Business & Lifestyle LEGENDS Podcast — Transcript
Branding Differences Between Uber and Airbnb, and How Coca Cola Always Gets Their Marketing Up to Date with Fergus Hay
Ben Schneider
Welcome guys to this new episode on the business and lifestyle legends podcasts. Today I got another awesome guest for you guys, he was the CEO and partner of legacy late Amanda is now the founder and CEO of the consultancy agency, Elysian Fields. He has helped numerous creative and service-based brands such as perpetually Bosch Royal British Legion, and many other big brands, he is also chairman of a health tech company called Vida, and that also take place as an expert at BBC News. Welcome guys furtive Yes Hey, hey Fergus, and thank you very much for always embarrassing to hear me talk about your time. It’s a pleasure to have you here today. So, you are a marketing professional. And there’s one question in general, I would like to ask you, could you guys, Could you tell the guys out there. From your perspective, what will be the next big marketing channel in 2021? What is the most underrated?
Fergus Hay
Well, the multi-million dollar question. So, the simple answer to that, there is never one. If you think about what the role of marketing is to sway consumers and customers to consider your product and your brand and then be willing to pay a premium for it. That is about a channel at your disposal to execute, of course, check a change over time, you know, 50 years ago, it was print advertising and newspapers, door to door sales, and the overtime has evolved with the social internet, through the apps the programmatic media content platforms like your own here. So I think the most important element for any marketer that has a conceptually flexible mind channel. We have to be able to flex to the right channels and platforms as they emerge. Buying was the main platform to engage with you, but of course, the vine has now disappeared. The important thing for marketers to remain agile, to understand what is the motivation for that target. What are the platforms that are relevant to them at that time and ensure that you exist in those platforms and channels natively in a way that is natural, and in a way that adds value in a meaningful way to the consumer?
Ben Schneider
Okay, so you did not have a specific tip for people who are maybe starting a business or already having a business that you start dead you’re saying like, let’s say, Hey guys, I’ve tried. In the last four months with a lot of brands, TikTok ads and they were working very good. If your audience is there because I think some people are always Google and Facebook only. So, the only advertising on Google search ads, and Facebook ads, maybe. But there are so many other channels out there.
Fergus Hay
It has to start with a really deep understanding. So, you can make an argument on any channel, I could really make an argument to you right now that posters in bus shelters on the road are quite powerful. Because even in a lockdown world, people will be walking the streets to see the visibility of a brand and a poster that is seen as very traditional actually has right. But the key is, what is your target audience and what motivates my recommendation to any entrepreneur or any business, whether they’re big or small, is to really dive into who exactly do you want to understand what are the media channels they use, and never rely on just one media channel. The truth is these platforms are separated by companies, where the consumer doesn’t separate the consumer may be using Tik Tok, will also be using Google and maybe using Facebook platforms like WhatsApp, or Facebook ad will probably be listening to the radio, or to Spotify, and probably will be walking their dog around the block and seeing some out of home advertising. So the most important thing is to build a picture of your target audience and understand what are the mediums that they’re engaging with and put an integrated media mind putting all of your bands on one media platform, often doesn’t deliver your long term results. Now, performance media platforms like the digital advisor will give you quite appealing customer acquisition cost, you’d say ok great I can put in $10,000 I can get, you know $12,000 worth of revenue here to whatever, and that can be seen as that’s often quite short. And a really important thing to do is sit there and go, who is my audience. What is my brand and make sure that in my brand communications I speak to the right people, and then have an integrated media plan using two or three or four different channels working together with the right messaging and targeting.
Ben Schneider
What you mentioned, that’s the advantage of of these online channels. You know your numbers, if I put a poster or if I put 50 posters somewhere down the roads in Germany. I don’t know how many clients came out of that advertising thing so I think that’s, that’s the advantage of the online advertising channels.
Fergus Hay
Yeah I mean it’s, you can measure it, and that’s useful. But the truth is if you think about how you choose to buy a product or service. It’s very rare that you see one digital ad, and that immediately makes you decide to purchase that product. The reality is there’s an entire narrative that goes around that. Otherwise, every single brand would be enormous. But the truth is the brands that really grow are the brands who of course use the right digital media, but they also use the broadcast media so that you have some authority behind the brand so that when people think about it it’s got some respect and integrity. And then there’s of course the power of word of mouth. All of these things work together. Of course, you can measure the digital media and in a way that’s a game that the digital media platforms have created in order to encourage you to continue to spend. But if you take a long term market. And then you build different dashboards for the product metrics that you tap into consumer research for six months and 12 months, you can see that the broadcast media platforms include PR and have an equal, if not a more important role to play alongside the hard-working, tactical digital merging those two pieces together into one integrated plan will give you absolutely larger returns on investment.
Ben Schneider
That’s an interesting fact you mentioned, to have some other people’s reputation. It’s not only if you if you guys are doing Facebook ads. Right now it’s great but this is created on your own, but if you’re advertising in a magazine or on a TV show where we’re in someone’s podcasts or something like that. You got them. Their reputation, also on your brand right?
Fergus Hay
It’s all about reputation, because in the end, you are persuading someone to change their behaviour, and I’ll give you an example. If you are a star. Let’s say you’ve come up with good collaboration. Mini slack and you launch it into the market. What you can do is you can target with digital media, what we call the early adopters. These are people who are always looking for a new piece of technology, they’re probably the first people to use the MiniDisc when it first came out, you know they’re the people who want to experiment and try things. So often you’ll see at sea level, startup businesses, get really really excited, because they can put in $20,000 $30,000 worth of growth capital into performance, and they see wow look at our customer acquisition costs it gets really low fast because the volume of people who are coming onto our platform. And that is true data, but it’s not long term, because those people are the early adopters. Now, often then what happens is the business goes to series A shows the investors look with what traction, we’ve got good cost per acquisition model with a good load of people who are onto our platform and using it or the early adopters, and then they raised a series A money 10 million, 20 million euros, and they promised that they’re going to widen the funnel, we’re going to get more hospitals onto their platform. And on this collaborative platform. Now, they kind of penetrated the early adopters. Now they need to go to you and me, and they need to persuade you and me, that we need to stop using slack and start using the new, the new, the new platform your platform. And in order to persuade me to do that, you need to be more than a single digital message. I need to read about you the trade. I need to see invisible places that have a real long term. I think that he is a few people I know that Ben needs a collaborative platform that is actually much better than slack as far as comes up, I don’t have that annoying notification at all that builds a picture of reputation that then will persuade me to leave something that quite honestly works and is listed on the stock exchange and famous business in order to try something new that may be a risk, and that is what reputation does any small business is trying to grow, you’re effectively trying to get people to leave an existing behaviour and try something they’re not in now.
Ben Schneider
100% on the same page. Have you done that for companies, not the complete startup companies starting from scratch, but maybe for companies who are doing 100,000 or 200,000 sales a month or a year, let’s say a year. Are they able to also buy some reputation, or buy ads on those channels, or are they too expensive, or are there other possibilities because, for example, buying an ad in a TV show or on a TV channel is quite expensive so this would not be possible if you’re doing 200 grand a year. So, is there any device or possibility for them?
Fergus Hay
Yeah, so it’s very easy to lose a lot of money. And often the issue is. People spend money on buying the media and they think that sold. But you have to have a really clearly defined brand before you even think about it. You have to have a brand based on your target customer. And that has a communication style and personality, that cuts through all the clutter. There are many brands who spend loads and loads and loads of money on marketing media, but because they don’t have a brand and a personality, there’s no emotional relationship with their target customers are all of that media money is kind of wasted. They may get brand recognition, oh yeah I saw that logo somewhere, but they don’t get any brand connection and brand equity. That’s what’s worth it. The real value. So before you even think as a small to medium business that might have a couple of 100,000, euros to spend on media, we even think about deploying that media. I would start really being clear on the brand, do I genuinely differentiate from everyone else, because of the multiplier. When you buy 10,000 euros worth of media, whether it’s digital, whether it’s activation or whether it’s awareness, the multiplier effect of having a differentiated brand that emotionally connects with its customers is huge, absolutely huge. To get the brand right. Then you sit there and you go from 200,000…What is it that I want to turn. Do I want to turn 200,000 euros worth of spend to 400,000 euros worth of revenue? If I want a direct revenue driver, then that will need to certain marketing execution or do I want to build my reputation over two to three years and I see that 200,000 as an investment, so that I can convert my sales activities, a better level, because we’re building our brand relationships that will lead you to a different set, but it’s really important that you define the brand, what the objective is of this marketing program and then you can choose the right medium. And the counsel that I often give to any business, whether it’s Coca Cola Company Unilever who I worked with for many many years globally, on the web, or whether it’s nice brands, like, like partial leave or whether it’s, you know, venture-backed startup companies with which I work with now. The advice is always the same. Once you got your brand defined. Think about the narrative, and start with your PR roadmap. What is it that the trade and the consumer media journalists should be writing about? What is the singular narrative that separates you from a category that doesn’t talk about your individual product but talks about your view of why the category is and that’s what category leadership, got to have that narrative? That way you can actually get really valuable and media really good PR, because that’s always where I would start top-down pianist, then you can think about if we do want to build long term value, what is my broadcast media, by the way, is obvious it’s the print and television, but it’s also a video on big platforms online so it’s not necessarily online. And then I would look at really targeted hard work performance media, one of those targeted digital communications that have identified the right customer to put your product and your value proposition in your price and you can do that on a big scale medium scale and small scale with discipline.
Ben Schneider
Also awesome what you’re sharing with us. Is that because I think I heard it from your emotions, how you were talking about that topic, is that the number one mistake, companies are doing out there that the brand is not defined as it should.
Fergus Hay
Absolutely, I mean not the number one, but it’s a combination, and normally what happens is the word brand is mystifying. So often people go, well we have a logo, and we have a set of features. Actually, Uber is an interesting example of this. Take two businesses to kind of unicorn business decade, Uber, Airbnb, in my view, Uber never invested in that brand. They view that brand as a logo, and then a service utility feature, we can get you a to be used, no physical cash on predictive times, and on-demand. That was that was. And of course, they disrupted a very very analogue old school market, How looking backwards, how inefficient attacks, waiting on a street corner, you know, getting into the car with a stranger who you have no pre betting on having to find cash in your pocket, and prices that change by the hour and you’re never quite so inefficient. So it really became a disruptive based on features, but they never invested in the brand and that’s all fine. When people are happy to switch, but the minute that Uber hits and headwinds. So headwinds were the founder Travis, making or having some crises at the board level with sexual discrimination or gender discrimination. In India, examples of rapes happening in cars. You got a whole series of legal challenges against the government. When all of those headwinds came. What happened, consumers started the listing, they abandoned the brand, because there was no there was nothing emotionally to connect them to and that’s why Uber's market capitalization has fluctuated so much and even now it still doesn’t mean breaking. Now let’s compare it to Airbnb. Airbnb is a hospitality business that has set up a platform that enables you to rent a community-based property, the Airbnb invested in their brand. They, from the beginning, they said we are community orientated we’re about personal relationships and we’re about the corporate icing on the combination and building experiences and communities in the bedroom. Now, Airbnb has way more issues than Uber. They have orgies in people’s houses. They’ve had murders, people have burned down people’s houses. The issues that Uber, Airbnb in a way they’re going to Uber, but Airbnb had a brand, they had something that consumers emotionally attached and they felt the Airbnb contributions to society. They felt that Airbnb was an empathetic brand. And because of that. No one hates Airbnb, People feel that Airbnb is a really positive part of modern society, and that’s why the IPO is so spectacular. And that’s why you didn’t see people coming on the platform. So that shows you how important it is to build a brand that has an emotional engagement with its audience even before you think about spending. And the longer I’m sorry, just to finish on that point that the proof is in the evidence, you step back and you look at really long term valuable brands. Brands like Coca Cola have invested in building emotional relationships Nike has invested in building emotional relationships, new brands like Allbirds amazing brands have invested in building emotional relationships with.
Ben Schneider
Awesome. I like listening to you. So, definitely guys, what Fergus has mentioned that the brand is not only having a logo. That’s, that’s very important to recognize. So, if he, if you’re working with that big, or some players like Coca Cola, for example, or only lever. Let’s, let’s stick to Coca Cola because everyone in the world knows that spread to everyone. Why do they need you, or, or what do they need from you when they can because someone could imagine them, hey Coca Cola is that awesome big, they have all their marketing agencies or they advisories, or, or even they maybe don’t need them, or they are doing all in house. So, what do they need you for, and how do you work with them.
Fergus Hay
It’s a great question and I had the privilege of working with the Coca Cola company for about eight years whilst I was at Ogilvy and Mather, and I did that in America and in Asia. So, so I saw a lot of the different elements that they are at the root cause they are marketing, actually, they don’t even make their own product. They have, send a syrup to the bottlers who are non-Coca Cola, who actually make the product, Coca Cola, are responsible for the brand. And they understand the value of those brands and if you just think about it, when you walk into a supermarket or Bodega or grocery, you’ve got Coca Cola, and you’ve got pets. They are the same size. They’re in the same format, either a can or screw-top bottle, they’re the same price. They’re the same colour liquid. And really, the taste profile is not that different. But people are either blue or red. You’re either one or the other, you’ve never crossed over. And that is two brands have done an amazing job of building tribal loyalty. So the Coca Cola company understands the value of marketing, and they will argue that they will in house brand design. The visual identity of the Coca Cola Company is absolutely cherished it’s precious. It’s precious, the formula of the value. And that’s what the Coca Cola company. But what made them. Such a relevant modern brand is that they stay on top of popular culture as popular culture evolves from Boomers to Generation Y generation Z’s and millennials, Coca Cola adapts forms with those consumers and that’s because they have the finger on the pulse of the consumers. They need to understand, what is it that this target audience 25 to 35 years old cares about both society, and product lines and make sure the brand remains relevant to them. And that’s where they use agencies, that’s where they use marketing agents, they come to us to help us understand what is the young Saudi consumer feel like right now, what is the Generation Z in Australia versus Generation Z in Cambodia versus what is it is, how do they feel about where they live, and the society they live in because that’s what fuels the brands, they focus on relevant so the agency partners job is to be on top of culture and to bring the creativity to have narratives in Coca Cola Brown, to, to the local consumers and you will notice that when you step back with Coca Cola and same with Nike. They haven’t changed. Coca Cola is always good for optimism. They always stood for, when the world is tough. Whatever is happening, you can be optimistic, whether it is the very famous hilltop advert. At the end of the Vietnam War from the 70s to the latest communications around diversity and inclusion in America. The message has always been rebranded as optimistic, and that comes down to the product. When you open the product of Coca Cola, the first thing you hear is that that is the sound that gives you a little bit of lip. The product itself when you put it on your mouth. It has a little bit hidden makes it a little bit better, it’s got to pick you up. So the optimism is rooted in the product. And that’s what the Coca Cola company will protect absolutely forever, and the marketing partners job is to interpret that and adapted the model.
Ben Schneider
What is so different between doing marketing for a big brand, not especially Coca Cola, just for a big brand with tons of marketing budget and already having this awesome brand name, and doing marketing for a startup. Is it more watching about numbers because there is not that much money to spend, or is there a little change that at first you. You care more about how is my sales from working and how do I, how many needed to put in to get one customer, and later change more to the branding, marketing where instead of some differences.
Fergus Hay
It is really important, because that’s where everyone lives. By the way, as important, the big companies as opposed to small companies. But for sure if you’re a small company, you’re always managing International. I don’t think it’s about sales. I think sales funnels are a tactic and they’re really important. But that’s not the core of it. I think the core of it is culture. Now, look at a company like Rudolph. You were BrewDog it’s a beer business that came out of Scotland. Now, billion-dollar businesses 12 years old, BrewDog and the founders of that believed in the culture. In the same way that Nike Foundation, the needs of both of these both BrewDog starts off as a small microbrewery up in Scotland, and the two founders were beer lovers, and they were absolutely brilliant marketers and with no budget. They built a tribal culture because it’s in the culture of the company. They sat there and they said, who do we want to be, what do we believe in, who do we want to talk to, how are we going to differentiate ourselves. And that then informs their product development, inform their product design, important where they distributed that informed the stunts that they pull in order to get PR media informed the consumers they didn’t want, you know, it’s always important to decide who you do not want. And that became a real powerful piece of momentum, really launched that brand to the scale that is now a billion-dollar beverage. That is 12 or 15 years old, that came out of these small towns, and everything that they’ve done is rooted in this idea of being a beer punk. How do you fight against the mass tasteless beers like Budweiser, the independent beer is made with love and made with taste, they’ve got the character to them. And they did amazing things, you know, they opened up their shareholding as a crowdfunding program so there are 1000s and 1000s of what they call punks beer pockets around the world who invested $2 $3 $5 in their shareholders. Alright, that’s a great return for them, but they built this tribal clearing so for them it wasn’t about money, it was about the culture they understood who they were as a brand, who they were talking to and how they were going to differentiate themselves category, so that then they can build a brand rooted in marketing, and that is the same whether you are a b2b SaaS business, whether you are a bicycle manufacturer or whether you are a manufacturer and marketing has to be a culture, not a department that simply delivers ROI.
Ben Schneider
Got it, got that so you’re chairman, also of a tech company that relates to the health branch has some marketing at the health sector, Because I think theory of always market with, like, being healthy living longer, having, having a better feeling something like that, right.
Fergus Hay
So, like every business is really important to what’s happening in the next one or two years. And when I would say this for any stock market business to any startup, you have to look at consumption trends, you understand who your target consumer is what is informing or directing, how they’re going to make decisions and where to spend their money. And the, there are two really important vectors for the effects of healthcare. Number one, ageing population is a crisis that society has never done, something like 70% of the population. The age is 70 years old. Plus, you’ve got a group of consumers who are living longer, right, but then having much bigger healthcare requirements, either on the state or on the public sector. And this is what we call a social crisis, because, as they get older, they will need more care. And the state infrastructure in the UK for sure is not set up, they’ll take care of millions and millions of people who are going to be living into 85, 90. And so the drain on the economy and the drain on the next generation financially we really feel there are very few people who are saving money for their parents. Cap, there isn’t the banks aren’t offering savings products they by the way that you should be putting away 100 euros a month, because your parents will need 24/7 care when they’re in their 80s and 90s. No one is saving. So this is consumption. That is a long term serious consumption. The UK government recognizes, they’ve committed 76 billion of state funding to help the elderly and the vulnerable as they get older. And so when you look at consumption trends that can look at where products and services can help, then you can look at how to market them respond. So the first really important trend for the healthcare market is the ageing population. And the second one, the impact of COVID, and COVID has shown, the elderly, how vulnerable they could be. There was a stat that there was a 45% increase in death rates. Elderly Care post-COVID 45% because of COVID. So you can see that people won’t want to say, mum or dad. So then you sit there and you go okay, the market is a generation like me looking at my parents and saying they’re 83, my parents. Let’s get them a carer to come into their home to look off. That’s your market. And who’s the purchaser, well I’m the purchaser. Not my parents actually, I’m the purchaser. So who am I going to market to well I’m going to market it emotionally. To my parents say hey, there’s help out there, services that you can trust. We can look after you and your home. And then the purchase though, me and my brother and my sister. The marketing will come to us going right bourbons, Allison and Camilla. Here is a suite of services that you guys can pay for to look after your parents in their home to keep them in comfort avoid them going into a care home. And here’s a bunch of technology that enables you to monitor their health condition, so that you can spot issues before they go into the hospital before they have to go to the hospital. So, when you ask, how do you market it always comes down to what are the economic drivers in your category, who are the purchasers and who are the beneficiaries, and then you can identify what are the barriers or the drivers, you need to talk to other people in order to sell your product or service, and that’s what we’re doing with beat again.
Ben Schneider
Let’s talk a few more minutes about that, because I think it’s not about the marketing side, but it’s quite interesting what you guys are doing. So, which products which technology could help these people, is it as like watches were giving you statistics about pulse and blood pressure and something like that or is there some AI involved are we talking about robots who are helping their homes. So, I think, I’m not that into this, but I’m quite sure that in, maybe 20 years, we will have robots, like in the movie iRobot with Will Smith, who is helping us in our household with some, some kind of stuff. But do you think about that and what are you doing with your company, which products are in a serving.
Fergus Hay
So really interesting, I think we have to be very very thankful to the leading universities around the world. Because the likes of Imperial Oxford, Cambridge are producing incredible fighters who are developing hardware that will be able to monitor different behavioural patterns and different health issues around, and I think we should be so grateful to all of that coming I’ve seen so many. What we’re doing is we’re saying look, let’s take two or three pieces of technology, hardware, and put them in mum or dads. Let’s give you an example there’s a great company called ally. They’ve developed audio technology. It’s a microphone that you put in, mums, or dads, and it monitors their sound patterns, walking around, coughing, going to the toilet flushing the toilet, and they’re sleeping babies, and it monitors their sound, and it builds a profile. Now, if mom or dad, start coughing at a higher rate than their normal baseline. That’s an early indicator of a lung infection. If mom or dad, start flushing the toilet, more regularly than they normally do. That’s an early indicator of a urinary tract infection. Now those two issues to fine specimens of mankind like yourself are not a big deal. You can take a pill and you can deal with a lung infection, but as someone who’s 80 years old, a lung infection or a urinary tract infection, you can be 48 hours away from being in the hospital, and the rates of recovery once you go into hospital. So what we can do is identify the early signals of operations, infection, and alert the carer and the clinician that mom or dad is showing the really really early signs of a potential infection so that you can treat it early and if you catch a lung infection or UTI early in the elderly, you can really deal with it with one pill in one day. And our job is to build what we’re doing in building a predictive analytics engine that is AI-based but I’m less bothered about that. But compute the data from the hardware to build a profile of mum or dad, and then create alerts when we see really early signs of potential issues that will enable a whole society, to avoid going into hospital, avoid the strain on the National Health Service, avoid those hospitalization issues that really become difficult to come back and keep people in their home with preventative medicine, keeping them healthier to live dignified lives as they age, and that’s the business that
Ben Schneider
I think it will help tons of people out there with their parents, but especially you will help their parents to live longer and this is something, something. Yeah, really incredible.
Fergus Hay
So, I mean that’s the main thing you know, ageing is not a dignified process. And I think, you know, enabling people to live in that home catches us up, It’s the right thing to do.
Ben Schneider
Yeah definitely, definitely. I know that my grandparents died last year and they were saying, 92, 93 and 95 years old living in their home, there and they were dying in their own. But yeah, that was the best that can ever happen to them, dying at home, so they are comfortable surrounding with, with all of us. Yeah, this is that that’s what, that’s why what you’re doing is really important for the society out there. So, thanks Fergus for that. Awesome, well you have one interview, especially the lot of insights about how branding works, how to work on your brand, how to define your company or defining your brand. Really appreciated having you here. If you guys want to see more about Fergus, just click the links in the description we will put it all there. Or you can google Eylsian Fields. Do you have anything to mention at the end of the interview to the
Fergus Hay
I wish everyone the best of luck. It’s the year, the brave the bold and the creative.
Ben Schneider
Yeah, definitely. So, thanks for this. Thanks guys for listening. Hope you will stay with us in the next episode.
