Chris Norton: 1:04

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: 1:24

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: 1:55

I went from kind of cow pr uh over to ministry 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: 2:04

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: 2:13

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: 3:03

what channel you running this?

Chris Norton: 3:04

on. Yeah, I was running it.

Christopher McKay: 3:05

So this was predominantly through Facebook at this point.

Chris Norton: 3:07

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

Christopher McKay: 3:11

Post. So this was just literally just Facebook Post.

Chris Norton: 3:14

Welcome to French with Bob. Yeah, and that's it.

Christopher McKay: 3:16

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: 3:39

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: 3:58

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

Christopher McKay: 4:01

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: 4:11

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: 4:18

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: 4:32

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.

Chris Norton: 4:55

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: 5:05

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?