Marketing in the Madness
Marketing in the Madness brings you expert insight and ideas for marketing success and gives you the tactics you need to grow your brand, your business and your career. You’ll hear from the heads of major brands to top influencers and female powerhouse leaders. Once a month, host Katie Street also shares top tips and strategies (as well as a few secrets) she’s learned from clients, networking and attending events.
Marketing in the Madness
Disruption, Innovation, and AI: How to Thrive in a Changing Market
In today’s rapidly evolving marketing world, disruption, innovation, and AI are the driving forces behind success. It’s no longer enough to rely on traditional methods—brands must embrace these trends to stay ahead. In this episode of Marketing in the Madness, we’re joined by Laurence Cornwall-Watkins, Joint MD at Bright Blue Day, to dive deep into how disruption, innovation, and AI are reshaping the marketing landscape.
With years of experience in B2B marketing, Laurence explains how brands can leverage these forces to transform their strategies, navigate compliance challenges, and disrupt the market. Together, we explore practical tips for marketers who want to stay competitive and embrace the future of disruption, innovation, and AI.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll discover in this episode:
🚀 The Power of AI in Search and Marketing
Laurence discusses how AI is changing the game in search and content creation, leading to a future where zero-click environments dominate. Learn how brands can adapt their strategies to align with this new reality.
💡 Disruptive Content for Today’s Audience
Discover why human-centric, creative content is key in an AI-driven world. Laurence shares insights into how brands can use disruption to cut through the noise and capture attention on social platforms.
⚖️ Balancing Compliance with Creativity
Find out how to navigate compliance without stifling creativity. Laurence outlines three effective strategies for working within regulated industries while still delivering disruptive, innovative campaigns.
💥 The Future of B2B Marketing
With the shift in client relationships and marketing budgets, Laurence provides a forward-looking perspective on how disruption, innovation, and AI are shaping the future of B2B marketing.
⚡ Bravery in Performance Marketing
Explore how brands can combine performance marketing with organic social strategies to experiment and innovate, ensuring that campaigns drive real action.
🎙️ Whether you’re ready to embrace disruption, innovation, and AI, or looking to push the boundaries of your current marketing strategy, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you thrive in today’s ever-changing landscape.
Tune in now to learn how to stay bold, brave, and disruptive in marketing.
📢 Don’t forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE! If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review and share it with your network. Your support helps us continue delivering top-tier insights from the marketing world.
Laurence Cornwall-Watkins
https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurencecw/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bright-blue-day-ltd/
https://brightblueday.com/
Connect with Katie Street:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
https://www.instagram.com/streetmate/
Follow Street Agency:
https://street.agency/
https://www.instagram.com/street.agency/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/streetagency/
AI, for us, is the most effective tool to take three steps forward fast instead of one, there's a potential step change in evolution itself that will happen more from Ai. This is a world of zero clicks. I never leave my search results because everything is served to me in that environment, we don't
Katie:need to go into the site and do the investigation, and that's the same when I'm doing research. I don't even go to Google anymore. I go to chat.
Laurence:They came left field and just changed the game for everyone. Social is where we go to waste time. LinkedIn is where we go to invest time showing
Katie:up in these more human ways with the right relevant content, the things that are speaking to the needs of your audience got to almost be back to basics. Create cool, differentiating, fun, human content that's going to help capture attention a
Laurence:number of clients in different ways. The potential of AI right now? What tools are out there, what tools are worth using, and how they can leverage them safely, and it is phenomenal. AI is a prodigal infant.
Katie:How the fuck does my phone know what to serve me like we all know that someone's listening, certainly
Laurence:yes, they're listening. Yes, they're watching.
Katie:Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of marketing in the madness. And today, as always, I have a bloody brilliant guest for you all, and in fact, a guest that also used to work at the same place as me and now is a client of mine. So that's even better. So welcome. Laurence, Laurence joins us from Bright Blue Day. But I want you to give us a bit of an explanation as in to your journey, because you are now joint. MD, yeah, yeah. So give us a bit of the potted history of Laurence and how you are and where you are today, and a bit about Bright Blue Day
Laurence:as well. I never knew agencies existed. When I was younger, I went straight to client side, I suppose, with a really small company that started selling boys toys. I'm going back a long way. Oh, wow, pilots, the Scion five, yeah, like the original, the Nokia 9210 that used to open clamshell, yeah, and it was just an online business, and he did very well. It was out of his garage, and I still know today's phenomenal. They taught me business to start with, but one man band, and just employed most of this family. And we had an agency to our website, and it was redweb, and there were 18 of them. Dave Burton was there, and I walked in and having worked with Chris and his family, who were just wonderful and adopted me, but they were all a lot older, and I went to an agency, and there were people wearing flip flops and shorts and yeah, and mucking there's a pool table. It was epic. And I was, Oh, my God, I want to work here. This is, this is just amazing. So I applied and got in in sales. And it was a time when the website, website development just kicked off in sort of a big way. And I remember, we did, we had productized. You could have website for five grand, 10 grand or 15 grand, in house, CMS, and I loved it. I just hit agency, and I thought, No, this is it. I loved the freedom. You got to find other I find everything interesting. So suddenly you're talking to another business, and what they do is fascinating. And it didn't matter whether it was solar power, it was all small business, Broadview blinds locally, it was all local businesses. But these people were doing amazing things. I was like, This is awesome. Like, this is awesome, and I love tech. So websites is it spent a long time there. The business changed from 18 to 160 must have been and as I realized it was too big for me, I was done. I was time to move on. But I was there a good 10 odd years, maybe longer, and we used to be in the same building as Bright Blue Day on Poole Quay. So I knew David and Jonathan, and I met them and said, Yeah, I'm ready to jump. And went through a grueling interview process, yeah, they were quite, it was quite full on. And eventually moved across into sales at Bright Blue Day. And everything was just different. And suddenly I went to an agency that did everything I'd never heard. I mean, they were original bright blue days, originally print, 60 year history. So people talked about MATLAB and soft touch and paperweight. I'm like, What is this in the emails? Why is anyone worried about paper? This is dead guys, yeah, but they were familiar, and they pitch, you know, pitch in a totally different way. It was dead. Be pitch rehearsals weeks before, what you wore, every word you said, every piece of creative was laid over, and it was, it was a serious, serious business. So it was a massive level up for me, and terrifying. Thankfully, I kind of stopped doing sales. It's not my natural place. I moved into client services. We won some really great clients. The first one I brought in was visa, and we brought them in tiny doing small bits and bobs, and they grew to be a principal client. And they still are today. It's 15 years we've been working with them, which is hard to retain a client. That's amazing. Lawrence, yeah, it's you can never, yes, you can never expect it, and that's the thing. I think sometimes people have house accounts. You get lazy, the Z team get put on it, you'll lose them. But clients like Zurich that we work with, we've had them for 20 years. So, you know, some predate me. I've been here a long time, moved into client services, picked up visa few other big clients, slowly, just worked my way through the ranks. I wouldn't say I'm ambitious. I'm just egotistical. I wanted to be in charge, yeah, and it took a while, but David and Jonathan got to the point where they were ready to step back from the business, and obviously they'd been doing it for 30 years. So they were ready to go and enjoy fast cars and fancy holidays. And they decided to do an MBO, so myself and Jess, my business partner, threw our hats in the ring with the board and said, Okay, we can do it. We had a five year MBO, so rocky start. Brexit was the first year.
Katie:I know timing, yeah. You're
Laurence:like, okay, you know it wasn't cheap, but we're like, Wait, yeah, we can do it. We can do it five years. There was a lot of documentation on what happens if we don't make it in five years. What happens if we don't make it in 10? Because it was a really big ask. Yeah, and the agency had to step up quite a bit to achieve that. Brexit shook us and that that was kind of troubling. We work mostly pan, EU and global, so that was okay. What's that going to do to the business, and how is that going to change how we operate? Didn't have the impact, or at least the impact was very slow. Obviously, we work a lot in finance. We did see some clients literally shut up shop in London and move back to Paris or Amsterdam overnight. So there were some nerve wracking moments. But then we had covid,
Katie:I know. I mean, what a time to buy. Yeah,
Laurence:that was, I mean, just like everyone, it seems almost surreal now, when you look back, that was two months of absolute terror. Thankfully, our clients and I am very grateful for the clients that we had, majority of them, it didn't touch them. The panic affected everyone. For sure, nobody knew what to do. We'd never worked as an agency remote. You know, it's impossible. You can't work remote as an agency. As an agency, and you just had to do it overnight. And they did the same. So there were two months of sheer blind panic, and then we had, you know, luckily, we had some of the best years we've ever had. Everything shifted into digital. All the budgets came that way, and all our clients were not impacted in the way that financially, in the way that, you know, holiday travel, things like that, were just decimated. So we made good time on the MBO. Wrapped it up in the five year period. Possibly could have done it in full and we're out the other side of it now,
Katie:amazing. Yeah, and today, how many people are you here? We're actually in beautiful offices for those of you watching, it's proper agency vibe. So what
Laurence:50 ish, yeah, just under 50, yeah. And it's interesting from those days where you looked at when I first stepped into an agency and there's a pool table and flip flops, you know? I think our clients have caught up massively, even in financial services. They've got chart rooms and they've got swing chairs and stuff like that. You know, they've tried to level up. There's something about an atmosphere of an agency, I think that just you can't beat doesn't matter how many beat bags you put into a room. Yeah, an agency is buzzing and frenetic. Businesses
Katie:work very differently to agencies, and it's that energy, enthusiasm, chaos, sometimes, that we bring ideas, innovation, and you know, that's what you guys do. You can't
Laurence:get stale, you know, because you've got, you've got multiple bosses, it's not, yeah, you know, your boss is the client that's shouting that moment, or needing, or needs you to step up and step in. Yeah, those are, those are the ones that are driving you, and you never want to fail. And you can't fail when you've got client relationships that last 1520, years, you know, you you can't make a misstep. So it sort of drives that fevered breakdown moment. Just be creative, deliver and get it done at all costs. And I think fast or die trying. Yeah,
Katie:that that is the key though, isn't it? It's, you know, especially when you've got clients in different sectors with, you know, very different audiences, you've got to change hats and wear different hats consistently and very quickly and effectively, to come up with new ideas, try new things. Be brave enough to, you know, try almost totally different things in some, you know, with some clients, you know, totally different sectors, and also learn what you're doing in one sector that actually might work in a totally different one. There's
Laurence:huge crossover. I suppose. We don't work so much with FMCG. We do focus on B to B and say B to B. Everyone's been talking about B to P forever, but FMCG does so many things where they are talking to a human and about a product, about a thing they desire and they want. There's so much that translates into B to B, knowing how to apply it is, is the skill and also having the clients trust you to be brave enough to go, okay, yeah, we'll make that change. We'll do that thing. It's a challenge.
Katie:It is a challenge, especially, I think now so I'm gonna So you've talked about, yeah, Brexit. We then had a global pandemic where we were locked at home. Now we're kind of coming up that actually had an interesting call with my accountant this morning. We're coming out of that, but I do. Think the overhang from covid is hitting businesses now. Last year, budgets were pulled for low you know, every single business that we work with, and we work with some really big brands and their clients, especially actually in the world of retail, but I'm sure you're seeing the same in financial services, which I know you guys do a lot in budgets were pulled. People were anxious about spending the big loans and the things that various different businesses had amidst covid to keep them topped up. Disappearing payments weren't coming in when they wanted so so many businesses last year had budgets pulled. Marketing teams at some of the biggest brands businesses in the world had you know, their marketing cut in half in terms of their budget. What I'm seeing now hopefully tell me, if I'm wrong, is that things are actually starting to be released again. So q4 so just to timestamp this for you guys, Q, q4 2024, we're recording this in September, so we're about to head into q4 I personally do think that there's going to be budgets released again. There's going to be activity. People are getting confidence back in the market. I hope that means, from a marketing perspective, things are going to come back to life. What are you guys seeing? What's what's working for your clients? If people want to, because I think that's the other thing is some brands are anxious. They may be looking for new agency partners, but they don't know who to go with. They don't know like, Oh, we've had these budgets cut. We're now getting some money back, but we need to spend it carefully. Still. What kind of things would you be advising? Because you're a bit like us, like, you know, lead generation and, you know, results focused, which all, which all marketing should be, let's be honest. So what do you think brands, businesses, marketers, should be focused on as we get into q4 I
Laurence:think you're right. I think there was an overhang. It just took the wind out of everyone's sales, which wasn't helped by, you know, global slowdowns across the market. So you had China underdoing as well as America. The tech sector in America took an absolute beating last year, the resurgence of AI kind of almost artificially inflated the tech sector. Money was pouring in. It looked like good times, but we've still got clients out there that are struggling, that are laying off people. There's consolidations happening a lot. There's a lot of mergers happening to try and streamline cost efficiency. I think in the UK, we had such I mean, Brexit was nothing in comparison to trust the political debacle. We wanted stability. Whatever your political radar, it's fine. It's stable. And that's what we needed, that stability then brings investment. So I think at the UK we've done better, probably than I thought we would off the back of the election with a bit of stability, which makes us more attractive from the US into Europe, because we lost that angle for a while. You know, it was always US and UK progressive in the same place, roughly at the same time, and therefore an easy run into Europe. And that we lost in tech sector for a while, where things were just migrating into Europe, and it was no we're going to go straight into going to go straight into Paris. We're gonna go straight into Amsterdam. That sort of shifted back into us, because we're stability back so we are seeing budgets start to be released. There's they're still tight purse. They're still and like you say, it's the, well, hang on, what's my ROI on this? What is my this is my campaign spent? What am I getting? What's the output, what's the deliverable, what's the expectation for the performance campaign? Because I've got to justify this. It's slightly more aggressive. It's Yes. And I think there is a fear that fear manifests itself in a couple of ways. One it is, will you stay with the agency you've got? Because you know they know you know the game, you know what you can model, you know what you can predict. It makes actually choosing another agency quite difficult, and being brave enough to go, No, it's time for a change. So we're seeing the purse strings loosen a little. We're seeing the budget start to be released, but the expectation of what gets delivered for it, I think, is ramped up quite a bit.
Katie:So you guys do work on performance marketing that is your kind of playground, and what you're great at, if you're a business that is hopefully, you know, edging towards that bravery coming into q4 what would you suggest they do? I know that you guys have seen some really great things with organic, social, yeah. How, how could a brand approach and what are the kind of rules or tactics that they need to follow in order to actually see success from organic. I think
Laurence:it's really interesting. I think, yes, we were in the performance space. I think there's been a lot of noise in that space for quite a while, because it's, it's the pointy end, it's the bit that you can easily quantify when you've got budget restrictions. You know, the the luxury of doing brand or doing organic, which isn't delivering a lead gen, a data capture moment, you know, isn't driving to a behavior change or a CTA, actually, that is too much of a luxury. So everyone's focused in on performance. That being said, performance has a limited view. It's in a lot of instances, it's intent. So someone intends to. To buy a particular product or service, and therefore the performance team are making sure you're there saying the right thing in the right place at the right time, to be the one that captures that lead. So social organic has existed for a long time within the brand's control and with internal teams, and we're seeing clients actually reach out to go, can you support us with our social organic? It hasn't had, or hasn't been seen to have the same value as the performances are paid because, you know, there's some big money put behind paid you want to make sure it delivers the results. Whereas social, organic was the place to be a bit more playful, a bit more entertaining, a bit more risky, but also a bit lazy, a bit blase, a bit I can just put stuff out there. What's interesting is actually we've told brands to be personable, to be human. That's great. The misinterpretation of that is actually, as a brand, show me your chill out room. I don't care. Show me the coffee you've got in your I don't care. We sacrifice we in the attempt of trying to be human, we sacrifice relevance. So it's not relevant to me that your brand, you know, the coffee you drink, or the away day you had, I don't care in recognizing that changing actually, our organic has a place, and it needs to be a bit more controlled. It needs it needs to be a bit more exciting. It needs to be relevant. It needs to be timely. It needs to inform, educate or inspire. Yes, there's a personal element to it, a human aspect to it, but it's got to be a value.
Katie:I love that. I mean, that's essentially what a lot of what we do at street is about building that engaged audience before they're ready to buy. We always talk about being problem aware, so, but this is almost pre problem aware. Sometimes they don't even know that they have the problem. So you need to talk to them and make them problem aware. They go, Oh, yeah, I have that problem. That might be me. Yeah, I don't know, looking for some kind of face cream that I don't realize that I need. But then, you know, if I start to see content going, Oh, do I do need that. I need to, you know, of course, I need to know, 10 years younger, but you know, it's got to sometimes you're not aware of the problem that you have. Probably my aging skin is not a good example, because I'm highly aware of that as I am getting older. But I think you've got to really think about the different stages in the journey and where organic can play in I personally, actually do think now, you know, at every stage in the journey organic can, you know, basically, that's all I I'm a B to B, you know, marketeer sales person, mixture of both. And, you know, organic helps us. Throughout we don't really do much. Well, in fact, we do no pay for ourselves, for clients. Sometimes we do a tiny bit, but most of the time, it's very proactive, but based using kind of organic content of it, like creating this podcast, yeah, and actually showing up in these more human ways with the right, relevant content, the things that are speaking to the needs of your audience, or the you know, it's and sometimes it can be random, like some content does really well, that's just funny, yeah, but, but plays on something that you Know, or you know, there's lots of different ways. Well,
Laurence:there's lots of and that's the thing. There's not just the platform needs to be played and the platform algorithms need to be played, and that is a skill. And also right. The content needs to be right for your audience. It needs to be engaging. It needs to be thumb stopping, all the usual, you know. But actually, the platform, as you know, very well known, LinkedIn, you know, the way the algorithms and they're potentially behind a lot of the bigger platforms, but they are gaining traction. I think what's interesting with that one for B to B, LinkedIn are slowly releasing features and functions that make it an authoritative platform. Social is where we go to waste time. LinkedIn is where we go to invest time. And that was a really nice view or lens through, actually, the stuff they're doing with the content authors, you know, you bloody impossible to get the blue badge, or whatever you get. It's you have to write solid content. They want long form blog articles on there. They've just introduced the videos, obviously, so interesting to see how that works. It is a place to go and learn to understand. And it's the right place for me to be. And the organic, at the moment, is a great Greenfield place to play with where you go. Step up your organic. Don't solely rely on performance. To be shouting at someone and getting in someone's face at point of purchase. Get in before then and start to educate people.
Katie:I love that. I think so what we're saying, if someone is listening to this, that's what you guys are, and they're a brand, potentially in the B to B space, and they want to test doing something a bit different with organic one, it's going to be cheaper, right? Because they're not going to have to put loads and loads of money behind paid campaigns. So for me, it seems like a bit of a no brainer to just start to test content and see what lands, right? Yeah,
Laurence:absolutely. And we use organic as an evolution to paid, yeah. So it's a, it's a really nice way of because you can, you don't know what's going to catch the mood at the moment, or what creative, I wouldn't say it's AB testing, but it's certainly going okay. These are the messages. This is the creative. This is the attention seeking part of it. You. Make it valuable, make it insightful, all the rest of it. Put it out there. If that one pulls like a train, move that one to paid if that one's going to reach a then a bigger audience that are intent based. But this is the place to make it all happen, and it lets you be a bit more playful with it. Yeah,
Katie:I love that. That's where we can be brave, right? I have to talk about this. I know everyone is talking about it all the time, but AI that technologies that can help us get further faster when it comes to organic or, well, and paid, I guess both. What are you guys seeing? What are you using? Good, bad, ugly, tell me stuff.
Laurence:It would be an endless conversation, and by the time we've said something, it will have changed again. AI is moving at a velocity that is just beyond and I think it's awesome. I mean, it will ultimately control the world and dominate our lives in various ways. There's a potential step change in evolution itself that will happen born from Ai. But ignoring that for a second, AI in search is one of the most disruptive components, I think, at the moment coming for us, and we've already seen in Google. I'm a Google fan, but you know, Bing is obviously doing the same. We've already seen in Google, the AI results that are just appearing top and they are trumping all the sponsors.
Katie:Yeah, it's so weird, isn't it? I've literally when a month or two ago, and it's just there. Yeah. And
Laurence:okay, so there's horror stories, of hallucinations, of it. What was one of the ones? How do I make my pizza? Oh, I don't know. It's telling you to put glue on your pizza. I mean, there's gonna be some wonderful hallucinations. But AI, they're overcoming this so fast. Ai, search results are becoming interesting. Will have a profound effect in any platform, whether it's Google or Bing. That's the two dominance in Google, when you search something, obviously, it's read the entire internet, and it's going to pull up what the results of things. So here's the answer to your very specific question. You don't need to read a ream of content. You don't need to go to a website, yeah, you don't need to watch a video. It will pull the exact three seconds out of video that answers your questions and surface it. It will pull content from Tiktok, which is great. It will pull content from Pinterest. What that's actually doing is assimilating it and collecting all the information you need about your your search. I don't need to go anywhere else. This is a very different world. And, you know, we build websites. Everyone that builds websites should start to think, hang on a minute. This is a world of zero clicks. I never leave the Google page. I never leave my search results, because everything is served to me in that environment. Why would I need to go elsewhere? I don't need to go and visit the B to B website where they put so much effort and content in, because it's scraping that and pulling that in, yeah, and
Katie:I'm lazy and I can't be asked, Oh, yeah, it's just we don't need to go into the site and do the investigation. And that's same when I'm doing research for, I don't know presentations for clients, or whatever it might be is I will, actually, I don't even go to Google anymore. I'll go to chat GBT and ask chat to pull it and and then also ask it to give me the image or and then, in fact, there's other AI tools now that then can put that into a presentation for me, and I can say to the there's one called Beautiful AI, where you can kind of Google. You can Google, you can ask it to pull the images and design the slide for you using your brand guidelines. You just don't, you don't need to leave the AI platforms. Or, yeah, Google search. And obviously
Laurence:the dominance of GPT, because they were first to run, and I think is prolific in the deal with Apple, if you know that comes out that they're here to stay. Google, I think of its dominance in search is going to go so fast and hard into that market, and you do go, Well, hang on. The end result of having a search page that actually delivers me all the results I need means I never need to visit a website. Fast forward two years, five years. Why on earth would I ever build a website? What will I build? I'll probably build content designed for AI to consume it and then return it out in search results or design for people's personal AI assistance to do that they had someone had AI, call the hairdressers, book a hair appointment, confirm the time, put it in your diary. It did everything. So then you go beyond the search of actually, if I'm searching for local hairdressers, or I'm searching for my hairdressers, it will take the next five actions I need to do. I now don't need to do anything. And that's when you're stepping into AI becoming a personal assistant. So websites are dead. That'll be a challenge and a step change for an entire industry. The downside, I think, beyond Terminator, end of the world.
Katie:Oh my god, I even put that together, but yes, but
Laurence:the downside is the echo chamber just gets so much tighter, and I think we've already seen it. You know, there are walled gardens in countries, in geographies, but there are based on our own search history, on our own proclevities. It will show me things that I believe or want to believe or I associate with. AI will get so much smarter at that that I will begin to not see any content and not serve any content into that search space that ever questions my beliefs and that. That potentially is a very scary situation, because I'm not going to go to a website and read two sides of the coin. I'm not going to get an inverse to my to my thoughts and what I believe. I'm just going to be served the small excerpt that absolutely agrees with everything I've said, and it will be delivered via AI, which is terrifying. It
Katie:is terrifying. There's a book you should read on that. Have you read scary smart by no Gowda, I'm going to gift it to you. It is scary smart because AI is here to stay, and it will overtake what we put in. Is very important in terms of how we shape our own futures. But what I'm super interested in is what that means for you guys, or for anyone, for brands, when they're looking at their go to market strategies. PPC, you know campaigns, what if the world is changing that much? Because it is that you say, what does that mean when you have to think when you're developing performance campaigns for your clients?
Laurence:I think there's a short term knee jerk, which is, use AI for as much as you can and and we should be more efficient because of it. You know, I know there are, there are challenges with copyright in some areas for AI, but AI for us, is the most effective tool to make take three steps forward fast instead of one. You know, did the idea of ideating of fast craft content, for headlines, for body copy, for how much information it can assimilate quickly on a very niche product or service or very niche audience, is phenomenal. The moment we're using it as a base. It never touches the world, but it gives you a hell of a head start. It won't touch the world yet. And I think for our clients in B they'll probably be slower to accept that this content is good to go with justagon, so, you know. So that's why, for us at the moment, it's forming a baseline for, oh, that's fascinating. We've now learned so much about that industry or that audience that would have taken days of research, and we can now learn in seconds, it then forms the basis of what's created, but it doesn't create it itself. I think that's the short term space. Yeah, longer term, it will influence and touch everything. I think platforms where we've put so much emphasis on platform expertise, actually, when you look at the likes of meta already, the platform is doing it for you. You know, it doesn't want you to narrow down target audiences. It doesn't want you to be specific. It wants you just, just give me what you've got and let me go and find the audience for you, because I can do it better than you. I can see all the data. I can see, every interaction, I can see, every touch point. I can go and deliver this to the right person. So don't try and mess with me. So in that regard, platform expertise actually becomes diminished, or it's less, which is, you know, interesting, fast coming challenge for a lot of agencies to pivot and go. That's not where the value is. Now, okay, it might still be needed to manage overall, but it's not the value. The value comes back to the content. How do I create engaging, smart, intelligent, disruptive, you know, disruptive content,
Katie:yeah. I mean, I remember going back to my red web days, which is where I joined after you we would, you know, we knew kind of how to hack the system, how to get the content served. You knew what was going on with Google, with the updates, but it sounds like a lot of that has is disappearing now. So, like you say, it's got to be about the quality of the content. For sure, you're, you know, how on earth do you get noticed when you've got AI, bots and tools finding the crawling and finding the information in a very different way, you've got to, like, say it's got to almost be back to basics. Create cool, differentiating, fun, human content that's going to help capture attention. I love it. I
Laurence:think that's the bit that agencies have always, you know, the agency I worked with have always wanted to be part of. That's the bit we had, the value, the flavor, the secret sauce, is understanding human behavior, psychology, understanding how to augment or create or generate content that actually taps into that and creates a behavior change. It's the bit that's fun. Yeah, the fun bit personally for me, and there are people out there that disagree, the platform has never been fun for me. No, it's a means to an ends. Yeah, now you need a skill to do it. That skill potentially diminishes, but actually, then what replaces that is the likes of Tiktok. You know, you you create content that fundamentally changes the game. And they came lightning fast, fastest growing social network. You know, they came left field and just changed the game for everyone because it was content that led, yeah, and that was a phenomenal step change, and probably about time, because it all become a bit formulaic up until
Katie:that point. Well, you're leading me to another very interesting question. Poor Lawrence, by the way, guys, we always write briefs, and I never, ever follow them, because you're making me think about something else now, which is social search. I mean, for me, I know, I know, I bang on about this all the time, but I find everything that I want to buy in my personal life on social channels. We've alluded to this earlier. So. Same when it comes to business. If you want and need knowledge, I go to LinkedIn. Don't go to Google anymore. I used to go to like big McKinsey reports and other things. Don't even do that so much. Now. I go to either chat or go to LinkedIn. So we know that the way people go to find their next partner, agency, beauty product, maybe look 1215, 20 years younger. That's how I search my products. I don't go to Google. Yeah, it's, it's diff is changing. So what does that mean for you guys?
Laurence:It is, but in the same way that Google potentially will be the death of websites,
Unknown:social media, yeah,
Laurence:I think that's the one disappointment I have with AI is that everyone will create their own AI. It was just the opportunity. And I don't want to get sanctimonious about it. We gave up our data. I'm fine with giving up my data. I just if you've got a fridge that knows what you eat, but it reorders the milk. Sure do it. I don't care. Life easy for me. I drink Coke if you want to serve me brand ads, because, sure, crack on my data. I'm fairly liberal with it, because I've never seen the value in it, in the way that next generation potentially does smarter than me. But I do think that there was the opportunity in AI to go, No, I'll have my AI build an AI that's my AI, and let my AI interface with everything else, whereas actually what we're creating, and I know we're early days. AI is built, being built into so many tools, but it's not interoperable. So especially in B to B, you know, we use Slack. Slack. Put AI in eye watering, expensive, but it was great, but it doesn't work with Gemini, which doesn't work with, you know, the AI in float, which doesn't work with. So you've got all these separate AI components which are capable of coordinating and sorting and moving, but unless someone straps them together, builds
Katie:all the links, and that's the same. We've done the same using copilot. I was like, Yeah, copilot is going to solve my problems, but copilot only works when you're on teams. I can't record a call if I'm on a call on zoom using the co pilot, so it only learns the teams calls it doesn't. So therefore, actually, we're better using something like otter, which I can dial into any call on any platform. So yeah, like you say, there's a real kind of crossover here. I've got an interesting other question. I don't know if you're going to be able to be able to answer, but I feel you're probably going to be the best person that could answer this for me. How the fuck does my phone know what to serve me like, even like we're working with eon next at the moment, I've been talking about eon next. Sky TV starts showing me eon next adverts. I talk about, I don't know, going on holiday and using love holidays to book my holiday, and then love holidays starts to advertise to me. A minute ago, we were talking about Airbnb before we went live, Airbnb will probably start to advertise to me. Yes, how? Like, what have we get? What have you You made me think about this when we were talking about data, like, have I signed something with Apple or someone that isn't letting them listen to me, read that Terms and Conditions forever. Yeah, exactly. Like, do you know? Like, I've never spoken to anyone that knows, but we all know that this is someone's listening. Yes. Like, what the hell's going on? So
Laurence:Karl will have a much better answer performance. My knowledge is probably slightly outdated, but even five years ago, and I know we've tightened up GDP, GDPR, and all the rest of it. We've tried to make inroads on this, the things you so my kids put apps on my phone, a lot of games, apps on my phone, what they're doing, but to the background tasks that you allow them to do, to use the microphone, to use the camera, they can run as background tasks. I'm not sure whether app will close the loop. I'm at the risk of talking outside of my knowledge, but certainly yes, they're listening, yes, they're watching, yes, they're detecting your hand motion, your movement. There was a thing that finance company looking at, a payment system, company we're looking at, which is you vibrate at a different frequency to me. So you could use your, literally, your hand vibration, as a way into a payment method, because it's totally unique to you. Apple Watches are recording apps now, Apple is a fairly closed loop system, but the apps you put on are giving data out constantly. Yeah, even when you delete that app, I'm not saying on Apple, but there used to be rumors where you delete the app, but actually the data could still be transmitted to the origin and the source of the app to then be sold through that data. So yeah, for sure. Facebook meta, yes, everything you say, everything you do, whether it's open, on whether the camera's on, it's listening, yeah, which is unsurprising when they say, actually, as a platform, don't try and find your audience. We know what they're doing, yeah. We know where they are, yeah. We know what they're looking at. We know what they just talked about with friends and with a friend that had a dog. I mean, that was years ago. They, you know, it was they were trawling through photos. And, of course, you don't own any of the things that you put on there. You own none of your images that you put on Instagram or videos. They're all owned by the platform. They're now not yours, and they are mined for information. So how many times do you appear with a dog? Used to be the thing there was that great campaign that was done with dog food, because I know you and a dog, so I'll go and serve you dog s of course, yeah. But how often do I hear a dog barking in the background when you get home? Does that mean you've got a dog? Yeah, scary.
Katie:I've only just I've got one of those because I love watching Netflix while some cooking, the recipe apps need to get better on it. But I've got an echo Alexa echo show with this, yeah, with the screen, and I've only just realized that I need to turn the camera off because it's just watching me, like I was like, yeah, it's probably watching everything I'm doing, not that I'm doing anything weird, guys. I promise it's all above board. But it is just a bit creepy knowing, yeah, that it's constantly been videoing me for like, years, and I really just realized, oh, shit, I can flip that over, yeah? And it worked, because I never you, I never phone any through. I mean, I do announcements to the house, yes to say now, but I don't ever use the video. So I was like, Why have I got a thing over? So I'm just going to close it. But it is mad. I mean,
Laurence:people did research. People did research where they'd, they'd, you know, measure the data output from it to see if it's sending back information and like, no, no, no, it's fine. The problem is this, it's not possible for it to know so much about you without it listening and watching.
Katie:We've spoken a lot about AI, which bloody fascinates me. But what I want to know is how you're helping businesses overcome, I guess you know the challenges that AI provides. One from, you know, I'm assuming they need the right AI tools built into their, you know, creative but also, how do they get surfaced? Yeah, because AI is changing how people search. So from a performance point of view, things are changing. So yeah, how are you guys helping brands to kind of overcome all of these challenges?
Laurence:So we're helping a number of clients in different ways. The way that probably is first come out is workshops for clients to actually understand what AI, the potential AI right now, what tools are out there, what tools are worth using, and how they can leverage them safely. So we've done a number of workshops with clients, marketing teams and product teams to okay, this is the state of play. These are probably the day to day use tools that you can use, and this is where it can save you time and money. And there have been some phenomenal examples. We have an insurance client that has entirely rewritten 1000s of documents with a new brand tone of voice. And AI did it for them. You know, that would have been a huge undertaking, either for an agency or internal so, you know, someone's lost out there. But actually it was done in days, not months, for a brand tone of voice change, which is, you know, simple in IDEA, execution hard, but actually just got a lot easier. So it's phenomenal. The workshops are about, I suppose, inspiring, what AI will do and where it goes, and that's from performance on, how do your performance campaigns need to change? But also, how does content creation need to change? There's a lot of pressure on marketing teams, as we know, even with purse strings loosening to do more with less, there, they don't have enough staff, they have too many projects, and they don't have enough time, and they don't have enough budget for all of them. So how can you use AI to start relieving some of those pressures so they can start to do more? We've run workshops where we talk about, you know, your traditional model in performance of a lead magnet. So okay, we've got one lead magnet for this audience, but you have six audiences. Now, traditionally, that one lead magnet would have to cover all audiences. Well, no, not now we can use AI to augment it and actually go, we're going to talk not to six audiences, but 20. And the performance needs to probably catch up with that that we can create hyper personalized, hyper relevant content and serve it. So your campaign needs to be smart enough to be smart enough to identify those audiences and go this content is just for you. Don't make it generic. Make it specific. So those are hugely exciting. There's probably a real time today. What can I do next month? What can I do in a year's time? What should I be planning for? And that's that's hugely exciting.
Katie:I love that. I'm going to ask you another mean question, because that's what I'm here to do. Favorite AI tool when it comes to those kind of things, GPT, really just chat still,
Laurence:yeah, it's a rubbish name. I wish they changed the name to chat GPT, yeah, but it's still, I suppose there are nuanced tools that are specific. Lots of platforms, lots of SaaS tech platforms have got aI built in that suddenly enhance it, but actually for just an all encompassing tool that will just cover so many bases. The recent update that lets you have memory through thread, through different conversations. You know, I immediately trained my own my tone of voice. I gave it everything I've ever written. So now when I come to write something I'm not saying AI writes my LinkedIn posts, yes, but, but certainly go. I want to talk about this. You know, go and find me information about it. I know this, but I'm missing this, this and this, and I want to talk to this audience now. Give me something in my tone of voice. It's incredibly effective,
Katie:and it gets you, you know, not. All the way there, sometimes, but 80 90% so it saves a lot
Laurence:of time, only to, I suppose, just slightly off topic at AI, because I will wax lyrical, and it is phenomenal. AI is a prodigal infant. It still doesn't understand. I did one of my presentations on on AI to a client. Was like, AI can write a sonnet for a dog, write a haiku, write a poem, write a description. It can draw a picture. It can make a video. It doesn't know what a dog is. So whilst we're all very excited today, it still fundamentally doesn't understand dog. Has no concept of dog. It just knows everything that's ever been written, everything that's ever been created about dog. So it can emulate it when we get to general intelligence of AI. Then, yeah, then we're at the Terminator moment. And, yeah, same here for that, but yeah, so it's, it's phenomenally powerful, a bit like I would always align it to AI is a bit like Photoshop. I'm a creative person, but I think creatively, but I can't draw and I can't create. You could give me Photoshop and train me how to use it, every button and every tool in it. I could not design you anything. My brain doesn't work like that. AI is exactly the same. If you learn the skills, learn the do prompt engineering, you know that's important for a while, till it figures out, learn how to use the tool. But still, if you're not a creative person, if you're not a creative writer. If you can't ideate in that way, it won't give you great results. It takes what you have or assimilates what it's got and throws it at you. So it's always a jump point at the moment.
Katie:Yeah, it's interesting where it's going to go though. Blimey, yeah, okay, I could talk about this all day. It's a whole podcast, isn't it? It's probably a whole series of podcasts, right? Not totally off topic, but slightly different subject, and one we come up against a lot, and I'm sure you do as well, compliance. So there's a lot of talk about being brave, being human, being different. We all know this. Anyone who's worked in runs an agency, been in agency world, you come up with fantastic, creative, bold ideas, and the client fucking kills it. Sorry, guys, sorry, brand leaders out there, but yeah, and what you the idea, and all the magic gets stripped away. So talk to me. How are you guys, especially in this more tech dominated AI world, talk to me about compliance. It's
Laurence:vital that you have a plan, that you have an approach when you're working in B to B with specific sectors, on how to navigate compliance, because it's not easy. If you don't get it right, you won't stand a chance of being disruptive. We found three ways that are quite effective. The first is investing time in understanding the compliance structure ecosystem. You know, you've got DPO teams, you've got brand you've got legal compliance. What are the teams that are involved in actually decision making on this is an idea that will work, and this is an idea that we can't let out the building. You have to invest time, not just from a creative point of view. Your copywriter needs to know. Your CS team need to know, like everyone should know, who are these people, and you should have them on speed dial, because you really need to build a relationship with them. They're not there to make a problem. They're there to their guard. They're guarding the brand as they should do, and they're making sure that no one falls foul. And in a lot of instances, especially in Fs, you want those people to make sure we're not miss sold when we shouldn't be. So they're not an enemy. You just need to understand them. The next thing is the why. So amount of times, no, you can't do that, if you accept that, okay, well, we can't do that. That's great. Okay, we'll come up with another idea. You've missed the point. It's not what can't we do? It's why can't we do it? But why can't we do that? What did we say that was wrong? Why did that matter? And the more you understand the why, the more you can navigate. Okay, so this idea never going to fly because we said those words, those collection of words in that specific sentence. So if we change it, how close can we get to disruptive? How fast? How far do we move from disruptive? How close can we get to compliant in actually, just augmenting this understanding the why makes all the difference. The final thing is the competition. You know, those compliance teams are probably approached by every person in marketing, every team. They are overstretched, overworked, and they don't have a time to look outside, often, into the world of, well, who's doing what? So you look at the competition, what are they doing? And if you see something, you think, how did they get away with that, you know, collect that evidence, bring it to the compliance team and go, Okay, you didn't let us do this. We've just seen this competitor, this competitor, this competitor, something similar. Why? Why were they allowed to get away with that? How close to that can we get? You know, either, you know, push them, but with the evidence it because then, okay, so they did it that way. So that would be okay, right? So that lets us be disruptive. Disruptive is absolutely right. Disruptive is sometimes exactly where you need to be. But if you don't have at least one or two of those ideas in play where you're working with them, you're never going to get something through the building. You will just get shut down every time. Yeah,
Katie:well, especially in those kind of industries like. Invest I love this is disruption, but at its most basic level, we've got a lovely pink background. So guess who I'm going to talk about, Klarna, like, subtly disruptive in a way that's allowed because it was just pink rather than blue. Yeah? Like, and it's game changing, yeah? Absolute game changer. And made other banks and businesses be like, Oh yeah, we can actually be different.
Laurence:Oh God, when you look at I mean, Revolut Monzo Starling. Starling bank, phenomenal. Yeah, that's stuff they're doing in social the stuff they're doing, they're advertising. It's it's so far ahead of an industry that hasn't had to really show itself in that way. Suddenly, the step change is required. You've got a huge ecosystem and environment that is designed to say no and say no, we can't do that. No, that's too scary. No, what if we got it wrong? The fear is huge. The startups didn't have that infrastructure. Now their maturity as they mature, actually it's things they're having to put in place you suddenly are having to worry about, okay, how do we put the checks and balances in place that makes or we don't make a misstep. We didn't have to worry about this. Now we do. So they're actually having to adopt similar processes and practices. But they have started in place, which is, yes, we want to not, no, we can't. So it's kind of an easier place to get to, which is exciting. They are doing phenomenal things, but the other brands are catching up.
Katie:Yeah, totally. It's constantly changing. Yes, constantly changing. Lawrence. Thank you so much. We've covered everything from Ai, innovation, compliance, I don't think there's any hot topics, yeah. I mean, it's all super interesting. I could talk to you for so much longer. A big thank you for coming on the podcast, guys. If you want to check out bright blue day, I will make sure links to Lawrence's LinkedIn profile to brightly day, and everything that you need is in the show notes. So go check them out. They do some awesome work, some awesome brands like Visa and fingers crossed. If you enjoyed today's episode, you'll be back to listen again soon. And well, I won't see you, but you'll see me. Bye, guys, bye.