Insights Everywhere #008: Lachlan Williams

Brand Power Starts When People Believe

How to apply brand-led transformation by aligning people, process and creativity

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Summary

In this conversation, Strategy Director Lachlan Williams shares his extensive journey in the marketing industry, discussing his experiences and insights on brand strategy, the importance of employer brand and employee experience, and the balance between technology and brand. He addresses the need to take a people-centric approach to business strategy and the role of creativity in driving transformation. Lachlan also explores the future of the industry, highlighting the impact of technology and the rise of independent agencies.
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Takeaways

• A strong brand strategy is essential for business success.
• Employee experience is critical for delivering great customer experiences.
• Technology must enhance, not detract from, brand experience.
• Transformation requires empathy and understanding of employee needs.
• Process can create the right conditions for creativity.
• Strong employer brands are built from the inside out.
• Critical thinking is essential to protect when using new tools like AI.
• Independent businesses are likely to thrive in the current market.
• Reading widely and forming a strong point of view are key for aspiring young strategists.

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Transcript

Hello. Welcome to Insights Everywhere. Today we have with us Lachlan Williams, one of the most talented strategists we've had the pleasure of working with at Studio Everywhere. Lachlan brings a wealth of experience and leadership across almost any category and discipline you can imagine from brand, comms, experience, product, innovation. He was most recently the head of transformation at Anomaly. And prior to that, he was the head of strategy at RGA. In addition, Lachlan contributes his time to the Brixton finishing school where he helps underrepresented talent kick the door down in the advertising industry. So Lachlan, thanks for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.

Super excited for this conversation. I know it's always fun even leading up to this recording, having a good laugh. So, I'm excited to see where this takes us. I guess just to start though, it's hard to know where to start really, because of the breadth of experience that you do have.

‍Maybe you could just start with - how'd you get here?

Well, it was a dark and stormy night, 1983. And ⁓ let's not go that far back. right. I mean, in a weird way, I've had a relatively linear journey into this industry by, by kind of comparison to sort of a lot of other people that I know. My journey through the industry is not being linear by any stretch, but the, but the kind of starting point is fairly straightforward.

I did a communications degree at university, major in public communications. I was very lucky that the course that I did was for the first kind of two years was very broad. So I did lots of different subjects, kind of media history and media arts. And we did like a journalism thing and I did some sound recording, other bits and pieces. But basically it was broad enough that it helped, I think, kind of sharpen some creative skill, but also see a breadth of kind of media and communications industries. And then finally, I specialized in PR and advertising. And as part of both those courses, we did internships. I spent some time at a PR firm, which was interesting. But I also then spent some time at a media agency called Media Edge, which was then MEC and is now Wavemaker. And from the internship, I got offered a job. And I went straight into the industry from uni.

But then once I was going to end, and I guess the only other thing to kind of mention about kind of where I started and kind of why I started, I had a hunch at uni that media agencies would take client leadership. And I was wrong. was woefully wrong. But it was around about the same time that Naked Communications had sort of launched. They just arrived in Australia. I kind of saw that as media fragmented and got more power and digital wasn't really, you know, a big thing really yet. Certainly there was no social media yet. But my hunch was that it was going to get really big and really powerful and that the money spent in those places meant that media agencies would be more powerful.

And so I went to a media agency, assuming that that's where the future was. And I think in a weird kind of way, media agencies and media companies do have an enormous amount of power still, but they certainly don't lead the conversation around brand.

And that's where I wanted to go. So I spent about five years in a media agency, working up from a media buyer on Canon, buying print ads in like regional media, which was a hoot. Worked my way into strategy and then kind of reached the point where you go, I'm helping to plan where things go, but I want to have an influence over what we say in those spaces. And so I went to a full service agency called Razor, which is now called Joy.

They're still around and a wonderful little independent shop. And because of the nature of that business, I kind of got to do a mix of media and comms and brand and various other things with some nice big clients. And then I kind of had a very short break at News Limited. I kind of knew already that I was going be moving to the UK, but I kind of did a very quick sort of six to eight month stint at News Limited, which was fascinating because it was sitting inside of a media organization in the strategic function servicing sales, but quickly elbowed my way into some of the more technology and digital innovation spaces to build up some new products to sell at Christmas time to advertise and work with the data team there to do different propositions.

I just found myself like really exploring other types of solutions that were much more technology and kind of data led. And then I moved to the UK, followed my partner who got a job at a university over here. And then I kind of just walked the streets of London for a couple of weeks interviewing at places. And in the end of all things, I had a couple of offers from a few different agencies. And the one that I picked was RGA.

The main reason I picked it is that the strat lead there at the time, Drew Burden, described to me a strategy crew that had an incredibly wide range of skills. And his sort of goal was that we would all cross-pollinate those skills and become like a super mutant strategy team, which sounded pretty fun to me. And that's where I spent the next seven years. I did everything on the bingo card there. Absolutely loved every second of it. It was an incredible experience with some incredible people.

This last week's been really fun because obviously they just sold to private equity firm. And while they're certainly in London a lot smaller than they were when I was there, there's been an absolute outpouring of love and hope and excitement about the future of it. So I'm excited to see where they take things then.

And then, of course, 2020, COVID, the sledgehammer that was COVID sort of knocked everybody around and I decided to leave RGA at that time, which was an insane thing to do actually, because we needed a visa. So I kind of put a timer on deporting my family. We just had our second kid, Elka, and it was like, okay, if there's going to be lots of change, let's go do change. And then I kind of spent about six months doing some consulting work, lots of different places.

And really sort of testing what the toolkit that I developed in each of these kind of relatively long stints at each agency sort of translated to out in the business world and found that helping to define sort of brand strategies at the very beginning of the company or for a company at a sort of pivotal moment of change was an incredibly powerful tool to sort of guide what can happen next. And it was kind of

particularly looking at the role that a brand could play in shaping an ecosystem and how each element of that ecosystem through the lens of brand could be shaped. linking all the different parts of a brand's ecosystem from their website to their comms to their membership to their products and packaging and retail experiences. Thinking about how those things should be connected to deliver a seamless and memorable experience.

So I had formed this theory, we're speaking to lots of different people about kind of how that might apply and sent a note to Holly Cliffon at Anomaly. And she got back to me and we had a little chat and then I spoke to a few more people. And I hadn't actually at that time really even been thinking about a transformation role. It wasn't even a term that I thought would be associated with my role.

But we kind of agreed that what I was trying to accomplish and what Anomaly wanted to achieve at the time was pushing into kind of new spaces where their leadership in kind of branding creativity could be applied in different parts of the business ecosystem. And so I went there and spent some happy sort of four years doing really interesting sort of diverse things in the States, here in the UK, a lot in Europe, in Denmark and kind of Germany. And I'm now kind of looking at sort of taking what I learned from that to start to build my thing. At very early stages of that process, but...

That's how I got here. And now I'm talking to you.

And now we're talking again. It's been a minute. I can't believe it's been four years that you've been at Anomaly, which means it was over four years that we worked together, which feels like yesterday. I think the one thing that strikes me every time that we talk and also just as you talked about kind of the progression along that journey is really the, you call them kind of a theory, but like really strong perspectives and vision that you have about where the industry is going, how to drive the most value from anything kind of in that brand ecosystem and that's brand related. What sort of organizations will and tactics and structures and approaches will help to drive that? And I'm curious, guess, like given where you are today, what is that latest theory or that latest, you know, building all of that expertise and experience that you've gained, you know, and thinking about your own thing or what's next.

Yeah.

How do you kind of define that or look at the world?

Yeah, I've got a couple of theories right now about where things are kind of headed. I still believe strongly that brands is an incredibly powerful tool. I still believe that if you can be sort of people-centric in your thought process and actually in your business strategy, then you'll be successful because if you sell things people want, you'll make money.

But I guess where I've kind of shifted a little bit my attention is those are the tools, right? It's what I love doing, it's what I'm good at, but those are the tools to get to something a little bit sharper, which is either driving efficiency across the business ecosystem by using those two tools as a way to bring together things that were fragmented or disconnected, and then when they are connected, making them more effective.

So delivering a more effective journey or more effective funnel by connecting them, but also by using that toolkit to see new opportunities and go, right, if we want to serve the needs of this group of people, and if we want to have the type of relationship that we can define through our brand point of view, then how would we serve them better or differently or in kind of new ways? And so you start to get to actual kind of product and business propositions at that point as well.

The clients that I've spoken to in the last couple of years, that disconnect between functions is really big. And I think some of the kind of obsession that we've seen in last couple of years to whatever the insert, the technology trend has been, whether it was all data and technology and then the multiverse for a moment and VR and now AI.

They're all really important and powerful tools, but they don't necessarily solve the fundamental challenge that we have. Businesses are designed for the world that we live in right now. They were built at different times, different functions. And I think that the story that your brand strategy tells and the perspective that is being user-centric can be an incredibly powerful tool to bring all those things together. So that's the big overarching theory.

There's lots of places or lots of context in which I think you can apply that. There's even like an approach that we're, and I have a feeling that there's a lot of businesses out there that have at some point in the last couple of years built a brand and now they're struggling to implement it and struggling to get the most amount of value out of it. And I think part of that is because a lot of those, a lot of brand strategy and brand design work is done in a vacuum without a really good understanding about how it needs to be applied across that ecosystem.

And I reckon there's probably just a job to go around to different businesses and say, right, let me help you get the most value out of the brand that you just spent millions of dollars on. So it kind of ranges from like the big foundational, let's define the brand and build the ecosystem all the way through to let's just go and do a bit of a health check and make sure that your brand is actually performing as well as it possibly can across those touch points.

Yeah, I mean, it resonates a ton. I know that we talked about a couple of businesses recently that have kind of been going through some of those challenges, beautiful new brand, you know, potentially award-winning work, but then how does it actually, you know, work for them or be effective when the rubber hits the road?

I think all too often, yeah, when you were working with different companies, there's the view that like kind of launching the brand as the finish line, not the starting point for actually building that and getting the most value throughout the organization. How do you approach those sort of conversations? mean, and how much do you think like marketing leaders and executives in general within organizations kind of view this and or how to make it resonate with them from a business context too, because ultimately that's what is going to be, you know, most important is not saying we're doing this for brand sake, but this is for the business.

I mean, I've met a lot of super smart marketers and leaders that share this point of view, lots actually, a surprising number. And I think what they would all probably tell you is that they find that very difficult to convince anybody internally that that's the answer.

A few people that I spoke to recently, their current theory is that they're better off kind of carving out a corner of the business and showing how it can work there and then saying, look, it worked. Let's try to get over here, which I think is a pretty smart way of doing it. I also think that there are definitely some kind of leaders out there that are looking at their ecosystems and going, actually, you what, this is the answer.

And you can also see some knee jerk reactions for some companies. Nike's pretty good example of that recently, where they started to have a bit more of a point of view again. So I think they recognize that they kind of diluted their brand point of view in an attempt to kind of be for everybody when actually the strength of their brand is that it's got an opinion, a strong point of view. And that kind of changes how you choose what to do and what not to do when you've got that strong point of view.

So I think there's lots of people in businesses, in clients, I know in companies that see this as an opportunity. think that the muscle memory of businesses is so strong to operate the way that they're operating that you really need to think quite pragmatically about how you begin to change some of those things. But I genuinely think it's happening. I genuinely think it needs to happen. But it won't be an easy process.

I mean, and even the example you use with Nike and makes me think like, it takes some, you know, existential shock to the system through plummeting share price or performance that then gets companies to say, wait a minute. Yes, this is the way that we need to be thinking about things like Nike. Starbucks is another one that I'm thinking about their brand. And again, how that spills into, again, to your point around like the broader brand experience of that organization and how that has been diluted over the years. so again,

Starbucks is a great example. Anomaly just picked that up and is working on that. And I think what's really cool about that. And the thing that I think is really fascinating about the challenge is that if they want to get to feel like a cafe again, they also have to grapple with the role that technology plays in making their cafes efficient.

Really? Yeah. To find the balance between the humanity of a cafe and the efficiency of a technology solution. Mac has got the same thing. Like you walk in, you got a terminal now. How do you balance that humanity part of that to get the warmth of the brand experience through? While also, I would have to imagine delivering excellent commercial results by making the process more efficient. those sorts of things, particularly in those sorts of environments for those sorts of businesses, is an excellent example of where that brand point of view and user-centricity is absolutely critical. Because if you don't do it, you end up with a technology solution that sucks the life out of the experience and dilutes the brand.

Totally. And again, it's like that really seemingly impossible tension that shows up where to your point, you need to drive incredible performance for the business, which when you think about technology does that, but at what cost? And that cost sometimes isn't nearly as tangible or near term when, you launched that Starbucks app, which is, you know, one of the most kind of efficient workhorses you can imagine for a company.

But at the same time, what does that result in and how does then the top line start to suffer as you kind of the negative side effects come into play over time.

It's the long-term and the short-term thing that's really tricky, right? Because you can see the short-term impacts of your more performance driven stuff, but the long-term impacts of brand are a harder to see. You know that it's there. There's loads of evidence that it works, but it's a little harder to kind of say in your next quarterly results, you can prove that the brand had a massive impact on the things that you were doing.

Which is why at the start I said, I think that there's an opportunity to talk about brand through the lens of dragging efficiency in process because the long-term value of the brand, the incredible opportunities and driving that price sensitivity and stronger loyalty to a company, all those things will come. But actually, if you can make your business run more efficiently by helping your teams be more aligned to the strategic vision through the story of the brand, you can drive immediate results against that. If you can make the things that you're doing more effective by changing the way that you work that could be effective there.

I like to say that one of brand strategy's most sort of powerful things is in business decision making. It helps you decide what to do and what not to do. You can make faster decisions and better decisions if you've got a clear brand strike. So that's an operational excellence thing, not just a storytelling meaning thing.

Yeah, and it's interesting to see. mean, think increasingly you're starting to see small instances of this in practices, and particularly, I think, when it comes to very high level kind of ex leadership within companies and or agencies who are starting to, you know, preach or kind of share this this point of view, and slowly it's it's starting to become more accepted. And appreciated, but it's also something that I think by and large is an uphill battle for many people working in the space just because of that, probably that short-term, long-term dynamic amongst other things.

The other part that I find astounding, and there's a few people that I can kind of name check that are still like shaking their heads going, how have we not figured this out yet? That people-centric mindset also applies to your employees. In fact, it particularly applies to your employees because that's the business. Like those are the people that are running the thing and how connected they feel to the story of what the company is trying to accomplish is going to directly affect their engagement and their productivity, which directly influences the profitability of the business.

And yet any thinking around the employee experience and employer brand and topics like that is considered of second rate to the consumer brand. And I find that astounding that we haven't figured that out yet, that actually if you look after people, you look after the business. So the very same things that we've been taught to do and have learned how to do from a consumer point of view, I think should be equally applied to the people working for business. And if you do that, especially if you're in a big retail business, like a Starbucks, right? If those people understand the story, they're going to treat customers differently. And that's your brand relationship right there, right? And then your apetizing and everything else can be like a good and strong and powerful reminder of the thing that people already know. But ultimately, the most powerful part of that brand is going to be delivered when someone says good morning to you and gives you your coffee. So, yeah.Absolutely.

Yeah, it reminds me to, I mean, there was a great little short story book by Michael Wolff called You Are a Towel. And it has an amazing analogy for that dynamic for brands, which I can't recount the entire story at the moment. But the towel is basically the thing that you have in a hotel, right? That's just one little part of the entire experience. But how that simple experience, say it's dirty or not folded, whatever it is, can change your entire perspective on that hotel's brand way more than any piece of advertising or brand building or other thing would happen. And how does that come from? It comes from the people in the organization that are focused on every single minute detail.

So it's kind of useless to have anything flashy or big brand promises or adverts or anything else if you're not going to be able to deliver on it across the board, which makes a lot of sense. But that's a great, I'll share that with you. It's a great one, just like pretty hilarious. I mean, yeah, I'd love to go a bit deeper on that because I know that's where we worked.

Our project that we did together was around the employee experience, right? And that was also inspired by, you when we were, that was working with Rackspace and then when we were inspired by your work at Siemens on that really, really holistic employee experience and brand program, which absolutely blew me away. And I would love to hear just a little bit more of your experience of when that has worked really well and maybe what some of the benefits have been to these organizations, how they've applied it in a way that has made it really a valuable asset for their company.

Yeah, sure. I have accidentally done a huge amount of employee brand work. It was purely accidental that sort of happened, but the second that I got into it, I realized just how underserved it is and under-resourced and under-invested in. There's a lot of companies that are working on it. There's a lot of people who very passionate about it. But when you look at how much companies tend to spend on it, it's not very much at all.

But the thing that I always had to come to is that if you're doing anything in consumer brand world, just sort of brand world in general, you should be asking yourself the question, what's the role for employees in it, no matter what you're doing. And regardless of whether there's employee brand team involved or not, you've got to ask that question because they're going to be the first people who react to it. And if they don't, if it doesn't resonate and they don't want to adopt it, then you've got a big problem.

Especially as I said before, if you've those people are customer facing. A really amazing CX is driven in large part by a really great EX. You've to have your employees set up for success so that they can deliver great experiences for customers. So any brand strategy for me, any sort of modern brand strategy needs to have that as a core component because it is such a kind of big part of how brand experiences are ultimately delivered.

And actually, if you want to go even deeper and look at who people tend to trust, they trust the employees of companies more than they trust the CEOs. And they trust employees and CEOs more than they trust media. So look at the people inside of an organization. Think about how they would understand this and how they would represent that brand. And you're usually onto a kind of good thing. And then, of course, you can go right into the world of, so how is that brand built on the inside of the business, because strong employer brands are built from the inside out. So what's my experience working here? What does that mean to me? What am I likely to say about that to my friends and family or to potential other employees? And then how have I formed that opinion and that feeling through all the interactions that I've had? And the reality is employee experience and a very intentional, how do we help someone through their kind of working life and career journey?

It's still a long way behind what we would do for customers. There's lots of companies that are quite advanced and doing an excellent job of that. It's still a bit fragmented. But my favorite question to ask of anyone working in HR or employee brand is, who owns the onboarding process? And it's usually followed by a lot of people looking around and going, is it you? Is it me? I'm not sure who owns that. Because it's one of those weird things that sits between things. But actually, how you welcome someone into a role is critical.

On the other side of it, like how you unbox something really matters. So why would starting a job be any less important for that part of that journey? So I think there's still a long way to go in applying the sorts of thinking and the sophistication of thinking that we find in the CX world to the EX world. But I think it's a critical thing.

Yeah. You mentioned, again, talking to like the HR team in particular, do you find that that typically then falls, you know, more on their end of the equation versus, cause when you think brand, you think marketing, when you think employees, you think HR, you know, what does that constellation look like for you?

For the most part, employer brand is still an HR topic. And in lots of ways, I think that's the right thing. But more and more, it's seen as a partnership between communications and HR, and sometimes a partnership between corporate affairs and HR and communications, because they start to see that actually all the things that you do as a company influenced how people feel about what that is. So you can't go all the sustainability and other CSR initiatives are separate. They're like parts of how people feel about their kind of work. So I've definitely seen organizations where employer brand is a topic that is shared a little bit more, but then plenty of other organizations where the employer brand is actually owned by the employer branding team or the recruitment team and doesn't really have an influence on - or even sometimes doesn't even engage with people who work on the actual employee experience and talk about engagement. So I always like to talk about the employer brand is ultimately the strategy for how you attract, retain and engage your talent. But the attraction and retention and engagement jobs are often owned by very different groups of people. And that's a challenge obviously, because if you want to engage people and then keep them.

You use that ultimately as the means through which you also attract people. So they need to fit together, but they often don't. And then you have the added challenge for many organizations where they don't quite understand the distinction between an employee brand and a consumer brand. And they aren't separate brands. They're simply two lenses on which you look at the one brand, but they are distinct because what it takes to make the thing or do the thing that you then sell to customers is often very different and is a very different experience for the people working there because it's the work that it takes to do it. I also like to talk about as the kind of behind the scenes of that thing. So it isn't the same thing. It's a perspective on the same thing. And so you often end up getting this sort of tension between, yes, we can't have two brands. You're like, we're not suggesting that you have two brands.

You just need to have the version of the brand that you would use for the people who work for you. Another way that I sometimes talk about it is the difference between giving a keynote presentation at a major conference and having your big boy voice on and delivering that very professionally, very clean versus later talking to your colleagues about how the talk went. It's still you. You're still going to be using the same types of language and same messaging. It's just a version of it that's a bit more relaxed and a bit more familiar.

And you would naturally understand the shift in context because you're a human being with like high emotional intelligence. But your brand should do the same thing. And it's like that flex for like, where are you? Who are you communicating with? What's, what's the kind of role? And if you're speaking to the people that work with you, you're going to be more familiar, right? And you're going to talk about what it took to do the thing that you then put out to market. And sometimes that is distinct enough that it requires its own, its own brand perspective.

Interesting. So when in kind of talking about that flex and kind of getting outside again, shifting outside of just the employee side, I mean, what other, you know, when your last role being kind of head of transformation, big, a big word, again, I think it's being used more in different, different ways as it relates to brand. And frankly, it's one that resonates with me a lot, given my background and experiences, how do you use this incredible asset as a vehicle to drive change and to drive growth and to change, drive culture, all of the things that we've been discussing. I am curious what that meant for you in terms of how you defined transformation. And I'm not sure if there's an example or two you could share just about how that actually that worked.

Yeah, sure, you're right. Transformation is a big word. And I think most people when they hear transformation, they think about digital transformation or organizational change. And I wasn't really doing either of those things directly. What I set out to do was to build a function that would transform how people experience brands. By looking at the customer journey by looking at the employee journey and going, all right, if these are the needs and the challenges that people sort of face, how can we more seamlessly and better serve those needs in each of those touch points? And how can a brand point of view shape how that actually works? Oftentimes, what happens is when you get to that, you realize that the thing you're suggesting is new and different to the thing that you're currently doing.

And so it therefore becomes change. But it wasn't, I wasn't ever really trying to sell change. I was trying to sell ideas that required change because they were better and better ways of doing things and more seamless ways of kind of doing things. But one of the things that I was quite, had quite a clear idea of in my head and I don't know whether it's 100 % right. It's still something that I believe is the right thing to be trying, but we're always learning. It's that if you want to deliver any sort of change, there's kind of three things that are really quite critical. One, think creativity. You need to have an idea of kind of where you want to be getting to that is interesting and different. I think you can kind of very easily follow the bouncing ball of the predictable outcomes of things and arrive at exactly the same conclusion as everybody else and they have no advantage whatsoever by the time you get there. But creativity allows you to kind of take leaps. It gets you to sticky places and things that maybe weren't the obvious things that can give you that edge. The second is that change is deeply emotional. Right? I don't think most, and most transformation efforts do fail. Like it's a very high percentage of transformation initiatives that do fail.

Most of them fail because not because the logic is wrong, but because people just don't want to change. And it falls apart at a kind of human level. And I think it's very easy to forget that when you're kind of putting together a really clever, detailed, complex business plan for how things will change. If you get there's a person that sits at the other end that has to do something different and doesn't want to. And that very likely you're asking them to do that new thing on top of the thing they do every other day, and you haven't changed the way that you reward them. So like, why would I do the new thing when doing the old thing is what gets me paid? That doesn't like, I'm not going to do it. And then you multiply that across a business of like thousands of people and you're like, yeah, no wonder it doesn't work sometimes. And kind of tied directly to that, guess, is then I think pragmatism is really critical. So trying to solve it all at once and expecting that the model and theory works in reality.

It is kind of silly. think you've got to a very clear idea of kind of where you believe the most likely places to drive that change are going to be and design pragmatic solutions that kind of start to start things moving. So I kind of started out looking at that and going, all right, so one, we need to make sure there's room for creativity in this process to define where the future is that we're trying to get to. Two, who am I working with and what do they actually care about? What are they feeling? And make sure that I'm looking after those people, making them feel secure, making them feel safe, giving them a sense of confidence so they can be courageous and brave in their decision-making, but also understand their relationships and kind of what will ultimately motivate them to change. And then finally, give them real tangible steps. They can go, yeah, I believe that will work. I can see how we can get there. And it doesn't really matter what you're doing.

If you're trying to sell anything new or trying to convince someone of adopting any new thinking, think those things are important. They become particularly important when you're trying to get someone to change potentially how the entire business functions. But I think that they're pretty good principles to kind of hold true no matter what. the example that I guess I'll point to is about a year ago, in fact, almost exactly a year ago, we worked on a big merger with the two biotechs in Denmark, they're coming together of Novo Zymus and Christian Hansen, which is now Novo Nises. And we were brought in to kind of build out the brand from scratch, full brand strategy, new name, new visual system, and all the kind of things that sort of come with that messaging frameworks, et cetera. And it was an amazing process with incredible clients at a really unique moment in the business's history where there wasn't really a detailed business strategy yet. There was a justification of the merger and a business rationale for how that would take place. And it was detailed enough to go, okay, we can see the value here, but there wasn't anything much more than that. So we came in to define what the new thing would be. the fundamental challenge really is how do you convince two completely different cultures of people to sign up to this new company. And in the first year, leave their old thing behind, right? And become this new entity. back to the point before about sort of people being the critical thing. If you ended up in the first year of that company existing with two fundamentally different tribes of people in that business, the business wouldn't work.

They needed to believe that they're all part of this kind of new one thing. And so the role of the brand, first and foremost, was an internal one to make sure that there was a story that everybody wanted to be a part of and that that story would do something that they could take to market. And we were incredibly lucky to have just the most amazing clients who were also unbelievably good at stakeholder management and giving us a clear path and coaching us to kind of how to interact with all the different stakeholders so that when we got into the kind of big rooms and we did present to the CEO and to the new C-suite, we knew how we needed to present the work in order to convince them to adopt the thing. And, you know, we were, there's this super bizarre kind of moment where the day after the C-suite had been announced, we were in a room presenting to this new group of people. I think probably the first time that they'd actually been assembled together to try and get them to buy into a new purpose for this new brand that they hadn't seen before, a visual system that didn't exist yet.

And the way that our kind of clients had sort of helped us understand the dynamics of that room allowed us to set that session up in a way that we basically arrived at an answer with a group of people who'd never really worked together before from two completely different sort of cultures and companies because we had what we needed to understand what they're motivated by to give them a clear sort of pragmatic next step and to tell them a really powerful story about kind of what that would mean for them.

And we walked away from that session sort of 40 minutes later with the answer to the purpose that the company was going to be for 40 minutes. I mean, we'd done a huge amount of work to get to that room and had options that we believed were the kind of right ones. But I think if we walked into that room and said, it's this, they would have wanted to pull it apart and argue with it. But instead, what we did is we went in with, here is the ways that you can think about this. Here's the themes that are the roll up ones.

I even built this kind of crazy kind of matrix one that said, right, here is this theme explained in sort of different ways horizontally. Here is that explanation across a bunch of different things vertically and gave them this grid. And it allowed them to have individual conversations about each of the themes and each of the ways to describe it that allowed them to go, actually, we like this and this and this, and then you combine them and it's this. But we wouldn't have been able to get

into that room if we didn't have a pragmatic way of doing it and a level of empathy from our clients to understand what those people in the room needed to be able to get to that answer. So it was an incredible experience and a masterclass from our clients and kind of how to do that. I just spent my entire time sort of taking notes on how they managed to do it. But that entire project, I think, was an excellent example of just in a really challenging context in a merger where actually, you know, some of our clients needed permission to get into the other person's building. Right. So we were doing things in parallel in this really unique sort of context where it was deeply emotional because they'd have to say goodbye to the company and the brand that they loved to come to this new one. So empathy was absolutely critical to get through it. We could have found the answer probably fairly quickly, but actually helping people fall in love with that answer and feel okay about leaving the old identity behind was probably the biggest challenge. it's that that I think made it success.

How'd you do that? I mean, you mentioned kind of working with the executive team on that, the purpose, which was kind of the highest order piece, which again, to crack that in 40 minutes is what the new group of people is mind blowing and its own. But how'd you get the rest of the company along? What was that rest of the journey?

I was trying not to look too shocked. I was like, yeah, this is great. Absolutely. This is the outcome that this is what normally happens.

I mean, one part of it was having a very, very clear and emotionally compelling story to tell throughout the process, not just in the solution, but kind of in the bits of the solution or the kind of the path to get to the answer. Some of that was incredible stakeholder management and lobbying by our client groups who would take those pieces of work to the different people that needed to see it.

And rather than bogging the process down and getting like lots of meetings and workshops, they did it sort of in the halls and corridors and sort of coached their own organization forwards. And I think between us and the client group, we managed to get the balance right between a very detailed methodical process that people could look at and trust. I mean, we're dealing with a company full of scientists.

Process and methodology is something that they can understand and trust. So we built safety and confidence in that really disciplined process and then spoke to people at a personal and emotional level that allowed them to kind of buy into it and be excited by it. So that sort of combination of a very disciplined process but also very empathetic communications for me was the key.

One thing in addition, I'll just talk just because you mentioned the word process and I saw you wrote something about that the other day and about how there's some belief in the industry and that process is the enemy of creativity and innovation, whereas your experience has been a little bit different. Yeah, just again, would love to hear your point of view, because it is different than what you hear a lot of times.

Okay.

I'm a guy that comes from the process world. was doing like process improvement projects with companies and then getting thrown into the creative industry has been like a wake up call or trying to kind of navigate the two. But yeah, I'd love to hear how you implement that.

Yeah, look, there is definitely such thing as a process that smothers creativity and produces terrible work. And that is basically process for the sake of process and measurability and being able to monitor something. And you will definitely experience that. Everybody will have experienced at some point where you're like, why are we doing this? That's because someone else wants to say it happened.

But you equally can use process as a way to make sure that you're creating the right conditions for the work to work and for the people to thrive inside that process. that's, I've experienced that through my kind of career through some incredibly clever people who just create an amazing sort of working environment and amazing workflow that creates the level of discipline and safety and clarity around work while also, and actually probably through that process, creating the space for creative thinking.

Ask any artists how they do their work. It's not random. They don't kind of wander around and have like epiphanies. It's work that they work hard. have a process. They stick to that, that kind of process in a disciplined way, because it's the structure they need in order to be creative and kind of have, have, have those moments. So, one, one of the big things that I learned at RGA was just that finding the tension between a process and having enough space that allows you to think about what was possible and to challenge what was possible. But then simultaneously come along that with how do we actually deliver that? How do we make sure we're giving people that sort of safety, that kind of process? So there is some predictability to it because I think to be genuinely creative, you have to also feel safe and process can provide that safety when it's designed properly. It can be designed properly when you think about the people that it's meant to serve. And it shouldn't be people serving a process. It should be a process serving people.

Are there any design principles in particular of that process that come to mind or is it different depending on where you've been?

I'm sure there is. and I'm sure if we had, any of my wonderful sort of producer operations friends around, could, they could list them off. I, the way that I would tend to say is, starting with simply asking what does, what do people need in this process in order to get to the outcome? What is required? What are the needs of that group? What are the requirements of the output? What are the most likely conditions they're going to guess there? And then designing a process around how do you fulfil those things? I remember getting a guide that one of my colleagues had written that was like how to run a design sprint. And the structure that I really loved about it is says, we do this so that this doesn't happen.

And each line was like, here's a thing that we tend to do in this process. Because if we don't do that, you tend to have this kind of outcome. So it was designed with a lot of thought around what would that mean for the people in the process. What would it enable, but also what would happen if you didn't do it and the problems that that would ultimately create. So was quite detailed and quite organized, but it was always through the lens of what's required to make the work happen.

Yeah. Slightly on a different tack now, as the last bit of the conversation today, I’d love to talk about kind of the industry as a whole and where you see it going. I know we've had a lot of conversations about this in the past. I know you do some mentorship and around the space. Obviously, there's a lot of change, especially with technology now shifting, AI, how that's approaching and kind of going to, we're just seeing the beginnings of that really.

Yeah, I'm curious, kind of your latest point of view on these shifts and some of these elements that are driving change in the industry.

Yeah, I've had a lot of conversations with the wonderful person that is joining Vulkan about this. We have a theory or a point of view that human behavior doesn't change. The context in which people exist obviously changes and the tools that they're using are different, but ultimately the behavior is the same. And so it's relatively predictable, I think, kind of what people are going to do with stuff. We're going to massively over predict what AI will be and then drastically underestimate actually the value that it will bring in other ways. As we did with the metaverse, as we did with VR, as we did with data, as we did with everything else before it, and whatever the hell comes after this, if there isn't after this. I think what we're probably seeing right now is kind of that sort of slight panic of like, what does this mean for everybody? And I think AI will have a seismic impact on the whole of this industry and kind lives in general. But it's largely just a tool, right? And it's a tool that you can use well or you can use badly. And I think the people that will win are the ones that think of ways to use it well.

I'm very lucky to be married to an academic who keeps me grounded by giving me the evidence base for things. she kind of, obviously the academic sector has its own struggles with AI because all students are kind of trying to use ChatGPT to write their essays. And the reality is it can write a reasonable first year essay, but it writes an absolutely bloody awful second year and cannot write a third year essay, because it just isn't sophisticated enough for that kind of type of thinking. It can't really critically analyze a paper yet. So they're kind of dealing with like this huge kind of challenge around the quality of work coming out of their students and actually the students actually don't understand the topic well. And as a part of this, she found this article about the how using AI without a great deal of thought has a hugely negative impact on critical thought because it sort of trains you to not think for yourself. But if you can use critical thought alongside AI, you can find some really novel uses for it and get to some really great outcomes. So again, it has to be a tool.

So I think one of the big sort of watch outs for us right now is how do we protect critical thought in our thought processes while we're using these new tools. And we should be using the new tools. Absolutely. You need to be using it daily, understand where the hell it's going and how you can get the most from it. But do not lose your critical thought because that's the thing that has of real kind of value. And I think that if you then look at kind of the whole of the industry, marketing in general, sort of brand across businesses and product experience, as well as agencies and communications, there's some big shifts.

There's lots of companies that are already struggling. There's lots of companies that are thriving. And there's sort of shifting power dynamics into big consultancies still. I think there's been a bit of a coming of age of in-house teams. And then you're seeing lots of businesses realizing they need to diversify in order to grow. And so you've got designing companies trying to be creative companies and creative companies trying to be business consulting companies.

And think that that'll simply continue. And while we're in a fairly high pressure market right now, there'll be lots of anxiety and tension, but there's also a huge amount of opportunity in that. One thing that I think will happen in the kind of short term at least is that, and we're already seeing it, I think in lots of of spaces that small independent groups of people will make a big impact. Because while there is less money to be spent in marketing departments, but there's still plenty of work to do. Some of the larger companies will be priced out and a small group of people, five people with lots of experience who can work really fast at a high level of quality will be able to do that work because their overheads are much lower. So I expect to see lots of kind of new exciting independent things pop up. that's, know, like whenever that happens, great things happen. Some of the best companies we're kind of born out of that type of environment. So it's quite exciting. There will also be downsides that, but I think it's kind an exciting time for creativity as a tool in business to see where it pops up.

For sure. I mean, even the years that we've known each other and talked about this, we've seen a flood of that new independent businesses and talent in the market. And one of the pillars of even how we've operated our own business as a result. I think, yeah, like lastly, guess, know, given that, you know, you, I know you're a mentor, teacher and advisor. do a lot in this space to pay it forward.

What do you say to the younger generation right now that are looking to get into the business and or, you know, get, exceed or excel in the business? What do you kind of see them facing and how to navigate?

Good question. It's a really good question. And the thing that I tend to come back to, to time and time again, because it's so unpredictable and so unknown kind of where the opportunities are going to be, is give a shit and put in the effort, right? There's really nothing else you can do. You can't be an expert in anything yet, because it's all kind of evolving, but you can be brilliant at learning. You can be brilliant at forming a point of view. And if you can develop those kind of attributes, then you'll be able to kind of follow where the kind of tide goes right now. But there are weirdly things that I'm seeing less and less of the kind of effort being put in and the kind of really leaning in and trying to form points of view. The only other thing that I would suggest is read very, very widely - just because creativity is the result of sort of smashing different stimulus together and the more stimulus you have, the more creative you can possibly be. So not a bad sort of thing to do to try and digest as much information as possible, but also to kind of look at the sorts of things that you're digesting and sort of feeding your brain, being from different places and different perspectives that you have a really diverse perspective on things. Because I don't actually know what it's going to mean to be a strategist coming into this industry, whether that is an agency or a client side or wherever. I'm not sure.

When I started out, there was no such thing as a junior strategist that can exist. You had to do your time. And you could come in through a research track, but there was no such thing as a strategic intern. It just wasn't a thing. It's possible that we shifting a little bit back towards that with strategy is something that is a lot more challenging to kind of begin a career in. I don't think it's impossible. I've met plenty of amazing young people that have got brilliant critical thinking. But what really stands people out is the effort that they put in and the commitment they sort of give to figuring things out and practicing forming a point of view. So my advice to anyone sort of getting into this would be read a lot, give a shit and practice forming a point of view around something.

I love it. I think I need to take some of that advice myself.

Probably me too, yeah.

No, it's super interesting to hear kind of the perspective. Again, as always, enjoy the conversations together and the many to come. So thank you for the time and for sharing some of your advice, perspectives and point of view, which like I said, I need to take some advice from your book.

I also need to listen to my own advice sometimes. It's easier to say it out loud than it is to do it yourself. yeah, this was fun.