Are you bored of constantly hearing about Elon Musk’s antics? Well good and bad news; it’s another podcast where we talk about the billionaire, but only in the context that we suspect his impulse purchase will fully fall out of favour this year. 

Outside of the social sphere, the Marketers discuss the essentials of launching a new website and, spoiler alert, your customer is key! They also addressed the January blues and how to keep the team motivated through what is stereotypically a challenging month. 

[00:00] Introductions

[01:31] The basic marketing things you need to focus on when launching a website

[11:42] The Marketing Ins and outs of 2024

[23:23] Surreal Cereal, and CBA advertising

[33:54] How to keep your team motivated and tackle those January Blues

[46:06] Outro

Transcript

Tom Inniss: 0:01

I don't think you can stand on stage and tell advertisers to go fuck themselves and then be shocked when they stop putting money into your platform.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 0:15

Welcome to 2024 and welcome to the first episode of the new year. I'm your host, hayden Woods Williams, and I'm here with our wonderful Brew Digital Marketing team and beyond to talk through some pretty cool topics. We're going to be looking at how to get launching your website right, or as close to right as it is possible on the first go. We'll discuss our good and bads of 2024 or what is to be 2024. And we are also going to talk about how you and your team can beat those January blues. So, without any further ado, let's get on with the podcast and I'm Hayden and this is the Marketers of the Universe podcast. So our first topic today is going to be basic marketing things that you need to be doing when you launch your new website. And we've got three of the team looking at this topic today. We have Kieran O'Neill, who is, by title, account manager. By what he actually does is everything else other than account management. He's really a superstar. In the team. We have Rich Harper, who is the head of digital marketing services, leading the team from the top. Lots and lots of knowledge from a long career in digital marketing. I think he may even remember offline marketing, I don't know. And also we have Jason Morris, who is our SEO marketing manager. Jason tells us all the time what we're doing wrong when it comes to SEO, and he can probably help you out as well. So, to kick things off, I'm going to ask each one of you if I can have one tip that someone must consider when they start thinking about launching a new website. And I'm going to start with you, rich, if that's all right.

Rich Harper: 2:25

Yeah, of course I wasn't offended by that joke about offline either. Did start my career in newspapers, though, so there's probably some truth in that. So one tip when launching a website, make sure you're launching a new website for the right reasons, and when I say that the right reasons are that the website is focused on your customer. Too many businesses see a website, I think, as a necessity for their business which probably is and then every two or three years they get to a point where they redesign it, relaunch it and I've been in that position in the past generally because they're a bit bored or they want something fresh, they want something new, not actually really thinking about what is the rationale or reason behind that website. So really consider what the website is for, the website is for your customer, and then design the website around that customer.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 3:17

That's a really good point. Kieran, can you give me a tip please, for someone launching a new website?

Ciaran O'Neill : 3:23

Test everything. You want to be just seeing your automations. You want to be chatting with your CRM email guy making sure that if people are signing up, people are being signed up. That's always a nightmare, especially if you're spending all of that money on your marketing. You spend all of that time and effort with launching a new website or even a new brand. This also falls into making sure that your discounts work. If you are offering a launch discount, got no 404s. That basic testing just goes for miles, because it makes sure that your customer has an efficient journey.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 4:02

I'll come to you in a second, jason, to add to that. But I think customer journey there is really interesting. Do you think customer journey is something we should plan before building a website, or is it something that we build and then start considering once the website is live?

Rich Harper: 4:18

The customer journey is massively important and it should be a consideration from the beginning. When you talk about the kind of process of building a website, you instantly jump to the visuals. You instantly jump to what platform is it going to be on? I need a WordPress site, or I need a different CMS platform, or I need it to be a headless CMS. Blah, blah, blah all these technical questions that need to be asked. Then we jump straight to the designers. Can you make this look pretty? Here's my brand guidelines. Here's my logo. Here's my pictures. We forget the utmost basics of what a website is supposed to do. The customer journey is massively important. Planning should start at a wireframe stage, where you are planning the navigation within the site. How are people going to find information on that site is critical in terms of the success of the site. For me, before you start thinking about colors and design and you start thinking about content and platforms and technical aspects, it's to really hone in on what that customer journey is. How are they going to get from A to B? How are they going to find information on your site? Ultimately, how are you going to get a customer to inquire or to convert, if that is your ultimate goal? Thank you.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 5:31

Rich, I'm sure there's more to discuss around customer journey, but I do want to quickly jump back to Jason. Jason, what is your one tip?

Jason Morris: 5:39

Yeah, it would definitely be echoing what Erin and Rich has just stated. So ensuring that you're thinking about the user first, looking at it from an analytical and an SEO perspective, and how you rank Google, is absolutely massive on user behavior. If you were, say, redesigning an old site or looking at competition, look at those pages or the level of the kind of funnel or the journey where people are exiting or bouncing quite quickly or not engaging, and make sure you have those fixed. And just to echo what Kieran said, as well as test, test and test, share with people and teams that you know are going to be critical, it's quite important at that stage Google will recognize and say, oh, cool, a new website. Oh, actually, people are dropping off. There's four or four pages, there's this, that and the other, and it can take some time to actually climb back from that. Okay, so it's worth getting it right from the get go. So test, test and test.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 6:37

Yeah, it's interesting you say that about who you get to test as well, because I know personally I'm terrible at testing, so I think you have to go and find that person who is a bit of a pain in the bum and will actually pick up those issues. One thing that I think is quite often forgotten about is mobile first. Do we still think mobile first is the way that companies should go? And I think think about that from a beta B screen as well.

Jason Morris: 7:01

Yeah, Historically it's been transforming to mobile first, but it does depend on the actual business. So SAS, for example, or more technical type businesses, a lot of the users use desktop over mobile.

Rich Harper: 7:15

Thanks, jason, I think as well. When we talk about mobile first design, I still see we design a site, we design it for desktop and then we just basically move all of the components into a single column view for mobile. That's not really designing for mobile first, that's just stacking elements to fit onto a smaller screen. If we're going to do this correctly, consider how you've got a mobile version of the site to engage mobile users and a desktop version of the site, not just stacking the desktop columns into a single view, which then inevitably creates a really, really long scroll on your phone.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 7:54

Yeah, I think tools like Hot Drive can help you realize just how quickly people do get bored with scrolling. I want to quickly ask when we're building a website, there is this big focus on perfection, and we've chatted a little about testing every single thing and having to get it right Do you think that the website has to be perfect for launch? Kieran, I'm going to go to you first.

Ciaran O'Neill : 8:15

No, it doesn't. I would make sure that there is a way for people to be able to actively engage or provide surveys or feedback, and you can. Then you have the ability and your team are prepared to react to that and make changes. So, no, it doesn't have to be perfect. But I would say, going back to the customer journey, that needs to be nailed, nail your customer journey. The website can be tweaked and improved as you go along.

Rich Harper: 8:43

Yeah, a website is an evolving thing. It should never be a static entity that's finished, it's complete. We should always be adding to it. It should all be looking at the analytics. We should be analyzing the performance, seeing where the audiences are dropping off, see where they're not engaged. I was reading an interest in Archon Search Engine LAN the other day. Everyone kind of sees SEO as a dark art or a bit of magic. Google don't actually publish any specific rules that you should follow. Everyone's trialling and testing stuff and publishing articles about what you should do, what you shouldn't do. Actually, google want you to be building a site for the end user. They value the user experience, they value engagement on the site and you can see that from metrics now that have changed within Google Analytics and GA4. So it's really important to get that like we've already said, and it seems to be the running theme really get that user journey, that user experience bang on and then success in Search World and stuff like that will follow, rather than building a website for Google and ignoring the visitor.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 9:53

I'm going to kind of build on that a little bit. You mentioned about not building a website for Google. Do you think that's possible these days, and this is probably a question for you, jason?

Jason Morris: 10:02

So there's foundation and a fundamental bits and pieces that you need in place on a technical front, so page load speed, so that's very important. It's a very, very user experience positive. So Google loves that, whether it's some fundamentals dev-wise, and you should have these headings and URLs should be this long blah, blah, blah. But what Google loves is something that's human as well and new and organic, and it's real and it's engaging for someone that's searching for that topic.

Rich Harper: 10:36

I would say as well. Google is massively important. It still holds the majority of the market share of Search. We all know that. But there's lots of new technologies. We probably don't have enough time right now to go into all of them. You're going to have the rise of AI Search. You've got investment in new AI search engines. Jeff Bestfoss has just invested in things perplexityai. Google's invested heavily in AI as well the way that people search now, things like voice search and stuff like that. So there's lots of things that we need to be optimizing for, which is why I don't think you should put all your eggs in the Google basket.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 11:18

Topic two is our one good one, bad. It's 2024. What are we going to leave behind and what are we going to start investing time in? This year, I think there's been a bit of a trend of people doing this on social media, so we're probably jumping on the bandwagon to talk us through their 2024 trends. We have Salphie Noor joining us from our social media team. If there is something to know about social media, the likelihood is Salphie knows it. Nassia Naseira, joining from our paid media team. Nassia has been with us now for two years and just keeps getting better and better, and that is the best thing that you can do. And we also have our content machine, tom Innes, who is the one that turns all these podcasts into lots of really useful articles, guides, blogs that you can find on our resource hub. Let's kick off with you, nassia. Do you want to start with good or do you want to start with bad?

Nassya Nasseira: 12:24

I could start with good.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 12:26

Cool, let's go with good. You're one good for 2024. What are we investing time in this year?

Nassya Nasseira: 12:32

Bring intent data to your top of funnel marketing and not just your mid and bottom funnel. For anyone that's tried the old more is more game with leads, I know a lot of marketers could relate to what I say. It's clear that not all leads are worth the cost or the effort, so no one to pull the plug and optimize and intend data can help be the lever that helps bring some order to a big influx of leads. Knowing where to find promising new prospects, even at the awareness level stage, and who to prior to ice, can greatly improve your performance. I would say it's definitely a domino effect. The more targeted you approach elite, the higher the probability they'll take action. Be greater your chance of a successful sale.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 13:26

Love that. I need a buzzer here because I'm going to throw it to Tom and Sophie. Does that agree or disagree?

Tom Inniss: 13:33

I don't know, I don't work in that side of things. I think if Nathya says it, then it must be true, because she is amazing what she does.

Saufi Mohd Nor: 13:43

Sophie, I would say I agree because, yeah, it is something that's actually really, really important. Also, it makes me question my own answer later now, because Nathya gives Nathya good tips.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 13:57

Tom, are you going good or are you going bad?

Tom Inniss: 14:01

I'll follow the trend and go good. I was going to say something really cheesy like oh, we should invest more time in people to combat the rise in AI, but I'm just going to say let's spend more time on threads. I think threads is going to become a massive platform. Actually, we've seen a lot of developments being made on threads, and I'm really excited about their adoption of Activity Pub, which is a whole new social protocol, which means that it will be open to the Fediverse as well. So you are quite as locked into Mark Zuckerberg's horrible, dystopian vision for the future.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 14:38

Again opening this up to the floor. Sophie Nathya threads good, bad, is it staying what?

Saufi Mohd Nor: 14:42

do we think? For me it was going to be like probably like a 50-50, because I feel like it's either going to be really successful or it's not going to be as big, but it has its own niche.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 14:54

I actually haven't used it still, so I am not in a platform to comment. Sophie, are we starting good or are we going to switch to the bad side?

Saufi Mohd Nor: 15:03

I'm just going to start with the bad side first, just for fun. I think it's nothing like really serious. I think the more of just not just at business level, but I think just like individual level as well, because I've still seen it in 2023, across individual and also business level. I feel like in 2024, I feel like people just don't use boomerang anymore, like I still see it. It's just sad that should have been less in like 2018 or whatever, but I still see it in 2023. So it should just, especially for businesses, just choose. Do you want to post pictures or like something static, or do you want to post a video? But at least those two have some sort of value. Pictures people would click on it, boost your engagement. Videos, good for awareness, connect to your audience. But no, just no. I feel like let's just stop that. No boomerang in 2024. That will be my bad one that I really hope I see less and less or just none.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 16:07

I'm going to have to delete all of my boomerang snaps when saving them up for our 2024 marketing strategy. So, Nassia, agree or disagree.

Nassya Nasseira: 16:17

I agree, boomerang seems kind of outdated to me. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I'm not a personal opinion.

Tom Inniss: 16:24

I'm so behind generally on social media trends that I haven't actually even got around to start making boomerangs yet. So I'm going to be embracing them fully in 2024, just like I have reels, which are quite new to me, I'm sad to say.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 16:37

Maybe we need to merge your boomerangs and reels so that you've got some ground content there. Let's go back to Nassia. I think you now have a bad for us. What are we leaving behind in 2023?

Nassya Nasseira: 16:51

That tailoring your content. This goes back to my good point, which is how do you tailor your content is by using all the intent data that you have. Example scenario let's say you have a sports equipment website. Person A searches online for best running shoes for marathons. This tells us that you're not a beginner runner, most likely at the researching stage for the best shoes out there. Then you have Person B, who's looking for best deals for light jogging shoes, so they're probably just starting out their fitness journey and more prime to buy right now. As you can see, those two different customers or users, the intent differs from what they're looking for and the info that they need. So you definitely need to tailor your content and serve two pieces of content to this audience, even though they're both looking for running shoes.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 17:56

I will throw it out there, but I don't think anyone wants less tailored content. What do you think, Tom and Sophie?

Tom Inniss: 18:04

I don't personally, Although at the same time it might save me money because tugged ads are surprisingly compelling. Maybe if we have less data collection, everybody will be slightly happier.

Saufi Mohd Nor: 18:15

I don't say we're kind of like Tom. I think for businesses I'll be like oh yeah, that's good, but for me personally, no, stop, sorry, I'm getting so like a bias and they're depending on my situation.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 18:28

Everything is super targeted to me at the moment. There's around babies. So there you go, Tom. You're bad. What are we leaving in 2023?

Tom Inniss: 18:38

We are leaving ex, formerly known as Twitter. I think 2024 is the year that we say goodbye to Elon Musk and his heuristic attitude towards social media and the contempt that he generally has towards its users and especially advertisers. I don't think you can stand on stage and tell advertisers to go fuck themselves and then be shocked when they stop putting money into your platform. I think his leadership is atrocious, his views are abhorrent and, to be honest, his acquisition of Twitter will possibly go down as one of the most disastrous business decisions, probably since AOL and Time Warner.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 19:19

Wow, let's let that one sink in. This is where there should probably be some kind of disclaimer, but I'm going to go the opposite and say that all of Tom's opinions that are endorsed by me.

Tom Inniss: 19:32

I'll go harder. I'll go harder. I mean, that's if Twitter StokeX is even around this year. I mean he can afford to run it forever and ever, but it's going to be valued at basically nothing. He's lost 15% of its users since he bought it. It's down 71% in terms of its valuation from when he purchased it. I think he's bored of it and he'll probably move on to something else. I mean, he doesn't even know what he wants to do with it. Is it an AI app? Is it the everything app, a communication app, a banking app? Or is it just a place for racist trolls to congregate?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 20:03

Anyone going to go against Tom there? Cool X, goodbye.

Tom Inniss: 20:09

It's great for football news, though. Oh, I'll take everything back then. Yeah, sorry, I think he's going to have a thriving year. That is so good.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 20:16

I think I might even leave the swear word in it's so good An explicit content.

Tom Inniss: 20:20

It's his words. He said it three times and then deliberately like intentionally called out CEO of Disney One thing I do quite like that they've done is the context on ads.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 20:32

So when you get targeted with the admittedly awful ads on there, someone from the community below has gone. This is absolute rubbish and that's quite a nice thing that I think could be taken elsewhere Other than following the NBA. It's totally useless and even now you open up a Fred in there and there's just so much rubbish.

Tom Inniss: 20:52

Yeah, I mean just this week's screenshots were going round. All of these verified accounts were basically saying I'm unable to do that because it goes against open AIs policies. So there's just a massive bot problem on there as well. So any engagement that you are getting from like to bring this back to an advertiser perspective, anything that you are putting on there, you can't guarantee that any of it is legitimate.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 21:13

Bosh there you go. The microphone is on the floor. Selfie. I'm going to pick it up for you to finish this off. No pressure. Luckily, we're finishing on a positive note. What are we keeping in for 2024?

Saufi Mohd Nor: 21:26

I guess, since, like last year or May 2022, we start seeing the rise of like a more like short form content and all. But I think, like I've been kind of reading a lot more. I think that moving forward that's good, but the focus kind of should be more on like snackable content. So it's not so much like oh, selfie, my video is 30 seconds. That's short form. But if you have like a 30 second video, then you're sharing like 10 tips in 30 seconds. That's not actually snackable. That's a very heavy snack there, so you know. So like need to like find the right way of like what is actually snackable for your brand, for your product and stuff. So I started seeing like some brands like across like different businesses trying to do it like finding the right balance of being simple but also actually engaging. So I think that is something that all businesses and should continue to explore more this year.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 22:18

Tom Nassia are we in agreement or are we disagreeing?

Nassya Nasseira: 22:23

I would say I agree. If you're trying to give me a bunch of tips 10, 20 tips in one, let's say like a 30 second video I probably maybe 30% would actually stick in my mind. So yeah, definitely finding a bright balance.

Tom Inniss: 22:44

Yeah, I would agree with that. It's about ensuring that your content has enough value without being overwhelming, but just to sort of counter that at the same time, on my reels journey I've discovered a lot of people do follow for part two and then you can never find part two, and I really hate that. So if you are going to put content out there, try and make it one cohesive, complete thought rather than splitting up into lots of videos that people then have to go and find because I don't think the attention span is there.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 23:18

Jumping into our third topic, and this is looking at a marketing campaign or advertising campaign that we have noticed in the recent kind of weeks and months, and we are looking this month on surreal, who are a serial company, who are kind of pushing boundaries, and their CBA it's January advertising campaign. Speaking to us today about surreal, we have Mark Bundle. Mark is our senior email marketing manager. He has a background in law and is the best person in the team to keep us all in line and make sure that we are following the rules and doing things the right way. He is the Batman to my Robin, which is always nice. Oh, I'm getting soppy. We also have Ridgeback from our first topic, our head of digital marketing services, and we have Michele Raffaele joining us all the way from Italy as well. Michele works in our paid media team as a paid media manager. If we can get him to go off on some kind of fun tangent, it is always making for the best lesson, so I'm hoping for one of those today. So let's kick things off and let's start with you, mark. What did you love and hate about this? Can't Be Asked. It's January campaign from Suru.

Mark Bundle : 24:41

Yes, love obviously the fact it's different. It's not just different from their own normal stuff, it's different from kind of other things we've seen for a while really. There's other people have kind of done the lazy campaign I used to do it a few years ago and there's the famous graphic designer, one that goes around every couple of months on LinkedIn. Yeah, it's nice to see it with change, nice to see something a bit semi-original. But hey, as you said in the intro there, the big one on processes and rules. I just feel for their quality of sure and sky of the agency. You had to look at this campaign with typos, with word art, with no brand guidelines and go. I know it's supposed to, but it's breaking every rule. Oh my God, I want to fix it. So I have some massive sympathy for the QA guy that had to allow it because it's a deliberate mistake.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 25:28

I can imagine there's probably some pretty sad designers looking at it as well. Rich, you have a design background before you started in digital marketing. How does this campaign make you feel as a designer?

Rich Harper: 25:40

It makes me cringe a little bit, but also when you think of the creative execution behind it. It kind of makes me smile a little bit when you think about the campaign and surreal are pretty good in general. We're talking about one specific campaign here, but if you look across the board, the marketing is quite tongue-in-cheek and it's their brand. But what they do really well and what I really like about this is they don't take themselves too seriously and I've seen stuff online and on social media about people going oh, this is just a campaign for marketers, it's not going to increase serial sales, and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like I think you're missing the point slightly in the fact that they're not taking they don't take themselves too seriously. It's a fun campaign.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 26:25

Marketing doesn't have to be boring, I think I disagree with it being about marketers there, because actually you look at the typos and the word art. Those are things that look around the room to make sure no one everyone here is in a generation that did go use word art when they're at school or kind of starting out in their first couple of jobs and it plays on that nostalgia thing.

Rich Harper: 26:47

Right, yeah, it's nostalgic, it's fun. People like fun, people like to have fun. We don't need to be serious all the time, which I think is what surreal do really well, all of the spelling mistakes, the word art, the stick men, all of that sort of stuff, all the pins, the campaign together in the fact that it's January and no one can be bothered. I disagree with a lot of the comments I read that it's, you know, paying to marketers. It's not. It's. That's where you're missing the point. And marketers are sitting there going oh, it's not going to increase sales, probably not the objective. When we talk about brand building campaigns and stuff like that, you can take your revenue head off and bits and bobs. And what are the biggest growth drivers for? For brand campaigns are fame and memorability, and this campaign does both of those.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 27:37

I'm going to chuck it over to Michele now. Do you hate it or do you love it?

Michele Raffaelli: 27:40

I wanted to listen to these podcasts to understand that. I mean. I mean between I do agree with what Mark said it's it's not original, that's true, but I think it's very well executed. So I'm trying to look at this campaign from both of my eyes the marketer one and the potential client, and one part of Fendme as a marketer and one, exciting, as a customer. We were mentioning in a conference the other day, but apparently we see every day between 5,000 and 10,000 ads each day. If these numbers are real, this type of campaign, it's definitely something that I remember across those 10,000 ads. So from that point, it does work. Licking to what Rich said, because I'm data driven, and looking at the search terms trend from Google on the Yusuriel brand, it actually did the trick. It did generate in the last 30 days, a huge spike of traffic coming from the brand name, so it did work In terms of awareness. I don't have visibility on their numbers, but I'd love to see an end of month report from Surreal to see how this activity impacted sales.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 28:59

With brands, you want to stand out from this splurge of ads and I think, if I remember, I did go and look up those stats and I think 5,000 is maybe in a metropolitan US situation. I think in the UK it's significantly lower, but in the US, obviously, every single thing is the halftime report by so and so, or this toilet seat sponsored by X, so that's maybe why that's so high. Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent From a brand's point of view. In order to stop that scroll, in order to stand out from this wall of advertisements, is doing something like this better than playing it safe?

Mark Bundle : 29:46

To stand out is always going to be a good thing. Well, it's always going to be a thing that's going to get eyeballs on your brand. Obviously, we discussed earlier on about when things sometimes you've got to be different and it goes badly. Seeing Mr Must and TwitterX, it's trying to be original, which I think Surreal as a product is as well, so they're almost stand true to their brand ethos while going off on one. Marketing-wise, it is nice to see, as you say, the nostalgia kind of factor to it, as well as the humanization of it. I guess and we've talked before about how it's good to humanize a brand the rainbow gradient font with drop shadow. I mean, if you're a certain age and you haven't put that in a presentation for school, you've not done life properly.

Rich Harper: 30:29

When you talk about Hayden, brands need to stand out. I think you need to be conscious of what your long-term brand goals are. So, yes, you do need to stand out and you do need to be able to stop the scroll. People need to be able to recall your ad if it's going to be successful. But not every brand is going to be able to pull off the campaign like Surreal have done in terms of being this tongue-in-cheek, being this basic in the sense of stickmen and really ignoring all brand guidelines, all brand rules, making a designer turn over multiple times and have nightmares for the rest of his life. It has to be part of your brand values and long-term brand objectives. If you look at Surreal, like I say, look across all of their campaigns, look across their brand. They're quite tongue-in-cheek. They don't take themselves seriously. I saw a host on LinkedIn the other day saying Dolly Parton works nine to five. What to do when none of your employees can be asked? Because on a Friday they finish work at one and that's part of their processes and format. But they play on that because it's in their brand. It's in their brand to be playful, to be fun, to be witty, and I think people will look at this brand and there's some learnings that you can take. Yes, you want to create standout, but there's certainly by no means is the lesson from today to go and create something that's completely off the charts in terms of where you are as a brand. If you're a fairly serious B2B brand and you start chucking out witty, funny posts, it probably isn't going to resonate. Do you think that?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 32:05

means that it can never sit well for what you stand for, or do you think it just has to be in line with what you are at the moment.

Rich Harper: 32:11

If there's a long-term play to change the perception of what your brand is, then I don't think it's wrong. I think it's when you all of a sudden go Do you know what you need to do. Something outrageous is when you can potentially fall a little bit flat on your face.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 32:26

And just to start trying to wrap this up, what's one takeaway and, McKellen, I'm going to start with you? That listeners can learn from this specific campaign.

Michele Raffaelli: 32:35

Understand your client. I know we repeated every single topic, every single podcast since the beginning, but you really need to think who's this campaign for? If they did, this campaign for marketer was a great success because we are here talking about it. I worked in the protein market for more than five years and I can tell you that Q1 is the biggest moment of the year, especially in UK where everyone comes back after holidays and they just go to the gym. That's a fact. If you do a campaign in January, you don't want to be so smart, you just want to sell the product. Their product is protein cereal People in England you say something as protein in it. They would buy it. But just focus on your product and your audience. They should have kept this type of campaign in summer, where maybe Not so many people would buy Rotten Serial, but they would have created that awareness that could have joined into Q3 and 4. So just the timing is something that I would have considered in a different way.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 33:44

Big focus on audience and who your customer is. Big focus on timing as well. On to our final topic for this podcast, very topical again. I know some people suffer with this, some people don't, but this is all about fighting the January blues and how you can keep your marketing team or any team positive in the post-Christmas blues. And actually just in general, we have four panellists on this one. We've got Kieran rejoining us. We've also got Tom coming back and we'll find out if he's going to be as fired up as he was about X. We have Mark the Batman, to my Robin. That actually means that he's the grizzly one that does all the work and I wear bright red spandex and smile a lot. And we have Debbie Gatt-Cutan Jardim Tau'a Levera, our wonderful senior social media manager. She's a ray of sunshine for the whole of us and she helps us be the best team that we can be. Cool. Just to kick off this topic, blue Monday was the Monday before we're recording this podcast and someone please tell me if this is true or not, because I didn't actually have time to go and back up my research, but I think it was originally a marketing ploy to sell something as a team. How are you finding? The mood is following December. That is always pretty disruptive. Debbie, let's start with you.

Debbie Gacutan : 35:16

First of all, context is that I'm from a very sunny place called the Philippines. Winter months is just tough in general, and it is true that everyone does the dip after the holiday season. One because of the weather, two because less social interactions. And number three, you just see your bank account and it's empty. So I get it, I get it. Yeah, I am feeling it, hayden. So, which is why I've put myself against this topic.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 35:44

How about?

Mark Bundle : 35:46

you, Mark. First of you, right, Blue Monday is a marketing thing. It was designed to sell holidays. It was put together a few years ago to try and sell packaged holidays and Debbie said she's down. That means I'm trying to be one of the chirpy people on this topic, which is just unnatural. I think it's a tough start to the year. It was an awful lot of obviously going on in the world generally which not going to talk about, but it makes the last few years of things been hard for everyone and then with at least in the northern hemisphere of the weather being the grim way it is, keeping everyone kind of upbeat and chirpy and cheerful is it's tough at the moment.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 36:18

We'll get onto it in a minute about kind of being human. But understanding that context around not just what's happening in someone's personal life or work, but actually the context of the whole world is such a big thing to think about when you think about keeping people happy.

Tom Inniss: 36:33

Tom, talk to me. January is kind of a difficult time of the year, isn't it, I think. On the same breath, though, like the January blues is a little bit unfair on January, I like to spread my blues across the whole year. I'm also like super worried that if Mark and I have to carry the positive element of this podcast, probably fuck. As Mark said, it has been a really difficult 12 months, to be honest, you know, and everybody is trying to go into this year with the sort of positivity and the like yeah, it's going to be better, but, like we've been burned from 2020 onwards, let's just try and go a little bit more cautiously into this year and just try and you know, make it through.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 37:18

This is where I will try and be my normal, relentless, positive self to try and bring some of the energy up. Kieran, what are you feeling?

Ciaran O'Neill : 37:27

I mean, I echo everything that's been just said. I think a big word is authenticity in January, which sounds a bit Instagram wellness, but what I mean by that is just having real conversations. And the reason why I say that is because it's important to be having conversations with your team, but they have to be authentic. They can't just feel it. It is authentic. You care for your staff, your team and what they're going through. Because we're all maybe a few people who do love January, but personally, for me, it's rough as guts. It's just awful. I am someone who loves the sun and January just drags for me. So it's good to have just real conversations with people, because that actually brings a smile to my face.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 38:15

It's such an interesting topic this one because, while it doesn't directly impact marketing, actually impacts every single person, and how you are in January and throughout the whole year is how you build a really high performing team. How do you stay motivated and we've spoken about authenticity and being human and how do you motivate the team members around you? When the nights are long, the days are short, it's cold. How do you do that?

Tom Inniss: 38:44

I don't know why I think my fearless leader, rich, is not actually feeding into this conversation, since he is ultimately responsible for staff wellbeing and motivation and he is relentless. He is the relentless joy of the team, so I might just call him out dragging back in. Rich, what are you doing to try and motivate us all and keep us going in this difficult, dark period of the year?

Rich Harper: 39:05

You've got no response to that, do you?

Haydn Woods-Williams: 39:09

No, I want to know or I'm going to my rep. That enthusiasm was inspiring.

Rich Harper: 39:13

Rich. I am an inspiring leader, hayden, that's right. What are we doing to encourage? We don't treat it as January is the new year. We take the fact that we had a really successful 2023 and that doesn't really stop now because it's the new year. It's not a reset. It's continuing on from where we left off last year. Continuing those building blocks Last year is just a building block through your future, so to speak. So I'm not a big believer in resolutions and stuff like that, because no one keeps to them and if you're going to start something, you can start it whenever. If you want to start eating healthy, do it whenever. If you want to start exercising, do it whenever. There should never be a valid reason. So I just generally shouldn't be seen as this kind of like oh, we've got a whole 12 months ahead of us, rather by doom and doom, it's not. It's just the continuation of the success we've had.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 40:09

So it sounds like celebrating success, but also not just doing that in January, doing that the entire way through the year and trying to not change the culture that you've built in a month.

Debbie Gacutan : 40:22

I actually want to say something, which is you know as much as I love that you know Rich is there to think about my well-being. I would like to think that my well-being is my responsibility as well. For you to put that on your manager, on the culture of the company, I don't think that's something that is on your benefit. I know that January is coming and I know I'll be depressed on January, and it's something that I've known for, like the last years that I've moved to England actually, so this is not like a surprise to me. So I think it is something that you have to prepare yourself, and what I've done is I've went mental, so I've enrolled myself in a gym class, I've downloaded an app, I'm reading this book. I'm looking at like atomic habits and like things that will be good. I'm surrounding myself with positive people. I'm trying to like do things that I know that will make me happy and will make me motivated, because this is like in a relationship it's a conscious choice to make things work, and I think that's something that you need to do for yourself. You need to make things work for yourself, you need to control your environment and just hope that you know your mindset will follow the same.

Mark Bundle : 41:36

There's a middle line to be drawn between it's all on you and, yeah, your manager and the company should be looking after you of. It's okay to not be okay. You don't have to be happy and happy the whole time, absolutely. But You've got colleagues, maybe friends, that are around you, hopefully friends outside of work around you, and I think it's important that, yeah, people do get depressed or low at this type of time of year. It's because of the weather, because of the money's all gone over Christmas, whatever. But yeah, just make sure I guess you're reaching out to people around you. If you see someone struggling or if he knows that there's a change in their behavior, make sure you're reaching out, make sure you're making those human connections and try and make sure that you're like just really looking after each other, I guess.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 42:17

Is there some responsibility as us, as leaders and team members, to actually make sure that it is visible and it's acceptable that actually, on some days you're running at 60%, some days you're running at 90%, some you're running at 10%?

Ciaran O'Neill : 42:32

Yeah, I might just wait in here because I'm reading a book on relationships. I've hit that point in my life and it's the whole thing around the percentage thing, the percentage. So you get home and couples are going through similar stuff that teams will be going through in January. So it's the same issue and what it is is a simple thing of one partner will go, I've got 20 and the other partner will go, I've got 40. And it's just a percentage is going to how much can you throw in to this evening or this relationship at this point in time? And managing the expectations and going okay, that person is completely on the floor. So actually as a team or as a unit, you come together and you collaborate, you make that thing work, and I think that's important in relationships and in teams which are technically. That is a relationship, that's a bond that you have together, especially marketing teams. I mean. You fight fires together, you seem, build a bond, and so there's a lot with that. There's leading with clear communication, there's managing expectations by telling your staff look book in time for you to be able to disconnect and, as Debbie said, making them aware of what's available to them and if there isn't anything available to them from the company, whether that's a wellness call with someone. It's showing them what might can happen, but doing that in an authentic way, just going back to managing expectations to be able to schedule in team bonding for the year. So if you've got socials or you've just got, oh, we can have like an after work drink. It doesn't have to be anything special, but going for what I like to call it a half to, which is a half point after work. It doesn't actually have to be alcoholic or what have you. It's just that type of thing that just goes like let's just down the halls and just be a team, without a project or anything like that, just be a team. I think that's really, really important to do.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 44:48

I mean, we are a completely remote team and because you are a remote team sometimes you have to make those things. It seems unnatural, but the more you kind of put in those social chats and those social meetings, those after work harters, only, things only happen if you put them in and they only start becoming natural once you get through it. Anyone else got anything to add, because my timekeeping has been shocking today.

Tom Inniss: 45:17

Just to reach out and ask if you're all right, Hayden.

Haydn Woods-Williams: 45:20

Do you know? Other words, I think one of the big challenges I've had coming into the new year is lots of meetings and very little time to kind of get the feet under the table, which is a challenge and makes you feel sometimes a little bit like you're always playing catch up. But having a team around to kind of talk about that is really important. And one thing that I'm going to give away for free today we haven't done this for a while, but I try and do a process called fill my cup or empty my cup. When I'm looking at my meetings during the day, Just make a little mark on each one. Color them in Google Calendar Green if they fill your cup so they energize you. Red if they take energy to do. And what you want to make sure is that you don't have a day that is just full of red meetings that are just going to sap your energy for the entire day. You try and balance that and that's where we'll leave that today. That is sadly all we have time for today. We have 100% gone over time, so apologies for that, but thank you so much for listening. We hope that you found the snippets in this session super useful and you're able to go and put them into your own marketing strategies. Hopefully you're able to take them, particularly this last session, and take them and help build and make sure your team is doing OK. We love that you've made it this far through the listen. We really enjoy making this content and if you know of anyone friends, colleagues, parents, whoever it might be who would enjoy listening to the show, please do try and recommend. Feel free to comment on whatever podcast platform you're using to listen to. Thank you so much for the Brew Digital team for all the research and energy they put into today's session. Hopefully it's filled their cup a little bit and make sure you do check out any past episodes. Subscribe on whatever platform you use to listen to your podcasts and we will see you in the next one. I've been Hayden and these guys are the marketers of the universe.