The brands trying to change the world - Chris Baker, Serious Tissues & Change Please

0:28Hey gentlemen, welcome back to the Uncensored CMO. Great timing because I believe you have a book coming out tomorrow. I do, yeah. Very exciting. How does that fit? Well, let me ask you. First of all, congratulations, because what a moment to become an author. And that must be kind of, we'll get into how much work went into it, but tomorrow's the launch day, isn't it? It is, absolutely. You know, really excited. It all still feels a little bit surreal and a little bit overwhelming. We had the book launch event last week. I think after spending months in a dark room writing, to suddenly have like a physical book in your hand was it was an amazing feeling and then to be out there talking to real people getting them infused about the ideas yeah but nice to be out of my like writing cave and having a chat and you know putting the ideas to the test really which is really exciting amazing I mean I mean people often say everyone's got a book in them you know don't they it's a famous phrase when did the book idea come to you and how long does it take from kind of you know you having the idea to where we are today yeah so um I mean I think like you say I think every ad planner thinks they've got a book.

1:28And then I think it's a case of careful what you wish for a little bit because it is a big job to write 60 ,000, 70 ,000 words and get it all down on paper. I think it's about my third go at landing a book deal. And it probably, so basically the end of last year, about August, the deal happened with Bloomsbury. And then you get six months to go away and turn it from an idea and a proposal into a physical book. And yeah, that took a lot out of me, but it was a really worthwhile process. Got to speak to founders and interesting people from so many brilliant brands that we'll go on to talk about, which was a real eye-opener and a hugely valuable process.

2:09Now, for everyone listening and watching, give us the pitch for the book that convinced Bloomsbury to go ahead. I mean, the main idea at the heart of the book is the best way to change the world is to change how people spend their money. I was involved in launching a brand called Change Please back in my agency days. It's nine years old in about two weeks. So that was an idea where basically if you can change how people buy their coffee, you can change the world. We created a coffee brand that trained homeless people as baristas, gave them a chance to turn their life around. And it really struck a chord when it first launched.

2:44huge amounts of PR coverage, a lot of uptake from big businesses going, look, we can just change our coffee from whatever else we're using to this brand that helps homeless people. And that was a big sort of eureka moment for us. And then it was like, okay, hang on, there's something much bigger here. If we can change how people spend their money in any category, we can change the world. That simple switch. And yeah, that was the thing I think that got Bloomsbury excited. Obviously talking about my own experience with Change Please, with serious tissues that we'll come on to talk about. And then also the fact there's already lots and lots of brands that are starting this journey that are moving people's money and building business models that are having a positive impact on the planet.

3:26So you're obviously quite busy anyway, because you've got two kind of change brands, as you described them as well, and you want to put a book on top. How did you manage to juggle both those things? And why did you want to try and do both, both be the change and also write about the change? Yeah, I think if I hadn't had grey hair before, I definitely would now. I've got three young kids as well. So that was a big reason in why I wanted to drive it because we all look around in this world we're living in, this sort of perma crisis, and everything seems to be going pear-shaped. And an idea of going, we need to get this out there, get this idea out there so people actually realise that the power their money has in bringing about positive change.

4:03But yeah, balancing it around running serious tissues, around my kids, and writing 70 ,000 words or so was a stretch. So a lot of early mornings in January, dark, lonely, getting it done. But yeah, when you get that book in your hands, it's a pretty amazing thing. Oh, it must be. And you've got a copy here today, of course. I have, yeah. So it's actually in real life as well. It is, yeah. It must be something to see after all those hours. 100%. You called it Obsolete, which I thought was quite a provocative title. Why did you settle on that as your book title? I mean, it is a... not necessarily deliberately provocative title, but when you look at it as just that one word, you go, God, that's pretty punchy.

4:42I was pretty inspired by a quote that sits on the inside cover, which is from a guy called Buckminster Fuller, a famous writer and thinker and architect. He talks about, basically, you don't change things by fighting the existing model. You change things by building a new model that makes the old model obsolete. And it was that quote that gave the title because I think when you look at these businesses, you see so many of them are building a new, interesting business model that takes what's maybe not quite right with the current model and improves on it, right? And that idea of creative destruction that's at the heart of capitalism generally, that is what these brands are doing.

5:20They are updating business models. They're making existing business models that might be problematic obsolete, right? And I don't think for a moment, so I suppose that's where the idea really came from. And I don't think for a moment I'm saying we're going to make massive brands obsolete. That's almost insane and it would be pretty foolhardy. I think it's more certain business models are going to become untenable and obsolete. And brands that are moving and moving things forward, making impact environmentally, socially, it's going to make those things untenable for companies to sit behind. So they almost, there's a lot we talk about about these businesses being catalysts for other companies to move faster.

6:00It encourages them, gets them moving to cardboard packaging rather than plastic. It shows it's doable, right? So that's where that idea really came from. It's interesting psychology, Nick, because I am in between jobs. I'll say in between jobs. Someone told me off the other day for saying I get fired too many times. But anyway, after being fired, I went away and came up with some startup ideas. And probably the best idea I came up with felt too difficult to do because I wanted to completely change the world of soft drinks and how soft drinks are made and where they're made and take out about 90 % of the carbon dioxide used in the supply chain.

6:34And this idea was really, really bold. It's interesting because I didn't do it and I probably should have done it, but I didn't do it because it felt too big. And I didn't think me as one person, even with the fact that I've got a background in the category, could pull off that audacious goal. And I think that's probably something that people feel like they look at the whole size of the challenge and it feels too big sometimes, doesn't it? But I think what I was encouraged reading your book is the idea that you don't have to get to that bigger percent of the market to generate change and also force other people to change.

7:05And you even came up, I think, with a percentage, didn't you, that is sort of like a tipping point for change of three and a half percent. So what's that about? And because that might give encouragement to people that are thinking, I couldn't possibly change, you know, the world in this way. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot in there. I think, you know, these categories are massive. So the toilet roll category is worth 17 billion. I think if we got one or two percent of that, we're in hundreds of millions as a business. You don't need to be the next Andrex, right? You need to get one, two, three, four percent.

7:35And suddenly you're a nuisance. You're encouraging people to move away from virgin pulp to recycle from toilet roll wrapped in plastic to toilet roll wrapped in paper and boxes. So it's very doable. I think you'd also be surprised around the amount of manufacturers that are open to doing things a bit differently. And it's a bit of a Goldilocks style situation. So there'll be certain manufacturers who are used to dealing with massive, massive companies and they won't entertain a conversation. There'll be certain ones who are too small. But if you find the right sort of manufacturer, they'll see the opportunity to grow with you, to disrupt things, to do things a bit differently.

8:09one of the examples from the um from the book is the story of home home things which is a basically a cleaning brand that noticed that 90 of what you get in your normal cleaning spray is just tap water basically so you're paying to ship you're paying for a single use plastic bottle that's basically full of water that you could get from your tap without millions and millions of liters of water being shipped around carbon emissions are crazy they basically created an equivalent of a Barocca tablet for cleaning. It took them a long time to find a manufacturer who was up for doing that because the technology that makes those tablets, normally they're using it for food, so they didn't want to introduce cleaning products.

8:46But when they found someone, they've nailed it and they've got a brilliant relationship with their manufacturer and they've created something really special. So there's more and more brands there that can do that. The other point around the 3.5%, so that comes from a bit of research from an academic who's looked at, I think almost every social movement in history and has gone, there's a tipping point when three and a half percent, she talks about it as the magic number, three and a half percent of society get behind or are part of a movement or an idea. And that's when it becomes, it reaches a tipping point.

9:19It doesn't, and 3.5 % doesn't feel like that. Doesn't sound much, does it? Yeah, especially when all you're asking them to do is buy a chocolate bar or a coffee. It's not like you're asking them to go and march on 10 Downing Street, right? so it's a small shift and the example I think she talks a lot about the example of apartheid in South Africa and when they did a consumer boycott because all the businesses were really owned by the white population but all the spending power was with the African population so when they boycotted white business they basically suddenly focused the mind of going oh shit we really need to do something here and then similarly going way way way back there's a brilliant example which looks at at the end of the abolition of slavery in, I think, the 1820s or 1830s, there was a big push to boycott West Indies sugar.

10:06And they created these sugar bowls that had slavery-free sugar on there. There's a great picture of it in the book. It's in the British Museum. It just says, East India sugar, slavery-free. And it got to a point where, I think, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but over half a million people were behind it, which was way over the 3.5 % tipping point. But imagine the stir that would make in polite society in the 1800s when you pull out your slavery-free sugar. It's the first genuine consumer movement. So that point of moving the money to change the world is something that is working at the moment with brands in terms of winning share and winning a couple of percentage points and big companies going, I probably should pay attention to this.

10:48But similarly, moving it away from places, bringing about the abolition of slavery, the end of apartheid, big historical precedent. so I think the other thing that got me excited is when you think about politics is slow legislation is really slow whereas money moves fast and power follows money politicians follow money for better or worse if you can move the money and the businesses that are successful are the ones that are making a positive impact you can surpass all of that and these change brands are almost proving that they can do things differently and make a success and then it means it's easier for legislators us to go actually will pass a law that um moves us away from the internal combustion engine by 2030 even though those things are sliding but there's no way there would have been the courage to legislate for that without tesla proving that it was doable this role is like agitator and the kind of radical flank effect i think we talk about of just being that that that nuisance on the outside that suddenly become that gets bigger and bigger and noisier and noisier and suddenly the need to change grows yeah i think the other thing that struck me as well when i was thinking about this for myself a few years ago was um i was slightly intimidated by the large businesses and thinking well surely if i have this idea the large businesses will just swamp me you know just literally you know roll over me but and you refer to it in in your book actually it's one of my favorite books all time is innovative dilemma that we we assume that big companies are great innovation they turn out to be very very poor because they are rewarded by the status quo as it is now and they very rarely have any incentive to disrupt themselves in terms of the business model so what you find is they're often very late to trends and therefore there's a beautiful opportunity for you know startup founders actually can get a long long way um not only to disrupt an industry but also create change uh within the industry as well and and get then the big companies then see it and go well how do we get a part of that yeah absolutely i think one of the most useful parts of the book so obviously i spoke to 20 20 or 30 odd founders at different change brands but also spoke to an individual called Agent Change who will remain nameless, who basically sits in a big sustainability role at one of the big 10 or 11 FMCG companies and understanding the view from their side of the fence was really useful.

13:04So I think first and foremost, if something's not worth five or six million in the first year, lots of these companies will just go, it's not even worth it, it's not going to move the needle for us. whereas change brands can come in they can operate on a slightly different time horizon they can operate over two three years and build something really special you know interestingly small came out of unilever so it's built it up it's a brand now that's one of the fastest growing in the country um raised i think 35 million a couple of years ago like really substantial unilever just almost i i believe they tried to do something similar internally and just couldn't make the numbers work they probably had a team of 20 people trying to do it that's not how innovation works and i think big companies just aren't set up to to work in that way they're operating at enormous scale agent change talks about the need to um how do you scale something up to a billion interactions a day and that's where their huge advantage comes from and if you're if you've got a bottling plant that works in a certain way or your production line is set up to do to fill up water cleaning products with with water you're not going to change interestingly Interestingly, again, chatting to the HomeThings guys last week, the patent for cleaning products that are in tablets was filed by some of these companies in the 60s and 70s.

14:23They've almost invented waterless cleaning 30 years ago and are still no closer to actually moving towards that. It feels a little bit like the same sort of story as Kodak with digital photography. so Kodak invented digital photography they then saw it as a let's not talk about digital photography because it's going to erode our our film business which which is the status quo right so I think there's a there's a moment when it's going to reach a tipping point with with waterless cleaning because it just doesn't make any sense for anybody apart from the five or six brands that dominate that category it's way better for the environment argue it's it's cheaper because it's smaller and you're not shipping the water there's no single use plastic it takes up less space on the shelf so the retailers could actually use that shelf space for something else that valuable real estate on shelf it's just the how do you break the status quo and there's brands like like ocean saver like small like home things other ones in the states that are doing it and it will happen at some point but it's just you're you're right to say they they don't necessarily really set themselves up to do it.

15:30And I think one of the brilliant examples, final thing on this one is P &G have actually created a brand called EC30, which when you go on the EC30 website, there's no mention of P &G anywhere. The only way you know it's P &G is when you go and sign up for the mailing list. It says you will get notes from EC30 and other P &G brands. But it talks about the importance of waterless cleaning, how billions of litres of water are shipped around the world every day. It's a D2C business. It's waterless. it's a really cool innovation that only you know big company could do it's very very cool little patches they are trying to disrupt themselves from within and that i think is hugely interesting and if i think that is a model that big fmcg could follow almost trying to disrupt from within on a slightly different time frame you can bring innovation there you can you know you can test you can win new audiences you can deposition your competition there's so much stuff you can do it's a massive opportunity for these companies they're all looking for growth and currently their core business is set up to just keep things going.

16:28Maybe they'll introduce a new flavor skew because that's much easier to win a bit of share. Whereas these big things where you're positioning yourself for the future of the category, that's when it gets really interesting. You're absolutely right. I mean, that is the dilemma though. I spent 20 years in soft drinks and it was the same thing. It's like, well, we could launch a new flavor of Pepsi. That's 20 million pounds. And I worked out there's no innovation that got over 10 million pounds in year one. And yet we had this kind of, if it ain't 10 million, it's not worth it. A bit of Naomi Campbell, like kind of like i won't get out of bed for less than 10 million it was a bit like that um until i pointed out you do realize that there is no innovation that's got to 10 million in year one no proper innovation uh you can keep doing flavor skews and then switch people through flavors that's fine um but it won't go you know but that's that you're only gonna it's the whole book isn't it that your incremental innovation only takes you so far disruptive innovation is what's gonna get you there but you have to look at different time horizons you have to incentivize the teams differently you have to resource differently you have to give people permission to do things in a completely different manner yeah and that's hard it's definitely hard to do that when you're under pressure from shareholders and and all of those kind of things and you've seen unilever change tack recently with a couple of changes of ceo i suppose it's looking after the long-term future of the business and you know a lot of these companies came about in the 70s when energy was cheap when plastic was a miracle product when you could dominate a supermarket shelf really easily there were four tv channels now all the advantages of those big companies have been eroded you can have a DTC model people buy stuff through Amazon you've got Lidl and Audi coming in and people are very open to trying stuff that looks a bit like brands but cheaper so the kind of the big advantage of these massive companies has been eroded, now you look at it and go plastic's hugely problematic, energy's not cheap, supermarkets, there's so many different routes to market so the world that they all grew so massive in has changed fundamentally and it'll be all of that presents a big opportunity for well for small brands but also for big brand the big brands that are savvy to this to go you know let's let's think five years in the future what are the the innovations that we're going to bring yeah bring forward that um disrupt us from within so as i have interest you've obviously done a lot of research for the book you're a startup found yourself you've got two brands that you've personally kind of started what did were you inspired by any of these other brands you looked at them to see ah i reckon that's probably where the next innovation is going to come from or as you cleverly do in the book the idea of creativity being connecting things and you know what if what if your toilet roll saved the planet or you know what if your chocolate was slavery free you know um did did you when writing the book suddenly think oh there's another idea that uh i could start yeah i think there's i think there's opportunity in in so many different places there's definitely a few more things in the in the back of our mind that we're like okay what what could we do next you know it's a little bit of running before you can walk and making sure that certain things are in good places before jumping on something else.

19:18But I think one of the things that I think a lot of these brands have in common is they all come from a place of starting off with a problem people really care about. For instance, with Serious Tissues, the four of us who founded it, between us have eight kids, all increasingly concerned about climate change and what the world's going to look like in 20 years when they all reach adulthood, or even sooner really. So we wanted to do something about that which was the problem people care about we then looked at a category that potentially has a has a problem so when you look at toilet roll for instance the vast majority of toilet roll is made from virgin pulp which is trees that have grown for 20 30 years and are then cut down to make toilet roll a million trees are cut down every day to make loo roll seems seems insane when we need trees more than ever to to capture carbon and and do what they're doing um so we had that category problem that we know we could push against and then looking for a way to make a positive impact going forward so the the idea of with with serious tissues was that we would plant trees be a toilet roll brand that plants trees rather than cuts them down we're made from recycled paper it's plastic free it's uk made and we plant trees um and i think the combination of those three things creates a pretty potent mix when you're creating a brand and in the book i talk about i think after we talked about that model talking about brands like toast like um up circle we talked about there's so many interesting brands that have seen a category problem seen something people care about there's always a way to make an impact so yeah if you think about it with those three things in mind there's endless opportunity and endless possibilities i think yeah now because all about how we do it right because because i think when um i don't think many people wouldn't want to make an impact and wouldn't want their brand to have an impact as well but obviously to be so So the more commercially successful you are, the bigger the impact is going to be, right?

21:04So it's a good thing. But we touched on some of the challenges, which are significant. So, I mean, you know, just taking my experience, like in soft drinks, I mean, like a few businesses dominate, you know, dominate in terms of supply chain, their ability to buy bulk on kind of global fruit, you know, juice market or whatever. You know, they have contracts with supermarkets that run into the millions that guarantee their shelf space. They've got pricing power so they can promote, buy one, get one free to destroy you overnight if they want to. I've been in those kind of battles. And many of those brands have got decades, even centuries of brand equity built up and awareness over time.

21:41It's not as if change brands haven't got a lot to kind of go up against sort of thing. So I'd be really interested to know kind of as well as positioning and coming up with, you know, you talked about in terms of finding a purpose that people care about and a category to disrupt. how can you win against such a you know such a big established players i mean i know you talked about you know the world has changed the world has changed in terms of routes to market and so on but there's a lot to overturn isn't there yeah it's i mean retail the retail environment's particularly tough because it's it is locked down and there's there's only a limited amount of options i know listening to the liquid death podcast you did with mike um cesario the the the way that most chillers in every 7-Eleven or similar are owned by Pepsi or Coke.

22:23So you've got no chance of getting in. The way they got to market was through bars and through alcohol distribution. And then where it's less locked down by those companies and festivals and the partnership with Live Nation. So they found a different route to market, which really suited their brand, which was a stroke of genius, really, in terms of if you can't go through it, you've got to go round it and find a way there. I think there's, the benefit is to come back to that size thing. You don't need to be a five million pound business in year one. You can, with social media, you can find your audience quite quickly.

23:00You can create, if you create a proposition that has come from consumer insight and a genuine audience need, there is a way to find that audience and build up slowly. You don't, I think if you go into something where you should, thinking about the category, it's things like don't have crazy minimum order quantities when you're having to order truck and truck after truck after truck to get to get it across the line look at things that are slightly higher margin than others coffee compared to toilet roll for instance coffee was much higher margin than toilet roll which made life easier on that that side of things toilet roll is a big volume place so you need to get some proper scale to be able to compete so there's things like that there's a lot in the book about yeah the the kind of nuts and bolts of how you the category you should think about and that sort of thing but you will find a a route to market yeah if if it's genuinely got that those three things i think baked in you will find a way to get it there and you can deliver on it yeah i did this little i did a study of um 10 years of soft drink innovation looking at the winners and losers it's really fascinating because the ones that were successful in year one almost none of those appeared on the list after 10 years and a completely different list and the ones that had succeeded in the long run almost all of them did the same thing where they picked a part of the market and dominated, like whether it was the pubs or whether it was kind of restaurants or maybe it was food service or whatever.

24:13And they'd absolutely become famous in that channel and had kind of basically took share of voice in that channel and then had got a following and then they gradually moved out. So like, you know, like Red Bull or Monster or Innocent. None of them went mass market from day one. They probably took, I mean, in fact, I concluded the study by saying, on average, it took them seven years to have an overnight success because seven years was about the time it took until they then broke into sort of what we'd call mainstream distribution. And people forget that. The most big change brands, as you call them, have been around a lot longer than you think they have, you know, but they've been really building up a community, nailing distribution, because often you can't afford to go everywhere.

24:52You can't. And, in fact, the opposite I found was all the brands that, you know, went for mass distribution from day one, most 50 % of them did not exist a year later, and 80 % of them didn't exist five years later. I mean, it's incredible. Like, literally chalk and cheese. in terms of those two strategies. That's really interesting. I suppose you think, yeah, Virgin Cola, for instance, just going after the biggest players, like, so hard. But going in, you know, the likes of Dash is a really interesting play. The likes of Liquid Death, picking particular things. Cano Water's been a huge success over here.

25:24When it first came to market, everyone was like, what planet are you on? Why are you putting water in cans? So I think there's, you don't need to go crazy. I think one of the things that's interesting about the conversation with Agent Change is he talks about the biggest fear of brand owners being eaten away from above and below. So below, you're being eaten away by private label and retailers and discounters, but above, you're being eaten away by brands that maybe charge us a slight price premium, but also occupy the high ground. Maybe there's slavery-free chocolate like Tony's, maybe they're plastic-free, recycled paper, bamboo, whatever it might be, something that is at a price premium but allows you to eat away at these brands from both sides.

26:06And I think another important point is, a lot of these brands come at a price premium, so not everyone can afford to buy it constantly, every single time. They don't need to buy it every time. And gradually, I think the way these brands tend to reach scale is almost the people that buy it earlier, the ones who are really sustainably minded or really focused on problems like homelessness or re-offending, then it grows and grows and grows. So with Change Please, for instance, the big part of getting it to scale has been working with businesses so selling coffee into the likes of we work and virgin atlantic and david lloyd gyms and it's now tipped over massively into the mainstream so it's very much like that innovation adoption curve and brands gradually grow to people who are really interested in like people who buy the iphone early on people who are really into positive change then it becomes you get scale you can compete on price you tip over into the mainstream and suddenly you're a mainstream brand, you can afford to be close to parity price-wise.

27:05Yeah, the other advantage, I mean, purpose can come in for a bit of a hard time sometimes. And you can see lots of examples of marketers abusing purpose or borrowing purpose and using it badly. But what I noticed when Peter Field did his study into it and also at System 1 when we've looked at it, it's very powerful in B2B because people want to work with other companies that are doing the right thing for the planet and for humanity and so on. So it's quite powerful. So again, if you've got a brand that's for food service, for example, having a strong kind of impact mission statement actually can be the difference.

27:36And I remember, you know, when I was pitching for Tesco many years ago, back in my drinks days, I mean, I remember we were talking before about the one-stop buyer who, he took me to their kind of concept store down the road. And he drove me all the way there. He put me in front of the soft drink fixture. And he said to me, he said, John, there are 96 brands you're looking at now. how many of those do you think are not in a six-figure contract and and i was like i don't know maybe 20 30 he said two he said you want to know where those two are they're the bottom shelf in the corner those two kids drinks you see down there gathering dust the little cartons in there they're the only two that i've not got in wrapped up in a very very kind of rich deal with the suppliers i'm like wow you know but having said that at the same time tesco corporately we're trying to do the right thing by reducing sugar trying to do the right thing by you know taking CO2 out the supply chain.

28:28We're trying to do the right thing with small suppliers, paying them in I think 14 days, not 90 days that everyone else. So we often forget that there are kind of corporate objectives that big retailers might have that you can play into as well. Yeah, it's a big, big thing. I think, I mean there's actually legislation, things like the Social Value Act, which has the government are looking to use their procurement spend, what they're buying with the NHS for instance, what they're buying in the government departments. With serious issues we've talked about doing the toilet roll with Buckingham Palace with Change Please.

28:58They're in lots of the NHS sites. They're in AstraZeneca. So probably the coffee that fuelled the vaccine. Oh, I love that. Looking like being potentially the first coffee in space with Virgin Galactic. So there's some really exciting things, but it's very much about, if you can change what one person spends, how one person spends their money, the coffee they buy, toilet roll they use, whatever it might be, it makes an impact. But if you change David Lloyd Jim's, there's 140 ,000 members in the country. If you can change the coffee they're buying, suddenly you start to have some real impact and it starts to build up really quickly.

29:32Now, just for everyone listening and watching, I just realised, we can talk about change, please, but you haven't yet said how it came about and what it's doing differently, because there's a great story to this. So yeah, please tell us the story of the origin. We probably should have started with that. So back in my agency days, I was at FCB Inferno in the day and sat in a coffee house in Covent Garden. a rare break between meetings um basically homeless guys sitting at the front saw numerous people walking past looking at their phone tapping their pockets crossing the road and then going straight into the i think it was a cafe near at the time to spend three quid on a skinny latte and a croissant or whatever and it was one way we went it just feels like there's something not quite right about this and there's an opportunity to disrupt that that journey and the idea that we had was basically finding a way to train homeless people as as baristas um giving them a skill a job um you know an opportunity to get back on their feet and everything that comes with that we took the idea to the big issue and they they loved it because it was you know very much a sort of update on what they're what they've done for 20 odd years i think 25 years at the time but they said look we're a magazine publisher trying to deal with the threat to publishing we need a coffee partner and at the same time in a like beautiful moment of serendipity i was living in peckham at the time wandered down the road and got chatting to jamal who's who's now ceo and the main man behind change police has been a driving force but he was they were him and a guy called rich robinson was starting a coffee roastery that was helping homeless people and we basically took the coffee roastery these guys were starting the the big issue and the sort of might of the agency at the time and and created change please which which is basically this coffee brand that fights homelessness by by selling coffee and it's been a crazy journey it's nine years in in mid-november first first coffee cart in covent garden it's now in over 20 countries it's in 300 corporate partners just just signed a big partnership with nespresso where nespresso you can now buy change please coffee through nespresso machines and nespresso have committed a million pounds a year to help with a new training center in Ireland and another one in the UK.

31:50So the real genuine impact in that partnership. Change Please have got buses that go out and basically our mobile service centers for rough sleepers in partnership with Colgate. You might have seen the ads on TV a lot with HSBC and they've got everything like laundrettes and showers and doctors and dentists. It's a crazy fact that one in three homeless people has tried to remove their own teeth so having a dentist that can go around and and help out has been pretty game-changing so yeah change please from a from really humble beginnings as that single car has has really gone gone gangbusters and it's um yeah probably probably was the the idea the thing that started the idea behind the book this this idea of you know if we can change how people buy their coffee we can change the world actually if we change how people spend their money this could happen across so many categories and it already is happening you know so many of the brands i talk about in the book are um already creating business models that tackle these problems and um and doing amazing things yeah that's inspiring and can you can you measure the impacts that you've had in terms of homelessness people off the streets now in jobs you know better denture i mean can you measure all that yeah so so there's a the most recent impact report for change please came out i think back end of last year it's it's just tipped over into the thousands now of people helped um in all sorts of different ways there's loads of detail in the report about um whether that's people who've come into the program got a skill and moved forward and then gone on to an onward employment with a with a corporate partner um or it's people some of the rough sleepers we've helped so yeah it's been really interesting in in that regard yeah i mean giving someone a job seems so much more valuable than just meeting their immediate needs doesn't it i came across this um i need to remember the name but it was a creative agency in la that exclusively worked with inmates and released offenders and the statistics were incredible like re-offending rates were sky high but but when they work with this creative agency and they trained them in prison as well before they got released they came out with a skill the offending rate went right down i mean the difference was incredible it makes sense doesn't it because you give them hope you give them a skill they're earning money they've got respect they've got dignity their cv suddenly looks you know like you might give them a job so proven themselves i mean it was so incredible i was very moved by the story that you know the guy that runs it who's an ex-offender himself you know and but they were doing great work as well so it was also tapping into a creative talent that was kind of being wasted selling drugs you know i mean exactly but that's the thing that um that makes home change police so um so revolutionary was you think of homelessness Well, the way to solve that is to give someone a house, right?

34:28But actually going job first rather than housing first, it gives you skill, the jump in self-esteem, confidence, social interaction. You know, these guys are used to being ignored and people walking past them and not really valuing them. And then suddenly coming for your morning coffee, coming for something you want, there's that value exchange. So that was the thing that's most transformational with the business model. And I can totally see that with the creative agency you talk about. There's a brilliant example in the book. actually another couple of guys who've come out of advertising um with xo bikes which is steph jones and ian priest from from vccp um basically steph was volunteering in um i think whenwood scrubs at the time and and he'd he'd see the same people being back six months later and be like what are you doing back here like what's going on look i got out and there's no way i can get a job so what they've created with xo bikes is uh they basically train uh people who've been in prison as as bike mechanics there's a big shortage of bike mechanics across the country more people got bikes during covid um the re-offending rate goes down from i think it's close to 50 percent of people who go out coming back down to two three percent if you're if you go through the xo bikes program so it's it's transformational as a as a model and they're looking at other ways they can do this across other sectors and the other thing that's absolutely genius about it is they they're basically getting the the raw material of the bikes uh from you know the room in the back of a police station or or a train station where it's a nicked bike that no one has no one's ever claimed they come to exo bikes they get refurbished and they make them look amazing they swag them up in like swag black or hot orange i think they talk about it so it's got a story to it each bike's got a serial number that refers to the particular bike mechanic who's turned it around so you know the story of of your bike so there's so much within that that you know takes a problem that that i'm thinking about it laterally and coming up with something really innovative that that works right so it's really really interesting yeah that's really cool and i mean talk about uh orange and black as well that i think another principle we talk about in terms of how to succeed is is standing out as well and just being different to the category and i think all the ones that we talk about this tony's or liquid death or you know ocean bottles you know they they're all very distinctive and different aren't they and that seems to be one of the right ways in which kind of change brands can can beat the competition as well yeah i mean i think you know distinctiveness isn't a new conversation in marketing but perhaps it is when you're looking at companies who are trying to change things for the better so we talked about a little bit earlier you know tony's chocolate only is a chocolate brand that's setting out to tackle modern slavery exploitation of children in the supply chain if that was created by a unicef or someone like that you'd probably see pictures of kids looking downtrodden in fields holding machetes or spraying fertilizer it would move you but would you want the chocolate bar from from that and i think you look at the tony's brand it is bright and joyous and and you almost wouldn't know the story behind it you peel back the wrapper you find out more about it the way the chocolate is in different shapes is amazing there's a story behind that um it's meant to represent the five main countries in Africa where the chocolate comes from and to show that the chocolate there is inequality rife in in chocolate so it's not like it's uniform squares some people complain about that but it becomes something that's super distinctive about the experience so putting that through brands that are looking to stand out but do it for a reason and you make positive change fun you make it aspirational those two things I think are things that you know only for instance before John Schoolcraft and Tony Bettison came on board as the CEO and Chief Creative Officer 10 or so years ago.

38:12It was a brand that had come out of Swedish University, just looked like anything else you'd see in a health food shop. And the transformation it's gone through with a bit of creativity, a bit of purpose in it is incredible. It's well talked about as a story. I'm sure you've probably had someone from Otely on here, maybe even John. But I think when they first redesigned the packaging, they held up in a normal company meeting and someone's going you're trying to destroy the company what are you doing and then then the difference it made was was absolutely staggering and now it's you know it's yeah the kind of behemoth it is i think there's a serious case for humor or fun in all this isn't there because all the cases that seem to succeed take what you know purpose categories like well health food stores good example isn't it it's all very serious and boring and you know stripped back and devoid of personality exactly that they're the category codes of better for you you know planet saving kind of organic aren't they um but the brands that have worked have like doubled down on personality fun and making things interesting i mean we talk about liquid death i mean they just take that to the extreme yeah you know and just they start with entertainment they don't start with oh look we're a you know we're in a can not a bottle we're going to save lots of co2 they start with entertaining the audience and being noticed and and then and then and then the environmental benefit is almost an afterthought actually it's you know you you kind of discover the environmental benefit as a result of discovering the brand yeah no i think you're you're spot on it's it's having a bit of fun with it i think that one of the things with with change please initially was some early designs had it looking almost like charity coffee and you think about the the flavor notes you're going to get from a coffee that's been made by a homeless guy it doesn't feel necessarily particularly appetizing so we went out of our way to make it feel super premium, like a specialty coffee.

39:56And the impact was almost secondary. So you just thought, this is a beautiful cup of coffee. And then you read the messaging on a cup and go, oh, actually, wow, this is helping someone off the streets. That's amazing. So competing on the category benefit first and foremost and then landing the impact, I think, is interesting. The way Tony's sort of hiding in the wrapper is clever. Oh, it's absolutely brilliant. Big fan of Tony's. I mean, the thing I also like about Tony's, I mean, because I'm probably a big chocolate fan anyway, but the product is so good. It is genuinely like the best chocolate in terms of like high cocoa content, absolutely kind of mouthwatering, a gazillion different flavors, you know, lots of very interesting flavors, exciting packaging.

40:37And the proposition comes through in everything. Like you say, the inner wrapping, the shape of the chocolate, the stunt they pulled with the advent calendar. Even the financial report is quite interesting. I mean, like, financial reports are meant to be the most boring legal document a company has. And even that's interesting. And they talk more about impact they make in the supply chain than they do the profit they make. In fact, they're measuring their progress based on, you know, kids that have been pulled out of slavery and are getting paid a fair wage rather than how much money they're making, which is brilliant.