Career beginnings in PR

Chris Norton 0:00

This show's all about fuck-ups , right , so we could get into the good stuff that you're doing today . I wanted to go right , take you right back . So we were just talking before we started recording about where you started your career , and you actually started in Leeds , which I didn't know for a start . Vicky and I were talking about it with you , weren't we ? And you started at a company called CalPR , right ?

Christopher McKay 0:20

Yeah . So I started so I trained as a journalist and then I went into a bit of freelance journalism , realised there was absolutely no money in freelance journalism at that point . So I ended up kind of just looking for a role and was offered a job as a PR assistant , pr exec at CalPR so literally just three doors down down the road from here . That was a really great insight into actually understanding consumer PR . But unfortunately the office shut down so it ended up moving off to london .

Chris Norton 0:51

I went from kind of cow pr uh over to ministry

The Bob Sinclair French lessons idea

Chris Norton 0:53

of sound . So , and during that time , obviously you've you've shared something and you did . You , you worked with um , the french dj bob sinclair . What happened ?

Christopher McKay 1:00

come on , fill me in so I think I was in that mindset when I kind of went over to ministry of sound and kind of in my own career , of going like creative idea got an idea .

Christopher McKay 1:09

I'm just gonna run with it , I'm just gonna absolutely go full steam and , um , I think the bob sinclair moment for me was probably the the real turning point of going . You might have an idea , but before you just go off and do it , maybe just do a bit of due diligence . Look at some data , work out some analysis of what's working and what do people want . So he's a French DJ . He was coming to the club . I thought , oh , wouldn't people love to know like translations of things people say at the club in French . So let's do he's quite a character as well , isn't he ? Yeah , he is , and he's , like you know , french lessons by Bob . So we , you know , had cameras . We created like little white boards and chalkboards it was , I think , at that point and he would kind of do little French lessons . So there was this 10 part series that I'd had set up after the first two how long did this take you to yeah and ?

Christopher McKay 1:59

what channel you running this ?

Chris Norton 2:00

on . Yeah , I was running it .

Christopher McKay 2:01

So this was predominantly through Facebook at this point .

Chris Norton 2:03

So that was our biggest platform . Like a Facebook Live , or was it before that ? No , it was Facebook .

Christopher McKay 2:07

Post . So this was just literally just Facebook Post .

Chris Norton 2:10

Welcome to French

Learning from campaign failure

Chris Norton 2:11

with Bob . Yeah , and that's it .

Christopher McKay 2:12

And it had like , if you imagine , probably like a cartoony style , kind of like graduation hat on and things like that a bit of a theme behind it . I was loving it , I thought I was on to a winner , um , and then what I quickly realized was that actually you know 18 year old people who love just going to the club . They don't really care about that , they just want to see really good pictures of the nightclub and people partying in the nightclub .

Christopher McKay 2:35

So I posted my first one . Um , usually we got around about 800 to a thousand likes at that point per picture . This one , I think 50 . That literally bombed and I sat there with my boss going oh well , let's just give the second one a try and see .

Chris Norton 2:55

Second one went similar how much time did you spend on doing it ?

Christopher McKay 2:57

I probably spent a good couple of weeks , however , I think you could have just been ahead of your time there because on . Tiktok now with that Gen Z audience .

Chris Norton 3:07

Yeah , french with Bob , let's bring it back . That's pretty good . Let's bring it back . You were just 10 years too soon . She's right . She's got a point . I think you were , yeah , ahead of the game .

Christopher McKay 3:14

Yeah , I like that phrase , I think , instead of a fail , just a bit of an early adopter innovator , but I can imagine that yeah yeah , when you've put your heart and soul into something and you think it's gonna work so I posted it .

Christopher McKay 3:28

Yeah , bombed twice um and then just had to cull it . Just literally had to pull it um and I think that's kind of for me going . I went in with an idea , just brainstorm some ideas , kind of didn't even check , going what people want , what's the content people are engaging with um , do a bit of testing , let's see what people actually want to see . And then , yeah , it was probably my worst campaign I've done .

Insights before creativity

Chris Norton 3:51

Well , the truth , the moral of the story , there is test , test , test test , isn't it ? Because if you test , whatever you test , not everything works . And you've tested something and it didn't work .

Christopher McKay 4:01

And just doing a bit of . You know , look at the data before you come up with an idea . You know , I think again we can get really caught into doing creative brainstorms , but insights got to drive a lot of it and I think I've I've really transitioned into understand the insights and then let that lead the creative brainstorm yeah um , instead of just going straight in with what ideas everyone have and picking a very subjective , which one do we really like ?