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The brands trying to change the world - Chris Baker, Serious Tissues & Change Please
01:04:49
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Foreign.
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Gentlemen, welcome back to the uncensored cmo. Now, we're talking about one of my favorite subjects, which are Challenger brands, but in this case, a slight twist on the idea of Challenger Change brands, brands that are trying to make a big impact on the planet as well. Now, we've talked about a few of these brands already on the podcast. It's great to have someone who's written a book about it, Obsolete, which is out this week. So, Chris Baker, welcome to the show.
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Thanks for having me on.
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B
Now, this is great timing because I believe you have a book coming out tomorrow.
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I do, yeah. Very exciting.
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B
How does that fit? Well, let me ask you. Well, first of all, congratulations, because what a moment to become an author. And. And that must be kind of. We'll get into how much work went into it, but tomorrow's the launch day, isn't it?
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It is absolutely, you know, really excited. It all still feels a little bit surreal and a little bit overwhelming. We had the book launch event last week. I think after spending months sat in a dark room writing, to suddenly have like a physical book in your hand was. It was an amazing feeling. And then to be out there talking to real people, getting them enthused about the ideas. Yeah. But nice to be out of my, like, writing cave and having a chat and, you know, putting the ideas to the test, really, which is really exciting.
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B
Amazing. I mean, I mean, people often say everyone's got a book in them, you know, don't they? Is a famous phrase. When did the book idea come to you and how long does it take from kind of, you know, you having the idea to where we are today?
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Yeah. So, I mean, I think, like you say, every, I think every ad planner thinks they've got. And then I think it's a case of careful what you wish for a little bit because it is a big job to write, you know, 60, 70,000 words and get it all down on paper. I think the. It's about my third go at landing a book, book deal. And it probably. So basically the end of last year, about August, the deal happened with Bloomsbury and then you get six months to go away and turn it from an idea and a proposal into a physical book. And yeah, that took a lot out of me, but was a really worthwhile process. Got to speak to founders and interesting people from so many brilliant brands that we're going to talk about, which was a real eye opener and a hugely valuable process.
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Now for everyone listening and watching, give us the pitch for the book that convinced Bloomsbury to Go ahead.
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I mean, the main idea at the heart of the book is the best way to change the world is to change how people spend their money. I was involved in launching a brand called ChangePlease back in my agency days. It's nine years old in about two weeks. So that was an idea where basically if you can change how people buy their coffee, you can change the world. Right. We created a coffee brand that trained homeless people as baristas, gave them a chance to turn their life around. And it really struck a chord when it first launched huge amounts of PR coverage, a lot of uptake from big businesses going, look, we can just change our coffee from whatever else we're using to this brand that helps homeless people. And that was a big sort of eureka moment for us. And then it was like, okay, hang on, there's something much bigger here. If we can change how people spend their money in any category, we can change the world. That simple switch. And yeah, that was the thing, I think that got Bloomsbury excited. Obviously talking about my own experience with changeplays with serious tissues that we'll come on to talk about. And then also the fact there's already lots and lots of brands that are starting this journey, that are moving people's money and building business models that are having a positive impact on the planet.
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B
So you're obviously quite busy anyway because you've got two kind of change brands as you describe them as well, and you want to put a book on top. How do you manage to juggle both those things and why did you want to try and do both? Both be the change and also write about the change?
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Yeah, I think if I hadn't had gray hair before, I definitely would now I've got three young kids as well. So that, that was a, well, a big reason in why I wanted to drive it. Because we all look around in this world, we're living in, this sort of perma crisis and everything seems to be going pear shaped. And an idea of going, we need to get this out there, get this idea out there so people actually realize that the power their money has in bringing about positive change. But yeah, balancing it around, running serious tissues around my kids and writing 70,000 words or so was a stretch. So a lot of early mornings in January. Dark, lonely, getting it done. But yeah, when you, when you get that book in your hands, it's a pretty amazing feeling.
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B
Oh, must be. And you got a copy here today. Of course, it's actually in real life as well. It must be something to see after all those Hours. He called it Obsolete, which is, I thought it's quite a provocative title. Why did you settle on that as your, as your book title?
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I mean, it is a not necessarily deliberately provocative title, but when you look at it as just that one word, you go, God, that's pretty punchy. I was pretty inspired by a quote that sits on the inside, which is from a guy called Buckminster Fuller, a famous writer and thinker and architect. He talks about, basically, you don't change things by fighting the existing model. You change things by building a new model that makes the old model obsolete. And it was that quote that gave the title. Because I think when you look at these businesses, you see so many of them are building a new, interesting business model that takes what's maybe not quite right with the current model and improves on it. Right. And that, that, that idea of creative destruction that's at the heart of capitalism generally, that is what these brands are doing. They are updating business models. They're making existing business models that might be problematic obsolete. And I don't think for a moment. So I suppose the, that's, that's, that's where the idea really came from. And I don't think for a moment I'm saying we're going to make massive brands obsolete. That's almost insane. And it would be pretty foolhardy. I think it's more certain business models are going to become untenable and obviously, and brands that are moving and moving things forward, making impact environmentally, socially, it's going to make those things untenable for companies to sit behind. So there's a lot we talk about these businesses being catalysts for other companies to move faster. It encourages them, gets them moving to cardboard packaging rather than plastic. It shows it's doable.
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Right.
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So that's where that idea really came from. Yeah.
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It's interesting psychology because in between jobs, I say in between jobs, someone told me off the other day for saying I get fired too many times. But anyway, after being fired, I went away and came up some startup ideas. And probably the best idea I came up with felt too difficult to do because I wanted to completely change the world of soft drinks and how soft drinks are made and where they're made and take out about 90% of the carbon dioxide used in the supply chain. And this idea was really, really bold. It's interesting because I didn't do it, and I probably should have done it, but I didn't do it because it felt too big. And I didn't think me, as one person Even with the fact that I've got a background in the category, could pull off that audacious goal. And I think that's probably something that people feel like. They look at the whole size of the challenge and it feels too big sometimes, doesn't it? But I think what I was encouraged reading your book is the idea that you don't have to get to that bigger percentage of the market to generate change and also force other people to change and even came up, I think, with percentage, didn't you? That is sort of like a tipping point for change of three and a half percent. So what's that about? And because that might give encouragement to people that are thinking, I couldn't possibly change the world in this way.
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Yeah, I mean there's a lot in there. I think these categories are massive. So the toilet roll category is worth 17 billion. I think if we got 1 or 2% of that, we're in hundreds of millions. As a business, you don't need to be the next Andrex, you need to get 1, 2, 3, 4% and suddenly you're a nuisance. You're encouraging people to move away from virgin pulp, to recycle from toilet roll wrapped in plastic, toilet roll wrapped in paper and boxes. So it's very doable. I think you'd also be surprised around the amount of manufacturers that are open to doing things a bit differently. And it's a bit of a Goldilocks style situation. So there'll be certain manufacturers who are used to dealing with massive, massive companies and they won't entertain a conversation. There'll be certain ones who are too small, but if you find the right sort of manufacturer, they'll see the opportunity to grow with you, to disrupt things, to do things a bit differently. One of the examples from the, from the book is the story of Home Home Things, which is a, basically a cleaning brand that noticed that 90% of what you get in your normal cleaning spray is just tap water, basically. So you're paying to ship, you're paying for a single use plastic bottle that's basically full of water that you could get from your tap. About millions and millions of liters of water being shipped around. Carbon emissions are crazy. They basically created an equivalent of a Baroka tablet for cleaning. It took them a long time to find a manufacturer who was up for doing that because the technology that makes those tablets, normally they're using it for food. They didn't want to introduce cleaning products, but when they found someone, they've nailed it and they've got a Brilliant relationship with their manufacturer and they've created something really special. So there's more and more brands there that can do that. The other point around the 3.5%. So that comes from a bit of research from an academic who's looked at, I think, almost every social movement in history and has gone. There's a tipping point when three and a half percent, she talks about it as the magic number three and a half percent of society get, get behind or are part of a movement or an idea. And that's when it becomes, it reaches the tipping point. It doesn't. And 3.5% doesn't feel.
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Doesn't sound much, does it?
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Yeah, especially when all you're asking them to do is buy a chocolate bar or a coffee or. It's not like you're asking them to go and march on 10 Downing street right. So it's a small shift. And the example, I think she talks a lot about the example of apartheid in South Africa and when they did a consumer boycott because all the businesses were really owned by the white population, but all the spending power was with the African population. So when they boycotted white business, they basically suddenly focused the mind of going, oh shit, we really need to, we really need to do something here. And then similarly going way, way, way back, there's a brilliant example which looks at the end of the abolition of slavery in I think the 1820s or 1830s, there was a big push to boycott West Indies sugar and they created these sugar bowls that had slavery free sugar on there. There's a great picture of it in the book. It's in the British Museum just says east India sugar, slavery free. And it got to a point where I think, don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but over half a million people were behind it, which was way over the 3.5% tipping point. But imagine the stir that would make in polite society in the 1800s when you pull out your slavery free sugar, like it's the first genuine consumer movement. So that point of moving the money to change the world is something that is working at the moment with brands in terms of winning share and winning a couple of percentage points and big companies going, I probably should pay attention to this. But similarly moving it away from places bringing about the abolition of slavery, the end of apartheid, big historical precedent. So I think the other thing that got me excited is when you think about politics is slow, legislation's really slow, whereas money moves fast and power follows money, politicians follow money, for better or worse. If you can Move the money and the businesses that are successful are the ones that are making a positive impact. You can surpass all of that. And these change brands are almost proving that they can do things differently and make a success. And then it means it's easier for legislators to go, actually we'll pass a law that moves us away from the internal combustion engine by 2030, even though as things are sliding. But there's no way there would have been the courage to legislate for that without Tesla proving that it was doable. This role as like agitator and the kind of radical flank effect I think we talk about of just being that, that that nuisance on the outside that suddenly gets bigger and bigger and noisier and noisier and suddenly the need to change grows.
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Yeah, I think the other thing that struck me as well when I was thinking about this for myself years ago was I was slightly intimidated by the large businesses and thinking, well surely if I have this idea the large businesses will just swamp me, just literally roll over me. But you refer to it in your book. Actually it's one of my favorite books of all time. It's Innovator's Dilemma that we assume that big companies are great innovation. They turn out to be very, very poor because they are rewarded by the status quo as it is now and they very rarely have any incentive to disrupt themselves in terms of the business model. So what you find is they're often very late to trends and therefore there's a beautiful opportunity for startup founders actually can get a long way not only to disrupt an industry but also create change within the industry as well. And get then the big companies then sit and go, well, how do we get a part of that?
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Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the most useful parts of the book, so obviously I spoke to 20 or 30 odd founders at different change brands, but also spoke to an individual called Agent Change who will remain nameless, who basically sits in a big sustainability role at one of the biggest 10 or 11 FMCG companies. And understanding the view from their side of the fence was really useful. So I think first and foremost, if something's not worth 5 or 6 million in the first year, lots of these companies will just go, it's not even worth it, it's not going to move the needle for us. Whereas change brands can come in, they can operate on a slightly different time horizon, they can operate over 2, 3 years and build something really special. You know, interestingly, SMOL came out of Unilever. So it's built up, it's a brand now that's one of the fastest growing in the country. Raised I think 35 million a couple of years ago. Really substantial. Unilever just almost. I believe they tried to do something similar internally and just couldn't make the numbers work. They probably had a team of 20 people trying to do it. That's not how innovation works. And I think big companies just aren't set up to, to work in that way. They're operating at enormous scale. Agent Change talks about the need to. How do you scale something up to a billion interactions a day? That's where their huge advantage comes from. And if you're, if you've got a bottling plant that works in a certain way or your production line is set up to do, to fill up cleaning products with water, you're not going to change. Interestingly again, chatting to the home things guys last week the patent for cleaning products that are in tablets was filed by some of these companies in like the 60s and 70s. So they've, they've almost invented waterless cleaning 30 years ago and on and are still no closer to actually moving towards that. It feels a little bit like the same sort of story as Kodak with digital photography. So Kodak invented digital photography. They then saw it as a. Let's not talk about digital photography because it's going to erode our film business which, which is the status quo. Right. So I think there's a moment when it's going to reach tipping point with waterless cleaning because it just doesn't make any sense for anybody apart from the five or six brands that dominate that category. It's way better for the environment, it's cheaper because it's smaller and you're not shipping the water. There's no single use plastic. It takes up less space on the shelf so the retailers could actually use that shelf space for something else. That valuable real estate on shelf. It's just the. How do you break the status quo? And there's brands like Ocean Saver, like Smol, like Home Things, other ones in the States that are doing it and it will happen at some point but it's just, you're right to say they don't necessarily set themselves up to do it. And I think one of the brilliant examples, final thing on this one is P and G have actually created a brand called EC30 which when you go on the EC30 website there's no mention of P and G anywhere. The only way you know it's PNG is when you go and sign up for the mailing list. It says you will get notes from EC30 and other P and G brands. But it talks about the importance of waterless cleaning, how billions of liters of water are shipped around the world every day. It's a D2C business. It's waterless. It's a really cool innovation that only, you know, big company could do. It's very, very cool. Little patches. They are trying to disrupt themselves from within. And that I think is hugely interesting. And if I think that is a model that big FMCG could follow, almost trying to disrupt from within on a slightly different time frame, you can bring innovation there. You can, you know, you can test, you can win new audiences, you can deposition your competition. There's so much stuff you can do. It's a massive opportunity for these companies. They're all looking for growth and currently their core business is set up to just keep things going. Maybe they'll introduce a new flavor sku, because that's much easier to win a bit of share. Whereas these big things where you're positioning yourself for the future of the category, that's when it gets really interesting.
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You're. I mean, that is the dilemma though, isn't. I mean, I spent 20 years in soft drinks and it was the same thing. It's like, well, we could launch a new flavor of Pepsi that's £20 million. And I worked out there's no innovation that had got over £10 million in year one. Yet we had this, we had this kind of, if it ain't 10 million, it's not worth it. A bit of Naomi Campbell, like, kind of like, I won't get out of bed for less than 10 million. It was a bit like that until I pointed out, you do realize that there is no innovation that's got 10 million in year one. No proper innovation. Uh, but you can keep doing flavor skus and then switch people through flavors. That's fine. Um, but it won't get, you know, but that's. That you're only going to. It's. It's a whole book, isn't it, that you're incremental innovation and it takes you so far. Disruptive innovation is what's going to get you there. But you have to look at different time horizons. You have to incentivize the teams differently, you have to resource differently. You have to give people permission to do things in a completely different manner. Yeah, and that's hard.
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It's definitely hard to do that when you're under pressure from shareholders and, and all of those kind of things. And you've seen Unilever change tack recently with a couple of changes of CEO. I suppose it's looking after the long term future of the business. And, you know, a lot of these companies came about in the 70s when energy was cheap, when plastic was a miracle product, when you could dominate a supermarket shelf really easily. There were four TV channels. Now all the advantages of those big companies have been eroded. You can have a DTC model, people buy stuff through Amazon, you've got Lidl and Audi coming in and people are very open to trying stuff that looks a bit like brands, but cheaper. So the kind of, the big advantage of these massive companies has been eroded. Now you look at it and go, plastic's hugely problematic. Energy is not cheap. Supermarket. There's so many different routes to market. So the world that they all grew so massive in has changed fundamentally. And it'll be all of that presents a big opportunity for, well, for small brands, but also for big brand. The big brands that are savvy to this to go, you know, let's think five years in the future, what are the innovations that we're going to bring forward that disrupt us from within?
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B
So out of interest, you've obviously done a lot of research for the book. You're a startup founder yourself. You've got two brands that you've personally kind of started. Were you inspired by any of these other brands? You looked at them to see, ah, I reckon that's probably where the next innovation is going to come from. Or as you cleverly do in the book, the idea of creativity being connecting things. And, you know, what if your toilet roll saved the planet? Or, you know, what if your chocolate was slavery free? You know, did you, when writing the book, suddenly think, oh, there's another idea that I could start?
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Yeah, I think there's. I think there's opportunity in so many different places. There's definitely a few more things in the back of our mind that we're like, okay, what could we do next? You know, it's a little bit of running before you can walk and making sure that certain things are in good places before jumping on something else. But I think one of the things that I think a lot of these brands have in common is they all come from a place of starting off with a problem people really care about. For instance, with serious tissues. The four of us who founded it between us have eight kids, all increasingly concerned about climate change and what the world's going to look like in 20 years when they all reach adulthood or even sooner really so we wanted to do something about that, which was the problem people care about. We then looked at a category that potentially has a problem. So when you look at toilet roll, for instance, the vast majority of toilet roll is made from virgin pulp, which is trees that have grown for 20, 30 years and are then cut down to make toilet roll. A million trees are cut down every day to make loo roll. Seems, seems insane when we need trees more than ever to, to capture carbon and do what they're doing. So we had that category problem that we know we could push against and then looking for a way to make a positive impact going forward. So the, the idea of with, with serious tissues was that we would plant trees, be a toilet roll brand that plants trees rather than cuts them down. We're made from recycled paper, it's plastic free, it's UK made and we plant trees. And I think the combination of those three things creates a pretty potent mix when you're creating a brand. And in the book I talk about, I think after we talked about that model, talking about brands like Toast, like upcircle, we talked about there's so many interesting brands that have seen a category problem, seen something people care about. There's always a way to make an impact. So yeah, if you think about it with those three things in mind, there's endless opportunity and endless possibilities. I think.
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Yeah. Now be good to talk about how we do it.
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Right.
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Because I think when. I don't think many people wouldn't want to make an impact and wouldn't want their brand to have an impact. Well, but obviously to be. So the more commercially successful you are, the bigger the impact's going to be. Right. So it's a good thing. But we touched on some of the challenges which are significant. So I mean just taking my experience like in soft drinks, I mean like a few businesses dominate, you know, dominate in terms of supply chain, their ability to buy bulk on, on kind of global fruit, you know, juice market or whatever. You know, they have contracts with supermarkets that run into the millions that guarantee their shelf space. They got pricing power so they can promote buy one, get one free to destroy you overnight if they want to. You know, I've been in those kind of battles and many of those brands have got decades, even centuries of brand equity built up and awareness over time. It's not as if change brands haven't got a lot to kind of go up against sort of things. I just, I'd be really interested to know kind of as well as positioning and coming up with the, you know, you talked about in terms of, you know, finding a purpose that people care about and a category disrupts. How can you win against such a, you know, such a big established place? I mean, I know you talked about, you know, the world has changed. The world has changed in terms of routes to market and so on. But there's a lot to overturn, isn't there?
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Yeah, it's, I mean retail, the retail environment is particularly tough because it's, it is locked down and there's, there's only a limited amount of options. I know listening to the Liquid Death podcast you did with Mike Cesario, the, the way that Most chillers in every 711 or similar are owned by Pepsi or Coke so you've got no chance of getting in. The way they got to market was through, through bars and through alcohol distribution and then where it's less locked down by those companies and festivals and partnership with Live Nation. So they found a different route to market which really suited their brand, which, which was a stroke of genius really in terms of if you can't go through it, you've got to go around it. Right. And find a way there. I think there's. The benefit is to come back to that size thing. You don't need to be a 5 million pound business in year one. You can, with social media. You can find your audience quite quickly. You can create. If you, if you create a proposition that has come from consumer insight and genuine audience need, there is a way to, to find that audience and build up slowly. You don't. I think if you go into something where you should think about the category, it's things like don't have crazy minimum order quantities when you're having to order truck and truck after truck after truck to get, to get it across the line. Look at things that are slightly higher margin than others. Coffee compared to toilet roll for instance. Coffee was much higher margin than toilet roll which made life easier on that side of things. Toilet roll is a big volume place so you need to get some proper scale to be able to compete. So there's things like that. There's a lot in the book about. Yeah the kind of nuts and bolts of how you. The category you should think about and that sort of thing. But you will find a route to market.
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B
Yeah.
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If it's genuinely got that those three things I think baked in, you will find a way to get it there and if you can deliver on it. Yeah.
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I did this, I did this study of 10 years of soft drink innovation looking at the winners and Losers. It's really fascinating because the ones that were successful in year one, almost none of those appeared on the list after 10 years and a completely different list. And the ones that had succeed in the long run, almost all of them did the same thing where they picked a part of the market and dominated like whether it was the pubs or whether it's kind of restaurants or maybe it was food service or whatever. And, and they'd absolutely become famous in that channel and had exit kind of basically took share a voice in that channel and then it got a following and then they gradually moved out. So like you know, like Red Bull or Monster or Innocent. None of them went mass market from day one. They probably took, I mean in fact I concluded this, concluded the study by saying on average it took them seven years to have an overnight success because seven years was about the time it took until they then broke into sort of what we'd call mainstream distribution. And people forget that the most, most big change brands as you call them have been around a lot longer than you think they have, you know, but they've been really building up a community, nailing distribution because often you can't afford to go everywhere. You can't. And in fact the opposite I found was all the brands that you know went for mass distribution from day one. Most 50 of them did not exist a year later and 80 of them didn't exist five years later. I mean it's incredible. Like literally chalk and cheese in terms of those two, two strategies.
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That's really interesting. I suppose you think, yeah. Virgin, Virgin Cola for instance. Yeah. Just going after the biggest players like so hard.
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Yeah.
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But going in, you know, the likes of Dash is a really interesting play. The likes of Liquid Death, picking, picking particular things. Canowater has been a huge success.
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Yeah.
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Over here when it first came to market everyone's like what planet are you on? Why are you putting water in cans? So I think there's, you don't need to go crazy. I think one of the things that's interesting about the conversation with Agent Change is he talks, it talks about the biggest fear of brand owners being being eaten away from above and below. So below you're being eaten away by private label and retailers and discounters. But above you're being eaten away by brands that maybe charge a slight price premium but also occupy, occupy the high ground. Maybe they're slavery free chocolate like Tony's. Maybe they're plastic free recycled paper, bamboo, whatever. It might be something that is at a price premium but allows you to eat away at these brands from both sides. And I think another important point is not every, a lot of these brands come at a price premium. So not everyone can afford to buy it constantly, every single time. They don't need to buy it every time. And gradually I think the way these brands tend to reach scale is almost the people that buy it early are the ones who are really sustainably minded or really focused on problems like homelessness or reoffending. Then it grows and grows and grows. So with change, please, for instance, the big part of getting it to scale has been working with businesses. So selling coffee into the likes of WeWork and Virgin Atlantic and David Lloyd gyms and it's now tipped over massively into the mainstream. So it's very much like that innovation adoption curve and brands gradually grow to people who are really interested in like people who buy the iPhone. Early on people are really into positive change. Then it becomes you get scale, you can compete on price, you tip over into the mainstream and suddenly you're a mainstream brand. You can afford to be close to parity price wise.
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B
The other advantage, I mean purpose can come in for a bit of a hard time sometimes and you can see lots of examples of marketers abusing purpose and, or borrowing purpose and using it badly. But why not see when Peter Field did his study into it and Also at system one when we've looked at it, it's very powerful in B2B because people want to work with other companies that are doing the right thing for the planet and for humanity and so on. So it's quite powerful. So again, if you've got a brand that's for food service for example, having a strong kind of impact, mission statement actually can be the difference. And I remember, you know, when I was pitching for Tesco many years ago, back in my drinks days, I mean, I remember we were talking before about the one stop buyer who he took me to their kind of concept store down the road and he drove me all the way there, he put me in front of the soft drink fixture and he said to me, he said, John, there are 96 brands you're looking at now. How many of those do you think are not in a six figure contract? And I was like, I don't know, maybe 20, 30. He said, two. He said, you want to know where those two are? They're the bottom shelf in the corner. Those two kids drinks you see down there gathering dust, the little cartons in there, they're the only two that I've not got wrapped up in a very, very Kind of rich deal with the suppliers. I'm like, wow. But having said that, at the same time, Tesco, corporately, we're trying to do the right thing by reducing sugar. Trying to do the right thing by taking CO2 out the supply chain. We're trying to do the right thing with small suppliers paying them In, I think, 14 days, not 90 days, that, you know, everyone else. So we often forget that there are kind of corporate objectives that, you know, big retailers might have that you can play into as well.
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Yeah, it's a big, big thing, I think. I mean, there's actually legislation, things like the Social Value act, which has. That the government are looking to use their procurement spend, like what they're buying with the nhs, for instance, what they're buying in the government departments with serious issues. We've talked about doing the toilet roll with. With Buckingham palace with change, please. They're in lots of the NHS sites. They're in AstraZeneca. So probably the coffee that fueled the vaccine.
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B
Oh, I love that.
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Looking like being potentially the first coffee in space with Virgin Galactic. So there's some really exciting things, but it's very much about if you can change what one person spends, how one person spends their money, the coffee they buy, toilet roll they use, whatever it might be, it makes an impact. But if you change David LLOYD Jim's, there's 140,000 members in the. In the country. If you can change the coffee they're buying, suddenly you start to have some real impact and it starts to build up really quickly.
- [29:33]
B
Now, just everyone listening and watching, I just realized we've been talking about change, please. But you haven't yet said how it came about and what it's doing differently. Because there's a great story to this. So, yeah, please tell us the story of the origin.
- [29:43]
A
We probably should have started with that. Yeah. So. So back in my agency days, I was at FCB Inferno in the day and sat in a coffee house in Covent Garden. A rare break between meetings. Basically homeless guys sitting out the front. Saw numerous people walking past, looking at their phone, tapping their pockets, crossing the road and then going straight into the. I think it was a cafe nearer at the time to spend three quid on a skinny latte and a croissant or whatever. And it was one where we went. It just feels like there's something not quite right about this and there's an opportunity to disrupt that. That journey. And the idea that we had was basically finding a way to train homeless people as. As baristas, giving them A skill, a job, you know, an opportunity to get back on their feet and everything that comes with that. We took the idea to the Big issue and they, they loved it because it was, you know, very much a sort of update on what they're, what they've done for 20 odd years, I think 25 years at the time. But they said, look, we're a magazine publisher trying to deal with the threat to publishing. We need a coffee partner. And at the same time, in a beautiful moment of serendipity, I was living in Peckham at the time, wandered down the road and got chatting to Jamal, who's now CEO and the main man behind Change Police. He's been a driving force, but he was. Him and a guy called Rich Robinson were starting a coffee roastery that was helping homeless people. And we basically took the coffee roastery, these guys were starting the Big Issue and the might of the agency at the time and created Change Please, which is basically this coffee brand that fights homelessness by selling coffee. And it's been a crazy journey. It's nine years in mid November, first coffee cart in Covent Garden. It's now in over 20 countries, it's in 300 corporate partners just signed a big partnership with Nespresso where Nespresso you can now buy Change Please coffee through Nespresso machines. And Nespresso have committed a million pounds a year to help with a new training centre in Ireland, another one in the uk. So the real genuine impact in that partnership, Change Please have got buses that go out and basically our mobile service centres for rough sleepers in partnership with Colgate. You might have seen the ads on TV a lot with HSBC and they've got everything like laundrettes and showers and doctors and dentists. The crazy fact that one in three homeless people has tried to remove their own teeth. So having a dentist that can go around and help out has been pretty game changing. So, yeah, Change Please from, from really humble beginnings as that single car has, has really gone, gone gangbusters. And it's. Yeah, probably, probably was the, the idea, the thing that started the idea behind the book, this idea of if we can change how people buy their coffee, we can change the world. Actually, if we change how people spend their money, this could happen across so many categories and it already is happening. So many of the brands I talk about in the book are already creating business models that tackle these problems and doing amazing things.
- [32:50]
B
Yeah, that's inspiring. And can you measure the impact that you've had in terms of homelessness? People off the streets now in jobs, you know, better denture. I mean, can you measure all that?
- [33:00]
A
Yeah. So there's a. The most recent impact report for change Police came out, I think back end of last year. It's just tipped over into the thousands now of people helped in all sorts of different ways. There's loads of detail in the report about whether that's people who've come into the program, got a skill and moved forward and then gone on to onward employment with a corporate partner or it's people, some of the rough sleepers we've helped. So, yeah, it's been really interesting in that regard.
- [33:25]
B
Yeah. Giving someone a job seems so much more valuable than just meeting their immediate needs, doesn't it? I came across this, I need to remember the name, but it was a creative agency in LA that exclusively worked with inmates and released offenders. And the statistics were incredible, like reoffending rates were sky high. But when they worked with this creative agency and they trained them in prison as well, before they got released, they came out with a skill, the offending rate went right down. I mean, the difference was incredible. It makes sense, doesn't it, because you give them hope, you give them a skill, they're earning money, they've got respect, they've got dignity, their CV suddenly looks, you know, like you might give them a job. They're proven themselves. I mean, it was so incredible. I mean, I was very moved by the story, you know, the guy that runs it, who's an ex offender himself, you know, and. But they were doing great work as well. So it was also tapping into a creative talent that was kind of being wasted selling drugs, you know, I mean.
- [34:20]
A
Exactly. But that's the thing that, that makes home change police. So revolutionary was you think of homelessness. Well, the way to solve that is to give someone a house. Right. But actually going job first rather than housing first, it gives you skill, the jump in self esteem, confidence, social interaction. These guys are used to being ignored and people walking past them and not really valuing them and then suddenly coming for your morning coffee, coming for something you want, there's that value exchange. So that was the thing that's most transformational with the. With the business model and I can totally see that with the creative agency you talk about. There's a brilliant example in the book, actually, another couple of guys who've come out of advertising with Exo Bikes, which is Steph Jones and Ian Priest from vccp. Basically, Steph was volunteering in, I think, Wormwood Scrubs at the time, and he'd see the same people being back six months later and be like, what are you doing back here? What's going on? Look, I got out, and there's no way I can get a job. So what they've created with XO Bikes is they basically train people who've been in prison as bike mechanics. There's a big shortage of bike mechanics across the country. More people got bikes during COVID The reoffending rate goes down from. I think it's close to 50% of people who go out, coming back down to 2, 3% if you go through the Exo Bikes program. So it's transformational as a model, and they're looking at other ways they can do this across other sectors. And the other thing that's absolutely genius about it is they. They're basically getting the raw material of the bikes from the room in the back of a police station or a train station where it's a nicked bike that no one has, no one's ever claimed. They come to EXO Bikes, they get refurbished, and they make them look amazing. They swag them up in, like, swag black or hot orange. I think they talk about it. So it's got a story to it. Each bike's got a serial number that refers to the particular bike mechanic who's turned around. So you know the story of. Of your bike. So there's so much within that that takes a problem that I'm thinking about it laterally and coming up with something really innovative that works Right. So it's really, really interesting.
- [36:26]
B
Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, talk about orange and black as well. I think another principle we talk about in terms of how to succeed is standing out as well and just being different to the category. And I think all the ones that we talk about, there's Tony's or Liquid Death or Ocean Bottles. They're all very distinctive and different, aren't they? And that seems to be one of the ways in which kind of change brands can beat the competition as well.
- [36:49]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think distinctiveness isn't a new conversation in marketing, but perhaps it is when you're looking at companies who are trying to change things for the better. So we talked about it a little bit earlier. Tony's Chocolate Only is a chocolate brand that's setting out to tackle modern slavery, exploitation of children in the supply chain. If that was created by a UNICEF or someone like that, you'd probably see pictures of kids looking downtrodden in fields holding machetes or spraying fertilizer. It would Move you, but would you want the chocolate bar from that? And I think you look at the Tony's brand, it is bright and joyous and you almost wouldn't know the story behind it. You peel back the wrapper, you find out more about it. The way the chocolate is in different shapes is amazing. There's a story behind that. It's meant to represent the five main countries in Africa where the chocolate comes from and to show that there is inequality rife in chocolate. So it's not like it's uniform squares. Some people complain about that, but it becomes something that's super distinctive about the experience. So putting that through brands that are looking to stand out, but do it for a reason and you make positive changes. Fun, you make it aspirational. Those two things I think are things that, you know, oatly. For instance, before John Schoolcraft and Tony Bettison came on board as the CEO and Chief Creative Officer 10 or so years ago, it was a brand that had come out of Swedish University, just looked like anything else you'd see in a health food shop. And the transformation it's gone through with a bit of creativity, a bit of purpose in it is incredible. It's well, well talked about as a story. I'm sure you've probably had someone remotely on here, maybe, maybe even John. But the, I think when, when they first redesigned the packaging, they held it up in an all company meeting and someone's going, you're trying to destroy the company, what are you doing? And then, then the difference it made was, was absolutely staggering. And now it's, you know, it's the kind of behemoth that is.
- [38:43]
B
I think there's a serious case for humor or fun in all this, isn't there? Because all the cases that seem to succeed take what, you know, purpose categories like, well, health food store is a good example, isn't it? It's all very serious and boring and, you know, stripped back and devoid of personality. Exactly. They're the country codes of better for you, you know, Planet Saving, kind of organic, aren't they? But the brands that have worked have like doubled down on personality, fun and making things interesting. I mean, we talk about liquid death. I mean, they just take that to the extreme, you know, and just. They start with entertainment, they start with, oh look, we're, you know, we're in a can or bottle, we're going to save lots of CO2. They start with entertaining the audience and being noticed and, and then, and then, and then the environmental benefit is almost an afterthought. Actually is, you know, you kind of discover the environmental benefit as a result of discovering the brand.
- [39:34]
A
Yeah, no, I think you're, you're spot on. It's, it's having a bit of fun with it. I think that one of the things with, with Changeplease initially was some early designs had it looking almost like charity coffee. And you think about the flavor notes you're going to get from a coffee that's been made by a homeless guy, it doesn't feel necessarily particularly appetizing. So we went out of our way to make it feel super premium like a specialty coffee. And the, the impact was almost secondary. So you just thought this is a beautiful cup of coffee. And then you read, read the messaging on the cup and go, oh, actually wow, this is helping someone off the streets. That's amazing. So, you know, competing on the category benefit first and foremost and then landing the impact I think is interesting. Yeah, the way Tony sort of hide it in the wrapper is clever.
- [40:17]
B
Oh, it's absolutely brilliant. Big fan of Tony's. I mean the, the thing I also like about Tony's, I mean, because I'm probably a big chocolate fan anyway, but the product is so good. It is genuinely like the best chocolate in terms of like high cocoa content. Absolutely kind of mouth watering. A gazillion different flavors, you know, lots of very interesting flavors, exciting packaging. And the proposition comes through in everything. Like you say, the inner wrapping, the shape of the chocolate, the like the stunt they pulled with the advent calendar. Even the financial report is quite interesting. I mean like, financial report is like meant to be the most boring legal document a company has and even that's interesting. And they talk, they don't. They talk more about impact they make in the supply chain than they do the profit they make. In fact, they're measuring their progress based on, you know, kids that have been pulled out of slavery and are getting paid a fair wage rather than how much money they're making.
- [41:09]
A
It's really talking to Douglas as part of the book. I know you've got him on.
- [41:13]
B
He's coming on. Yes. In fact, in fact he is my next guest.
- [41:17]
A
I'll be as warm up. But he talks about Tony's being an impact company first and foremost rather than a chocolate company. So there's. Because they've got the Tony's chocolate only brand and then they've got Tony's open chain which is supermarkets buying through their supply chain. They've got Waitrose and all the Dutch supermarkets. Relationships with Aldi, for instance. He talks about, in the book about, I think Ben and Jerry's buy their chocolate through Tony's open chain. If a decision came when he had to decide on taking on a couple more Ben and Jerry's equivalents or growing Tony's chocolate only, the decision's an easy one because you'd get more chocolate from the supply chain, you'd make a bigger impact, you'd help more children. If you took on another two or three Ben and Jerry's, that's a decision that no other brand would. Would make. Right. It's the detriment of maybe growing Tony's chocolate only. But the impact grows. The impact first and foremost grows. So, yeah, there's.
- [42:09]
B
Well, it's interesting because you also quoted in early in your book Elon Musk's 2006 plan and his, his is similar actually, because I heard him on Joe Rogan saying that if Tesla goes out of business and he doesn't sell another, another car, he's happy with it as long as the entire automotive industry has gone, gone ev. And that's his goal. And even if it means Tesla is less successful and loses share, which I thought was very interesting because he sets out that plan, doesn't he? About I'm going to do a supercar first because that's going to make my money. That allow me to produce a much cheaper electric car that'll get more people adopting and ultimately it will force an industry to catch up. And it's forcing the industry to catch up. That actually is the change way beyond. I mean the effect of that is way bigger than the effect Tesla will have.
- [42:54]
A
100%. The sort of radical flank, the person who's agitating from the outside and the fact it was, it's, it's on a blog and it's the sort of secret master plan from 2007 that's public. Yeah, public. It's a really funny read and just really clear on, you know, we'll build a supercar, then we'll do this and it'll gradually get cheaper and we'll, we'll hasten the move away from hydrocarbon. It's really clear and it is very much this idea of these brands as catalysts for change and you're seeing it in so many categories the likes of within Toilet Roll, for instance. I think between who Gives a Crap, Cheeky Panda, US, a couple of other brands, it's probably close to 10% market share in the UK has moved to some more sustainable brands. That means that brands like Andrex are looking at having plastic free Variants, they're looking at removing the core or having double length rolls. Cachel have removed their, that tube basically. Regina have launched a bamboo toilet roll but it's 5% bamboo so it's slightly tenuous but you know they're reacting to it and you're seeing change similarly in cleaning, you're seeing brands moving away from washing capsules in plastic to washing capsules in cardboard. It's all very doable and if these guys are showing that it's doable, it's not hard for a massive, massive company to do it. So this catalyst effect, Tony's doing it with chocolate. I know from speaking to a lot of the Waitrose guys the impact Waitrose have seen on their own label product since they've had Tony's open chain front and center. They've seen a 20, 30% jump in sales of the Waitrose own label chocolate because it's got that, Tony's link to it. So it's a big opportunity. It's very easy to look at this, this thing and I remember being a conference a few years ago and two different panels, both made up people from within FMCG and the first one was very much almost seeing all this stuff, all this change as a threat and a risk to be managed. And we'll measure it, we'll make small incremental changes, we'll deal with it, but it's very much a threat and a risk to be managed. The second panel was much more optimistic and like this is an opportunity, this is a way to redraw the lines of a category. This is, this is a way to win share. It's, there's so much there and I think you can look at it in both ways, right? But if, if you, if you can get that sort of optimistic hat on and look for the opportunity, there's growth opportunities everywhere. All these companies are looking for growth. This is a way to achieve that growth, to win share, to improve brand perception. All of those things like it's, it's not a CSR and all those kind of things. Traditionally it's down the corridor, it's the hemp wearing hippie down the corridor that's talking about it. It's not like that anymore. It is fundamental and core to so many businesses now and it's only going to get more so as we see more and more expectation from younger generations for businesses to be part of the solution. You see this huge wealth transfer of money going from boomers and older guys through to Gen Z who genuinely care and want to see that happen. So there's so much happening that suggests it's going to happen.
- [46:05]
B
The bit I think people don't realize as well is the very, very big private equity companies, VCs, the big institutional investors, this is very high on their agenda. So when they're looking at which companies and which founders they invest in, you will get to the front of the queue if you can make a societal impact. And that's something that people probably don't realize because they don't publicize that particularly. But there's a lot of, a lot of money available to founders that really want to do something.
- [46:33]
A
Yeah, look, I think you still need to prove your business is fundamentally sound and strong. But there is big opportunity there to do. And you know, the likes of Verl Invest are in, they're in. It gives a crap, they're in Tony's Chocolonely Wild Oatly. There is proper money behind these, these companies small raising huge amounts like they're seeing the financial opportunity and reward.
- [46:57]
B
Well, also, I don't know if you have this, but on my pension fund for example, I have an option to exclusively or partially invest in better for you companies as well. So, you know, and that's a very long term view as well. But that's another way around. And one thing I just wanted to talk about as well, because I enjoyed it. You had a Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs quote about creativity being connecting things, which I'd not thought about before, but kind of makes sense because often ideas come to us, don't they, when we go, oh, I see someone doing it over there. What if you took that idea there and put it in that category over there sort of thing. And it made me realize a lot of the examples you talk about, you could probably apply to any category, couldn't you? And just go, you know, what's the environmental solution? Currently you're doing it in toilet tissue or whatever. Take that to another category. What be the equivalent. Or if there's an unfair supply chain happening in chocolate while the supply chain's got unfair advantage. So I think as a kind of creative construct, there's all sorts of places. The one that surprised me actually was the amount of, you know, you take beyond meat, right, as an idea for humans, apply that to your pet. Yeah, I thought, there you go.
- [48:00]
A
You know, that's an amazing story. The Grub Club guys. Yeah, I think what's the stat that, oh, dogs and cats eat 20% of the meat and fish on the planet.
- [48:09]
B
Not even thought about that. But when you think about, you think.
- [48:11]
A
Yeah, of course they do.
- [48:13]
B
You just don't think about that as an audience because it's pet care, it's considered different.
- [48:16]
A
No, I mean, the grub club guys have. I've stumbled on something really, really interesting. The. You know, you can grow the same amount of protein in a. Such a mealworm. It grows in a shipping container. You can grow that in a couple of weeks. That would take so much land. And so it's so much more intensive. And it's also amazingly good for dogs because it's a novel protein. And I also think it's much easier to say to your dog, well, you're going to start eating this and rather than going, I'm never going to have another burger, you can make your dog not necessarily vegetarian. You can make them, make them move there. So, yeah, there's. There's so many opportunities and things you can connect. And I think there's an interesting one I've seen recently with, you know, Thai Fu, the tea brand, so obviously been around a long time, trying to, I suppose, reinvigorate themselves. And going after, I suppose exploitation in the tea supply chain is a really interesting one because people don't think about that. They're almost trying to do a Tony's for. For tea. It'll be interesting to see how they get on with that. But, you know, trying to reinvigorate a brand and I think we talked a bit about purpose, but the purpose, I think can be quite a bit. A little bit like Cinderella's slipper, like trying to shove your ugly sister's foot into a glass slipper. For a lot of brands it can be hard, but if you can find a way to make it make sense, you can find a way to genuinely make an impact on that problem, then impact can make a really big difference to a business. And I think there's a few brands that world would be able to find a way to do that.
- [49:40]
B
I liked your word, your phrasing impact as well, because, like, impact has to be commercial as well as purpose.
- [49:46]
A
Right.
- [49:46]
B
And the two things have to be aligned together. The moment they're not aligned, that's when you get into trouble. So I thought, I thought the word impact is quite neat.
- [49:52]
A
Yeah, look, I think it's. This is quite a capitalist view of changing the world. I think it's not about trying to get people, it's not driving degrowth. Like, obviously there's a. It's a. It's a theory of change that's quite focused on switching people from brand Y to brand X. Right. People are. It's really hard to change behavior. We know that. I've worked in behavior change for years. You're trying to get someone to give up smoking or eat healthy or whatever it might be, or exercise more. Humans are weak. Right. It's really difficult. But when you think about changing brands, you're probably always going to buy coffee, toilet paper, tampons, you surf the Internet, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So just by changing from brand Y to brand X you can make a huge difference. The amount of money that is consumer spend in any economy I found mind boggling. So when being the planner I was like, oh, I wonder how much money actually is there? And consumer spend in any economy is between 60 and 70%. So globally that's getting up towards 77 trillion. I think in a couple of years time if you move 1% of that, that's $700 billion every year moving to brands that make a positive difference. Yeah, okay, 1%. So that means you don't need everyone to do it. You don't need to do it every single time you buy a product. But it quickly amount turns into something huge.
- [51:12]
B
Yeah, I mean back to your cast is for change. Actually, as in a previous job, I was marketing director, Lucas Aid and we every year had this National Soft Drink association kind of conference or whatever. And I was talking about our sugar reduction plan and Coke were there as well. Big players were there. I mean Greenpeace were outside protesting. There was surfers against sewage protesting on sugar waste, you know, sorry, on sugar waste, on plastic waste as well. And we had the pressure at the time was for reduction in sugar. And we had a guy that used to run, I think he had action on salt was the thing he was famous for maybe 20 years ago. And he had moved into action on sugar. And I assumed that what he wanted to see was lots of new brands launching lots of low sugar kind of products. And I chatted to him and he said, I don't see that at all. What I want is a 5% reduction every year in Coca Cola's sugar content. And I want it in a way that no one notices because he said that I don't want people, I don't want to create, have to change people's habits because that's hard. I want the existing habits, they have to become healthy by stealth. And I thought, wow, that's quite interesting. So he was a bit like we were saying, he wants the disruption in the market to change the big companies to make gradual change that, you know, almost slips in under the Radar he said that's the big win. That's where it's all going to, you.
- [52:26]
A
Know, I mean the size of these companies. So I'm talking to someone at PepsiCo and I think they took 2 or 3 mil off every crisp packet and the plastic reduction from that was staggering. So, so it's just because people want this more so brands can, can show the way and then the big guys can, can hopefully move a bit quicker. But yeah, I think, I mean when you look at the stats around the sugar reduction, the effect it's had on childhood obesity and stuff, there's already some really good numbers around that. So it's, yeah, it's a way to do it without trying to change it in a complicated, visual, highly visible way.
- [52:58]
B
Yeah. Now you mentioned serious tissue and I don't want to miss the opportunity for you to explain how that came into life as well because that's another thing. And that's your main job as well, isn't it now?
- [53:07]
A
Yeah. So I'm basically, Jamal is very much front and center on change, please. And absolutely killing that. Getting into the States now or killing that, killing it. I run serious tissues. So again growing pretty well and starting to get more and more B2B business because you know, like you say, companies want more of this. So it's, I think we touched on it a little bit earlier but, but it's a UK made, not shipped from China. Like a lot of bamboo products. It's plastic free, 100% recycled paper. So paper from the office or from the home turned into a really nice soft toilet roll. I think, I think the view of recycled paper from our school days when it was maybe tracing paper. Yeah, basically, yeah, recycled paper. You almost couldn't tell the difference between that and virgin pulp now. So we're seeing more and more traction around that and I think we've been going for a little over four years. We've planted one and a half million trees with that. We've got this very cool dashboard now that shows where the trees are planted, the trails, the tree planters go on and so you can make sure there's no double counting of trees and all that kind of stuff. So super transparent in the tree planting side. So yeah, big hopes for that.
- [54:16]
B
I mean that doesn't sound cheap. I mean all the recycling effort that goes into it, you're a small brand, you've got to invest in awareness and distribution. Then you're going to be planting trees. That doesn't sound particularly cheap when presumably toilet roll is a Commoditized category where the retailers are buying at the lowest possible cost.
- [54:31]
A
Yeah, I mean, getting into retail has been a challenge, but the DTC side is nice and stable. It's a product that people love having delivered because you don't have to get it from the supermarket. And as long as it's doing what it needs to do and coming at the right time every month, people, people stay.
- [54:48]
B
There's a constant supply of demand.
- [54:51]
A
It's always going to be. It's not something you're, you're going to get bored of the taste like you might do with a coffee brand or something. So. So that's big. But yeah, so we've got some really good partners in terms of manufacturing. Our dashboard work is with a great partner who actually came out of one of the companies in the book. They're called Veritree, but they came out of a company called Tentree, which is a clothing brand that for every product you buy, they plant 10 trees. They basically got so big they started doing their own tree planting. They solved all the problems they'd had in their own tree planting by creating this, this amazing tech solution to tree planting. So, yeah, a lot of partnerships, I think the, that point of working with other businesses. Yeah, I think is really important because it's like, I like the idea of creating almost this, this rebel alliance of change. Brands that work together and like share a bit of knowledge and, you know, whatever that might be. Because when you're in a holding company, you've got a huge amount of advantages. So actually we're all trying to disrupt things. So actually working together, partnering and all of those kind of things make a big difference.
- [55:57]
B
I love your alliance point that's so interesting. I mean, I found in the stuff I've been doing is that when you don't have the big budgets to communicate, you don't have the kind of customer relationships, building partnerships, other people that do, or together you can kind of multiply. Your impact is just huge. I mean, partnerships can be amazing.
- [56:15]
A
I mean, Change Police is, is an unbelievable example in that everything from the David Lloyd partnership in, in every David Lloyd gym, you're getting a Change Police coffee. The story passes, people then buying it in Sainsbury's and Tesco's to drink at home. When you're in a wework, if you go to the coffee machine, you're seeing the story of Lucy in one of the baristas, the Colgate buses, the HSBC buses. It's a great story and it works amazingly for the brand as well. Because if you're the Colgate brand manager you probably run out of things to talk about in your ad every year there's only so many times you can talk about whitening or show some teeth from close up. So it gives you something different to talk about. The cost of them sponsoring a bus for a year was less than buying a bus wrap for two weeks in London. So it's a no brainer for them, gives them something amazing to talk about and makes a real difference. Right. So it's a win in so many different respects. And the Nespresso partnership as well that came out, that started earlier this year is an absolute game changer as well. Taking the platform that Nespresso have got as probably the most famous coffee brand in the world and all those machines everywhere, you can now buy a change please capsule for your coffee machine. And Nespresso have committed to a 1 million pound donation which is building these training centers and allowing change police to extend into Ireland and do more there. So there's. Yeah, partnerships are so powerful. It's very easy to get your head down and sort of think about what you can do. But how can you work together with other companies big and small and yeah, that feels like an exciting way to work together.
- [57:45]
B
It's very forward thinking Espresso, isn't it? To embrace the brand.
- [57:49]
A
Two coffee brands partnering together is really interesting.
- [57:51]
B
That is a very interesting situation. But good on you maybe to finish off then. So you've just. Yeah. Book's launching tomorrow. Although by the time this goes out the book will have launched a couple weeks ago. So go out, buy everyone. It's called Obsolete. It's available on Amazon in all good bookshops. But as, as you wrote the book at the same time as having your own. I guess, I guess things have kind of been, been building together. What have been, what struck you having written the book as the biggest learnings you'll take away into. Into serious tissues?
- [58:17]
A
I think. I mean the, the, the opportunity to meet all these different brand founders has been incredible and seeing the. So I suppose that's opened up a door to a lot of partnerships and we're already working on creating a bit of an informal rebel alliance so we can work together on more stuff and maybe we pool our spend to get better media deals and all sorts of different things we can do. So that's definitely been a really good one. Just from connecting there's been lots that we've learned, I think tactics that people have used to be successful. So the sort of, you know, disruptive Stuff, fame driving stuff. I know Fussy, the deodorant brand have been amazing at, like, disrupting things. They've done a few. One interesting one I really liked is they create. They had an ad that Unilever complained about and then they went and delivered an olive tree to Unilever headquarters in Black Fridays. They got. They got a reply from Alan Jope on LinkedIn who was CEO at the time, saying, no sweat, well, we'll take good care of the tree. So the sort of fame, fame driving stuff, sort of big budget energy, I think, is that. That one, I think is really interesting because when you're a small brand, you think it's really bloody hard to make an ad like you would have done if you're working for Unilever or Mars, for instance. But nowadays you can make something feel big in terms of the production facilities and all of that. So the sort of, I think Tim, Tim from home things, talking about big budget energy, kind of playing off the big dick energy sort of thing, but. But like pretending, acting like you're a much bigger brand. And there's loads of examples in the books of. In the book of brands that have taken on like, like Canowater campaigning outside Wimbledon last year about the Evian partnership, which is really interesting. So there's. There's just been like punchy interesting examples and I suppose seeing brands that are further down the road than we are. So talking to the guys at Tony's who have done so many amazing things for their. I think it was 2012 or so when they started. Douglas talks a lot about when they first started. It was quite a lot of stick, like having a bit of a dig at certain brands and trying to agitate a little bit. Now they're trying to work in partnership. It's much more carrot and collaboration. They've become more grown up, which I think is really interesting. Similarly with Oatly and the journey they've been on from like super disruptive to where they are now. So, yeah, lots of inspiration, lots of confidence, lots of sort of shared moments of, God, it's not that easy, is it? But like working past it and knowing there's opportunity there. So, yeah, it's. Yeah, there's a lot in there that gives you a bit of shape of how to do it. I think the one final point I'd say is the amount of people coming out of the creative industry starting brands is unbelievable. So you look at, obviously serious issues change. Police coming out of ad land really wild came out of marketers at HelloFresh at the time, Smile is a unilever thing. The guys at Suri, the toothpaste brand, were XP and G and agency side Tony the guy, the original Tony. As a journalist, people who are in the creative sector going, maybe I'm a bit fed up of working on this brand. I feel like I can, I can do it myself. And I, I. There is a, there is potentially a better way. There is a road I can follow.
- [61:41]
B
It makes sense because in creative industry, I mean we're here in uncommon and I mean Nils, when he was on his gardening leave for a year after because of his WPP contract, worked with the guys at Halo Coffee because he's really, he loves coffee and is inspired by what they were doing as well. And there's so much creative talent and imagination and so many ideas that get pitched and never see the light of day. Well, I mean Mike Cesario is a good example, isn't he? Liquid death. That was a, you know, he got frustrated with the amount of times he was pitching ideas and never got bought by the client. So eventually you're going to go, yeah, I might as well do this.
- [62:13]
A
Yeah, Mike's an ad creative. Matt from Fussy's an ad creative and just going, well, actually I'll take one of my better ideas and run with it. Rather than the sort of. John Schoolcraft talks a lot about how he got frustrated with marketing clients just not buying the best ideas. So, you know, it's, it is very, very possible to go out and create a brand and a product manufacturer. There's so many manufacturers that are up for a conversation. It gets a bit scary when you start looking at P Ls and all those kind of things because it's not, you know, necessarily your core competence as a marketer but you can learn that. Yeah, the whole thing of building a. An intuitive brand that has a bit of magic in it is something people, that's what you learn in this sector. Right. So, So I think there, I'd love to see more and more brands coming out of the creative sector because I think, I think, I think the right brands can change the world. I think marketing and advertising and its current guys has moments when it can make a good impact, moments when it doesn't but brands. And if the right brands get big, the right brands can genuinely make an impact and can genuinely change the world.
- [63:16]
B
Very well said. And actually the number one thing I took out your book actually was the energy to do it because you've got so many examples that there's almost no reason not to do it. And I think one of the reasons I do this podcast actually is I want people to hear from as many other people who've done it as possible to give them confidence to make the jump. Because I think the biggest barrier is often us. It's the fear of it going wrong. And what I love about your book is you've got 30 odd examples of brands that have got it right and take inspiration from that. You know, take those little demons out of your head that are telling you not to do it and. Yeah, and learn from others.
- [63:50]
A
You don't need to quit the day job from day one. There's, there's, you know, you can do a lot of it on the side and keep doing other things, so it's not like it's right. You know, I'm gonna bet my house on this. You can do it in a way that is slightly less risky than and kids.
- [64:05]
B
So hopefully, as a result of this podcast, we will be hearing about lots more brands out there doing it. That'd be fun, wouldn't it?
- [64:11]
A
Yeah, it'd be amazing. Get in touch if you've got any idea and you want to talk about it.
- [64:14]
B
Grab the book, be inspired and go create. Nice one. Cheers. Chris, thank you much.
- [64:18]
A
Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.
- [64:19]
B
Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. And if you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do I'm over on X at UncensoredCMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.