SPEAKER_03: 0:51

Imagine handing in your notice at a top PR agency, ready to launch your own business, only for a global pandemic to hit within weeks. The stock market crashes, uncertainty is everywhere, and you're left wondering if you'll need to ask for your own job back. That's exactly what happened to today's guest, Daryl Sperry, co-founder of Hard Numbers, the London-based agency built on one clear principle demonstrating marketing impact with the data. Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the podcast that helps you grow your brand faster by learning from the slip-ups and hard lessons from the world's top marketers. I'm Chris Norton and my mission is to help you, the senior marketer, turn other people's mistakes into your own advantage. Today Daryl joins us to talk about the dangers of misjudging data, why agencies need to prove an ROI better than ever, and how he navigated launching a business in the toughest year on record. We also dig into generative engine optimization or GEO, you might have heard AEO as well, and what it really means for PR and SEO professionals alike in 2026. Daryl will share the career mistake that still makes him wince, why failure is the foundation of success, and what marketers must do now to avoid being left behind in this AI-driven future. So, as always, sit back, relax, and let's hear how you can stop obsessing over vanity metrics and start focusing on those hard numbers that actually matter. Enjoy. Daryl Sperry, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

Oh, thank you very much, Chris. Thanks so much for having me on.

SPEAKER_03: 2:30

So you've got a palm tree in the background. Where where about see whereabouts do you live? Down the south coast, yeah?

SPEAKER_01: 2:36

Yes, yes, in sunny, sunny Bournemouth on the south coast. Uh and uh anyone yeah, uh down here they always say, Oh, Bournemouth has a has a microclimate. Uh you wouldn't know that today. It is absolutely pouring down with rain.

SPEAKER_03: 2:50

Nice. So do you do you spend a lot of your time travelling to and from Bournemouth to London then? Or do you just do anything from Bournemouth?

SPEAKER_01: 2:57

Yeah, so um I'm probably in London. Um I'm increased it recently, so I'm going to be in London sort of two two to three days a week uh now for about the last kind of year or two. It's probably just like one, one or two days a week. Um it's the challenges of my um partner Rachel has a very successful um accountancy business that specialises in dealing with creative services firms called digits. So she's very busy. I've obviously got hard numbers and you know that that keeps me busy. Um and then we've got two kids, um two young kids who are who are four and six.

SPEAKER_00: 3:33

So um between the two of us, the the the juggle of you know, two businesses and two kids done off, keep you keep you keep you busy.

SPEAKER_03: 3:42

I'm completely the same, mate. Completely the same. So yeah, we I've got two I've got two kids, but one was just 18 two weeks ago. So uh he's now driving himself around. So yeah, it's uh I but having two she my wife's got a business as well. She's a biophilic designer, so she designs gar she designs like gardens and stuff for schools and in in uh so she's got quite a successful business in that area. So well, it sounds like you and your partner, your wife, have got the ideal thing for magic numbers, because magic numbers you must have that the those that pillar talk must be riveting when you want to talk through accounts and balance sheets, right?

SPEAKER_01: 4:21

Oh god, you you name it, right? Yeah, between magic digits and hard numbers. Uh funnily enough, I talked about it yesterday. We um it's my dream that one year we do the you know the world like Excel championships or whatever, right? Because I think I've got a very high XL user level, right? And uh so's so's Rach, obviously, given her job. And I'd love to go toe-to-toe with her in a like an XL off. Right? Right, okay. Interesting. Who could do, you know, the the more you know complicated link model, you know, V Lookup, you know, all the rest of it, tables, you name it. Who can who can do the who could do the better spreadsheet? I'd love to do that with her one year.

SPEAKER_03: 5:02

So so so I mean that that's fascinating because I've I've seen you speak of we've known each other online for years, but we've never actually spoken before, which is weird because I feel like I do know you because I've followed you for ages and been connected.

SPEAKER_00: 5:15

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 5:17

I know what you're about. So to for those of you who don't know you, you started an agency in 2020, is that right?

SPEAKER_00: 5:22

During the It is, yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_03: 5:23

Um during this something was a small thing going on, something called COVID. Um you started you started it then, did you? And how and how how was that starting in the middle of the pandemic?

SPEAKER_01: 5:35

Well, so I worked at I had four very happy years at Hotwire beforehand, and I handed my notice in on the 14th of February on Valentine's Day. Um it was when when there was this thing called, you know, like there was a kind of quite a limited understanding of of it at that point. Um, there was a couple of people wearing masks on the tube and stuff. Do you know what I mean? It was it wasn't really, and then within obviously, I don't know, four, four or five weeks or something, it was everywhere. And then there was that day when like the stock market, like, you know, absolutely cratered and Bitcoin went down to 3,000 bucks. God, I wish I bought at that point. Uh, and all sorts of other all sorts of other stuff. Um and I did I genuinely remember sitting there thinking, am I gonna have to ask for my job back? Because I was kind of on my like you know, notice period, seeing out my notice with hot wire or whatever, and um thinking, Am I gonna have to say, actually, change your heart? I'll stay. Um But Paul and I sat down and we we ran the we ran the numbers and you know, ran through that with my with my partner Rach, because obviously it's it's something of a speciality of hers. And and we we built a business model that said, what if we don't win any clients until Christmas? And will we have enough like money personally and enough money in the business and all the rest of it to see ourselves through that? And we were like, Yeah, actually, yeah, we you know, we could we could we're in a very fortunate position that I could do that. Um and so uh went oh gosh, come on then, let's do it. Uh so for first of first of June we opened our opened our doors and um yeah, haven't haven't really looked back. We uh in interestingly enough, uh we won one client in our first month, and then our second client in our second month, and then I think our th third client in our second month as well, and then just kind of snowballed from there, basically, and um yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 7:40

And so you yeah, you you you built through through COVID, and then you you you kind of I like the I like the offer of what you're about because I assume that this is about because we're we're we're based in Leeds, right? So we're the we're one or two, depends on which one you look at, biggest in Yorkshire. And um we um have worked with a couple Stuart Bruce is used to be my uh we used to work together. Yeah, and um Were you another Wolf Star alumni? Yeah, I was one of the yeah core uh yeah, me, I hired Jed Hallam, who was a whole part of my I'll tell you what, mate right back in the day.

SPEAKER_01: 8:16

Jed Hallam, you, Becca Caddy, Stuart Bruce. Yeah, yeah, we had a quite a good team at the time. I mean, that is like a Galacticos of PR and marketing, right?

SPEAKER_03: 8:26

I mean we had someone else as well, Sam Oakley, and we had he ended up creating an analytics company.

SPEAKER_01: 8:32

In in the immortal words of uh of um Bobby Robson, you couldn't buy those guys for a hundred million.

SPEAKER_03: 8:41

Well well you you founded in 2020, so you're founded in which is what I was coming on to. So we we founded Wolfstar when there was only We Are Social, yeah, and then we were the other one, and so and then more spouted up as we and and then off the back of that I set up prohibition 15 years ago uh because there were still not that many uh and set it up to do integrated, but then about I don't know how long ago, when the Barcelona principles came out, we looked at impact and measuring impact and all those sorts of things, which is why I love the art the the focus of what you guys do, uh which is about delivering impact to a client, right? And and impact in numbers, which uh which are I do though think that is quite a hard discussion. Uh it's probably different for you because you're called hard numbers, and if someone's gonna hire you compared to us or whatever, they know what they're getting. They're gonna be about the hard numbers. So um is it a difficult conversation to get them to give you access to their CRM, their their uh GA, and so you can then justify the work that you're doing and the result that you've got?

SPEAKER_01: 9:44

No, um uh not normally. No, I mean the what the one thing I would say, a coup a couple of things I would say. One, um the the more mature the business, like the later stage, you know, the businesses or whatever, the the harder it is to get hold of their GA or whatever, or the more gatekeepers there are, or you know, the hoops you've got to jump through or whatever. But I I don't I I'm just trying to think, and I don't want to I like hard numbers, so I don't want to give you a a wrong one, but I I think in five years and more than a hundred client engagements, I think there have been two instances where we haven't been able to get access to GA um Google Analytics.

SPEAKER_03: 10:26

Um CRMs though is different kind of fish, right? That's gotta be harder.

SPEAKER_01: 10:30

Even then, I mean, we're only when I mean that this is the thing, right? Like it's a bit like almost everyone gives us access to their GA and search console. Yeah. But then if they've got internal tools, like they're maybe using SEMrush for rank tracking or hrefs or something like that. Well, you know, um, they might not give us access to those because someone might have set it up in a particular way, or they might, you know, whatever.

SPEAKER_03: 10:59

So then there's like license feed, uh yeah, and yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01: 11:02

So then we we have our own SEMrush and our own hrefs and stuff like that. So we might have to set them up as a project on those. Um, you know, and so then it's sort of like, you know, you go down like it's a it's a like like with anything, it's a hopper, it's uh, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a funnel and it gets smaller and smaller down the bottom. But um yeah, with CRM again, I mean we have anytime we've made a case that it, you know, that it makes sense for them to give us access, we've been able to get it. That we there's there's not been an instance where but but in working with over 100 clients, the number of clients where we've had direct access to their CRM and via API we're pulling that data into our Look at Studio dashboards is you know um like less less than 10% of our people. Oh, okay. You know, that's interesting. But we're doing all the other you know, if you've got access, I mean the big unlock is GA. If you've got access to GA, right? You know you can, you know, referral traffic from links we've placed, um, you know, form completions or you know activities on uh I can't remember the nomenclature in the new version of GA, but you know what I mean. Like basically Oh, everybody hates the new GA, don't they?

SPEAKER_03: 12:19

Nobody likes it. I was I was um I did advanced GA, I used to give GA training. I remember uh Andrew Bruce Smith's been on the pod a few times, a good friend of mine. And um I've known him, we used to speak at some of the CIPR conferences, and and when he used to talk about GA, he went to another level and I'd done advanced GA. Now I open GA and I'm like I don't even know where to start. I don't GS4, you need a specialist to like create your reports for each bloody one. You need a you need a GA specialist now.

SPEAKER_01: 12:48

I think they need that to drive adoption of Look at Data Studio because basically you need Lookadata Studio to use uh GA4 now. I mean there's you you know, whereas before you could just use all the the the charts and charting tools and everything that would natively and it it just worked, yeah, and you could get it just about anything you needed to get. So I just think they did it to drive adoption of of Look at Data Studio.

SPEAKER_03: 13:14

I mean everybody slagged them off for that. I thought they got that wrong. This is um this is fascinating talking to somebody. Well, I find I find it interesting talking to PR agency founders because we we just joined so Prohibition has just joined WorldCom, right? Which is um the big the U the world's biggest independent PR agency network around the world. We were invited to be on it as part of um there's only three no two, two, we're one of two UK. Um they only take three per country or something. And um, yeah, it was just fascinating to me because I never speak to other PR agency owners, because in Yorkshire we all sort of we've all got our own, we're all competing against each other, if you know what I mean. Whereas when I speak to somebody in an in a completely different um like you and Bournemouth, I don't have many clients down in the Bournemouth area, do you know what I mean? And it I found it fascinating to hear that everybody's got the same problems and issues, and uh when you it's it's quite a cathartic experience. It's well, I mean, why the hell did I launch a podcast called Embracing Marketing was there? It was because uh people sharing things that are uh cathartic, but you never actually get candid chats, which which is quite fascinating to me. So are you you're all your guys based in Bournemouth or are you based all over? Are you in that how do they do it?

SPEAKER_01: 14:26

We're we're almost I mean, uh almost all of our full-time like employee, you know, employed staff are based in London. Um we have some freelancers or whatever who are who are you know a bit more dispersed than than that. When we started off, actually, we um shout out Harry, he was one of our first uh 10 employees, he was based up in Manchester. Um, really, really great, uh, really, really impressive young man. And we um had wanted to try and build a little Manchester, you know, agency. Then sorry, a hub, you mean like a Manchester hub. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh we did we looked at Sheffield as well at the same thing. Um and in in both instances for myriad, you know, reasons um that I won't bore you with, we we ended up kind of not pulling the trigger on that stuff. But um, but yeah, uh yeah, so but everyone's based in uh the the majority of the team are based in central London and then um yeah, I'm down on the south coast. I make we are uh we have we share an office with the park, they're another um they're an experiential agency, they do Mondays, uh Wednesdays, Fridays, um, and we do Tuesdays, Thursdays, and it works. Oh, okay. That's clever. I never thought about that. Like sharing an office. Yeah, I'd I'd I'm amazed more people don't do it. Because if you look at if you look at um, you know, no one wants to be in an office five days a week, right? And so if you just find another agency and then just think, okay, well, why don't you we'll have it two days a week, you have it three, or we have it three, you have it two, or you know, whatever, work it out.

SPEAKER_03: 15:59

I need to have a think about that. I've never actually thought about that. That was because we yeah, we have I mean, it was Friday today, we're recording on a Friday, and I've got about 15 people in out of 28, 29, whatever it is. Um, but Wednesdays is our day when we're all in. Um, but we yeah, it's it's fascinating because it used to be everybody was in every day and now they're not. Um and everybody's going through the same boat. So yeah, so in terms of how our numbers today, then, so yeah, I I I like demonstrate impact is like I say, what we do, we do that as well with our clients, and um we try to make sure we're doing that. Um but I still find when um we because we've we've actually worked with a number of SEO agencies, some of the biggest ones um we helped to do their own PR, which is a weird brief, but there you go. Um uh and I still found that with they're looking for links, referral traffic, and all the things that we we but sometimes it's still a bit of a grey area because you know if you you you do some excellent campaigns for a client, and we're gonna get into geo in in a minute and explain what all that is. Yeah, yeah. You still can't control what the competition are doing. So these agencies that promise page one and now probably position on them. It's impossible, isn't it? Right?

SPEAKER_01: 17:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Look, I've but I this is where I think PR folks give ourselves too much of a hard time around data and ROI. Look, uh I I mean that you know I built a business on saying we should be able to do a better job of um demonstrating ROI, right? So I don't want to talk myself out of that as a as a value pop. But just by way of consideration, no one in the boardroom ever asks for the ROI of the great big massive 40-inch flat screen TV you've got to have in the boardroom. They just take it as a cost of doing business. No one ever says what's the ROI for that, right? No one ever says what's the ROI for having a dedicated meet room in a in a in a business? They just take the fact that, yeah, we you know, if we're a business and we're gonna function and we're gonna do the things we have to do. We have to, you know, like there isn't there isn't overobsession on you know finding the ROI of everything or like nailing down that, you know, and and and with all marketing, if you know, do you think that advertising generally, you know, big splashy advertising campaigns are genuinely any better at measuring the impact of what they do than like the the best, if you take the best of PR measurement, right, and put it up against the average um advertising, you know, measurement you know, of what they do, right? Yeah, my contention is we would beat them to within an inch of their lives, right? But we have as a as a as a profession um modesty, like this inferiority complex to other marketing channels, right? Yeah. Also, the other thing I would say though is you know, you and I are both, you know, I mean, look, I have enormous respect for Wolf Star, what Stuart Bruce did, and for the alumni that have come from that. And you look at, you look at, you know, there's a reason why you, Jed, Becca, you know, and other folks that you know were there are as you know, have have gone on to do as amazing things as as you have done, you get it, right? But again, what I always what I always used to say to um Stephen Kemright, it um Rise at Seven, right, is uh you'll if you go toe-to-toe with a top consumer agency, most of the top consumer agencies from London, you'll beat them because you'll turn up and say, Oh yeah, we can get you media placements and we can get you coverage and all the rest of it, but we can also tell you how much referral traffic they drive, how much in what the increase in branded search was over that period of time, how much how many form completions or you know, whatever, or how much product you sold, you know, as a result of traffic that came from things that we did. We they'll do all of that other stuff. We'll tell you the average DA of the you know placements we secured from you. They'll be able to tell them all that stuff. We could tell you, like, you know, over the period of time we worked with you, did you see an increase in you know your ranking positions for either branded or generic terms, and they'll be able to tell them all that stuff, right? Whereas most consumer PR agencies wouldn't have any of that. So Rise at seven, if they if they went toe to toe and if if the data in the ROI and all the rest of it versus uh uh you know some of the best consumer agencies in London, Rise will win, you know? So it's I I kind of feel like it there's this uh there's the what it is, there's this like perceived hierarchy around like data accuracy of measurement, you know, all the rest of it, with different like marketing channels and different different approach uh approaches or whatever. Um I think as a as a as a um as an industry, you know, the the the PR sector, if we really get our heads around the digital impact of what we do, genuinely, and then we report that back to our clients using all of the kind of metrics that I talked about there, then we should be absolutely at the forefront of marketing disciplines in terms of being able to demonstrate some form of positive impact from what we've done.

SPEAKER_03: 22:00

100%. 100%. The problem is, Daryl, not everyone is like you. And that's good, that's good though, for us if you're selling, you know, because there are some brilliant, excellent agencies in the north. In Manchester is a good example when you were talking about that. I imagine that the competition around there is is fierce. There's some good good agencies up there.

SPEAKER_01: 22:21

One of the reasons why we decided not to stay up to job.

SPEAKER_03: 22:23

Exactly. Exactly. So, well, um so we'll make sure we get your mistake in first before we get into GEO. So, what's what's one mistake you've made in your career that you've learned quite a lot from? I'm looking for a nice anecdote here.

SPEAKER_01: 22:41

Chris, I think I love this uh question and I love the the sort of basic premise of the um of the podcast, right? Because I say all the time, I learn far more from my failures than I do from my success. Um and success is ultimately a function of how you deal with failure. Uh I'm going to tell you something that I've never where I failed, where I've never shared this with anybody, and I actually made a point of saying to the team at Hotwire, please who were with me on this, please can you not tell anyone right that this happened.

SPEAKER_03: 23:21

They're the best ones.

SPEAKER_01: 23:23

Yeah. So uh we had the opportunity to pitch a large French-based technology company, France-based technology company while I was at Hotwire. And we did a like creds plus and sent it to them. And uh we then got a meeting in the diary for a pitch. Um but um in that time, I hadn't seen any correspondence from the folks that we were going to pitch, and I um or all we'd uh but we had like agreed who else was going to be in the meeting, and my understanding was there was just like m more people who weren't in the original like creds plus presentation that we did via Zoom. Okay. And we bought tickets to go on the Eurostar to go all the way to France to pitch to these folks face to face. Um we got there, got into the room, sat down. I had we hadn't done any like formal like proposal or whatever, because my understanding of the meeting was the creds plus that we'd done is what we were going to be taking folks through. Oh, okay. They'd sent me a detailed brief of what they expected to see in terms of a proposal or the rest of it, and it had gone into my spam and I'd not seen it. Right. And so I'm dragged, you know, uh an account team all the way to France um to do this, uh to do this, to do this pitch. And you hadn't done the pitch. And we had we hadn't done the like full pitch because I thought it was you know that we were taking people who hadn't been in the first thing through the creds plus.

SPEAKER_03: 25:08

And how many people do you take to to France with you?

SPEAKER_01: 25:10

Oh it's two or three, I can't remember. But yeah. Um the whole day out of the office. It's uh it's the it's the direct cost of the Eurostart for you know, two or three people. Three or four people, sorry. It's the um it's the indirect cost of well, what would we have done all day if we hadn't done you know, done that? And it's a professional embarrassment for me. Like my whole shtick, right, when I was at um was at uh was at Hotwire is I am one of the only professionally trained salespeople in the PR industry. Most other um people that do newbies for agencies are either people that like pitching, so they like, you know, but they don't understand that like pitching is 10% of sales in for for an agency, right? There's all the stuff you've got to do to get into the pitch, and there's all the stuff you gotta do after to like make sure to negotiate a contract, get the right commercial terms for both sides, you know, um all the rest of it, right? To give the confidence that you're that they're making the right decision, you're the right people to go with, dealing with procurement, all that stuff, right? Spend my my life as a professional sales leader doing that stuff, so I was always I have this enormous advantage over these part-timers, right? I'm a professional, right? You do this, you know, you do this is basically a hobby to you. I do this for a living, pal, right? Yeah, and uh I I made that kind of like absolute school, you know, uh error, basically.

SPEAKER_03: 26:50

Yeah, so yeah, but you it went into your spam, right? So you didn't see that. So I can I'm on your I'm on your team here. What can you do with that? So did you not get it then?

SPEAKER_01: 27:03

Funnily enough, we did not. I did I did think though, I was thinking about when you gave me the opportunity to think about other like you know, F ups or whatever that I've done in my career. It's not necessarily a complete F up by me. There was one other story I was I was I I thought about telling you, and I'll but I'll tell it very quickly. It was when I was pitching for um some uh government business, not in a PR role, but when I was at Precise, so basically media monitoring, media intelligence industry or whatever. We were pitching for a it was a government, central government media monitoring service for for one of the government departments, I can't remember which. And I, again, professional salesperson, like to think I'm quite an engaging, you know, person. Like I spent, you know, two ears in my mouth, you listen more than you talk, you'd you know, all the rest of it. But then when you talk, you make sure what you say is very, very well tailored to what someone says. We'd done a really in-depth presentation on what we could do for these folks and all the rest of it, and I that I thought was a really great presentation. And the the lead person that we were we were pitching to when I stood up to leave the pitch on her lap, she had it wasn't even like woman's own, it was like one of those crap, you know, like okay, but not even okay. What yeah, something like that. One of those magazines that and she had it on her lap and she was like turning the pages, she's been reading it the whole time.

SPEAKER_03: 28:31

Oh my god, yeah, that yeah, so yeah. That's that's yeah. Yeah. But I I had one pitch, right? Yeah, and we and I was the I was before I own Prohibition, and I was I had to go as the um leads account director. So we had a London office, we were pitching for a government a government uh contract with procurement, and it's with a dame actually, who was in the meeting or who shall remain nameless. And we we we pitched for the um it was for like uh social uh what's the um disorder, what do you call it? Antisocial disorder. Oh yeah Yeah, yeah, and we we we we were part of that. We created it. Anyway, we were pitching for it, and we pitched this idea, and the CEO finished his thing. I was just the one from Leeds, so I I got to say what we would do, how we would do it regionally, and there's about six of us in the pitch. CEO finished his finished his big spiel, and the client went, Well, I think your campaign fundamentally lacks credibility.

SPEAKER_02: 29:40

I've never forgotten a line, and I just remember going, I'm glad that's not me. It's got to be stressed.

SPEAKER_01: 29:47

Oh my god. Oh my god. Do you know why I and I will give you your segue to optimization if you if you want to have it, right? Yeah. Um, you someone must have come out with this quote before from Michael Jordan. But you know the quote where he says, I've missed 9,000 shots in my career, I've lost almost 300 games, 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and I've missed. I fail over and over and over in my life, and that's why I succeed, right? My view of sales, like professional sales, at my best, I've closed 75% of business I've pitched in a given quarter or year, right? On average, um, it's about 50 to 60 percent like career career winnings for me, right, in the different places I've been, right? So that means 40 to 50 percent of the time on average, I don't win, I fail, right? So whatever professional success I've had in my life is simply a function of how I've dealt with failure. And more importantly, every time I fail, I could tell you all of the pitches we've not won at hard numbers. I probably couldn't tell you all the hundred clients we've ever worked with. If you if you if you held a gun to my head, right? And I can tell you I can remember more pitch bad pitch stories. I could have given you fifteen others, right? Um, than uh than I could remember winning pitches. Anytime we don't win as an agency, I'm uh I look in the mirror first and I go, where like Like 90% of the time we pitch, we should be the agency they should pick, right? 10% of the time we might be the wrong agency for whatever reason, but 90% of the time, but only 60% of the time we win those, right? So there's this period of time where we should have been the agency they should have picked, and for whatever reason they didn't. And the reason is I didn't do a good enough job of convincing them, of demonstrating to them that we were the right agency for that thing, right? And so what I well, every time everything we do is we look, we you know, I will look then at how can we be better? What can I learn from that? How can I be better as a result? What do I then take to the next time we pitch to make sure I'm not in that same position again? Because I hate losing more than I like winning. Me too. 70%. The segue to optimization is right, inherent in the concept of search engine optimization or generative engine optimization, right, is the concept of testing and learning, trying, seeing that stuff doesn't work, and seeing stuff that does, right? A B split testing things, trying new things out, doing a test, failing, all the rest of it. Inherent in the concept of optimization is the concept of failure, right? And so our job is simply to learn like what doesn't work and let's not do that. What does work and let's do more of that? And that is the basis of you know optimization, whether you're optimizing for for Google, Gemini, um, you know, chat GPT or anything else.

SPEAKER_03: 32:53

Well, yeah, because so generative engine optimization or application engine optimization, is that what the A stands for? Or is it artificial?

SPEAKER_01: 33:02

Artificial Yeah, yeah, intelligence optimization payloads.

SPEAKER_03: 33:06

It's all bullshit. It's all invented by somebody, and I remember mobile optimization, which doesn't exist anymore when that came out, and everybody was said you need to have mobile application. Anyway, it's the new term, and it's the new term because it's an optimization for um uh artificial intelligence and results. And what's what's fascinating in this area is that if you look at the Daily Mail statistics, 80% of their traffic has dropped off a cliff. Now, all these media have got to make money by traffic and eyeballs, and suddenly they're not getting it. And the the reason why this jumped into my inbox is because about six months ago I noticed that our web traffic had dropped 50%. Now we rank really well. We've got our sites pretty well optimized for a lot of things. We've always been on page one, position one, sorry, between one and five for everything that we want to go for. We've always we always have been. Uh our traffic dropped 50%, but our inquiries hadn't. So and that and but uh inquiries from uh AI had had gone up by something like 300%, which is from a low base, obviously.

SPEAKER_01: 34:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 34:13

Um so what I've found is there's a lot of people out there struggling to understand what is different and how to to make sure that they're future-proofed right now. Because right now there's a real opportunity if you are doing this stuff to to win right now, isn't there? Not to say it's gonna win it win in future, but uh um because I we you mentioned um Beck Acaddy, Jed Hallam. I wrote a blog 12 years ago, right for people, not for spiders, right? And right now I probably I don't even know if I could find that post. I think it ended up in PR week. And now it feels like that is coming all the way back because actually the spiders are becoming more human, not human, but artificial intelligence.

SPEAKER_01: 34:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 35:00

So is this the biggest opportunity for the PR sector we've ever had? Is the first question.

SPEAKER_01: 35:08

Yeah. I I I I I I yes. I I think for the la in the last 20 years, this is the biggest opportunity for the PR industry, you know, since the kind of you know, um uh algorithm updates of of Google back in the 2010s that you know kind of um Penguin. Uh yeah, yeah, Penguin and high high domain authority sites and stuff like that, right? So, yeah, unquestionably, right? And and the reason I say that is is a couple of fold. Like one is that is how um earn media ranks within you know the the citations from um uh generative engines. So our own research that we did back in November last year, that we're refreshing with our with our partner conclusive, and we're gonna be releasing that in the next um in the in the next like four to six weeks. But our research that we did back in November showed that when you looked at the uh hundred biggest brands in the world and you asked them about their reputation across four pillars so value for money, uh trustworthiness, quality of product or service, and innovation, um, 61% of all of the citation, all of the responses, all of the responses to the prompts contained earned media. And in relation to innovation and um um uh trust, uh, it was uh 67 and 71%, uh so even even higher, right? So um so earned media is a huge source of uh uh information for you know um uh these generative AI platforms. The other thing, oh sorry, Chris, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 36:47

No, I was gonna say it's not just earned media though, it's quality earned media, isn't it? It's like the BBC, it's like the big bot the more qualitative your earned media that you've got, so not essentially not not the high DAs, which you can still game that system, but it it seems to be like the the more well how can I say this in a technical term, more well known media um seem to do to do better. I've read your report by the way. And also the the the Reddit side of things, which I've seen more recently, I've seen that Reddit is coming out more than anything else now for some reason, which which amazes me because there's a lot of rubbish in Reddit. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 37:29

So okay, so on the Reddit side of things, when we did the report back in November, uh uh uh OpenAI had only done the content deal with Reddit in May of that year. And what you've seen, if you look at this stuff, you know, um over time, is month on month on month, um, Reddit content was appearing more and more and more and more in responses from from chat Chat GPT. Now, I have a working theory about this, which I've shared you know elsewhere, is that if you were spending money on this content, it would make sense to algorithmically preference it within your responses to stuff because like of course it would, right? We're spending 70 million dollars over here to get this content. We should be making use of it, right? We should be preferencing it. And um, my evidence for that is there was a uh I think it was iPool Rank did uh did a uh piece of research on um uh 8,000 prompts on Chat GPT, and 5% of all of the content cited uh was um FT content, which in response to questions like what is the best coffee shop, what is the best mobile, what is the best, you know, those kinds of things. Um and the FT isn't five percent of the internet, but OpenAI has a reciprocal content deal with um with the FT. So it would make sense for them in some way to be preferencing that stuff. We have seen though, I mean, only in the last week, um, there was another um, I think it was Prompt, Prompt Tracker, Prompt Monitor, that was the name of the business that did some some research and put it out that said that they'd seen Reddit like full, you know, inclusion with yeah, falling, and Reddit's share price fell. Like like I like I think it was mid-single or high single digits, right? Just on that, just on that day, that one data point, right? So um yeah, it's wild. I mean, this is again, this is why I think this is a big opportunity for us because it's it's that nothing's steady state, nothing's normalized now. You know, it's really hard now to make money off Google PPC, because it's so mature as a channel, and it there's so many people doing it, and there's so much competition for every keyword and all the rest of it. It's really hard to make to make money. The CPC rates are you know really big. It's hard to make money doing that, right? Because it's a mature channel. More everyone's using it, everyone's doing it, all the rest of it, right? Um, we're right at the start of this. Uh so there's this window of opportunity uh that exists now to get our heads around this, to really, really, you know, understand this or whatever, to recognise that there are going to be fluctuations, there are going to be changes, algorithms change, things like that. So we've got to stay across this stuff. That's why you've got to keep keep monitoring these prompts and keep checking it, keep doing the research or whatever. But then there is this huge opportunity, I think, that exists now to get in there. And I think it's also important in the context of what happened last time around with SEO. Because you look at like when the PR agencies didn't step up and make a claim for this stuff, then you had the advent of you know, link all these link building companies and things like that coming into the into the industry, not understanding brand relevance, brand tone of voice, all that kind of stuff, and taking a very transactional approach to earn media and poisoning the well, I think, in in many instances for for you know PR folks, right?

SPEAKER_03: 41:02

I I was talking to a guy the other day, a friend of mine, CEO of a he sold it actually, a big, big, big SEO company, and he said something. I was like, we're talking talk about GEO, and I was it's fascinating for people like me and you that are interested in it, and um I and he said, It's not just that, Chris. It um think think about the big media agencies. Um for people like me and you, Daryl, they want companies that can do PR in these spaces, and they'll go, shit, we need to be doing that now. Actual acquisition, you know, like buying companies that do excellent PR because at the end of the day, we don't do this, we need this in our in our skill, in our locker now. Yeah, yeah. But you're right, you're right with the SEO agencies that jumped in and they created digital PR.

SPEAKER_01: 41:48

But digital PR now is just PR, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, but but but you know, but if you look on TechJPR on any given day, you know, you will any complaint about uh I got pitched by a PR person and it was rubbish, nine times out of ten they're from a digital PR or a link building agency or something like that. They're not actually a reputable PR agency, right? So my contention is complaining here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come at me. I'm I'm stopping the mobile to come in for you now. Yeah, yeah. I'm like the John Snow. Look, there are some uh brilliant digital PR agencies. We can rattle them off, right? Rise at seven, bottled imagination, bottled PR. Um, you know, uh uh uh there are there are a propelling, right? There are loads out there that are really, really good. But for everyone that is good, does good quality work, does it in the right way, all the rest of it, I can point you at 50 that pile it high, sell it cheap. Buy like buy links. Um yeah, buy links, but buy app volume, you know, um at spam out press releases and you know, to irrelevant journalists, media outlets, all the rest of it, do drip campaigns to follow that stuff up, like our meat grinders, right? Um so and and look, the same is true in the PR industry, right? Oh, absolutely, but not to not, I don't think to the same to the same level. And the other thing is by not stepping up and owning this, and then it being our budget and our work and our stuff, these new market entrants basically like it it took budget away from us, yeah, and it also you know was was doing it in a way that negatively impacted our reputation and our perception in the minds of a key audience for us, which are the journalists and the media outlets that we want to be pitching.

SPEAKER_03: 43:43

I mean, journalists, there's just less and less of them every week. AI is just getting rid of them. Is it is it gonna be PR's pitching to AI soon? Uh is it not? This is what this is what I'm worried about. I think it'll come full circle. I think it'll just get better and better. Obviously, um I mean I could talk about I could I could literally do another three hours with you on this, but anyway. Uh uh I know we took tight for time. So yeah, uh you've been on the show now, Daryl. If you were us, who's the next guest that you'd have on the show and why?

SPEAKER_01: 44:16

God, that's a really good question. Um can it be anyone?

SPEAKER_03: 44:25

Anyone that's got a fascinating story to tell that's where they fucked up, basically. Today's today's chat, do you know what today's chat between because we don't have many agency owners on here has made me think I should do a whole bit on a whole couple of episodes on PR nightmares where people share them? I might I might crowdsource that and get a load of people's stories. Oh that'd be brilliant. Oh yeah, right. Okay, so agency nightmare, you know, pitch nightmares or whatever.

SPEAKER_01: 44:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So look, I mean, uh I'm gonna uh I'm gonna I'm gonna probably um talk my own book a little bit here. But um, you know, the year that we started 2020, right? There were 48 other PR agencies that started the same year as us. I think more than any at any point in history, and there will probably never be that many PR agencies that start in one year, right? Um, but there were some absolutely brilliant agencies that started at that time. So you've got Mike Rob and the folks at Bold Space, you've got um uh uh Joe uh Walton at Fight or Fly, you and Charlie and the other folks there, you've got uh Nick from Words and Pixels, uh, and then you've got Gemma um at uh uh Shook, right? I mean, those are four great agencies that all started at the same time as us. They all have very, really innovative, highly differentiated uh propositions in the same way that we do, and and all five of us as agencies have stood the test of time, um, you know, versus when we we set up the other person you should definitely get on the the pod is my missus, um uh Rachel, because she does the P she does the finances for 45 other um marketing agencies and things like that, and so she has seen the financial impact of FUPS world like you would not believe, and she'll never tell me anything commercially sensitive or anything, whatever, but sometimes she'll get off calls and she'll be like, Whoa, yeah, you know, so um she she's uh you know, and she's got a great perspective across, you know, um sectors, yeah. I mean, yeah, across the sectors because she works with influencers, influencer marketing agencies, um, PR agencies, you know, social, you know, whatever. Um, and she's a she's a Washington lass, she's from the Northeast. Um, okay. And so yeah, she's uh she'd be a good person for you to speak to. But um probably talking my book.

SPEAKER_03: 46:52

Daryl, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thanks so much for coming on. If people want to get older, how can they find you?

SPEAKER_01: 46:58

Uh I uh at Darrell Sperry on most platforms. Um I'm probably most active on LinkedIn um out of out of anything. But uh I used to be very active on Twitter, but um Twitter is an absolute bin fire now, sadly. So um I'm probably less active there than I used to be. But um yeah, Twitter, Blue Sky threads, but LinkedIn tends seems to be the the one that I'm using the most at the moment. Cool. Okay, well thanks for coming on, Daryl.

SPEAKER_03: 47:27

That was great.

SPEAKER_01: 47:28

Thank you very much.