How Ambitious Brands Get it Done with Fewer Resources and Less Time with Good Marketing

Transcript

WEBVTT

00:00:00.100 --> 00:00:01.663
Welcome to today's episode.

00:00:01.663 --> 00:00:06.974
Today, we are talking about good marketing what is good marketing?

00:00:06.974 --> 00:00:11.067
And we have the perfect guest to help us with this topic.

00:00:11.067 --> 00:00:12.230
Our guest is Emily.

00:00:12.230 --> 00:00:15.103
She is a fractional CMO.

00:00:15.103 --> 00:00:16.068
Welcome to the show.

00:00:17.621 --> 00:00:19.288
Hi, nice to meet you and great to have you here.

00:00:20.600 --> 00:00:28.294
So why don't we start off by you taking a minute or two to share a little bit about who you are and what you do?

00:00:29.320 --> 00:00:30.922
Yeah, so I'm Emily.

00:00:30.922 --> 00:00:33.064
I'm the founder of the Good Marketing Club.

00:00:33.064 --> 00:00:45.996
It's my recent venture, as I have now gone solo, so that's the brand name that enables me to operate as a solopreneur, where I help ambitious founders basically get it done, realize their vision through the power of good marketing.

00:00:45.996 --> 00:00:52.848
I launched five weeks ago and it's really with the premise of helping good people achieve good things through the power of good marketing.

00:00:52.848 --> 00:01:07.652
I think we can all agree there's still so much average marketing out there and I really want to change that to make sure that actually how visions are realized now is through the capability of telling good stories, leading good executions and, yeah, helping people's vision come true.

00:01:08.900 --> 00:01:12.111
Sadly, most of the marketing out there is not good marketing.

00:01:12.111 --> 00:01:15.930
I would say 99% of the marketing I see is pretty terrible.

00:01:15.930 --> 00:01:22.573
So we are here to celebrate the top 1% of really good marketing and we're ready to be inspired.

00:01:22.573 --> 00:01:28.253
Emily, share a story with us about some of the best marketing that you've done, that you're the most proud of.

00:01:29.301 --> 00:01:40.218
Okay, so I'm going to rewind now to 2017, where I was head of marketing or head of central media marketing sorry for a FMCG company in the UK.

00:01:40.218 --> 00:01:42.341
I don't know if you're familiar with a brand called Iceland.

00:01:42.341 --> 00:01:47.609
Iceland is a really interesting company because it's been around since 1970s.

00:01:47.609 --> 00:01:53.405
It's still privately owned, it's got over 900 stores and essentially what they sell is frozen food.

00:01:53.405 --> 00:02:12.723
But after pretty much decades of very the marketing was really focused on budget and price, and so a lot of legacy issues there, with the sense of how the brand is being positioned for years and the quality of the goods had really come on in terms of the taste, the quality, credentials.

00:02:12.723 --> 00:02:30.895
But because of the legacy advertising and marketing that had been done in the past, there was this really strong brand perception that the quality of the food isn't good, it just caters to people that are budget shoppers, and so, basically, the campaign that I want to talk about was around 2017, to do with the Christmas campaign.

00:02:31.436 --> 00:02:40.451
Now, for any FMCG company, some of the biggest competition that we had at the time was retailers like Menace, waitrose and those kinds of brands.

00:02:40.451 --> 00:02:55.134
When it comes to Christmas, you start planning those ad campaigns, like in January almost, and so a challenge that we had was twofold one, we were really late in planning the Christmas campaign and two, we just didn't have the budgets as those brands as well.

00:02:55.134 --> 00:02:57.943
One of the biggest retailers in the UK is called John Lewis.

00:02:57.943 --> 00:03:06.992
They are so well known for their Christmas executions and as soon as they wrap up Christmas, they're literally starting January with planning that year ahead for Christmas.

00:03:06.992 --> 00:03:11.063
So we started planning the campaign in August, which was really late.

00:03:11.063 --> 00:03:23.965
And the second challenge is that we had this ambition to start really positioning Iceland, the brand, as a retailer that was known for quality, that was known for good taste and how we were going to do that around Christmas.

00:03:23.965 --> 00:03:33.269
So the whole strategy was around surprising, delighting and converting, and we just ripped up the rule book that Christmas and had so much fun planning the campaign.

00:03:33.269 --> 00:04:10.010
So how it started was, you know I mentioned there that many of the competition they have really deep pockets when it comes to their Christmas campaigns, and so because were late, because we didn't have the budget, we essentially decided to look at a load of trending YouTube videos where kids are ripping up Christmas presents and being so amazingly surprised with what they were receiving for Christmas, and we put CGI onto those clips as if the kids were basically opening the presents and it was one of the hero items from Iceland, whether it's a turkey, whether it's something that you'd eat for your Christmas dinner.

00:04:10.010 --> 00:04:23.408
And it was so funny because you'd see these well-known clips that were trending, they were viral clips and because of the way that it was superimposed with CGI, they were basically ripping up these presents and, amazing, you're ripping up a turkey.

00:04:23.408 --> 00:04:26.562
And so that was the Christmas the TV campaign.

00:04:26.942 --> 00:04:30.230
But what I really loved is how we executed that strategy.

00:04:30.230 --> 00:04:32.785
So it wasn't just about TV, it wasn't just about social.

00:04:32.785 --> 00:04:40.870
Every team came together to make sure that for that Christmas campaign, it was about capturing attention for the longest period of time.

00:04:40.870 --> 00:04:46.021
Like I mentioned, the Christmas TV campaign was to do with the cgi ripping up the, the presents.

00:04:46.021 --> 00:04:56.531
But how that was then distributed and launched was we got one of the well-known families that were in the videos, who were a very big, well-known family of influencers.

00:04:56.531 --> 00:05:10.127
They had a huge youtube audience, a huge instagram audience, and so, because one of their children were part of the eclipse, we got them to live stream them watching the tv launch in between the ad breaks.

00:05:10.127 --> 00:05:14.603
I think it was around a top and tail ad, for I'm a celebrity, get me out of here.

00:05:14.603 --> 00:05:16.406
So a lot of eyeballs on the tv.

00:05:16.406 --> 00:05:25.339
They live streamed the tv commercial going live so that then distributed to their audience and then that kick-started the campaign.

00:05:25.339 --> 00:05:26.802
People are laughing.

00:05:26.802 --> 00:05:30.512
We're getting lots of press coverage about how funny the tv campaign was.

00:05:31.120 --> 00:05:34.728
And then we started to really wrap up and dial attention as well.

00:05:34.728 --> 00:05:38.620
So, for example, we had a huge influencer event.

00:05:38.620 --> 00:05:53.187
So, coming back to the perception of iceland being quite low budget, low taste credentials, we decided to invite a load of different influencers that basically had the audience that we were looking to capture, so more of an affluent audience.

00:05:53.187 --> 00:06:05.281
We invited them down to this beautiful kitchen where we had essentially designed the kind of event to really turn the head about what you do around Christmas time yeah, whether it was.

00:06:05.281 --> 00:06:05.420
So.

00:06:05.420 --> 00:06:19.653
We invited the influence into the TV, into the kitchen, where we had basically curated a load of different activity, whether it was cooking demonstrations, whether it was cocktail classmaking, whether it was wreath making.

00:06:19.653 --> 00:06:33.130
We had a graffiti artist like showing all these different things around Christmas time how to lay out your table, to lay out your table, and so, again, because we had a variety of different influence at the kitchen they were then basically able to.

00:06:33.151 --> 00:06:35.339
The influence was then capturing all the different activities.

00:06:35.339 --> 00:06:41.834
They were distributing that through their channels and so on one of the most busy periods of the year.

00:06:41.834 --> 00:06:53.411
So the time that the that the influencer event was held on a saturday, the first saturday of december, so a historically really busy period for whether it was there was a huge rugby game that was playing.

00:06:53.411 --> 00:07:00.173
That time, m&s, one of our hero competitors, had just come out with this Paddington Bear campaign, so it was very busy.

00:07:00.173 --> 00:07:01.987
People are out getting their last minute shopping.

00:07:01.987 --> 00:07:12.514
It's very difficult to capture attention during that period and on that day, just given the kind of the angle that we're taking with the event, the types of influence that we got to come to this event.

00:07:12.514 --> 00:07:20.088
We were trending on twitter more than any other campaign, more than any other hashtag, and again, because of the different activity that we had there.

00:07:20.088 --> 00:07:26.213
So I should have mentioned as well the cooking demonstrations, where the influencers were also able to test the quality of the food.

00:07:26.213 --> 00:07:30.105
They were showcasing through their channels the different activities that were going on.

00:07:30.105 --> 00:07:46.802
So, again, iceland was being spoken about in such a fun and different way and was able to then not only show the kind of the food credentials, but also the atmosphere, like people were talking about it in such a positive way and that also gave us so much good content then to distribute further.

00:07:46.862 --> 00:07:51.029
After that activity happened as well, we did loads of other activity as well.

00:07:51.029 --> 00:07:59.165
We looked at search, at search history, to say what are people Googling in the run up to Christmas?

00:07:59.165 --> 00:08:04.624
They've got you kind of your obvious ones, like how to make eggnog, how to make gravy, and we're giving all these highly searchable queries a different twist.

00:08:04.624 --> 00:08:25.384
And so, again, making sure that the recipes that we then basically created how-to videos around were done in a very beautifully shot, making sure that the audio, the visuals, everything was done with really a petable style and how that was then distributed as well, to make sure that when people were searching for these different recipes, it was item that was coming up above our competitors.

00:08:25.987 --> 00:08:47.744
We also did another execution which was around I don't know if you're familiar with James Corden's Carpool Karaoke, but yeah, we basically, because we wanted to also promote the home delivery service, we got one of our internal videographers to go and do Sam in a Van which is essentially to go and surprise a load of shoppers with their Christmas delivery that we gave them free of charge.

00:08:47.744 --> 00:08:59.432
And the way that we basically did it was Sam basically went and did a tour of the UK and he was laughing and joking in the car Like we shot it, like it was a carpool karaoke, but basic with our home delivery drivers.

00:08:59.432 --> 00:09:08.067
They were then delivering the shopping to the shoppers and we were gifting their whole Christmas hamper free of charge and again capturing that in a bit of a docu-series.

00:09:08.067 --> 00:09:12.196
Again, that wasn't being done by any other retailers at the time and it was just.

00:09:12.196 --> 00:09:22.789
It proved to be beautiful content that again surprised, it delighted and it captured that audience that could then go to convert because they were seeing the kind of essence and the humor of the brand.

00:09:23.351 --> 00:09:30.639
For a busy period we were and again I can't stress this enough how different our budgets were to our competitors.

00:09:30.639 --> 00:09:38.447
We really dominated that time and that space and we sold out of all of our hero products we were being spoken about.

00:09:38.447 --> 00:09:51.101
The sentiment around the campaign, the sentiment around the brand at the time was like we saw some really amazing results from that, but just given the influencer event alone, that garnered over 5.7 million impressions.

00:09:51.101 --> 00:10:02.763
We were trending, like I mentioned, on Twitter above any of our other competitors, above massive sporting events at the time, and it really repositioned the audience of how they felt about a brand like Iceland.

00:10:02.763 --> 00:10:24.363
You don't get over legacy issues like perception with just one campaign, but it really what I love the most about that campaign is at the time the board and the owner was really hit on traditional channels like tv and print and pr and we really positioned and showed the power of influencers, of social media and digital.

00:10:24.764 --> 00:10:26.910
And I remember after the first weekend, that Monday morning being invited into.

00:10:26.910 --> 00:10:37.134
I remember my boss came to get me and saying, emily, that Monday morning being invited into, I remember my boss came to get me and saying Emily, the we needed to come into this meeting it was with the board of directors to talk about how the influencer event went.

00:10:37.134 --> 00:10:45.465
They they never really cared before that about influencers and social media, but they really saw the impact that we were having through being creative and about ripping up the rule book.

00:10:45.465 --> 00:10:54.948
So so that really showed the brand of okay, this is how we can do things now to really command attention, to capture attention and really show the power of digital.

00:10:54.948 --> 00:10:57.527
At that time and this is going back like eight years ago now.

00:10:57.527 --> 00:10:58.249
That was one of the.

00:10:58.249 --> 00:11:06.107
The reason I love that campaign so much is that it was really about just doing things differently, thinking differently and how you can really capture attention.

00:11:07.620 --> 00:11:09.244
I love so many aspects of this story.

00:11:09.244 --> 00:11:22.616
Having spent some time and done some marketing for companies in London, I do know that the British are very serious about their Christmas campaigns.

00:11:22.677 --> 00:11:24.457
That's just you don't mess around about it.

00:11:24.457 --> 00:11:46.011
This is a great illustration of what good marketing is, but also changing the image of the brand, like you said, from doing very different marketing and doing it in a very guerrilla style, without necessarily the biggest budget and on a limited timeframe.

00:11:46.011 --> 00:11:54.775
That's where you brought in some really great examples of creativity, of doing things when you don't have unlimited resources.

00:11:54.775 --> 00:12:03.000
That's when you're the most creative and you can come up with the best ideas, and those examples you shared were pretty awesome.

00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:05.535
So is that what good marketing really looks like, in your opinion?

00:12:06.519 --> 00:12:13.638
Absolutely so, if I can think back, we were given free reign to go and let's just make an impact, and that was about having a great time.

00:12:13.638 --> 00:12:26.187
So the principles that I now live by with launching my own business it's about producing good marketing, working with good people and having a good time, and I can honestly say for that Christmas campaign, we were all having the best time together.

00:12:26.187 --> 00:12:33.317
We were having to think outside the box, I think a lot of the time, like, of course, no one's going to say no to huge budgets they're great to work with.

00:12:33.317 --> 00:12:42.441
I think so much creativity comes from when you have limited resources, when you do have to think differently and you think it's not just about then copying what the competition is doing.

00:12:42.441 --> 00:12:45.659
It's actually looking left and looking outside the category.

00:12:45.659 --> 00:12:48.897
Think, okay, how can we really capture the audience?

00:12:48.897 --> 00:12:50.861
And think about what's going to command their attention.

00:12:50.861 --> 00:12:55.759
They're definitely principles that probably have influenced why I now stand for what I stand for.

00:12:56.140 --> 00:13:00.807
So yeah for sure, principles that probably have influenced why I now stand for what I stand for.

00:13:00.807 --> 00:13:01.330
So, yeah, for sure.

00:13:01.330 --> 00:13:19.065
So, with your new venture, if you're talking to folks and they're sitting down with you for a cup of coffee and you're telling them, you should be doing good marketing, not bad marketing, what is the one or two things that you would advise marketers that symbolize good marketing?

00:13:20.530 --> 00:13:33.677
I think it's really about challenging conventions Like so much of the time you still see marketing which is just it's tick boxes let's all go and do podcasts, let's all go and do blogs and let's all go and post every day on social media.

00:13:33.677 --> 00:13:35.937
But, like, why are you doing what you're doing?

00:13:35.937 --> 00:13:53.179
And I think, especially in a marketing team, like you have to give this space and allow the culture where you're having healthy debates, because a lot of the time, if you're just going along with the consensus, it probably means that you're also executing a lot of vanilla style marketing.

00:13:53.179 --> 00:14:00.018
And so, I think, really digging deep to understand, like, why are we doing this and how can we do this better and what's the competition doing?

00:14:00.018 --> 00:14:01.671
But again, how can we do that better?

00:14:02.173 --> 00:14:18.581
So I really think that if you're not debating and having healthy conversations about how to like always look to strive to do better, and that can be quite detrimental, because I think if you work in marketing, you're your own biggest critic anyway, because you're always thinking like, how can we do next, how can we do better next time?

00:14:18.581 --> 00:14:19.888
But that's a good thing.

00:14:19.888 --> 00:14:25.672
You should always be looking to push yourself and see what you're capable of, because it comes back to that whole budget piece.

00:14:25.672 --> 00:14:33.037
If you're given lots of budget, you're going to go and do lots of great stuff, but if you're given less and you have to do more with it, that's actually a power.

00:14:33.037 --> 00:14:37.283
So healthy debate and looking to always strive to do better.

00:14:38.325 --> 00:14:45.844
I like that, and what would you say is the hardest thing about doing good marketing?

00:14:46.971 --> 00:14:47.634
The hardest thing.

00:14:47.634 --> 00:15:07.629
I think marketing in general is one of those fields where everyone thinks that they can do good marketing, because we've all got social media and we're all inundated with marketing every day, right, we're all overwhelmed, and so I think the hardest thing is being able to really have a point of view in what you're doing.

00:15:07.629 --> 00:15:13.953
You might be asked to do a thought leadership campaign, but you don't really know what is the opinion here that you're having to deliver, right?

00:15:13.953 --> 00:15:23.591
So I think it's being unique, doing things again and again, but in a different way, that your audience actually sees themselves in what it is you're putting out there.

00:15:23.611 --> 00:15:27.326
I think so much marketing that you see today really misses like.

00:15:27.326 --> 00:15:36.311
Ultimately, it's about the audience, it's about who you're speaking to, it's about the problems that you solve, and that's really hard if you're a marketer, because you're having to say the same thing in a different way each day.

00:15:36.311 --> 00:15:41.482
So always look to actually capture what is it that your audience cares about.

00:15:41.482 --> 00:15:42.191
You have more.

00:15:42.191 --> 00:15:46.552
You might have different types of audiences, and how can you get through to them as a human?

00:15:46.552 --> 00:15:52.994
At the end of the day, it's really putting yourselves into the shoes of your audience I agree 100.

00:15:53.033 --> 00:16:02.985
I think that's great advice and, as you pointed out, doing good marketing is never easy, but it should always be fun for sure.

00:16:02.985 --> 00:16:17.186
Yeah, I am going to link to your website and your LinkedIn in the show notes so people can easily get in touch if they'd like to connect with you about the Good Marketing Club and continue this conversation further.

00:16:17.186 --> 00:16:19.894
We really appreciate you being with us today.

00:16:20.631 --> 00:16:21.475
Thank you so much, Eric.

How Ambitious Brands Get it Done with Fewer Resources and Less Time with Good Marketing

Listen On

Recent Episodes

Business Episodes

Marketing Episodes

Branding Episodes

Product Marketing Episodes

Apple Episodes

Product Management Episodes

Canada Episodes

Digital Marketing Episodes

Advertising Episodes

Online Advertising Episodes

First Party Data Episodes

Social Media Episodes

Facebook Advertising Episodes

SEO Episodes

Australia Episodes

Email Marketing Episodes

Personal Branding Episodes

Executive Branding Episodes

Customer Marketing Episodes

Customer Loyalty Episodes

Browse episodes by category