Welcome And Guest Introduction

Chris Norton 0:00

Hi, welcome back to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the show that helps you grow through other people's failures. And this week we've got Ben Norman, Strategy Director at Principal's Agency and also host of Marketing 101. I think I might be uniquely qualified for this because I think I'm actually the only marketer who has more mistakes to his name than successors. You know, when you think about it and you think the career that we the career that we have, people go, it's not brain surgery. No one else goes to that brain surgeon. Have you thought about doing it like this? Because my nephew has done a bit of brain surgery. So sit back, relax, and let's hear what Ben Norman has got to say about marketing strategy. Enjoy. Ben Norman, welcome to the show. Okay for having me. I think it's um this is what it's like to be inside a real podcast, isn't it? I wouldn't call it a real side inside a podcast. Yeah. Welcome inside. Well, we've had a good um pre-show warm-up, haven't we? We've covered everything from UFOs, conspiracy theories, um, the capitalist society we're trapped in. Yeah, I think if if anybody does want to get Simulation theory. Yeah, if anyone wants to get a really good opinion on UFOs speak, reach out to Chris Norton. Oh, I love it. I love all that.

Building A Podcast With Room 101

Ben Norman 1:15

I love all that stuff. Right, so uh obviously we've got a podcast, you've got a podcast, and we've been on your podcast about, what was it, five months ago, six months ago? How long have you been doing it? I think it's over a year. Is it a year ago? Yeah, you were like my fourth episode, I think, you guys. And I've been doing it about 18 months away. Marketing Room 101. That's it. So room 101, you put something and banish it away. Marketing Room 101, legally different. You get something in marketing and you put it in a room straight away. You'll never guess what we do. Get in room 101. So, how's it gone in in those sort of year and a half that you've been running it? What what um are there any I mean it's a great concept for a show first of all. It's it seems to have gained quite a lot of traction from from what I can see. It's very broad. I think what what I like about it is a lot of like it puts the emphasis, or what I've enjoyed about doing it is I've got to meet some really great people. Uh, and you guys, I've got um promoted. It's really, really broad. Like the things that people do and the things that people bring along, it's you you get everything from someone who wanted to banish exclamation marks to somebody who wants to banish meta because of the damage it's doing to um the the psychological damage it's doing to children as they grow. So we go everything from ridiculous, um ridiculously serious to completely flippant and everything in between. So um yeah, it's been good. I think you you know, I've had I've had everyone I've had some of your previous guests um we've had a few chats with. I've had people that are completely so so, for example, the likes of Dom Dwight, people like Steve Harrison, um Mick Mahoney, I think you guys spoke for them. Um who's been your best guest, would you say? Oh, it's hard, it's like trying to pick your children, isn't it? But uh so my first guest was somebody who I've been a massive fan of for many, many years. I don't know if you guys are familiar with a guy called Paul Feldwick. Yeah, I know the name wrote a book called Why Does the Peddler Sing. And for me, it was a bit of an when I read that book, it was a bit of an enlightenment enlightenment moment, really, where I realised what how advertising works, how advertising the role it plays in culture, the role it plays in society, why it's actually important for it to be entertaining, why showmanship is as or more important than salesmanship. And so that that's what he outlines in the book. He goes all the way back to the 1920s, I think it was, or maybe before that, when people would go around to your house and they'd knock on your door, and then they these people were trying to peddle their wares, they were trying to sell silk scarves or trying to sell what what uh ointments or they were trying to sell door to door. And what they realized is people would give their attention up if they'd sing a song or if they'd dance or if they'd if they'd offer some form of entertainment in exchange for your time, and then you might buy something at the end. It's like that's that's what advertising is, that's how it works. So it's a long way of me saying so. Paul wrote that book, and I always wanted to speak to him. But setting up the podcast was a reason to reach out to him. And I had the most fascinating conversation with this guy who's been very senior at many agencies for many years, written a couple of books. He's he's one of the greatest minds in the industry. And all of a sudden I'm sat there on a call with him thinking, Jesus, I like I don't really know what to say to him. Yeah, but he was brilliant. So yeah, I I I still think my first episode is special for that reason. Because I got I got to meet meet him, but then yeah, uh there's load loads of them since been some good

Mini MBA And Marketing Basics

Chris Norton 4:35

guests. Okay, and so you you you've been into Prohibition before. Well, we should we should give it a light mention. You are engaged to one of our staff members, yep, who's been here for years and years and years and years. Um, and you came in to do some training on well, but to you know, basically on strategy, right? So you're a strategist, you currently work for principals, right? And you're also, I've got I've got here, you're also a Ritson mini MBA graduate, which I've always been really interested in because obviously Mark Ritson, for those who don't know, writes for Marketing Week. I think he's based in Australia now, isn't he? I think he lives on what's the island? Is it is it maybe not Tasmania? Right? I don't know, yeah. He's somewhere in in rural Australia. Yeah, and he he he's a fascinating guy because I find him hilarious because he just drops F-bombs left, right, and centre. But he's a brilliant mind. So what was the mini MBA like? What did you make out of it? Uh it was great, it was a bit of a pivotal moment for me. And I so I did a degree in advertising design. So I uh I was very much on the communications side. Um I think that's what a lot of our industry become. We we we talk a lot, and a lot of CMOs have roles where it's about communications, and we mistake marketing and communications a lot. And I I'd sort of very much got a degree in advertising, um, and my career was advertising and communications, but I was always fascinated by the broader thing, and and and I know uh going back to talking about reading things like Paul Feldwick's but I'd always wanted to learn and keep learning, but then when I went on the mini, then I was like, actually, I want something that gives me a broader view. And then when I when I did the mini MBA, I realised you realised just how small, just how insigni not insignificant it's a very important part, but just how slim the communications part of marketing really is. If you're gonna do marketing properly, it's you know the I think if I remember rightly, it's maybe 10 modules on the on the MBA. One of them is promotion, one of the four Ps is promotion. Yeah. One section, and that's that that's a slither of it. Like I say, it's a very important point-y-end slither, but what you realise when you do that is it's this process all the way from doing your research, understanding your audience, going through segmentation into then making strategic choices before you ever get anywhere near deciding what you're gonna do in communications. So, what Ritson does in that in that course is I mean, I recommend it to anybody if they are interested in learning. If you want, if you want to add something and tick some CPD credits off or something like that, then I don't necessarily think it's start a podcast, then you start focused on it. Um what what what the course does very well is it gives you that broader view of how what if you are a disciplined specialist, you understand better what part of the discipline or what what part your discipline discipline plays. But it also means that when you're speaking to a client, you understand what they've got going on behind the scenes. If you're a PR expert, you're an advertising expert, you're a even if you if you're a creative execution specialist, you can understand the bigger picture. You understand what you do and how that fits in with it. Yeah. So where does

What Strategy Really Means

Will Ockenden 7:40

well let's talk about strategy? And and strategy is one of those funny things, isn't it? Because everyone always talks about the need to be more strategic, and then you put somebody on the spot, even senior people, even myself at times. What is strategy? And it's actually quite hard to define, and people really struggle with actually developing a strategy, don't they? So I suppose as a starting point, what is strategy? Um, and what are the risks of not having one? And and how strategic are people in general? Because I I have a feeling people leap straight to delivery, don't they? They leap straight to tactics, forget the whole strategy bit. So talk us through that. So, what is strategy and you know uh what are the risks of not having one? It's a good question. And I I struggled for many years with what strategy is and what planning is. Because I think if you were to speak to different people in different agencies, you would find that there are loads and loads of different interpretations of what strategy is. Um and also, even within agencies, people will have strategy in the job title, or they'll call themselves a planner, or they'll call they'll give themselves different descriptions, different roles, etc. And what you find is there is no one single truth because a lot of the time, we'll go going what you just said there, you've got people jumping into tactics. You've got people who are tactical planning specialists who could then call that a strategy. And but often you can have a strategy for PR, but when we talk about strategy in a broader sense, and the way that I I see strategy, the only way I've found that is a neat and clean way of describing it is I'm gonna use my hand, sorry for people that are listening. But over here, at the far end of my left hand for the tape, he's putting his hand to the left. So for the tape, so over here on the far left, you have um a person. That person is a potential buyer of your product or service. Over here on the right hand side, you have a product that you want to sell to those people. So you've got a person that can potentially buy your product, you've got a product off, you've got your product on the right hand side, but in the middle, you have hundreds of people. You have the board of directors at the business, you have a retailer, you have the retailers' decision makers, you have a number of different agencies, you have so you've you've got all of these people, and what those people do, they've all got valid and they've all got roles, etc. But the job of strategy is to listen to all of that, to hear all the noise, but bring those two things back closer together. So you need to create that connection and see through all of that noise and think how can how does this person and this product come together in a way that is mutually beneficial, that is a fair value exchange. Um so the yeah, it's to put that kind of in a nutshell, really, who's the person that we're trying to sell to, what we're trying to sell to them, how can we bring that together through communications to make that transaction happen? And a gre and a great example of that being what? Bring it back. I think you mentioned some Roman war examples uh when when we when he did the training. Yeah, that's so the so so the strategy and tacticos were the so yeah, it comes back to the Greek generals. I don't know if I'm saying that right or not, but ultimately there'd be a host of complaints from your listpronouncers. Yeah, exactly. And that's where the names came from. Because what uh uh and and if you look at a lot of business theory, a look a lot of marketing theory, etc., a lot of it does tend to come back to um things that have been learnt through war or through politics, etc. But what you they found, so back in ancient Greece, they found that they needed two separate roles. So if you had the tactical people, the tacticos, they would command the battlefield. They would command what actually happens. So, how am I going to move these people on this day in this battle in order to come out and win that battle? And that can be as specific as we are going to use bows and arrows to uh to to destroy the uh the enemy's you can tell how to do that. Yeah, or they start moving first and we're gonna respond. Very, very specific. Exactly that tactical delivery isn't and what but what they found is uh also what you actually need is you you need the you need to go back and so so diagnosis into strategy into tactics. You need to start by diagnosing. So if you think of the um going back to the ancient Greek example, you would you would be looking at where you're going to play, where where is the battle going to take place? Who are we likely to be battling against? So you'd build as much knowledge as you possibly can about the about the enemy, data, um data, you're building data. So in a marketing context, looking at so what's the marketplace that we're actually playing in? What is the what does the battlefield look like? Who are we going to be fighting against? What are the um what are the competitors doing? What's the actual objective that we want to achieve? And then that's when you set a strategy. So a strategy is a broader approach to that battle. So in in the marketing context, that is we've done the diagnosis,

The Three Cs And The Bow Tie

Ben Norman 12:35

we've got the data, we've got what we need to know about our. So I always boil down to the three C's. I can never remember the name of the Japanese guy that came up with the three C's as a model. But think about the three, you think about your customer, you think about your competition, and you think about the company and bringing those three things together. So if we this the strategy should be, so you built the knowledge around those three areas. The strategy is the coming together of those coming together of those three things in any context, in any category. I've never found a situation where you can't solve the problem by looking at the three C's. So who is the customer that we're trying to speak to? What do we know about that customer? Have we made a decision about that customer actually and decided? So a lot of people say strategy is the art of choosing what not to do, and then you're left with what you do do. So who's the customer that we're actually going after? Who have we decided that we're not going to go after? What do we know about them? What are their wants and needs, their desires, their behaviors, their attitudes in relation to this product or service? Then we've looked at the company. So what do we, so the company C, what do we actually do as a business that meets the need, though those needs? So we understand that customer well enough to know what they actually want. What do we do in relation to that? But then that's all well and good. But if your answer to that is the same as all your competitors, so that's where the third C comes in. How is it distinctive or different, depending on which side of the fence you sit on with that? But ultimately, if you're just doing the same as what your competitors are doing, whether that's through communications or through at a product level, then you're not genuinely creating value because you're just interchangeable. So we understand what that customer wants, needs. We understand what our company does in relation to those needs, and then we understand what the competitors are doing. So we can create something in the middle, and that is your strategy. Your strategy is what you do in the middle of that, and that's your call it competitive advantage, proposition, positioning, thousands of different ways of describing it. And then you bring in the tactical expertise. And how do we articulate that? Because I mean, I was I was reading examples of um, in fact, I read um Alastair Campbell's book on strategy, which is which is brilliant actually, and is using all of his kind of political learnings into how to articulate strategy. And he he has the same argument, actually, that um even the most sophisticated business people often can't articulate strategy and don't think strategically, and they leap straight to tactics. And I read that um Apple, for example, when Steve Jobs came back for a second time, that the company was in a terrible state, and essentially the objective was survival and the strategy was simplify, and that was it. Yeah, and that was his, you know, and and and and it was arguing that actually some strategy, you know, you don't need 20 pages to try and articulate a strategy. Is that right? You know, should should should kind of you you be able to articulate it on a single page once you've done all of that insight. Uh uh you you should be able to. Um you can't always, because it depends if you if you're it depends on how strong your strategy is. But going back to that point of strategy is choosing what not to do. Apple have always been a great example of this. In fact, on the Mini NBA, Mark Ritson uses Apple as a great example of this when Steve Jobs relaunched Apple and he put three words up on a slide on a screen, and it was, I believe it was simplicity, uh simple, human, and creative. Maybe it was those three, I can't remember exactly. But and he's like, that's a strategy. That sounds dead simple, but the process of getting there, if you if you think of uh to to sort of use another example, that's got me using my hands again and getting a bit uh excited. If you think of it as a bow tie, the diagnosis is a is you've you've got quite a broad thing on this on the left-hand side. You've got lots of information about your customer, about where you want to go, about your category that you're in, all those sorts of things. So you've got this big load of information. To get to the strategy, you distill, distill, distill, distill, distill to a point where you might be left with one word. You might be left what I often like to write is a manifesto. So that would be on a single slide, it might be a couple of paragraphs, but there's also a one sentence version of that, and then if you take that one sentence, you can probably create a single word out of it. But it's something that is a very clear articulation of who we're going who who we are for, what we offer them, and how that may and how that stands out from the competition or all the available alternatives. Um and then it goes out again. That's why it becomes a bow tie, because that's when you then get when you when you've got that, you then get into the tactical execution of it, and then you can have a thousand PR ideas off the back of it. You can have a thousand TV potential executions in TV. You can be thinking about what you do on social media, but what that you've got to have that very clear and very simple. You don't need 20 boxes on a brand passport or a brand house or a brand bloody salad bowl, whatever people want to call these things. You need to just have a very clear articulation of what it is and what you do, and then from that you can start to pick up the tools and start doing your tactical planning. Well, so right when you work with like a big brand, then what are the things that you often um that you're trying to get them to answer before any creative or channel decisions happen? Like what you've just discussed there, you've got the bow tie, you get tight, and then you go, What so what the what are the um what do you do before you make any creative or channel um

Listening First And Field Research

Ben Norman 17:55

decisions? So my process, it kind of varies depending on the client. So listen to the client and find out how they might approach things. They might have a founder who knows everything and they can give me the answers. Yeah. They might have a sales team that are uh clashing with a product team, clashing with so it depends on the organizational setup. My first point of call is always stop speaking, start listening, arrange interviews with as many people in that organization as you possibly can. So speak to speak to them all, absorb everything that they've got to say. Do that on their own, not in a workshop, because then people are freed of um if if they know they're just having a one-on-one chat with you, yeah, they're not afraid of what the boss is going to think to what they say. Yeah, exactly. Um, but also what I like to call speaking to customer connectors, and that's what I was saying before then about sales teams or customer service team. If you're working with an insurance company, the first thing you want to do is speak to the people that are in the call center. Yeah. Speak to, or I I I I've done quite a little bit of work with Citizens Advice over the years. They have people on the front line every day speaking to people that need their help. Speak to those people as much as you want to speak to the marketing team or as much as you want to speak to the CEO, whatever it might be. So start by listening, then ask all of those people, equally, ask your marketing team, ask product teams, etc. Bombard me with everything you have on your brand. Bombard me with your previous campaigns, bombard me with all that stuff, and let me get lost in it for a couple of days, just so I can absorb everything from your point of view. But then what I want to do is go out and actually see and speak to the audit. So it goes back to those three C's. Everything comes back to the three C's. So go out and and speak to, if possible, whether whether it's through quant, whether it's qual, um, whether it's I'm a big fan of um ethnographic research. So I will go into a high street without any um without telling people what I'm doing and just speak to people and ask them questions about that category. I'll go into a supermarket and ask them questions. I'll go into B&Q while someone's shopping the paint shelf because one of our customers, uh one of our clients is Valspar, and I'll just watch people shopping that fixture and I'll ask them questions. You're essentially a retail stalker, is what you're in. I'm a retail stalker. Until security remove you from the building. I've been banned from more retail markets than you possibly can think. And and almost always for work. Almost always. Yeah. Um and then and then look at the cast so and then look at your comp look at the competition and try and take so when we get onto the third C, when we're gathering information, doing the diagnosis bit, try and think of it as alternatives, not as competitors. Because if you think of competitors, competitor to a Snickers is a kick. Yeah. Because that's in the category. That's the stuff that's on the shelf next to it. But try and think of alternatives. My number one alternative to a Snickers is me not eating a snack. Another alternative might be me having a protein shake, because that feels a little bit better. Another alternative might be me having an apple. So we've got Snickers now. Yeah, yeah, just yeah. So try and think about your alternative thing, or the alternative ways to meet that need in that occasion or when that need arises, rather

Knowing When Insight Is Enough

Will Ockenden 21:00

than just thinking about who's the competitor directly. Directly, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how long do we need to spend in? I mean, in an ideal world, just spend weeks in this kind of insight phase, wouldn't you? I mean, that cost you a thought. That cost a brand spend too long. What's the spend too long? I mean, what's the practical reality then? You know, if you if you've got a brief, you know, what is the right amount? Is it is there a right amount of time to spend to make it commercially viable? I I think you you you when you've done this enough time uh when you've done this for long enough, I think you get a gut feel or you get a feel for when you know enough. Um, but also you get a good gut feel from when your client service team start telling you you spent too much time on the job, so you have to move on. But I I think especially when you're speaking to people, once you start hearing the same thing over and over again, yeah, and you there's a dim uh there's kind of a there's diminishing returns on the conversations that you're having. Um Because there there will be those insights, won't there, about a product or a brand that that are shared. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. So what speak to it, speak to people until you start hearing the same thing, until you start just feeling like you're not really learning anything more. Um And then when you've absorbed as much as you can from the information that's already out there, um, then you have to get to a point where you start c you start cracking on and forming a strategy then. And it depends if there's budget for testing strategies, then that's that's great because you can start to get to that point of uh having some rough propositions mapped out, and then you're either testing them back with the client and you're going back and speaking to that client and saying, Look, there's always more than one right answer. It's just there are some answers that are more right than another. I don't really subscribe to this theory that an agency has to go in with one solution, and that is by the way, guys, we are the agency that's come up with the one solution to your problem. I've seen that argument so many times. Go with three, go with five, go with one, and then you're confident. It's I like to go with a couple. I think like it depends it depends on the client. Again, a client might say, just give me your recommendation, that's fine. But what I like to do, because this is before we've got into the tactical part. Yeah, it's like, you know what, there are different, there are a few different ways that we can solve your problem, but you have to rationalize it. I think this is more right or more the this this one's slightly more right in this scenario, this one's slightly more right in this scenario. So um, yeah, pull together your thoughts, pull together your ideas, but then move on and start to form it, and you'll start to get a feel then of if a proposition, if a strategy that you're building is right for that client or not. Well, um, why don't you talk about the McCafé example? So when you when you did a session with us, um that was a really good example as far as I was concerned, about that universal insight that absolutely creates an idea that just connects with people. Yeah, so so the McCaffey example is my favourite. If I'm ever doing training on strategy or I'm ever talking to clients about what the three C's is, I think it's I don't know if people might remember the campaign, they might not, but in a nutshell, they wanted to increase sales of coffee at McDonald's. They want it to be seen differently in the market for coffee. Um, but what they realize is well, we can't really. So we've looked at our customer, and what we found when looking at the customer see is that our customers want decent coffee. We all that's a universal truth. People don't want to drink crap coffee. But what we also but they're a bit tired of coffee ponsery, coffee nonsense. The coffee shops that you go into where it's less of it's more about the artistry than the coffee or whatever it might be, or serving up three different you've got three different test tubes and you assembly. Just to be clear, that's what Will loves. Will loves that. I heard about a new thing the other day. Dry cappuccino, if anyone knows. What the hell is that? It's a black coffee with just foam on top, milk foam. I mean that that's an example of like crap squankery. Yeah. Um like that. So they um so they they looked at their audience and they're like, people want good coffee, but they don't want it. So that doesn't quite work, does it? Sorry, carry on. Well, it's a different thing, but um, yeah, so so they they they understood their audience. They understood that people they want good coffee, but there are not not everybody,

McCafé And Anti Poncery Positioning

Ben Norman 24:55

but they're this this group of people that we've identified as the people that we want to achieve growth with growth within, they're probably getting a coffee from Greggs, but maybe they're not thinking about McCafé, or they're probably at Costa, where we know the coffee's not great. Um, but they're not um then they're not thinking of McDonald's in that scenario. Then on the floor they then they look at so what's the competition? Well, the competition is either people that are above us or below us were McDonald's, we're in the middle ground. But then what what as a company do we offer? Well, we use 100% Arabica beans, our beans are the same as they use in style, whatever it might be. So we've got a genuine claim to decent coffee, but we also offer it without the knowledge. You can walk in and out, and it's £1.20, and then you're on your way with your coffee. But they've created they created this campaign where they essentially it's a versus rather than an about positioning, which means they've they've positioned themselves versus something else in a very clear way. Think of the way that BrewDog positioned themselves or did, um, rather than positioning them rather than just focusing on themselves. What they did is they created a campaign that was about essentially taking the piss out of coffee ponsery, and then at the end they just introduced themselves as the antidote to that. But you can see that strategy coming through really clearly. You can see you can dissect it so clearly when you watch the ads. So I'd encourage anyone if you want to see what a good strategy looks like, very entertaining ads. I think the thing that I took away from that is you don't like Costa Coffee, so why is that? Do you see? Do you think the quality's gone down and Costa? I would rather yeah. Um it was quite good at one time, then it seems to have l Costa seems to have lost its way a little bit. I don't know if Costa's changed or if the if everything else has come up around them, but I'd I I'm a big Greggs fan. I worked I worked really you like Greggs coffee? Greggs coffee, absolutely fine, yeah. Um it serves a purpose. It's not my favourite, but I think yeah. What is your favourite? I quite like Nero. I know I'm promoting it, yeah, but I'm not on commission in in any way. Well, it's it's the nearest coffee house. I would shout out to um to uh Fika as well in as a as a Leeds a Leeds coffee house, but yeah. Uh well I'll I'll I mean other coffee houses are available. And if you want to sponsor the show Caffè Nero, we are available. Well they basically they they quietly do sponsor the show, then every other episode. Yeah, they're getting on it every week anyway, this is the way we're going. But yeah, definitely look up that McDonald's campaign because it for me it's the insight, it just connects with you, doesn't it? Because even if you are a coffee snob or you're not, you you recognise it, don't you? And it and it and it's it's it's it's yeah. I sort of drink McDonald's coffee, but no, I don't, but we go on. To be clear. I I think we'll we'll we'll get onto your mistakes, your many mistakes in a minute, because I'm quite looking forward to hearing those. But with um with strategy, this sounds a bit I feels like I'm dumbing it down a little bit, but I find it's good to apply this thinking of um objectives, strategy, tactics to kind of everyday situations, which which kind of helps you then understand how it and I think it's worth kind of reminding yourself. So the example I was thinking was you know, objective, clean, clean your house, right? Yeah. So the strategy might be I've got limited time, therefore I need to focus on the highest traffic areas. And then the tactics would be Hoover, mop, dust. So that's kind of breaking down and I find applying that, you know, I'm hungry, I need to go for lunch. What's my strategy? What are my tactics? I'm gonna go on TripAdvisor and find the uh highest-rated restaurants in Leeds City Centre. But applying that kind of thinking forces you to then think about that professionally, doesn't it? And I think, you know, with you can have training and you can learn this stuff, but you often it is easy just to leap to tactics straight away, isn't it? And it's it's quite good for discipline. The house needs cleaning, so I just start cleaning. But yeah, yeah, yeah. And to be honest, that's the right that that I'm sure it's fine. But start with diagnosis. Go always go back to that diagnosis part, isn't it? I need to so so what what what is it that so what's wrong? What needs to be done? What's the what's the like I'm I'm renovating my house at the minute, and this thinking exactly applies. You don't just start renovating a house, you start by looking at what needs to be so do the diagnosis bit. What's actually wrong with it? Am I going to start doing something? This is a big thing in marketing, I guess. I'm gonna start doing something, but it's not gonna work because I've started replacing my kitchen and then I've realized that the damp

Strategy Thinking In Daily Life

Ben Norman 29:10

behind one of the walls or that the rewire or that the wiring needs sort of. So if you've properly looked at it first, diagnose what needs to be done. And you'd look at the you might speak to estate agents and find out which which renaws can increase the value by the maximum amount. And it's all that kind of insight phase in theory. Renault's? Sorry, you've lost me there. What car what's a car got to do with the uh renovations? Oh, right, Renault, we're talking house speak now. Okay, which rena's the but the best example of this is when you look at politics. Can we have a thumbs up for if you like Renault's or thumbs down, please? I think without getting political and without having any any sort of political angle with this, I think when you think about politics, you can very quickly start to look and think, has that party diagnosed the problem with the country, with the audience, whatever it might be? Have they come up with a plan for how they're going to solve it? And then have they got tactics for doing oh well or is it scrambling around thinking how do we win more seats? But of any discipline in the entire country, any industry, any sector, surely, and this is Alastair Campbell's argument, actually, most politicians aren't terribly strategic. And it and it seems You don't have time though, do you? That's that's the issue I've got. The problem that you've got I've heard the argument today uh that that obviously with the Keir Starmer, currently there's there's gonna be an and we won't go political, but the fact that um people in political parties, PMs, it's a horrible job. You you basically um the last however many years it's been all the Tories are awful, they they come in. Um I mean Liz Truss. It's pretty bad, but it's bad because the economy's bad. And the the economy's bad, so it doesn't really matter what levers you pull because actually today, as of this was it no, yesterday um I saw Rachel Reeves literally nearly do a hurdle out of there to try and bring some good news in the time that she's been in government, and there was a not was it was it not point not one percent increase in GDP? And she was like saying, This is fabulous. So I was thinking, is it? Fabulous fabulous. Um, but the point is that it the economy isn't doing well, right? So when the economy isn't doing well, people are not giving you time. People are pissed off. They thought it was the Tories, oh no, it's not the Tories, now it's Labour, and next thing it'll be next thing it could be reform, it could be any political. I've voted for all of them, by the way. I'm not on any political party, but I just go with who is got the best strategy. But at the moment, none of them have a decent strategy, do they? I'm I'm genuinely like it'd be interesting to see if someone could come in with a decent long-term strategy. Yeah, in marketing, that's the equivalent of just going straight to performance marketing, isn't it? You know, if if sales need addressing. Yeah, it has a place. Yeah, it's exactly that. Yeah, it's not brand, it's performance. Rather than literally about it. We're on last point. I'm not worried we brought that back to marketing so seamlessly. I've got what I would say is that when we talk about if if we think so the politician's example, but I'd also say anybody listening to this, as if you feel like you don't have enough time to do strategy, that uh it's all it's it's it's an irony in itself because we said earlier, strategy is the art of choosing what not to do. Yeah. If strategy is the art of choosing what not to do, then by definition it saves you time. Yeah. So pausing for a short moment, deciding what the actual problem is. Taking off in your helicopter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And looking down, and then deciding what's the problem we're gonna focus on. So you if you feel like you've got ten things on your list of things to do right now that you need to do, more than that, man. You won't get them done. But if you go, actually, there are one, two, three things that are disp have a disproportionate impact on the success of this organisation, this team, whatever it might be, you focus on those things, and that that you've got a strategy that is focused on solving the things that actually matter, you're more likely to get them done than you are if you just dive straight into the tools and start thinking. It's it's the hot sort of busy fools definition. Yeah. Yeah. Busy fools is a thing we've discussed recently, actually. Um, what's something that you think the industry has become too obsessed with at the expense of doing genuinely effective marketing? And then we're not taking it straight back to the politics example. Yeah. So a couple of people that have been on Marketing Room 101 recently, just to bring it back to me. Um nice plug there for Marketing Room 101. Oh, do you do a podcast? Yeah, sponsored by Nero. Yeah, I hope so. They um so the theme that keeps coming up is the idea of let's stop obsessing over this versus that, over these false binaries, over brand versus performance, over short versus long, over um social and digital versus TV. And I think they are so many, you've alienated so many people already there. But any anybody who's anybody who thinks they're in one camp and that one camp is the right answer to any problem, is by definition. They're all on LinkedIn, though. And they're the people you could be and and surprise, surprise, if you're an expert in social media, you're gonna go on LinkedIn and you're gonna say the answer to all the all the problems in the world is social media. It's the cause of a lot of and yeah, yeah, and and I'll give a plug to uh a guy called Tom. A guy called Tom Roach, who's a previous guy. He's very he is a very interesting voice and all this, yeah. Jellyfish, yeah. Because he's just got that ability to see through it all. He's brilliant. Because he's seeing that you bring them together. Every nail, the solution is a hammer. Yeah, exactly. If you're a hammer, every every solution is if you're whatever it is, yeah. There's a saying that something like that. Yeah, to a hammer everything looks like a nail. Yeah. Um we'll cut out

False Binaries And Channel Neutrality

Ben Norman 34:45

my rambled explanation of that. So yeah, I think I think that's the thing that so whether it's obsessed with I think anybody who's obsessed with one thing and thinks that's a solution to everything is not giving their clients the best possible answer. If you are an expert in social media, that's brilliant. And and we need experts in social media, we need experts in TV, we need experts in email marketing, we need experts in whatever it might be. But start just try and spend your time looking at how what role your channel plays, because it doesn't play them all. Yeah, that that lateral view is so important. I mean, and you, you know, if you're at a senior level in social media, you absolutely should have that broader picture, shouldn't you? To kind of obsess about one channel being the only solution is is so I thought we got over that actually. I think it means social media is one channel though as well, don't you? Like because you've got your channels in social media, but then social media is one channel. Well, I'll give you an example. So I was at an event yesterday. Sorry, I I get passionate about these things. I was at an event yesterday, uh not about not about events, God know, and a lot of people were talking about SEO, GEO, social search, AEO, all the I was like, if you if you think about it strategically rather than tactically, so SEO is a tactic, it's optimizing search engines to work in your favour. GEO is optimizing generative engines in your favour. Correct. Why is that not just search as a discipline? If you start talking about it being so because search is the thing that the customer does. The customer has a need, that need needs to be fulfilled in some way. So they take a step, they realize, right, I'm not I'm no longer a passive customer in any way. Like I am now in market for something. I'm now in the market for a new toothbrush. So I'm gonna go and search. I'm gonna and I I what I want as a marketer then is I want an expert in search who doesn't think about SEO, geo, social circuit. I don't need an expert in all those things. I need someone who goes, right, okay, that once that person starts searching, here's how we can use all of those tools, whether it's geo, whether it's SEO, whether it's whatever it might be, to meet the needs and to influence that person in the in favour of my brand. So I think as a discipline, you need to start talking about it as search, not as SEO, geo or whatever. Channel neutrality is what we need to move towards. I think so, yeah, 100%. Because that's the best way to serve clients. You know, naturally, the way agencies are set up is there's a commercial imperative to sell your services. So of course your niche becomes disputed. It fascinates me the GEO AEO thing, though, because you know we're all waxing lyrical about GEO and AEO, which is basically large language models uh recommending you. But Google got it caught with its pants down, but actually now Google searches are still 95% of searches. Yeah. Still today, which is insane. Because everyone's going on about GEO, AEO. And I I I actually do use the uh various language models to do searches because I think it's it's better you get a more refined, detailed response than just but a lot of people will you still use Google and then use Google's Gemini AI powered search anyway. And I have got one final question for you on before we get into your mistakes, which is right, you mentioned advertising you did a degree in advertising communications. Communications, what would what element of your degree was that? And what how do you what was it about? Are you using communications in a different way that I would use it? Well, I find this quite interesting because when we talk about what the way I see communications is the promotional. So if you think of the four Ps of marketing, one of those Ps is promotion. Yeah. It's about promoting your product or service to your audience. Essentially, integrated all forms of marketing communications. PR being one of them, yeah, advertising being one of them. Yeah. I mean my my degree was in advertising specifically. Yeah. But when I talk about communications, I think of communications as being the whole the the whole the the the the P of marketing that is about communicating your product or service to your audience. Yeah. Whether that's through social media, whether that's owned, whether it's earned, whether it's paid, whether it's TV, whether it's social media, whatever it might be. Yeah. But I also know that we that you know, when we talk of in in the world of PR, it's it's it's a different if you see someone as a communications director of an organization, it doesn't mean someone who's going to handle the advertising, does it? No. It sort of means in a different way. But I mean my my first job in in in comms, in communications, was in I was uh internal comms uh exec on a nuclear power station, and my job was to communicate to all internal stakeholders, and we did some external, which would be your traditional media relations type stuff, but it was internal comms. So I was communicating through, you know, if you went on the uh the site was like six miles square. So

What Communications Means In Practice

Chris Norton 39:35

you you know, you've got people inside a nuclear reactor, you've got people um all in different environments, some people in offices, some people in nuclear uh environments, some people outside. And there was like TV screens all around the site. Um, and I my job would be to communicate on those screens. So very different type of communications when you um, but that's just part of a a community. I just I find it interesting that the degrees even do what we're talking about, you know, like we're talking about search marketing and and branding stuff up. So advertising, communications, PR and communications, brand communication, you know what I mean? It's it's all it's interesting to sometimes they even sit in different schools, don't they? Like I I was in the school of creative uh the the the the creative arts school at the university, whereas marketing people come out of the business school. I'm sure PR people will come out of where do where do you guys come out of? Everywhere. Yeah. Business is it business? Well, it's uh marketing, PR, um humanities, humanities, yeah, yeah. So English degrees is fewer than that. And I think that's but that's part of the beauty of the industry though as well, is that is that variety I think of of different perspectives and different views. I think we should embrace that, but equally it can be quite confusing for someone trying to get into the world of marketing. So this is the part of the show where we'd look at a mistake and what's been going on. And I think you've brought four pages of mistakes in and you've managed to full four somebody fiance managed to print them out in full black using our entire ink cartridge. 20 pence a sheet. Yeah. So do you want to walk us through what you've brought to the part? I love the fact you're so prepared. Yeah, so so well, as somebody who I don't know if I mentioned, I I I do do a podcast and um Oh, you haven't mentioned that. I'm just joking, but I think I think you have to be prepared. There's nothing worse than someone turning up who's not prepared. Um when you asked me, uh at first I was like, oh God, I don't know, where where do I start? And then what I realise is I'm first of all, I think my best mistakes are still ahead of me. But I do have a few, and I I think I might be uniquely qualified for this because I think I'm actually the only marketer who has more mistakes to his name than successors. That's good. I think it's probably worked out quite well for this show. I think I'd probably continue and could could compete with you on that. So I started thinking about him, and what I realised is I'm gonna make you a menu. Okay. Here you are. I've made you both a menu, uh almost like a bit of a f a set menu, and I'll let you choose. If you want me to read out just a ton so what I've got is my menu of mistakes. Yeah. So to start, you can choose between the flippant but slightly serious one or the one that cost us six uh the one that cost us 70k. Okay. The main event you can have the one that ruined childhoods in Weatherby. I mean, that sounds interesting. That does sound like a quite a meaty meaty, meaty meat. I can't I find it hard to look beyond that one, to be honest. Maybe because it's got Wetherby in, and that's where Will lives. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carry on. The one that ruined my engagement. I mean, that's interesting because she's in the building, and I wouldn't mind hearing that story. She's approved me telling the story. You can have an Amoose Boosh at the end though, can't you? Yeah, of course, yeah. Uh the one that cost us a

The Menu Of Marketing Mistakes

Ben Norman 42:25

big client. And then to finish, we have the choice between the one with the rotten running shoes or the one with the missing art director. I mean, my God. Do you want to choose this do you want to choose the starter for us, Chris? Uh yeah, I think I'm gonna go with um the s oh no, the flipping but slightly serious one. Um yeah, let's go for that. Well the the it the f the my first reaction was when I thought about this. Just choosing to work in marketing. Really? In the first place. Like people, you you know when you think about it and you think the career that we the career that we have, and and you sometimes you have and people go, it's not brain surgery. And people say it's not brain surgery, but let's be honest, can you imagine being a brain surgeon who had to deal with three rounds of amends on final artwork on version 27 that's always been already been approved by seven different stakeholders? You don't have to go back and do all your work again, do you? Nah. Trusted to do your work? No one else goes to that brain surgeon. I know I'm not qualified in your area, but have you thought about doing it like this? Because my nephew has done a bit of brain surgery, and they reckon that actually if you just slice it here, it'll work. That's true. So there's something about it where I think I th I think that's yeah. So it's it there there is a serious side to that book. I've had people say that in meetings. I've got a nephew who's good on computers, you know, things like that. You're like So you think, God, uh what other industry could we have chosen to work in where everyone's an expert except you? Um when it's the perceived um The barrier to entry is low though, isn't it? Because everyone's on Facebook. And everyone thinks they can market. Yeah. Everyone thinks they can do marketing. Yeah. Everywhere. Everyone's a marketing. I'd imagine careers like sales might be the same as well. Everyone thinks they can have a crack at it. Yeah. But actually to succeed at a high level is incredibly strategic. A really brilliant salesperson's well worth the money though, because they can really drive. It's not just having a Bluetooth earpiece in 2002. But for everyone that's absolutely smashing it, there's ten of them that are fucking useless, isn't there? Let's be honest. Probably in marketing as well, to be fair. Okay, that's my flippant but slightly serious. Yeah, that's that's wet my appetite. Um, I'm on to the main event. I mean, I want to hear about your engagement. Let's save, yeah, we'll save that for the um for the glass of brandy at the end. Um okay, let's have the one that ruined my childhoods in Weatherby. Only because you mentioned a mascot. And in the PR industry, almost everyone has to dress up as a mascot at some point when they're when they're first in their career. What you can do, you can you can probably link this video as well if you like, because there is a video of it happening. But so I let slip to a client's. So that's definitely happening, by the way. So so we we we deal with some very big clients, but we also, for many years, and and they are still they have a special place in my heart. One of my favourite clients is is um Wetherby Whaler Fish and Chips. Um great fish and chips. Um very popular with all the Premier League, by the way. Oh yeah. I heard on a football podcast that Wetherby Wailer. Yeah, the football podcast, because of where the Wetherby Whaler is in the middle of the um M1, a lot of Premier League um football teams will stop and they'll they'll have all pre-ordered it. Come on and they'll go and get it and bring it all onto the buses. They're leading training grounds near there as well as it's minos are a big fan of as well. So when I worked, uh so I looked after the Wetherby Whaler account, got along with them really well, but then I let it slip that I'm a I'm kind of I'm into running. Um when I had a few chats with them, and they were like, Oh, that's it's interesting. Ben, have you um how interested in running are you? I was like, Oh, yeah, I do quite do fair bit. Um so they said, Right, good, because we've got a mascot race coming up, and the person that usually does it's left the business. Do you mind taking part at Wetherby Racecourse in the annual mascot event? Which is you have to run a couple of furlongs of Wetherby race track in uh in the middle of a day of racing. How long's a trail? Very, very, very far in my mind. That's all I can say. This is where the research and the insights should

Wally The Whale Mascot Meltdown

Ben Norman 46:30

have come. You should have got your data. I signed up for it, and there are there are a number of mistakes within this, but first of all, it's about 25 degrees on that day, and there's it, or not, is a whale. And it's a whale that's essentially a structure of quite heavy scaffolding. And I'm six foot two, and this is not designed for someone to be six foot two, so it presses on every pressure point you can imagine. When you're strapped into this outfit, um you had and I had to go around the parade ring. So you sorry, there's an important you missed out on upon Peter detail. What's what's the whale called? Uh Wally. Wally the Whale. So Wally the Whale, weatherbee whaler's um mascot. So I I don't know how to do in this. And it's so it turns out they'd come fourth previously. They'd pus they placed quite well. How many were in it? It's like 40 mascots. I was against Harry Gator from Harriger. Oh, you see, he's up and I waving him every week. Yeah, it turns out Harry Gator's a sheet. I know the Really? Yeah, Harry Gator's a sheet. There's the uh the Bradford City Bantam, some guy with um ex-military guy who is doing like backflips and stuff, like scary guy. Um he's there having a fag before the race. Oh god, I'm gonna win it again. Sounds like an alternative universe. Madness. Absolutely madness. That'd be great video. I want to see this video. So we're gonna put this video in. What I didn't realise is how hard it was to run in this thing, but mainly how hard it is to see, and this is a crucial detail. You can't really see out of this outfit. And so we get to long story short, we get to the race. I'm like, I'm I'm gonna win this. I'm a secret weapon here. I've even I even put my running shoes on beneath like the dislike disguised beneath that. I was like, right, I'm I'm gonna take this very seriously. Um and it it was the heart, like it's uphill, but there's jumps as well. There's jumps and you can't see. So I got over the first hurdle, second hurdle, third hurdle. I'm sort of mute thinking what's going on. The actual horse they put some hay bales on. Oh, right, okay. So I thought you meant the actual nine-foot fence. And then I got to the second to last jump thinking, God, this is this is I I'm I'm dying here. And I tripped over the last jump, ended up on the floor, my head came off right in front of the grandstand. So all of a sudden, there's all these kids cheering. So, Van Rapport. And then at that point, those kids realise, oh, it's not actually a whale, it's some balding guy who's got a very red face, who's like in fury because he's failed and let a client down. Um, and also what I didn't realise is a lot of people that my uh principals have put quite big bets because you could bet on it as well. And they they'd I'd been bigging it up to them as well. You've lost some thousands. So some would call them wallies. They'd put like some of them put like 30 quid, 40 quid on me to win. So that's that mistake. I don't know if that works for you. Wow. I mean, I like that. Yeah, I like that. Uh I mean you're not the first person to have on this show to talk about being dressed up as a mascot and their head falling off. No, you're not. You you're you're not an exclusive, I have to say. There's been other stories. How many? Um let's go on to the dessert. Right, the dessert, we've got we can to finish, we can have the one with the rot the rotten running shoes sending my old stinking running shoes in a box to a new business lead thinking it thinning, by the way. That's a typo. Typo for the mistake. It was smart, only to be completely blanked. Uh, or the one with the missing art director turning up to a short shoot to a short a food shoot for Asda, only to realise I forgot to book the art director and decided in the moment to tell the client I'm actually an art director as well, and client service, and starting it out literally. I mean, come on, let's hear that one. I mean, that's pretty much it. That's yeah, but I want to hear what how it went. So, yeah, I was looking after Asda when I worked at um Creative Race. I worked on Food POS, um, and I'd done quite a lot of these shoots. So we were shooting, I think it was Pizza for Asda Cafe. Um, so I got to go on all the sexy shoots, and yeah, but we worked with um quite a big photography studio, but it was always you your art director runs the show, um, and there's quite a lot, quite a lot to go at with art direction of food shoots. Yeah, then as it you know, it's quite technical. It's really technical. And we didn't have a food stylist on it either. Really? The art director was gonna do the food stuff because it was an art director, quite specialist. This art director was great. We always have a food stylist, you've got to go there. You yeah, yeah. I mean we we do at Principles, yeah, it's a pretty place. Um yeah, they they didn't I I just forgot, I just forgot to book the art director, but the client was there and I'm I'm stuck sat there and I was I was like, I've got two options here. Shit yourself, fess up, um oh yeah, three

The Missing Art Director Food Shoot

Ben Norman 51:05

options do a chart I think that's what we're saying earlier. Yeah I fess up and we reschedule the shoot until we've got somebody who can like a true hero, like owner own it, own your mistake, yeah, tell them that you've made a mistake and own it properly like a real man. Yeah, yeah. Or I reveal to the client that I'm actually uh a trained as an art director, I've done it for years, um, but I've just moved into client service. Um, passion for clients and all that sort of stuff, and um just style it out. So I did potentially it's more the coward's route, I'd say you've you've you basically lied. It's a coward's route, and so you see your own art direction in Asda on the cafe menus, and I did that. Styled it out in a Was it good? It's fine. You know, so you're terrified. What did the art director say about it when they saw it? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it didn't go down that well back in the office, to be honest. But um I'm not sure how much I could have styled it out because it was it was for Valentine's. Uh it's coming back to me now. It was a pizza shoot for Valentine's and it was pepperoni pizza, but the pepperoni was in the shape of Love Hearts. Oh, lovely. And trying to cook them so they don't just look weird. Yeah, because they immediately would shrivel up, wouldn't they? Yeah, but I'd seen enough that you know, cooking them in a way where you don't look yeah. I think nothing says Valentine's Day then in a pizza from Azda, really. No, it's it's up there with the um what is it, cute a Champs Elise. Yeah, it's up there with the Yeah, exactly. So there you go. Very good. I don't think anyone has been so organized with their mistakes um as you, and I love the menu. So notes to future guests. Bring a menu. Someone say you brought a strategy to your mistakes. The bar is high. Yeah, I think, yeah. I'd like to think so. And then executed it in a bit. But is the is the food, is the menu the strategy or is is the menu the tactics? I think this I don't know. Neither do I. So there we go. We've broken down strategy and tactics, and we still don't have a fucking clue which way we've gone with it, et cetera. Thanks for listening. I don't know if we've mentioned it, but you've got a podcast. So this is the question for you. What are the top three things that you would banish from brand strategy or marketing this year? This year? Yeah, or yeah, this you know, today. Just today. So I I actually keep a list in my phone of ongoing. So the reason I set the podcast up, the reason I want to see the podcast, is because I love this industry to bits. Might not come across with what I was just saying about deciding to choose market in the first place. I absolutely love it. I'm passionate about it, but I I think I love it to a point where I get so frustrated with it because I want it to be better. I imagine it's like when you have kids. You love them, the more you love them, the more frustrated you get with it. Um so uh but I do there are a couple of things that stand out. I've got some flippant ones and I've got a serious one. Flippant ones, two things that I want to get rid of. Okay, you've really thought about this. This is a good question. Well, I sort of thought you might throw this at me, and I I was thinking, right, okay, what are the what are the things that had improved my life the most? So there's the serious one, two flippant ones. The flippant things that I want to get rid of, tiny microphones. What ones are tiny microphones? Yeah. You just look stupid. Like, why's everyone dicking it? No offense to anybody that uses tiny microphones, but what happened to a microphone that you could hold in your hand? Was that ever a problem that needed solving? I'm going to put a shout out to Andy Barr here, PR Andy Barr, because he does videos now. He's been doing loads of TikToks recently. I've been checking them out, Andy. And Andy Barr has got the the small one, so you can answer your question. On a stick? Um He's got like a small one that he holds like this, which he talks to, and I've watched all the videos. And

Three Things To Banish Now

Chris Norton 54:40

then he's got another one which I quite like, and he walks into the he walks into the public and then does what you do, you know, where you go and ask people, and it says PR Andy Barr in it, and he'll go with the proper microphone. So you'd prefer that room, right? I just think it's I can't keep a straight face when I see people with these videos, or they've just got the tiny little microphone pinched between the fingers. Um it's like when people, if you remember the craze, when mobile phones got obsessed with being small. Yeah. What was why? It never solved a problem. There's no the the problem wasn't my phone's too big, like I don't know. It's like when you see someone with a half pint and you try and keep a straight face, like just drink a pint. And then the other one is people using the word omni-channel wrong. The people uh the amount of people I hear talk about omnichannel when they mean integrated. Omnichannel is that is the channel. Hasn't we got some half pints to omnichannel? I heard it yesterday, like it's the same as people using me talking about medias or mediums or you it's just like just these little phrases like if you are talking if you're gonna be an expert in this thing, understand what the bloody word means. Like it you don't have an omnichannel communications plat uh campaign. So let's come on then, define omni-channel. Definitely frantically trying to figure out if he's knows what it is. Um I've just been social media. You've been the whole social media, yeah. I think the damage it's doing so. I've recently read a book by someone called Sarah Wynn‑Williams. She's trying to be silent, or she she is having difficulties publishing her book and promoting her book. She worked in a very senior position at Meta, not Meta, sorry, to clear, I don't want to get sued, at Facebook for many years. And I won't go into the detail of it, but the damage that that business is doing to the world, to the to children and the effects that it's having on how I agree. Like I just struggled to see, I struggle to see any benefit that it brings to society, to humanity. It does more harm than good. If I could wave a wand and just bin social media, I get rid of the whole thing. I think to add to come to if I can retort to that, social media, when it first came out, was brilliant. It allows us to connect to people that we could never connect to and do the things that we're doing right now, which is where you're interviewing or meeting people that you'd never meet. That all came about from social media. Yeah, and where to draw the line as well, because WhatsApp and YouTube technically social media, but not necessarily as toxic as so would you ban them as well? I think anything where you are where an algorithm can be controlled centrally to dictate what people are exposed to has the ability to control cultural narrative, to control minds. They have more power than they should be allowed to have. Agreed. Is that not the same as the press though? So the difference with the press, so this is where I I think it's an interesting debate. You've got a good point. But the press are accountable in some way. If you publish something in a newspaper, if you put something on a news channel and TV, you have regulations

Social Media Harm And Regulation

Ben Norman 57:35

and rules that in some way you have to adhere to. On social media, that the the the proliferation of fake news, of uh people being allowed to say things with confidence without having the responsibility that the what we might call the traditional press house to the truth is dangerous. I've got an idea, right? You know, our first conversation was about politics uh as a joke. It was UFOs, actually. It was UFOs, yeah. But do you do and the fact what we were talking about was politics and how PMs and things can't stay in power, and not we weren't, you know, party we weren't but with a particular party. But do you think that if they c whoever comes in, whatever happens now, why don't they fucking review the social media policy and say um stop putting people into two two camps, like somehow somehow create a policy where it's not as controlling, like you've just said. And we and good legislation can do that to all to all of these um social networks. And maybe you'll find that people aren't as angry at each other, like fake anger, where they're they're point they're prodded all the time. Hey, look at this will make you angry, this'll make you angry. This is this is them, they're awful. And if they change that, I wonder if PMs and politicians would start being more longer term again, and we'd get longer term politics and a better run country. And we just answered the entire do you know what I mean? Well you've answered you've answered it, but there are two there are two points there. I think it's Scott Galloway that's says that um rage is the new rage rage is the new sex or or whatever it might be, like rage, I can't remember the exact phrase, but rage sells, anger sells, anger keeps people off, you know, and that's that's the new version of sex. That's what's wrong with social media. That's social media. And then the algorithms are built around that. And then the other point, and this this is where I don't know if I mentioned the name of this book before, but read um it's called Careless People by Sarah Wynn‑Williams. There's a very interesting point in the book where, and I'm gonna say allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, sandwich everything around that because I don't want to get sued. Do you want us to flash up a big alert? Flash up, please put that on the screen. But there's a point in that book where a board meeting takes place where there is a discussion about how can we prevent Facebook from getting blocked in countries. These countries, the governments in countries are wanting to start apply legislation, and they're if I'm remembering it correctly, the governments are interested in starting to control Facebook and block Facebook because of the proliferation of fake news, etc. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna buddy up to certain more radical parties and help those parties to get into power because those parties won't block Facebook. There's a point where in the book they talk about buddying up to far right radical parties in Germany to help them get into, to help them gain power, um, because they will help us stay unblocked. And yeah, I've got and we I know we've got I know we're over time, but this is good. And the other this is fascinating, this conversation. But the other side of it is, and I heard somebody disbating on one of the very many podcasts that I listen, I listen to so many, um it it are LLMs, and um obviously there's there's lots of different ones, um, all the AI different. Are they now are they actually starting to sanitize and remove that anger because now you're not uh you you've got something else to talk to, and it's giving you a more balanced view, um allegedly close brackets, um, and it's not as biased as either right, you're left, they're terrible, you're great, you know, you be angry, you hate them, you love them. And actually, when you're using um LLMs, they're they they might bring it back. I think there's something there. I'm hoping that social media can keep the good bit of what made it great connection, but the anger and the stuff it does for kids is fucking awful. So I really wish they'd sort it out through legislation. Yeah, I I I agree fully with that. If there are there are great parts to it, you know. My my dad met his girlfriend on Facebook who he had never met, and they last saw each other when they were 14, and then they both got divorced, went in different directions, met back up again because of Facebook. Like there is there are all these beautiful stories. There are people who are so lonely, but then they become you know, they can cure that through you know, there is such a rosy side to it, but but then there's for me, it's the videos of people falling over that would in 30 years ago. I mean, they're hilarious. You've been framed, but infinite. Yeah, it's and that moment would have never been captured, would it? Yeah, just seeing stuff that's absolutely hilarious and and it brings people joy. And this is where we drop the video of you falling over with your. So um people will be listening to this, it's been brilliant. They'll be wanting to get in touch with you. I'm sure they want to pit your brains on all sorts of issues and also listen to your podcast. How can people um connect with you? So uh the the easiest way, yeah, get to Facebook, yeah. Um the easiest way is probably on LinkedIn. If you look for Ben Norman, I'm the bold one. There is one with her. Um but that and reach out through there, or um, it's just m wherever you get your podcast marketing room 101. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Kevin. Thank you for coming. Enjoyed it.