Chris Norton: 0:00

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast that asks marketers to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets and how it made them the professionals that they are today. I'm Chris Norton, and I'm joined today by one of our clients, graham Clark, director of Marketing at British Wool. The British Wool Brief has been a challenging but brilliant one, and we talk all about marketing a legacy brand and the different tactics that we've deployed to bring the message to the masses, including a campaign with Love Island's Farmer Will. We're taking things from pop culture to agriculture today, so sit back, relax and enjoy, and let's hear all about how you market wool to the UK. Hopefully it won't be woolly. Enjoy, graham Clark. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Um, so, graham, for those that haven't met you, why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got started out in marketing?

Graham Clark: 0:55

so I guess it was by mistake. Really, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think all I knew I wanted to do when I was younger is to wear a suit to go to work, which?

Graham Clark: 1:04

it's quite ironic. It's quite ironic. I can't remember, but last time I wore a suit and I hate wearing a tie, so we all wore them back. Then we did, we did back in the day and um, so that was always my sort of ambition, I guess you could say so.

Graham Clark: 1:17

I went to, went to university to do a general business degree because I didn't really know what I wanted to focus on and marketing pricked my attention while I was doing it. It was sort of did everything like law, accountancy, and the marketing part really did stand out as something I was quite interested in. So I specialized in that in the final year in the course and obviously marketing back then was very different to marketing nowadays in terms of I didn't have a laptop, there was no, no internet, and it was very, very different to sort of books, libraries, old-fashioned stuff, actually reading stuff instead of there's no way, I had to write a dissertation, you have to do it yourself. So yeah, it was a different world. I mean it's not that long. Well, it is quite a long time ago actually, but it's like 25, 30 years ago and 30 years. So much happened, hasn't it in 30 years with technology and everything to do with that, but not always for the better as well.

Chris Norton: 2:11

Yeah, because we're similar ages and I started out in the dot-com boom. My first year's job was in the dot-com boom and I worked at a tech agency and they hired 100-and-something staff execs. I was one of like 30 in this, like a cohort, and literally within 18 months there was the dot-com crash. Yes, great timing, so a load of them left quite swiftly. I remember the era of, like, the BBC's website being launched Because, like September, the 11th, I remember. Do you remember that? Yeahth, I remember. Do you remember that?

Graham Clark: 2:45

yeah, I remember watching that live on. It was very slow, but on the internet that story broke on um.

Chris Norton: 2:52

The reason why I remember it's because we were in London and it broke on the BBC's website when the website was pretty new and it was like um, it had like a ticker tape. It sourced the style of the ticker tape and it said there'd been like an accident, a plane had crashed, and then it was like loads of rumors, like the weather plane and but all the pre that was oh yeah the internet was coming out totally and you never had it at home.

Graham Clark: 3:14

I didn't have the internet at home for years. So even after that it was sort of it's quite nice actually, because you could. You could get away from work because you didn't have access to emails on your phone. So, yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't sort of 24 7 like it is nowadays. So that was that's sort of one of the one of the negative things I guess you could say. But that's the world we live in nowadays. You've got a marketing degree.

Chris Norton: 3:33

You're like one of the a person in working in marketing with a marketing degree, which is quite a thing because there's not many of them no, I guess not.

Graham Clark: 3:40

No, it's um, yeah. And then, when I'd finished that, I did a diploma while I was working, because I was always keen to yeah. Yeah, that was a lot better than my degree, I'll be honest. I think it was a lot more practical and it was harder as well, to be honest, but I guess it's because you're working at the same time as you're doing qualification. It's never easy, is it? And then I topped that up to a master's couple of years later, because it's just something I always wanted to do, just as a sort of from a personal achievement kind of perspective. But again, none of it was digital marketing. I've got a degree, a postgraduate diploma, and a a master's in marketing, and never once did we touch on digital marketing, because have you done any training in regards to digital marketing?

Graham Clark: 4:25

since one or two bits, but a lot of it's just sort of picking it up on the job and sort of working with agencies like yourselves, and you do pick it up, I think. For me it's no different to any other channel for marketing, it's just. It's just a different channel, isn't it? It's the same kind of scenario as traditional advertising, traditional pr. It's just a different channel with a bit more specialisation. That's why I always look at it anyway.

Chris Norton: 4:49

So what were your first couple of jobs in? Because you worked in furniture, right?

Graham Clark: 4:57

Yeah, so first job was a big kitchen manufacturer and we used to supply into the private sector so big house builders, the public sector, so social housing and also the retail market as well. So it was quite a broad customer base B2B, b2b yeah, so it was quite interesting. It was like again, working in those days was very different to working in now. Some of the things that used some storage you'd get from that. You would never get away with it nowadays, some of the people we worked for. But it was good, fun and it sort of helps build your character. And I worked in three different jobs while I was there on different aspects different markets were selling into. So it's really good broad experience and worked with some really good people, some really knowledgeable people, and still got friends who I worked with in the first job, because it's quite different when you start working to sort of when I guess you're the boss. It's a bit different, isn't it?

Chris Norton: 5:47

and when. So so how long were you there?

Graham Clark: 5:49

I think it's about six, six, seven years. So it's really good, really good ground in all aspects of marketing. And then I moved on to a another role, which was sinks and taps, so again a similar kind of field. Um, how have they gone?

Chris Norton: 6:04

from furniture, sinks and taps to kitchens.

Graham Clark: 6:07

Well, yeah, exactly it's a massive it's a massive segue. So so yeah, did that for a couple of years and then moved on to a joint.

Chris Norton: 6:15

What was big marketing in the sinks and taps world then?

Graham Clark: 6:18

a lot of it was working with sort of the national retailers and looking at their strategy and getting products into them. It was like a lot of my jobs in the marketing have been sort of a sales and marketing kind of role, so I've got quite a lot of experience on that sales side and account management I guess you could call it more than sales. So it was working with some of the bigger, biggest, bigger retailers and looking at how they were positioning the product point of sale, that kind of thing and making sure they had the right products for market, for the consumer as well. So so it was quite it was interesting to a quite an interesting time, um, but that lasted two years and then moved on to the role before, prior to the one I'm in now, which was um doors, again very, very, very, very exciting. So and you've got carpets, and now I've got carpets, one door opens and one door closes, yeah, exactly.

Graham Clark: 7:08

So that was there for a good few years, probably seven or eight years. That was quite a good time to work there really, because we were penetrating new markets and it coincided with the sort of financial crisis which was a nightmare at the time, but we were getting into new markets at that time so it didn't affect us as much. We were still growing, which was quite unique a business like that in those times. So we were selling a lot into builders, merchants and also national retailers as well. So again, it was really good broad experience. A lot of that was account management, but also marketing as well and basically making sure we had the right products. A lot of product development was quite important and drove a lot of the growth.

Chris Norton: 7:43

I guess you could say what sort of channels are you selling?

Graham Clark: 7:45

doors in. So independent retailers a lot of independent door retailers who sell doors and and increasingly online was becoming a massive thing and that and that posed its own challenges in terms of working on lower margins to bricks and mortars and and all the challenges that go with that. So it's quite complex from a pricing perspective and the structure of the pricing to make sure you weren't undermining your core customer base. But massive, huge, explosive growth online in that sector at the time and again we had to be on top of that and make sure we were in all of the different channels and being represented, I guess as well, but also into people like Wix and people like that. So they were a big, big player in that market at the time and working with them on more of an account management role, I guess you could say.

Sinead Morrissey: 8:30

You've mentioned, obviously, the changes in the industry since you started. I guess something that Chris bangs on about quite a lot is bringing back the coverage boards. So back in the day you used to create coverage books and coverage boards for every client and we did one recently for a client and they actually really loved it. But is there anything else? Is there anything from that era that you think you did better back then?

Graham Clark: 8:54

Analog. Analog era wow.

Chris Norton: 9:27

Definitely not databases that run CD-ROM. No, don't bring that up?

Graham Clark: 9:32

No, no, no. And CRM systems were a bit flaky back in the day, weren't they as well? So a lot of stuff I've done is like product development, so it's more practical stuff, isn't it, in terms of developing new products and maybe a bit of research here and there. What about CD Photography? I thought photography was always. Photography evolved quite a lot in time as well, so we used to have to do a lot of photography sets traditional photography sets and building sets and things like that, which used to take ages and cost a lot of money. But it's all CGI now, and that's been a huge, huge change in terms of the photography side, I would say, because all the products I've sold probably prior to this role I'm in now have really been relying on really good photography and lifestyle photography so the consumer can visualise what that product's going to look like in their home. And yeah, traditional photography I saw some fun and games with joiners back in the day, building sets and whatnot. Yeah that.

Chris Norton: 10:28

My God, I remember photo shoots back in the day with like acetated photographs and things like that.

Chris Norton: 10:33

Oh, yes, you used to have to go in the dark room and shout at you if you walked in, especially when you're doing a press shoot. One of the first press shoots I had to do which I don't even know if I've told this story on the podcast they were like, because I was the exec in London, it was like we need an actor or we need someone in a picture and it was an eBay competitor. So there was eBay com boom. Remember eBay, ebid, ebidder, I think there was as well. There might even be an eBidder now and we worked on a site called Auckland which was like a news. I think it was an American bidding eBay competitor. It was pretty big at the time and one of the whole the whole theory to get the visual across that it was like you could get anything anywhere on this site was they wanted to do an Aladdin's cave. Obviously you know what's coming. So they made a whole Aladdin's cave set and I had to dress up as Aladdin all day.

Graham Clark: 11:31

Have you still got the image?

Chris Norton: 11:32

I haven't actually. It went in one of the consumer glosses, it'll be somewhere. I don't ever want to see it ever again.

Graham Clark: 11:38

I used to use my kids on photoshop sets so if they wanted like kids photography for that lifestyle aspect, I used to use kids all the time, my own kids all the time, cheap labour it was a full day, like a full day.

Chris Norton: 11:50

Oh yeah, I used to like it it was good fun.

Graham Clark: 11:52

Yeah, you were all there planning yeah delivering it.

Chris Norton: 11:55

It was good, I think those I mean you obviously still do shoots, but there's a lot more it's more on location stuff, isn't it, than nowadays same video, yeah god, video was so expensive back in the day yeah compared to these days where it's a lot cheaper.

Chris Norton: 12:11

Okay, so why don't you tell us a bit about your current role then? So you currently work. Obviously you're a client of ours. I've been a few years now, yeah and um, you work for british wall. Why don't you explain to the marketing people listening who are british wall and sure, what we do, yeah, what you do, yeah so we're pretty unique.

Graham Clark: 12:28

Actually, it's sort of a very different business than most businesses really, which is quite exciting. So we work on behalf of farmers. So we're like a farmers' cooperative, if you wish, and there used to be a lot of farmers' cooperatives down the years, but we're the last remaining one and we work on behalf of around about 30,000 farmers across the UK and we basically sell their wool for them, on their behalf. So we aggregate the wool and we hand grade it, so we basically classify all of the wool that comes through and then we sell it into an international market. So that's one stage of what we do and that's one of the more important stages what we do. But we also work with brands as well.

Graham Clark: 13:05

So we try and bring brands on board to use british wool because we want to drive more demand. The more demand we drive, the better price we can get for our farmers for their wool, because all our profits are returned to the farmers. So it does no like um faceless shareholders that we're reporting to. We're reporting to 30 000 farmers and our board of directors is full of farmers as well. So everything we do is for the farmer. So we work with about 170 175 brands, downstream brands that are using british, and we do things like training, we do joint collaborative marketing things, as we've done with yourselves quite a few times in the last few years and that's all about increasing awareness of british wool but also driving that new, new demand for british wool as well. As I said, if we can drive that demand, we're going to increase the prices because that demand will come through our auctions, where we sell the wool and we're at record prices since 2018.

Chris Norton: 13:56

Well, since 2018, yeah, record price, yeah, we're not.

Graham Clark: 13:59

We're not where we need to be. I think it's fair to say I think the returns have been really poor.

Chris Norton: 14:02

I mean covid decimated as it did with a lot of markets.

Graham Clark: 14:06

It just decimated the market and it's been a long road to sort of recovery. We're not quite there because there's still a long way to go in terms of getting that farmer's price up, but we are making progress and I think we've been through some really difficult times in terms of the market and the demand and hopefully-.

Chris Norton: 14:22

Globally as well.

Graham Clark: 14:27

Oh, globally as well. Globally it's a global it's and it's a global commodity as well. So we're competing against other global wool. I say competing, we don't because wool's small. So in the context of the global market, wool's about one percent of all textile fibers. So it's it's very small, so we don't compete with other fibers, other wool fibers, but there are other fibers. So new zealand wool, you know, much bigger than an art, than our clip, so our price is really linked to a lot of that global commodity kind of side as well. So yeah, the global market it's not just us.

Chris Norton: 14:53

The global market has been difficult and one of the things that fascinated me when I started working with you is like how we encourage people to buy British wool, because British wool it's like buying British beef right, like encouraging people about the quality of the products. So how can somebody, if they're out there thinking I'd love to buy? But we've done campaigns on it, haven't we? About how people don't know what? That's some of the campaigns we've done. People don't know what they're wearing. They don't know where the product's from. They don'd know if you were wearing a satin shirt. Yeah, different fibers you don't really know, yeah, synthetic.

Chris Norton: 15:29

You don't know if you're wearing like an australian or new zealand wool or a british wool. How can somebody spot that if you're just a layman?

Graham Clark: 15:37

so this is one of the issues we've had is that people, because something's made in the uk and it's made out of wool, people are, well, it must be british wool.

Graham Clark: 15:44

It's not always so we've. We've got sort of unique kind of label logo that we use and it's got like a iconic crook mark, which I think was 1972 when that was created. So it's got quite a lot of legacy on that logo. So we encourage licensees. Our licenses will be our brand partners that are using British wool to actually use that logo on their products. So the consumer's seeing it and all of our consumer outreach campaigns, which we do a considerable amount of consumer outreach, mostly with yourselves is sort of pushing that logo as well. So people are actually looking for that logo so they know if they're buying a product that's got that logo on, that profit or the profit that's there is going back to the farmer and they're supporting rural communities really to keep on going, keep and that's the message that I think, because there's a lot of messages on wool like and we've discovered like it's fully sustainable.

Chris Norton: 16:33

Yeah, it's good for the sheep to be sheared, because they need to be, otherwise, it's yeah, I'm a welfare lots, of, lots of things.

Graham Clark: 16:39

You don't know how many people like jeremy clarkson gets me watching farming shows and he's been great for, you know, for raising that awareness of farming and raising that awareness of how difficult it is as well. You know it's a really tough job and working ridiculous hours, but not a lot of money no, exactly. And I think we should be appreciating farmers more in terms of the food they're producing and, you know, if it costs a little bit more, it costs a little bit more. The farmer's got to, got to make a living and we don't appreciate it. We don't appreciate things. People don't, unfortunately, but I think with people like clarks and bringing it to that, it's really high profile. He's done a great job at raising that awareness of farming and issues that go with it as well and that's been great for our campaigns as well, actually, hasn't it't it?

Sinead Morrissey: 17:25

I think he's brought that conversation forward. Definitely. That's really helped some of the campaigns that we've done, particularly around when we've worked with farmers to kind of raise that awareness in terms of how skilled they are and how valuable they actually are in the community A lot of the sort of insight that we've referred to, and we've managed to bring it to the consumer and resonate more with them because of that program and because of the fact that jeremy clark's has done so much around that conversation yeah which has really helped us to kind of get the messaging out there.

Sinead Morrissey: 17:58

and I think one of the things with british wool is that this it's great from a marketing perspective because there's so many different touch points, but also people kind of struggle to get their head around the concept of British Wool and who you are, because it's quite a you know there's quite a lot of moving parts. It's complex, it's quite a complex organisation.

Graham Clark: 18:18

It's not what you call a normal organisation, it's quite a complex. We operate across loads of different touch points, as you say, and on the supply chain, but also the consumer side as well. I think it's not just Clarkson as well. If you look at TV mainstream TV now there's a farming program on every night, which again is great. You've got, you know, farmers that have turned into influencers and TV stars in their own right.

Chris Norton: 18:40

We've worked with a few, haven't we?

Graham Clark: 18:41

Yeah, which is great. I mean, we did a campaign with Farmer Will, didn't we from Love Island a few years back? And again, it's really good that profile and them.

Sinead Morrissey: 18:50

Supporting British Wool and getting a British Wool message out there really helps, and programs like Great British Sewing Bin We've worked with Patrick Grant a lot Just all of that kind of fits within the key messaging that we need to try and communicate, which is sustainability, isn't it?

Graham Clark: 19:03

And I think that's the message we're trying to get, without sort of being too evangelical. It's getting that message out to the consumer that they should be looking at what they're buying. We all should be looking at what we're buying. We shouldn't be buying fast fashion. We shouldn't be buying a top that you're going to wear once and then chuck away. It ends up in landfill and microplastics end up in the ocean and there's more awareness. We did some research with yourselves and looking at Gen Z's attitudes towards it and saw that longevity was coming out really high scoring. Now, whether that translates itself to the actual purchasing decision is questionable, but hopefully it will over time, and I think there's a lot can be done legislation-wise as well. So taxing sheen and all that products and the thousands of things they make and gets discarded and people don't wear it. The quality is questionable. It's a massive issue, not just in the UK but globally. It's a massive issue. It's a huge issue.

Chris Norton: 19:55

Is it harder to sell British wool when we're going to be in July next week?

Graham Clark: 20:02

It is in clothing. Yeah, definitely.

Chris Norton: 20:03

You're not going to hang around a wool jumper in the middle of summer if people are thinking well, actually I'd like to back british farmers and I'd like to buy, but I'm not buying a bloody jumper, no, no, what. What sort of? What sort of other product type things can they buy that are british wool, and how do they know about that? Is it the same?

Graham Clark: 20:19

logo yeah, same logo, and it goes into all sorts of stuff, so it goes into a really good application. Is sleep. So bedding, mattresses, toppers, pillars wool's fantastic. It regulates your body temperature. It and it does. It's absolutely amazing.

Graham Clark: 20:32

So I sleep, obviously, cocooned in wool, and, if I am aware, we'd work with you on quite often. It's a great phrase. It's one of our, one of our customers has sort of come up with that and it's right. You cocoon yourself in wool. Yeah, if you think about if you're sleeping on polyester, on plastic, basically, you wouldn't wrap yourself in plastic and sleep. You'd be sweating, wouldn't you? So every time I go to a hotel now they've also got cheap bedding it's always synthetic. You just sweat all the time. It's absolutely awful, it's horrendous, whereas with wool you don't, because it regulates your body temperature. It does the same when you're sleeping as it does to a sheep. You know a sheep doesn't get wet. A sheep doesn't get hot, it doesn't get cold. You know that. That fleece regulates their body temperature and it does exactly the same when you're sleeping. And it sounds weird. That wool you all seem to keep you warm. So well, I'm not gonna have wool. I going to sleep on wool in summer but it regulates your body temperature so you should be sleeping with wool and I would say it's a cracking use.

Graham Clark: 21:31

We also go a lot into carpets as well. It's a big because of the kind of wool we've got in the UK a lot of hill and mountain wools. It's really tough and really hearty. You can imagine the stick the sheep gets from a weather point of with rain and cold and snow and whatnot. So it's really hearty wool. So that goes into carpets, into residential carpets, but also contract sector. So it goes into things like cruise ships, hotels, convention centres, casinos, that kind of thing. But I think probably the most iconic thing it goes into that everybody will know because they'll have sat on it is the upholstery on the London Underground underground. So that is all made in yorkshire from british wool and it's uh, the manufacturer of that?

Chris Norton: 22:14

is it camira camira? Yeah, weirdly they were a client of ours as well. All right, that's really good, really good work for them really good company.

Graham Clark: 22:21

There's loads of british wool and it's. It's such a fantastic, iconic sort of usage. Isn't everybody's sat on a tube, haven't they? And sort of sound racial. And the reason is to do that is because it's robust and it lasts and it's comfortable and you don't you don't be replacing that every five minutes and it does last.

Sinead Morrissey: 22:37

It's, it's very, very durable do you think the consumer has actually made the switch to purchasing for longevity and being willing to spend more? Because I think we see so much reported on that in the news and obviously our research does kind of lend itself to that, but do you think that that is actually what's happening?

Graham Clark: 23:01

Maybe in certain areas, I think, because a lot of it comes down to cost as well, and you know we've been through sort of a cost of living crisis and so we're still in that, really, and the retail market's been so depressed for such a long time and not everybody can afford it because it's not cheap. You know it is more expensive To shop sustainably. It's more expensive in the short term, but it's more than an investment, so you could buy. I've got a jacket that I. I've got a jacket that I like, a Harris Tweed jacket that I've had for I don't know, about eight years now. It looks exactly the same. You know, the kind of thing that never got out of fashion. I'll have that for the rest of my life probably Buy cheap, buy twice.

Graham Clark: 23:34

Exactly exactly, and it's always about sort of just thinking about your purchases. You know, think about something. If you're going to wear it once, what isn't it? It's daft, isn't it? It just ends up in landfill. And you know, we can only have so much landfill.

Chris Norton: 23:47

Yeah, I can't imagine there's many British Wall products on Timu, is there?

Graham Clark: 23:51

No, no, no, no, they last forever they really do. And also it biodegrades. So if you did have a, it actually biodegrades, which is quite a cool thing about. Well, it biodegrades, but it also if you wash it. We've all with the Attenborough documentaries on microplastics in the oceans. Everybody knows about that now and that comes from synthetic. They say synthetic. Synthetic is plastic and it's making that distinction that synthetic doesn't sound as bad as plastic, but it's exactly the same thing as plastic. It's the same. I don't think a lot of consumers make that link or necessarily know that, but that kicks off sort of microplastics and they all go into the ocean and that's a lot of, along with the plastic bottles a lot of that which't they they do and and people say, well, what can I do?

Graham Clark: 24:47

and it's like, well, what you can do is not buy plastic, not buy synthetics. You can't avoid plastic, let's be honest. And we're never going to replace that because there's not enough wool globally or cotton available, so we're never going to replace it. But it's just sort of shifting the dial a little bit, so we are thinking about the environment. It's uh, yeah, it's quite frightening what we're doing to the planet, isn't?

Chris Norton: 25:08

it is managing. I mean most. Most cmos or heads of marketing have to manage a board. You have to manage a group of of farmers is that is that challenging to? Because will they understand the term? I mean, you understand the terminology when we give you our kpis from the stuff we're doing? Do they understand your KPIs when you're presenting to them? Is that difficult?

Graham Clark: 25:33

It can be, but again, it's sort of explaining it in. You don't want to use all the marketing lingo and we all use. We need to cut it down and say what we're actually doing and I think we need to tell the farmers. It's difficult to communicate with the farmers because there's that many of them, but we do have. We've got a dedicated team that's sort of our member engagement team that communicate into the farmer all the time and sort of giving them the key messages about British wool, but also communicating increasingly what we are doing at the front end, because it's key that the farmers see that we are trying to create new demand. We're doing an awful lot at that front end. So yeah, it can be challenging. I think communicating to any stakeholder in a business can be challenging, can't it? But yeah, it can be challenging, but no more challenging than, I would say, any other organisation.

Chris Norton: 26:20

And you've changed your strategy as well. So you've now moved to direct to consumer as well. So you can people can buy from you online. Do you want to just talk a bit about that and how that's grown in terms of the amount of skews and stuff you've got on there?

Graham Clark: 26:32

yeah, so that was really um, because we're doing a lot of PR campaigns and we want to direct, for the call to action is obviously to buy more products, as all marketing campaigns call to actions generally are. So we wanted to create sort of shop, a one-stop shop that just purely sold British wool, because a lot of the people we work with they'll have a British wool range but they might sell other products as well, so we don't be pushing demand for other products. We need to push demand for British wool. So the idea was to have that shop that was purely British wool products. So it started with I think it started with about 15 brands on there. I think we're up to about 33 now. That's good and now our licensees. So the aim behind that is not to make money, which sounds crazy, it's to break even and it's all about increasing brand awareness and adding value to the people that we're working with the brands that we're working with.

Chris Norton: 27:22

What's the URL so you can get it on our website In the description as well.

Graham Clark: 27:25

Yeah, and get it on our website as well. I mean, our website's massive because we've got that many different stakeholders. I think if you want to understand how complex British Wool is, if you just go to our homepage and we've got about six different mini websites off it and, yeah, complex.

Chris Norton: 27:40

Yeah, but you're telling the story clearly, I think the sustainability piece about it being good for the environment. It's like you're investing locally in local rural communities. That's what I like about the brand. There's no downside really to it, other than it's a little bit more pricier than buying a synthetic top.

Sinead Morrissey: 28:00

I think when we started working together, the biggest thing we struggled with was communicating with journalists on who british wool are and it's there's kind of no, there's there's not really a consumer friendly way to put it um, and that's probably what we struggled with to begin with. Um, but I think I've noticed that. I'm hoping you would agree, but in terms of brand awareness, there has been a huge shift, particularly probably in the last year or so, in terms of when we are reaching out to people, they know who we are, they're using our research, they're coming to us now. Would you agree that you think in the last couple of years there's been quite a big shift, that people are much more interested in that traceability side of things?

Graham Clark: 28:48

as well. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you just have to look at our sort of generic inbox, for you know, every day we're getting inquiries from the press, inquiries to go on TV shows and stuff like that. That's increased massively over the past couple of years, and we did some brand awareness measurements as well, didn't we?

Graham Clark: 29:03

in the last 12 months and it had increased by I think it was 7%, which is great, and we had metrics saying that. I think it's 29% of people recognise our logo. That's pretty, you know, for a company of our size we've not got huge marketing budgets, so I think we're probably punching above our weight from that perspective.

Sinead Morrissey: 29:19

to get that kind of consumer awareness is pretty impressive, I think, impressive and I guess, even looking at like the coverage that we've managed to secure recently, like british vogue and the broadcast coverage as well, you just did something with country file and I think the conversation is there, isn't it, and it's just finding the right way to get british wool involved in it and then so, out of our campaigns we've obviously done quite a lot over the years. Are there any in particular that you would kind of deem the most successful or the ones that you most enjoyed working on?

Graham Clark: 29:49

I think they're all. Most of them have landed, haven't it to be fair, I think. I think it's um. I think the side of the bed one was quite funny because it was quite. That was one of the first it was one of the first ones we did, wasn't it, and it was sort of like a bit tongue-in-cheek, wasn't't it, but it really did land.

Chris Norton: 30:02

The news headline was about getting out the wrong side of the belt.

Graham Clark: 30:05

Yeah, I think it was sort of like are you more bad-tempered on the right or the left, or something like that.

Sinead Morrissey: 30:10

Yeah, but you can compare the left side of the belt. Don't send that to America. You'll end up getting all sorts of political confusion.

Graham Clark: 30:16

Oh God, yeah, heavens forbid. Yeah, we original the nationals, didn't we? It's fantastic, yeah, I think the one we've got coming up for the um our 75th anniversary. So this year is our 75th anniversary and we're doing a lot of open days and a lot of um sort of activation campaigns. So we're hopefully going to get some really good coverage on that because, again, it's a really nice hook, really interesting, and there's a lot of history and people like that provenance, they like that history, and we've got some amazing stories to share with people as well.

Sinead Morrissey: 30:45

Yeah, all of the content that we've got for that one, I think, speaks for itself, so it'll be exciting to see how it lands. But we've now kind of built like a network of people as well, haven't we, in terms of influencers and celebrities that really back the brand, so that's quite nice to be able to lean on people like that for this 75th anniversary and Shaun the sheep.

Graham Clark: 31:07

I mean what an amazing, perfect hook up.

Chris Norton: 31:09

I mean we wanted to get him on BBC Breakfast, but we can't figure out how to get him he doesn't talk, so well, they got Peppa.

Sinead Morrissey: 31:16

Pig on ITV well, not Peppa.

Chris Norton: 31:19

It was her mum, wasn't it?

Sinead Morrissey: 31:21

yeah, which is just a whole we did a whole podcast on that.

Chris Norton: 31:24

make sure you go back to that. It doesn't sit well with me. Yeah, yeah, which is just a whole. We did a whole podcast on that. Oh yeah, thanks for getting back to that. It's fascinating. It kind of works.

Sinead Morrissey: 31:27

It doesn't sit well with me, no, yeah it's a bit weird, isn't it?

Graham Clark: 31:30

Yeah?

Chris Norton: 31:31

It was very weird, which is why we did a podcast on it, the Shaun the Sheep thing.

Graham Clark: 31:35

for us, though, it's got such massive reach, and I think when manager shawn the sheep, looking at their sort of target audience, and instinctively you think kids. But it's not just kids, it's all the parents that have grown up with it and have got a really positive connotations of shawn the sheep, and so they're the sort of consumers for wool nowadays as well, so it's a really positive thing, and they're celebrating their 30th anniversary this year as well, at the same time as our 75th, which is perfect. So so we are looking at doing a few things. We're looking at some kind of charity Christmas jumper that we're working on at the moment. So there's quite a lot of things in the pipeline and we've done it.

Graham Clark: 32:10

We did a carpet activation thing, which is going really well. That's in a lot of carpet retailers across the UK. One thing it has helped us do is get that reach on social media. So we're looking the other day at sort of the aggregated views of the content, and it's well over half a million, and that's only from three different pieces of content massive one thing I would say about social media is if you've never checked out anything to do with british world, check out, uh, sheep of the week.

Chris Norton: 32:35

Oh yes, sheep of the week. It's iconic, it's iconic.

Graham Clark: 32:38

Yeah, and dare we be late? I'll miss it, we'll love it they do they do it. We've had that for years. I mean, that was in place when I started, I think eight years ago, and it's just grown and grown and grown and, as I said, if we miss a week we're in trouble.

Sinead Morrissey: 32:53

We started doing Sheep of the Year as well.

Graham Clark: 32:55

Sheep of the Year. Yeah, why weren't you thinking? About doing a calendar at one point I think I think we've got that many things on.

Chris Norton: 33:03

I think it would be yeah, we could do well on that so we've got a couple of mistakes to talk about before we I mean a couple's not bad in nearly 30 years, is it so everybody's made mistakes apart from somebody that I invited on the show about three months ago and they said they've never made a mistake.

Graham Clark: 33:19

I was like you're not, they're just setting themselves up for a massive mistake there. Yeah, they are. Of course they are.

Chris Norton: 33:25

They'll drop me another message a bit later, so why don't you tell us the story about your high quality brochures?

Graham Clark: 33:32

you produced. Yeah, they're amazing, really glossy and top end and beautiful photography. Spent an absolute arm and a leg on it what year was this? Oh goodness, this will be 20 years ago, maybe 20 years ago. So back in the day, brochures were massive, weren't? They brochures were the main form of communicating, particularly B2B as well before websites before websites. Yeah, back in the day yeah, that's what replaced brochures isn't it?

Chris Norton: 33:57

websites, yeah, brochures because you used to get a company. If you were interested in them, they used to send you the company brochure.

Graham Clark: 34:02

Yep, and it was just. It was always stressful.

Sinead Morrissey: 34:05

It was all stressful printing, it wasn't it you still get that in some industries like kitchens. Yeah, well, you need to, yeah it's tactile, isn't it tactile products?

Graham Clark: 34:14

so, yeah, we did this. I think it was about 50,000 catalogue site quality, high gloss, cost an absolute fortune and unfortunately, unfortunately we put some old lady's phone number on the back of it and not our phone number. How the hell did that happen? I have no idea. It was a one-digit out and it was like oh no, the MR phone and this poor old lady getting all these phone calls and we had to employ a team of about half a dozen temps to come in and overstick it.

Sinead Morrissey: 34:41

Was the typo you.

Graham Clark: 34:43

Well, not me personally, but yeah, the team I was working in, obviously, I must admit, though, ever since, ever since.

Chris Norton: 34:50

Boxes is 50 000 brochures. Oh god, is this?

Graham Clark: 34:53

a stock room full of yeah, I love a lot of brochures. Yeah, yeah, it took them a long, long time to have a stick of them, but it was cheaper than getting them all reprinted. It's just that feeling of it's just gut-wrenching feeling. When you realize what's happening, it's like, oh my god. And then you look at it. It's like it is wrong. I wouldn't have missed that?

Chris Norton: 35:09

how many phone numbers did she get? How many phone calls did she get?

Graham Clark: 35:11

she phoned us within 48 hours. I think she'd had about 20 phone calls. Uh, she wasn't best off being a sunset.

Chris Norton: 35:18

Keep going because there's nothing. Once they're out there, you can't in them because you couldn't do it.

Graham Clark: 35:23

Now you could change the website.

Sinead Morrissey: 35:24

You've already handed out 1,000.

Graham Clark: 35:26

You've got 1,000 people Potentially, you're still going to ring it for them. I bet this is a mistake that most marketing people have made.

Sinead Morrissey: 35:33

There are a lot of typos.

Graham Clark: 35:34

In some way or shape or form.

Chris Norton: 35:36

We interviewed another. Weirdly, we've only had a few clients on here. You're one of her first roles, rachel for huthway. She was doing a big exhibition down in um excel and she had then they did a 60,000 pounds worth of uh right in the center of excel it was one of the biggest things and they'd done it. And she, uh, worked for a big software as a service company and it said software in massive letters all across, and it wasn't just on one side, it was on each side and they were there.

Chris Norton: 36:15

This was in the first hour that one of her team told her and we were like what did you do?

Sinead Morrissey: 36:22

it's like a three day exhibition. You just have to be anxious for the next three days. Can you imagine how much time did you do? Did you like it's like a three day exhibition. Yeah, so you just have to be anxious for the next three days. Can you imagine it? How?

Graham Clark: 36:27

did you sleep Awful, awful. I mean because you don't do when you've done something daft like that because it's easy. It is easy to do and you can't. If you proofread in a brochure, you you're not going to spot it. I think ever since I've done that I've been so paranoid about printing stuff. I think even to the extent that back in the day when I was a bit younger, I used to proofread stuff on press colours and stuff like that because it was quite colour critical, even phoning that phone number from the press just to 100% make sure it wasn't the mistake we were going to make. Again, it does make you a bit paranoid, it does make you a bit paranoid.

Chris Norton: 37:03

I mean, yeah, we've all made typos in the press releases and all sorts of things. Okay, and the second one, the second one of your two mistakes you've got when you did a mail merge. I'm not going to lie, I've got probably 10 mail merge errors where it's merged, the wrong.

Graham Clark: 37:19

Yeah.

Sinead Morrissey: 37:19

So you'd say like what's a mail?

Chris Norton: 37:20

merge. That's your first marketing mistake. What's a mail merge? That's your first marketing. What's a mail merge? Yeah, seriously.

Graham Clark: 37:28

So like oh my god, gen Z's looking at me as well, taking it from Excel and putting it in word, basically as a in a letter format oh right.

Chris Norton: 37:37

So for instance, let's say let's say you've got a thousand people in a database and you want to send an email, a one email, to a thousand people in back in the day you might even use for those. If you're older, listeners might remember when you used to have to do a mail merge for the labels, oh yeah, and it would do the labels for the posting. So the main, the idea, is that you could connect word or outlook to to excel and it would look for the sort look for way, and then it would. So it says hi S, look for way. And then it would say it says hi Sinead, but everyone's done it wrong way. It says hi British wall.

Graham Clark: 38:10

I accidentally, I mean, you might take the wrong box or delete a column by or delete one bit. So, I think I'll just miss.

Graham Clark: 38:18

I don't know what I've done in Excel but it had misaligned all the names and the company names so we'd sent it out to all like massive customers. How many customers are we talking? Oh, it's probably I'll be two and a half thousand, I would have thought top of my head, so quite a lot. It was a decent do. Some whack of people and all the names are wrong. And they obviously they knew where the competitors were, so they were getting with with the competitor's name on it but their company name on it awful well, you have the competitor's name in your email yeah, well, it wasn't an email, was it?

Graham Clark: 38:48

it was a, it was, it was a printed one. So so it would say so, say you're my competitor, would say, dear chris from british wool, and it was like and then you, obviously the new other competitors were we've got some right irf phone calls from customers you don't even know our name I'm still confused that you we said you sent a new, a letter from.

Chris Norton: 39:07

Do you understand that?

Sinead Morrissey: 39:08

so you sent a letter and it had the customer, so it'd be like their first name.

Graham Clark: 39:12

But then yeah, we added their full name, but the competitors the details.

Sinead Morrissey: 39:17

Details yeah, details in there that you shouldn't have said no, no, it was just an address.

Graham Clark: 39:21

It was not. It was there was no company, it was a generic kind of communication. There's nothing confidential in there, but nevertheless Q phone calls and I just died when I found it Because that literally was my mistake. That is the one I will fess up to. I had nobody else to blame for that one. But again, we didn't have chat, gpt, we didn't have Google to Google out or do a mail merge. You had to figure stuff out back in the day and uh, yeah, well, that's my excuse.

Chris Norton: 39:49

And I'm sticking to it with that, like when you did stuff wrong, like now, like people. Even even five years ago, before ai, you had some sort of problem with meta or you know, if we were talking recent social media you could kind of google it, find a site, then look through the forums, find the answer. But even before now, ai just gives you the answer straight off the bat.

Graham Clark: 40:14

It's miles easy, isn't it?

Chris Norton: 40:15

But back then it was like, oh, I've screwed this up, this is broken. What do I?

Graham Clark: 40:18

do? There was no YouTube no no, no. No YouTube.

Sinead Morrissey: 40:21

Yeah, God, I won't be able to get through the day, no, without being able to ask you a question. No, you just figured it out.

Graham Clark: 40:25

Yeah, it was good. It was well, it was good. I'm surprised there wasn't more mistakes. Well, I'm sure there was.

Chris Norton: 40:30

No, it's probably pushed them aside. Yeah, we haven't got all day.

Sinead Morrissey: 40:36

How do you feel that consumer perception has changed over the time together?

Graham Clark: 40:41

I think it's increased, doesn't it? I think you know, from looking at the brand awareness metrics that we use, which is obviously one of our core kpis, prior to sort of working with yourselves, we had we were getting our licensing scheme sorted first. So so the brands making sure we're working with the right brands who were actually using pretty sure, and not other brands, which sounds sounds quite basic, but that was a massive job in itself, and setting a scheme up that basically tracked that wool usage through the supply chain to be a licensee?

Sinead Morrissey: 41:10

is there a minimum amount of wool you have to use in a product?

Graham Clark: 41:12

50. So it has to be minimum 50 because a lot, of, a lot of stuff does get blended so we have to be practical and commercial on it. So it's 50. But if you look at most jumpers and things like that with brit, british wool don't get blended. They do tend to be 100%, and bedding as well tends to be 100% British wool. It tends to be the carpets and things like that that get blended for cost reasons more than anything else. So we needed to get that sorted first, because otherwise we'd be pushing consumers to products that maybe didn't have the right levels of British wool, which is a waste of time. So once we got that sorted out, then the proper consumer outreach started. When we started working with you Get Yourselves, I think it was was it four years ago now? Maybe four years ago and yeah, it's increased massively. I mean the amount of coverage we've had in the main. You know the top titles in terms of what our kind of target audience are looking at, but also regional press coverage as well.

Graham Clark: 42:02

I think some of the stuff we've done on regional radio, yeah so it's quite an old, an old-fashioned medium, but it's really effective because people listen to regional stuff and and you're in the car, it's a captive audience, isn't it? You can't escape it, you can't. You know people aren't knocking it off and it. I think that's really quite strong and something that maybe people neglect nowadays. We it's all about social media, but I think those kind of traditional channels are really quite important still as well, particularly when we're targeting. A typical target audience for us will be probably 40 plus a bit more disposable income, and I think they are more attuned to those kinds of channels as well, as well as social media, obviously.

Chris Norton: 42:39

So how can people find you, graham, if they want to get in contact with you after hearing this and thinking, god, I want to, I'd like to use british wool. How can they get hold of you?

Graham Clark: 42:47

me personally, yeah, linkedin linkedin.

Chris Norton: 42:49

Yeah, yeah, what do you just?

Graham Clark: 42:50

graham clark linkedin yeah, graham clark, british wool linkedin and what's the british wool website?

Chris Norton: 42:54

it's britishwoolorguk okay, cool, um, thanks for joining us, no problem, thanks for inviting me cheers Thanks.