh my god that brand's amazing right but actually just to be additive to a social situation where people are coming together to have a good time and you start a conversation between two people it's pretty beautiful like that's a really nice place for us it is well alcohol is quite you know inner directed isn't it it says something about you what you drink doesn't it is almost like a you know extension of personality in some ways but industrial beers are so similar it's like provenance but basically it's where you know where the beer is from is the main thing isn't it are you from spain or italy or france wherever whereas actually so much more personality in craft beer isn't there i mean we we we want to create stories right and i I know lots of brands say that, but quite literally the cans are restoring, right?

36:27So we want to take these things and just push them into other media and other channels, right? And take people on a bit of a journey, whether or not that's a physical experience at a festival or something called that you might see on London Underground or whatever it might be, you know. And it's that sort of storytelling that I think makes the brand sticky. I think the other thing is, in really simple terms, I really don't want to use this language, but it's just quite cool, right? We have a huge thing about people stealing our pint glasses from pubs, right? And actually, today, this morning, Will and my team sent me around a TikTok that a pub literally filmed of someone stealing stuff from the pub, right?

37:10And from my perspective, more power to you, because if you steal our pint glasses and stick them in your cupboard and you come down in the morning and have a glass of water, you're reminded by the brand that's an ad campaign yeah i can't get in your cupboards right and shouldn't that would be weird right but i can you know i can get on your tv but it costs money right but more power to people that want to do you designing glassware to be stolen then or you design to be desirable enough that someone might want to it's almost more simple than that you know nick designed a glass he just thought looked cool and so do lots of other people which is why they want to steal it but having that brand affinity having that brand approach is great now what's really important for us is as you grow and scale as all brands do right you've got to keep that right you've got to keep doing those interesting things um and that's what's really important so it's a bit like your gift gaff experience actually this because beer a bit like telecoms is incredibly dominated by a few players right both in distribution and in brand so the amount of tied estates you got you got listing agreements in the big supermarkets you've got huge huge budgets to build brand right and then you look at craft beer where there's over 2 000 craft beer businesses in the uk what made beaver town stand out what made beaver town cut through in all that i think part of it is time and place you know beaver town came up with with a couple of other you know big craft breweries i think they were very famous you know i knew them from a consumer perspective before I you know went to work for them I think they were famous for their you know tap room and you know in Tottenham it's still open you still go there I think you know there were some really savvy decisions around things like the micro brewery and bar that we've got in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium but I think it's a combination of those things but equally it's being accessible I think sometimes historically craft beer could be seen as something that happens over here by people who are slightly cooler than you right and i don't think and i haven't felt either from a consumer perspective or you know looking after the brand that we do that we actively don't and to the conversation we had earlier about culture is because the culture isn't that right the culture is one around you know logan's one of the most down-to-earth people i've ever met you know it's oh you want to bring a mate yeah yeah well all right cool you know and it's very much that approach and i think that's infectious and i think that comes across in in what we do i think the other aspect is because you know i mean there's loads of wild and wonderful cans out there that look beautiful but there wasn't at the time you know i think that you know beaver town was the first craft beer brand to go into free 30 mil cans and cans you know cans were traditionally seen as the sort of beer that you know we don't want people to drink you know this one in the glass is a fancy one you know and that that totally but that totally flips my head i think that's about the time i was at brew dog actually is is there was that flip from as you say the bottle to the can happened really a year or two that that whole thing changed you know i'd have a four-pack can yeah yeah so i mean you know when we were kids it would be like strongbow down the park kind of association you know not not not craft beer yeah yeah i think i I think absolutely you go into Tesco now or wherever and you look at, you know, the range of cans.

40:36And I think the other thing is I think the market is developed as well. You know, if you think about 440 mil specials, you know, there's loads of different options for consumers and surely that's a good thing. And they can come in and come out and run for, you know, short runs and all the rest of it. And I just think that it adds vibrancy to the market, which I think helps consumers feel like they're, you know, feel passionate about it, right? because you've got lots of different options and and you know we are as people super savvy consumers more so than ever right so you can tell things that are real you can tell things that are interesting tell things that gives marketing hype and i think those combinations of things has kind of helped us you know speed to market product i mean ultimately the product's got to be you know stonking right and neck oil is a it's a cracking beer so that helps right and then you've got all this beautiful brand storytelling wrapped around it that's you know kind of like sci-fi and movies and all that kind of thing and and you know part of that zeitgeist and we are where we are you mentioned logan of course you know quite a famous founder what was it what was it like working for the founder and what difference does having a founder in a business make to it i think it's it's you know it's amazing right because ultimately you can talk to the person that started it and go particularly from a brand point of view right and you go so why did you do this or why do you want to do that so just tell me about it and almost it's just some of the words that people will use when it's their own business just gives you a greater insight into why things have happened need to happen should happen right and that and and that is unique logan's whole approach he was you know the first person i met when i was you know talking about doing the role and all the rest of it just incredibly down to earth and an incredibly likable smart passionate person and again that kind of is infectious and helpful and that you know ultimately it was the person I went yeah actually I'd you know I'd like to work for this guy it's a bit like we were saying before actually is that people leave businesses because of the boss but you also join a business because the boss right the person you work for is a huge part of your yeah love for the company absolutely and I think you know to steer the business through what is done and make nickel what it is and you know grow it in the way that we have I think is is incredible so yeah it was you know pleasure to you know to work with Logan.

42:56Now I must ask about ownership as well because obviously James Watt got himself into a bit of controversy when he bought some Heineken shares now of course Heineken originally bought a share in Beaver Town didn't it and then has bought Beaver Town out what's been any difference in experience going from a founder-led company to, I guess, a huge multinational business? My genuine answer, in all total honesty, so I'll look you in the eye, is it's exactly the same, right? In a totally good way, it's exactly the same. If not, it's actually just maybe a little bit better, right? Because ultimately, the business was at a point where it needed just an element of, It was like a, you know, it's like a young teenager going into a later teenager.

43:39And it just needed that sort of, I don't know, support to get to that next step, you know, to get into college or, you know, university or whatever. It's a silly analogy. And I think that's happened, you know. And I think, you know, what, I don't want to put words in the mouth, but I think what Heineken can see is this thing works, right? Like this thing really works. So let's just let it work. Right. and I think often you know and again gift gap was the same you know telephonic and ot saw that it worked so it's like just let it work you know like support it in the right way and just let the thing you know do what it needs to do I think that you know traditionally it was kind of like don't do that like just pull it across and you know we now own it and it's all a bit you know sort of masculine and and I just haven't I haven't seen that I think there's such a good insight here I mean, if you look at when Coke bought Innocent as well, Innocent Towers remained.

44:35And if you talk to anyone from Innocent, they said they had full control over all brands and packaging and products and everything else. And that Coke were, you know, one arm's length removed, really. I don't know if you've read the book Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. But that really points out. I can't remember how many looked at, but he looked at every big company innovating. And anywhere where they tried to innovate within the business, it always failed. because the innovation would never be big enough for them to care enough. You know, so I don't know if your hurdle rate was, well, you know, it needs to be 100 ,000 sales a week and the innovation was 10 ,000 sales.

45:10It basically get neglected. And the conclusion of that book, if I remember rightly, is the only way for innovation in big companies to succeed is to give it the freedom and almost manage it as a completely separate management team, separate incentives, you know, complete freedom from the mothership. So it's good to see Heineken living that out. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things in that. I think we are in a world where test and learn, minimal viable product has become normal, predominantly, if not entirely born out of tech. And I think that's helpful, because I think that gives a basis and a parameter to be able to innovate and try things that otherwise would be squashed because they didn't, you know, they're not big enough and resource and cost and all those things.