Chris Norton: 0:04

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast that helps senior marketers hit record revenue and double their ROI by learning from the mistakes of the world's top marketing leaders. I'm Chris Norton, and today I'm excited to have Matt Thomas, Senior Manager of Brand Strategy at Lexus UK, on the show. Matt has an extensive marketing background, having worked with major brands such as Unilever, bayer, energizer I'm thinking Bunny Toyota and now the luxury brand that is Lexus. His journey from consumer goods to the automotive industry gives him a unique perspective on brand management and strategic marketing. Matt will share insights into how experience across industries has shaped his approach to marketing at Lexus, and during this interview, we dive into topics like market orientation, brand building and how he ensures alignment across teams to deliver impactful strategies that drive growth in a highly competitive market. He also tells us how Lexus carefully researched and then selected its huge brand sponsorship with the Lawn Tennis Association. So, as always, sit back, relax and let's hear how Matt's approach to brand strategy can help you transform your own marketing results. Enjoy, matt Thomas. Welcome to the show.

Mat Thomas: 1:20

Thank you very much.

Chris Norton: 1:21

Great to see you guys so do you want to tell us a little bit about how you got into marketing at the beginning? Sure, sure.

Mat Thomas: 1:29

Well, the ambition was to be in marketing from probably about the age of 20. But it took me probably a few years before I actually got into it. I worked in finance first of all. Didn't work for me. Of course it's a massively important discipline, but it just didn't really work for me. Marketing was the thing I always really had my heart set on. I did some traveling, came back, and when I came back I started having that time away. I was. I was like this is the thing I've got to achieve, I don't care what it takes. And it took me about six months from coming home and I landed a job, um, with Unilever, uh, at their bird's eye wars business, um, just going back like 20 something years, um. So, yeah, really, really lucky to have got into that. It's an amazing place to start, I suppose, my career.

Chris Norton: 2:28

Okay, so you got in from finance and then. So what was your first job in marketing? What were you doing in your first role?

Mat Thomas: 2:37

I was a marketing assistant on the Bird's Eye business. Really interesting time for the business. They just launched, um this new range I think it was called enjoy. It was, at the time, I think, the biggest grocery launch like ever at that point in terms of the investment, uh, in terms of media, but also investment with the trade. Um, so to, I suppose, observe that and see what was happening was was absolutely fascinating.

Chris Norton: 3:07

Um, yeah, and and then you moved from from bird's eye. You moved into I mean, it's the logical step, I'm not gonna lie straight into health care from from from bird's eye. How did that? How did that happen? You've jumped from one sector to another. Was that for something to be different?

Mat Thomas: 3:26

Ultimately, it's still consumer goods. So at Bayer, yeah, they're a well-known pharmaceutical company, right, but they also have a consumer goods division, and so I worked on those consumer goods, so you're probably aware of these brands Baroccia, rennie. There's also things like caniston for feminine health, um, so, so, yeah, so worked in that business for about eight and a half years otc medicine.

Chris Norton: 3:54

Yeah, right, I worked in oc medicine too. Fun times. Yeah, marketing to practice nurses, nurses and pharmacies. Yeah, I did all the pr for like glaxo and stuff, some of the brands, so I've been in that sector. It's, it's quite interesting. I mean you can't do some of the fun, more fun stuff with celebrities and uh, you've got to be very careful what you claim and counter claim because there's so much regulation in that sector. But it it is still a quite an interesting sector and and renny's a cool brand, by the way I just every it is, I have to use it. Great stuff. Yeah, did you have fun with that?

Mat Thomas: 4:25

the seltzer as well as in the portfolio. Yeah, it is. I mean, you're literally set up for hangovers, right? Yeah, barocca out seltzer and renee, um, so, but, yes, absolutely great brands. Yeah, you're right, there are restrictions, um, of course, and but there are in car. There is, in car, advertising and marketing as well, so, um, I suppose, a lot of sectors of the same what was a cool campaign that you did while you were in the otc sector.

Chris Norton: 4:53

Then gives an example of something you did that was quite different in the otc sector.

Mat Thomas: 4:58

So really, is probably, uh, the one which really springs to mind. This is probably going back about 15 years ago, going for a strategic change actually on the brand. From where because their main competitor is Gaviscon, which is a record, then Kieser brand, and changed strategic direction to really kind of go after the sort of more everyday uh in suggestion, rather than more severe. And from that um did a lot of strategic work, segmentation, and I also did a lot of inside work and sort of found this kind of core insight which was the real kind of crux of a new agency brief and from that it developed. You may remember this it looks like the Mr Men, it looked like sort of a big kind of cartoon tummy and I think it ran as a sort of creative device for a number of years afterwards. It was a big step change, massively successful as well.

Chris Norton: 6:00

Great.

Will Ockenden: 6:01

So you've gone from um, you know relatively low ticket items. I mean, how much is a tub of a tube of barocca? About three quid. And then you move into automotive marketing where you know you're looking at 20, 30, 40 000 pounds to buy a car. So you went to toyota, didn't you? Before you went to lexus. So what kind of you know that's? That's quite, quite a shift, isn't it? What attracted you to? You know that must be a, is that wildly different market shift nice pun it's.

Mat Thomas: 6:30

It was difficult, absolutely, absolutely. I think there's there's kind of two things which, for me, make it really difficult when you change sectors. Um, I think the first one is is the language of the category or the industry. Within consumer goods, you could move around from company to company and largely the language, the terminology will be the same. There will be some differences, but you go into a completely different industry.

Mat Thomas: 6:59

You're literally like what do you want to know it? And that takes time and patience and just constantly that sort of requiring to be curious and kind of go, what was that? And I always take notes at the back of my book Kind of no idea what that is, I'm going to have to check. So you sort of get into that behavior, um to do it. And you know no one's gonna kind of like sit you down and kind of go, here are the rules of the road, excuse the pun, but you have to be really proactive with it too.

Mat Thomas: 7:34

Um, and I'm like 10 years in automotive. I still learn stuff. You know it's a complex industry and I think the other big change for me going into automotive was I've gone from working in particularly in a bear full marketing mix roles where I'm responsible for advertising, but I'm also responsible for product and pricing and placing, working with sales team to get distribution. So going into then a role where it's just cons, that's really hard because your brain has been literally trained to think in a really laterally and now you're going into this just purely comms role, um yeah, that's quite tough and I think takes a. It's a big shift.

Will Ockenden: 8:25

So what about this shift from, you know, a very frequently purchased product to something that must be a very considered product? I mean, you know how often do people buy cars? Every three years, four years, five years? It's a whole different kind of approach.

Mat Thomas: 8:38

Yeah, it's great. It's a great question Because if you think about within consumer goods, typically you do something, you see an immediate result In cars. You don't see thousands being sold the next day after you launched a campaign, but I guess the difference is that you do see an increase in interest. So, for example, you'll track you know for the short term what's happening in search, on Google and so on. You're tracking then what's happening on our website. You're tracking in terms of are people converting? What are they doing on the website? Are they actually interested? What are they configuring? Are they requesting test drives and so on? Are they going into centers? So no, you can't see that immediate impact in terms of sales, but you can see the immediate impact of what you do in terms of measuring interest so.

Chris Norton: 9:41

So how do you measure effectiveness in what you're doing today at Lexus? So what's your role today? What do you do at Lexus in 2024, 2025?

Mat Thomas: 10:26

Right, so my role is to lead brand strategy for Lexus in the UK. That's the other part of my role. I look after our socials. So, yeah, my role at I look after our socials. So, yeah, role access is leading brand strategy and fundamentally, that is delivering the strategy for the UK defining what do we want to achieve, defining our objectives and what our target audience is, and then, when we sort of get into the tactics, making decisions on what we do, what we don't do. And you know from that there is the, you know, investment into the long term, things like sponsorship, but then also what we're doing in the short term as well, in terms of whether that's campaigns, launches, also performance marketing, as you can imagine. You know the abundance of things which we have on offer to us. You have to make choices and so, you know, a large part of our role is is kind of defining, you know, almost like what we're not doing so was it.

Chris Norton: 11:36

You've done a campaign with the lawn tennis association, is that right? Yes so, um, yeah, we're a sponsor. So how did that come about and what's the thinking behind that people, people that like playing tennis, like to drive lexus's. What is the plural of lexus? Lexi?

Will Ockenden: 11:54

alan partridge says it's lexi, doesn't he in one of the episodes?

Mat Thomas: 11:58

yeah, I have to kind of go back to kind of the strategy of what we're trying to do with Lexis, kind of give you the context right. So the issue or the thing with Lexis is that people know we make cars right. If you look at things like prompted awareness, we're really strong. Yeah, so that's great. The challenge we have on Lex lexus we are a small brand, by the way. We're not huge, but when people come into the market, in the premium market, to buy a new car, lexus is not top of mind as maybe other premium brands you know, like bmw, the salies and so on. They're ubiquitous, right. Right, we're a smaller brand, so our challenge is really much about salience. We've got great ambitions to grow and to really, I suppose, from a brand perspective, to unlock that growth we need to build salience. It's a really important thing for us to be more top of mind. So really that's the challenge we're trying to fix. So building salience is kind of like our is our core objective.

Mat Thomas: 13:03

Now what we've learned over the past few years is that model uh ads you know the things you see on tv, yeah, driving around cities and mountains and bridges and so on, usually italy, usually italy or portugal, south africa is. What you find is that they do a great, and so on. Usually Italy, usually Italy, or Portugal, south Africa. What you find is that they do a great job, usually in the short term, maybe a bit in the medium, but they're not building the long term. And so, therefore, we felt we needed to shift our investment also into the long term as well. We needed to shift our investment also into the long term as well. No, this isn't about really getting sales tomorrow, but it could be in the future. So that's why we've shifted investment into sponsorship.

Mat Thomas: 13:52

Now, why tennis? Well, it's, I mean, depending on what survey you read, but it's the third most popular sport in the uk and it's growing. It also indexes really well with our target audience and also within the kind of the wider premium market as well. So it kind of we felt it made sense. Um, in terms of the sponsorship, um, so, yes, you say we are a performance and automotive partner with the lawn tennis association. We've also signed a deal with sky and we're a sponsor of their new um sky tennis channel, which launched earlier in this year. So you could sort of say that we're sort of starting to build an ecosystem within tennis and have shifted a big proportion of our budget into doing it.

Chris Norton: 14:42

And does that include like are you going all in on tennis, then Does that mean you'll look to sponsor potential players like Emma Raducanu or whatever, or something like that, or the next Emma?

Mat Thomas: 14:57

Yeah, it's part of the LTA deal. We are essentially the sponsor of the national team. So the national team who compete at things like the Billie Jean King Cup or the Davis Cup are known as the Lexus GB team.

Chris Norton: 15:16

Okay.

Mat Thomas: 15:17

We do also have some brand ambassadors as well within tennis um alfie hewitt, um the uk number one wheelchair player, um lovely guy um and casey bolter as well, and also cam nori so are you the guy to tap up for free tickets to the next wimbledon final then?

Will Ockenden: 15:38

Do not email the show.

Mat Thomas: 15:41

Do not email the show.

Will Ockenden: 15:44

Okay, so a big ticket sponsorship like the LTA that presumably is running for several years. How do you, as a brand, measure the impact of that when you've got such a long sales cycle?

Mat Thomas: 15:56

Right, so it's a great question. So we obviously have a lot of access to data and brand tracking on on nexus. We can understand brand health. Um, to understand the impact of tennis, we set uh, we set up a separate tracking study with tennis fans in the uk. It's pretty robust, it's like a thousand uh tennis and we do about four or five dips a year to understand, in terms of spontaneous awareness of Lexus as a sponsor versus other brands, what you think and feel about Lexus. Now you've seen that association with tennis and lots of other metrics. But fundamentally, you know, going back to the, the lexus strategy, our kind of core goal within tennis is to understand, really to ensure that there is spontaneous awareness of lexus within tennis.

Mat Thomas: 16:51

That's that's really the goal and

Will Ockenden: 16:53

um, it sounds like you've you've really got a handle on customer understanding and you know, you, you kind of deeply understand your customers, your prospects, what they're interested in. To what degree do you kind of um, do you dive into your, your personas and um, you know, I guess, uh, you know mine, mine, their interests, in order to make better marketing decisions we spend a lot on research.

Mat Thomas: 17:19

I think a great example of where we've done that is earlier in the year you may have seen this we launched a new car. It's called LBX. It's a smaller, it's a B-segment SUV, so it's a smaller, compact SUV. And we had a lot of quant data on the target audience. It's a panel maps and panel data. But I think the problem is, when you look at just that data, is that people start to kind of fill in the gaps. They start sort of creating this persona where you know you kind of go okay, it's a sort of younger car buyer, maybe it's 35. She's female.

Mat Thomas: 18:02

And then that turns. That turns into oh, her name's victoria. She lives in a beautiful house in fulham, her husband works in the city. Oh, she works for a media agency. Where else? You know all that kind of stuff. And so we commissioned some research with, uh, this anthropologist and did some ethnographic research with the target audience. And you know, no, this isn't Victoria who works at media agency. We discovered, like you know, these eight people who we did research with. You know, one lives in Birmingham and works at a prison, another was a trainee doctor, another worked in customer service.

Will Ockenden: 18:39

But I think it really kind of smashed some of those kind of preconceptions which many people have, and I think that was really important to kind of like get some reality in terms of this is going to be, you know, potentially the future customer and then something else I'm curious about and and you know, given that you operate in a in essentially a premium sector, you know it's a premium product how do you you know you've got so many decisions to make every day when it comes to content to post tone of voice. You know what to uh, you know what to write on your website how do you have a kind of a premium filter for everything you do? Influences you work with um, partnerships you might strike how do you approach it? There's a number of our clients in in the kind of the premium sector who have to make those decisions too, so I'm just curious to hear your view on it we have, um, let's call it a brand world, um, which has things like some distinctive assets or brand codes.

Mat Thomas: 19:38

It will have guidelines around look and feel and it will have guidelines around tone of voice as well. I think there's more work we need to do with tone of voice. I think you know what we find in in the business we work with syota and lexus is that sometimes they end up sounding a bit similar, um, and you know it's really important to really define that, and there is work at the moment to try and make sure that, you know there is a very, very clear kind of tone of voice on how we want to, uh, yeah, define waxes. It's really hard with an auto as well, because you know, as you probably would agree, so many brands look the same and and sound and look and feel and look the same and really differentiating, uh, and being distinctive is hard, so different what you're saying.

Will Ockenden: 20:29

There is differentiation in the motor world is difficult so, um, I was reading some recent statistics and it said that something like 20 21 of car customers say social media directly influenced their purchase decision when they bought their latest car. Now, I think there was a time when marketers would have rolled their eyes, when you would have said you know, facebook or instagram would actually influence a big ticket purchase like a car. But you know, we've we've sold houses through social media, haven't we directly attributed a facebook post to a selling selling a 200 000 pound house? So is that the reality now? Are people purchasing, or at least being strongly influenced by social when it comes to car purchase?

Mat Thomas: 21:09

it plays a role. Absolutely no one is buying cars from social or through social media. It plays a very key role as part of the media mix Absolutely does, and you know we've validated its effectiveness. We've done, we do marketing mix modeling and you know it has validated the effectiveness of using social, particularly in the sort of the short term and in lower funnel. Um, hence, you know it's addressable and we can get targeted. So it definitely plays a role in terms of that. I think. Also, there is the role in terms of which I think you're alluding to, around research. You know, um, not everyone goes straight to Google to research. Actually, people will go and research on things like Instagram and also TikTok as well, and we know that and we're very sort of mindful of that, particularly in terms of the content which will you know, appear on Instagram, particularly for Lex, it's really when we make sure that everything which is, you know, on Instagram portrays the brand in the best way.

Will Ockenden: 22:23

Um, so you know, every sort of image, piece of content is scrutinized and ensure that it represents what lexus should and um talk to us about kind of the key channels for you then at the moment as a brand, and are there any kind of channels you're keeping an eye on that you think your audience might move into? So you know the classic one being tiktok, which is increasingly becoming a, you know, an influential channel for a lot of brands okay, so obviously the sponsorship, um so that also includes skype.

Mat Thomas: 22:54

So obviously that's tv, social and digital. So we get into kind of talking about model campaigns, um tv, still thing channel for us, um video on demand, social display print, particularly for big campaigns we still use. Print out of home is also a big channel for us and so yeah, pretty much all the channels will use, but are you saying that tv is the biggest channel for lexus, still in 2024?

Chris Norton: 23:26

yeah wow, impressive, definitely, definitely.

Mat Thomas: 23:30

So tv is not dead, it is definitely not dead and I think there's plenty of data to prove the point. Yeah, okay, you know, there are, uh, less young people watching linear TV, absolutely, and there's data to you know which demonstrates that. Um, but the audiences are still big. Um, and you know, if we want to fill the void in terms of which we can't achieve with Lydia, that's where video on demand will come in, and then also the other channels, but primarily, tv is still the most important channel for us and, from all the data which I see and what I've read, and the thinking which we apply, is that TV has a catalytic effect on other channels, so it makes other channels work harder and makes a campaign more effective. So for us, it's still the King Channel. And again, marketing, mixed modelling confirms that for us.

Chris Norton: 24:33

Sir John I don't know if you know him, but Sir John Hegarty, who's an ad guru and a bit of a genius, that I'm definitely going to get on the show at some point he said a few weeks ago, which I thought was genius as usual all marketing directors should be fired and rehired as entertainment directors and we should focus on entertaining the consumer. And he said I hate the word consumer Entertaining your audience is, and if you can't entertain them, walk out the door. And I thought that's interesting because what you just said about TV adverts they're all similar in the automation industry. They're all beautiful cars from different angles. A beautiful lady and a beautiful guy sat in a car driving through the curly bends of Sicily where, in actual fact, they're all so similar that there's nobody standing out.

Mat Thomas: 25:25

So I've read the same thing. Actually, I think I even read it this morning, um, and I was actually listening to a podcast with him on last night too, I think, on my way back from one. So, um, I think there's a truth in what he is saying. Um, I think I'll give an example in terms of where I think, okay, I maybe I don't think it's entertaining, but in terms of demonstrating emotive power, which I think is a driver or and a lever of effectiveness, I think that's what we try to do within sponsorship. So let me explain that.

Mat Thomas: 26:02

So, for sky and our sponsorship for Sky Tennis, we developed iDent for that sponsorship and we also, at the same time, developed a 30-second TV ad. Also there's a 60-second ad as well and what we wanted to do with that was ensure that we didn't succumb to the typical automotive norms, as you say, driving around sicily and so on, and do it very, very differently. And we worked with you probably know this company called system one, and they have done a lot of research into sports sponsorship, and there were two really for me quite important points from that work we did with them. They discovered that sports sponsorship can be as effective as regular advertising. So you know, if you're a brand and you're doing sports sponsorship, it can be as effective a building brand as a regular piece of advertising, which is fantastic, right.

Mat Thomas: 26:59

And the second one was around where the levers to drive. You know, effectiveness is about really tapping into the right brain, which I think is what Hegarty is sort of nod levers to drive. Effectiveness is about really tapping into the right brain, which I think is what Hegarty is sort of nodding to. It's about entertaining or really tapping into the right brain and emotions. So that was kind of our brief for the agency is that we want to do that, we really want to do something which is emotive. We want to do that, we really want to do something which is emotive. And the creative route which we have barely features a car. Quite proud of that. But our managers convinced us, say, well, this is how you're meant to do it. And we pre-tested it. We made them animatic, we tested it against another route and it performed brilliantly in research. We recently retested it and again performed really really strongly, driven by this whole thing of okay, it's not entertaining but it has emotive power and it really, I suppose, you know, I suppose it captures an audience's imagination.

Chris Norton: 28:09

Okay, well, this show is all about mistakes, and you've talked a little bit about your role in Lexus. Do you want to tell us a bit about one of your mistakes that you've been a witness to?

Mat Thomas: 28:21

So I'm going to pop out here a little bit. It's not necessarily a mistake I've done, but I think it's a mistake we've made as a business and I think that a number of years ago. I think we've changed it now, but I think we got social wrong and so when I look back on it I just think, think, wow, why didn't we do something about that? So we had a social team based we still do actually in the business, actually reported into the PR department, and it acted as a silo within the business, didn't align with the brand strategy of Lexus or Toyota and weren't aware of, you know, objectives or target audience, certainly not aware, you know, following what our sort of brand codes are or anything like that, to make us look like Lexus and Toyota, like Lexus and Toyota, and sort of went down this path for a long time of sort of making lots of content which really sort of didn't fit with what the brand was doing or where it was going. And, furthermore, the team had this objective of wanting to be the most engaged automotive brands on social media and I was like, okay, that's kind of interesting.

Mat Thomas: 29:51

I was like, well, are we sure about that? Because for me there's a challenge around it. It's like well, not like what I said, well, consumers don't care about brands, they don't want to engage with them. Essentially, by saying that we want to be nice and engaged, essentially, you know, I'll be essentially overstating our importance as brands in consumers' minds and lives. And so, you know, think about what manifests from working like that is, we're sort of chasing the wrong thing and, okay, we're having conversations with people, but it's about stuff which is irrelevant or of no commercial value. So, you know, there was posts about zodiacs and, and what's your favorite audio book and which is your favorite steering wheel?

Chris Norton: 30:39

I mean, it's a question I've asked myself a lot of times which my favorite steering wheel is, though? Yeah, me too but it's cheap.

Will Ockenden: 30:45

What you're talking about there is some cheap engagement for the sake of engagement, which, which is fine.

Chris Norton: 30:49

If you're just measuring engagement in a silo, it's it's pineapple on a pizza or pineapple off a pizza, isn't it?

Will Ockenden: 30:55

there was a phase in social of um everyone sharing cat videos about eight years ago. Wasn't there cute cat videos which did amazingly for engagement?

Mat Thomas: 31:02

but if you sell, if you're, you know if you're a range, rover, sport or apple, it's no good at all to you so I think that's where, for me, we got it wrong and, um, it took quite a long, you know, time to to sort of change that and I think the team was great, really really good, really touted much, but for me I think that's a mistake. It's just like don't do this stuff. As you say, yeah, you'll get the engagement, but I don't think there's any commercial value and I think you know a great example of this is the Queen's death, when lots of brands started posting ridiculous things about RIV and all that, and you know that's just silly.

Chris Norton: 31:45

What was that example of the Queen's death.

Will Ockenden: 31:48

Didn't Lego, do it.

Chris Norton: 31:50

No, I won't go on Lego. There was somebody, like there was a brand, that did it, and everybody just went in hard on them going. What have you got to do with?

Will Ockenden: 31:59

Oh, wasn't it a kebab shop?

Chris Norton: 32:00

Yeah.

Will Ockenden: 32:00

Some kebab, yeah, royal kebabs.

Chris Norton: 32:03

Yeah, that's it Back. Some kebab? Yeah, royal kebabs. Yeah, that's it Back in the day.

Will Ockenden: 32:07

There's actually a very good Facebook page which you've probably seen called Condescending Corporate Brand Page and basically it's a Facebook and Instagram page and they call out brands doing that kind of cheap engagement content that's got nothing to do with their brand.

Chris Norton: 32:19

Will features on it quite a bit.

Will Ockenden: 32:20

Yeah, I'm on it weekly. So back to social then. How do you measure the effectiveness of social media then? Now you know what does success look like to you and how do you kind of map that against your broader organizational objectives.

Chris Norton: 32:36

Please do not say 5 million followers on Facebook. 5 million followers on Facebook.

Mat Thomas: 32:42

Now I think this is a really difficult one. I am more concerned about the brand objectives rather than worrying about individual channels. It's for me, when I think about the channels, I want to think about what they're delivering for us and is there great attention? That, for me, are the fundamentals I'm most interested in. So, when it comes to social, okay, yes, we track engagement, but it's not a primary focus For me.

Mat Thomas: 33:19

The key things which I get the team to think about is are you getting reach? Are you reaching a lot of people and also our target audience? Secondly, is it the right content for that for those audiences? Um, but fundamentally, it's about, you know, it's ultimately about reach. I go back to our objective, salience and so therefore, I don't want to be just fixated on just trying to talk to, you know, to maybe lonely people that have just where I reach a lot of people, um, and build the brand. That, for me, is the is the fundamental thing. So I'm less worried about the whole thing. About engagement, I appreciate it's important in terms of driving reach, but it's not a primary focus.

Chris Norton: 34:07

Okay, and talking about a successful campaign, you were working at Toyota when you did the warranty campaign. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because it was quite a dry subject area, but you turned it into something that was hugely successful, right, yeah, yeah, no we were really proud of that.

Mat Thomas: 34:25

So the context of this, so the warranty campaign, so within after sales, which is a profitable part of the business, we really wanted to address the decline of number of cars which were coming back into centres and I was the driver of that, because it's essentially coming in to bring your car back to a tight center was perceived as expensive. So the value chain team developed from this a proposition where if you bring your car back to a center, say it's a five-year-old car, you will get an extra 12 months warranty, extra 12 months warranty. Um, so brilliant proposition. And we developed a campaign which was very, very successful.

Mat Thomas: 35:12

It's very hard to kind of attribute what did what in terms of driving the success, but in terms, you know, the advertising obviously plays a big role in that, but we saw like a huge uplift within cars coming back to centers within a very short space of time, up by sort of about 30%, 40%, wow. So you know, really, really good. And we also you know every agency loves an award we won a Marketing Week award which was fantastic, amazing, really proud of. I think you know for me the kind of learning with this. You know the point you you alluded is car servicing is not an exciting, isn't really an exciting area, but you can turn something what's quite boring into something quite exciting. The crate is brilliant and we're yeah really proud.

Chris Norton: 35:58

Well, car car servicing is expensive wherever you go, so the fact that you managed to turn a campaign to grow by 30 to 40 percent is is amazing.

Will Ockenden: 36:06

That is, that is quality so with that, you know, without the fact that people think it's expensive, was that an assumption or based on um customer understanding? I know that's based on reset okay, so you would identify the kind of customers objections or pain points and then address that, and I suppose that's an example of a really strong proposition. That is so strong, almost, that a lot of the heavy lifting is done already, isn't it when you then have to market that and communicate that?

Mat Thomas: 36:32

you're absolutely right. I mean, if you think about it within, like the sort of the four p's, now that's the product you're selling and you know, without a strong product you haven't got anything, um. So so, yeah, you know, it's really, uh, finding the right proposition. We've got that absolutely right. We start what then?

Chris Norton: 36:51

yeah, you know, that's really cheap, we're not going to success what advice would you give to somebody wanting to do marketing in the automotive sector if they were looking to get into it next year? What? What's the hot tip you can give them to get into the sector?

Mat Thomas: 37:07

I think for marketing, you need to have some training, you need to have a good foundation of knowledge of brand management and media, I mean as well. Well, I think, to consider, within automotive, the budgets are pretty high. So you know you have a lot of responsibility of managing such big budgets and, um, so you know you've got to have, I suppose, that experience.

Will Ockenden: 37:42

Um, yeah, I think that'll be like my first so matt, um, a number of our listeners will be in in not necessarily similar sectors, but they'll. They'll operate in the kind of the premium space, whether it's, you know, fashion, whether it's watches, whatever it might be. What, um, what are your kind of key lessons, then, for any marketer in that kind of premium space? And then we talked about things like customer understanding. Definitely, you know, we talked about those kind of strategic partnerships where you align with something that speaks to their interests. You know, what would you say to those, um, those premium brands that want to cut through in the way that lexus has?

Mat Thomas: 38:17

well, firstly, thank you for the compliment, um. So what would I recommend? I think the key one for me is around making sure you've got the basics right. First off, make sure you really kind of diagnose the market, the customer understand, really understand the customer. You know, in premium segments you've really got to get it and understand what's going on, and I can't answer enough how important that is to really understand the customer. And then, yeah, for me then it's about having a very, very tight strategy and I think really spend your time on those things before you start worrying about instagram and tiktok and and so on. Um, it's really invest your time in in those first two stages. That would always be my advice.

Chris Norton: 39:22

It's worse I'd say that for any brand, um, but yeah, so you've been on the show now, matt, you've, you've, you've asked, you've answered our questions a lot of them anyway and but the question for you is, if you were us, who's the next person you'd get on this show to tell us about their history in marketing?

Mat Thomas: 39:45

wow. So people who aren't quite interested in moments I read quite a lot um. You know, uh, orlando woods.

Chris Norton: 39:55

I think he's absolutely fantastic, um he's a bit of a genius as well, isn't he?

Mat Thomas: 40:00

yeah, um, have you? Yeah, I see we've never interviewed rory sutherland he'sutherland, he's on the list.

Will Ockenden: 40:06

He's on the list.

Chris Norton: 40:07

Rory and Sir John, I'm coming for you.

Mat Thomas: 40:09

Yeah.

Chris Norton: 40:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mat Thomas: 40:11

I just read Alchemy. Actually, it's absolutely fantastic. I love listening to that in the car too. It's just yeah, it's incredible. It's also Marketeers. It's really hard, it's really hard, it's really hard. I don't want to single someone out and then make they call me and go why, did you say that, no, I'll, I'll sneak with those okay, that's fine, that's good.

Chris Norton: 40:35

Rory's a good shout, because he's one of my. He's like in the top three that I want on the show. Yeah, yeah. So thanks for coming on the show, matt. Matt, if people want to find you online, how can they get in touch with you?

Mat Thomas: 40:46

So I'm on LinkedIn, matt Thomas Lexus. If you search for that, you'll find me. Yeah, drop me a line if you want to connect and chat. Love to meet.