Welcome to Episode 50. This milestone episode is with Tom Ollerton, Founder of Automated Creative.
If you’re interested in seeing how artificial intelligence is being used by agencies right now, with some of the world’s biggest client brands, to improve advertising performance, I think you’re going to love this episode.
If you’re an account manager, you’re looking for a new role, who likes the sound of working with such cutting edge technology and making an impact with his blue chip clients please visit my website and sign up for my newsletter via the homepage. You’ll be sent regular updates about each of the podcast episodes, and tips for improving your account management skills.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:06
So today I’m absolutely thrilled to be talking to the founder of Automated Creative, an agency that turns brands media impressions into marketing intelligence. His impressive client list includes the likes of Diageo, Fevertree, Adidas, GSK, Samsung, KFC, and many, many more. Tom is the host of the Advertisers Watching Ads, where each week brands watch and discuss other brands ads and it’s fantastic if you haven’t already checked it out. He’s also the host of the Shiny New Object podcast which explores the future of marketing and industry leaders, where he recently interviewed Sir Martin Sorrell. And that’s actually where I came across Tom initially. He did a phenomenal interview and that’s why I invited him to the show. So Tom, massive, warm welcome.
Tom 00:55
Hey, it’s brilliant to be on someone else’s podcast. Thank you so much.
Jenny 01:00
Can you start off by just spending a few minutes talking about you, your background and maybe how you help your clients at Automated Creative?
Tom 01:09
Sure. So I sort of have a long history of failing at a lot of things. ,I left university early to go and be a rock star moved out London when I was 19. And a few years later made a terrible album that didn’t do very well. And then I was a chef for a couple of years and then did about 200 gigs as a stand up comedian. And I just wasn’t very good at any of those things, really. But in the process, I discovered advertising and also discovered that you could work in a creative industry and get paid, which had sort of evaded me up to that point. And so I worked in a design agency, digital agency and a social media agency, where I was social innovation director and I fell in love with the way that automation was being used to do creative things. So the automation of copy, music, like poems, media campaigns, researching audiences, and I just thought, wow, like at some point, all of these creative skills are going to come together and there’s going to be this kind of whole new creative service, that has got automation at the centre of it. So I thought, well look, I’m going to go and try and make that thing. And four years later, almost in a day, we were working with the clients you mentioned. We picked up in the last quarter P&G, Danone, Mondelez, Cancer Research UK and a few more. And as you say, we turn impressions into intelligence. So
we essentially take what people are saying in social about a brand or category, we listen to the conversations of real people, what are they saying? And then we turn all of those conversations into hundreds and sometimes 1000s of ads. And based on what people click on or interact with, we can infer what are the psychological triggers that are driving the kind of action that the brand wants. So instead of the creative team, or the brand team, making some assumptions about the audience, we’re just listening to the audience, then we’re making hundreds of ads that respond to all of those conversations. Showing those ads to the same people that had them pretty much, and then looking at the data in a very analytical way about what’s working from a visual and written perspective. So we deliver two things, we deliver incredible leaps in advertising performance, but also we deliver deep consumer insight that you probably couldn’t get anywhere else.
Jenny 03:32
It’s so impressive. I mean, I’ve got so many questions I’d love to unpack. But are you the only agency doing this? Because this for me feels very forward thinking, is this unique? And you’ve been doing it for four years now. Have you found that other agencies have kind of jumped on this?
Tom 03:54
So I spent a lot of time making sure that we’re the odd one out, so that we have competitors who have raised 10s of millions of pounds. And so we can’t compete from a sort of a cash perspective in that sense, but we thrive on the principle of just being different or being daring. So we’re constantly looking right, how can we be different? How can we outmanoeuvre? How can we out strategize the competition and add value to the client in a way that they’re not getting somewhere else? So there are lots of technologies that make dynamic ads, I guess, would be the closest thing. The majority of the industry in this sort of dynamic ad space, it’s a bit moronic, it’s a bit dumb, it’s a bit like you get these 100 copy lines and these 100 images, and then you sort of churn through them in a mechanical way, which is fine, which serves a purpose. But it won’t tell you why your ads work. Whereas what we do is much more empathetic and listening to the audience, understanding what they’re saying. Then creating the ads that reflect the wants, needs and desires of the audience and then get the validation from the same audience about what is working. And so we’re blending some of those agency soft skills of strategic thought and creativity, copywriting with the mechanical, with the automation. So I to deliver a service, which I believe is unique. But of course, there’s other people that do different elements of what we do.
Jenny 05:15
Okay, so it actually sounds very, very comprehensive. So in order to kind of bring this to life for the audience, could you give me an example maybe, or one or two examples of campaigns that you’ve run? Because I’m interested to see from start to finish how that works, and also maybe the metrics behind the results that you’ve had?
Tom 05:36
Yes. So one of our long term clients is Reckitt or Reckitt Benckiser as their they were known recently and we work out of Singapore and serve APAC those guys as well as actually North America, Canada, and all over the place for those guys now. But the first project we did ran, I think, like 18 months across seven different markets. And what we’re trying to do is to code what were the written and visual triggers that drove a performance for the brand Enfamil, which is an infant formula, less well known here in the UK, but massive in China, massive, massive in the US. And it was really great to see our client go on stage and talk about the work relatively recently. And she said that when we were working in one of the markets, we were able to prove with our technology that the best thing that you could put in an ad targeted at a mum, was in fact a dad. And because we tested so many different things, we were able just to hone down on what were the visual triggers that drove performance, then that led to that sort of awareness and CRM driving campaign moved on to a conversion campaign. And we took the learnings, we took the insight that our tool had developed, and were able to halve the cost of sale of their baby milk product from ads on Facebook, which is just absolutely ginormous, for a brand of that size. But that’s the thing we’re really passionate about is delivering those kind of performance figures. But delivering that kind of insight that Dad was more powerful than say a Mum and a child, it’s just so fascinating to me because I think that one of the downsides of the industry is people talk about best practice a lot. They talk about, oh, well, if you look at best practice, this brand does this so we should copy that, because that’s what best practice is, that’s what they call it at school, they call it copying. So if everyone’s copying each other, then no one’s marketing, because marketing is the practice of standing up from the market. So what our technology does, is able to help bands identify the things that make them stand out from the market. So another example would be for KFC, retain clients where we are constantly driving the performance of their paid campaigns and social. And actually, our client was on stage at MAD/Fest talking about the work and he was reporting back how we kind of change the tone of voice of the ads, whether it’s kind of straight or humorous or sarcastic. And it’ll just change from week to week. So once again, with KFC, we do that by listening to the audience, how are people talking about takeaway foods? When people say all kinds of crazy things like, ‘Oh, I’ve been to the gym, so therefore I deserve a burger’. So cool. We’ll put that in an ad and see if it works. And this is ongoing work for KFC, they’ve just won some best brand in the UK I think last year. We’ve delivered a 40% reduction in cost per download of their app, which is just astonishing results. So yeah, so that’s what we do. And I’ve got probably 100 of those stories with similar insights and similar levels of performance.
Jenny 08:38
Wow. Well, congratulations on that. And I did actually see that interview on MAD/Fest with the, I don’t know if he’s brand manager for KFC?
Tom 08:45
CMO now Jack is.
Jenny 08:48
CMO Wow. Okay. But that’s a fantastic story. Maybe we will include the link in the show notes actually, because that’s a great case study. I’m curious to know how this kind of AI powered technology actually works. I mean, when you talk about multiple variations of the copy and multiple variations of the visual, which then kind of accelerates the learning and the insight and leveraging what’s working to make it even more optimised, how does that actually come together? Like, what’s the input that you have? Can you just maybe just keep it simple for me, but just how does that work?
Tom 09:28
Yes, so the original vision for the business was just to automate everything, we’d like press a button and a campaign would appear and the sales would happen. We just sit around on a beach somewhere, but that hasn’t happened at all! And the reality is that machines are really good at some things and they are really good at doing lots of small things very quickly. Whereas humans are good at strategic, tangential thinking that kind of happens slowly over time. And when you get machines to try and do that stuff, it’s awful. And equally, trying to get a human to do lots of things very quickly, that takes a long time and is very expensive. So essentially,
our technology, which has AI elements throughout the process, is fundamentally focused on automation, hence the name. And what it really does is it’s able to produce ads very quickly, which is obviously very useful because it means you don’t have to choose one ad, you don’t have to make a bet. So brands can now test hundreds, if not thousands of things if they desire. And so the technology makes the ads very quickly but our technology also knows what is going on at every stage of every ad. So when these ads are out in the wild, and people are reacting to them, watching videos, clicking on links, buying something, we know what was going on at each stage of each ad. So at an audience level, we can understand the written and visual triggers that drive performance, then we can make more ads based on what we know is what’s working and turn off the stuff that isn’t. So you’re going through an iterative process of creative sprints, we call them to really understand what is driving interest in this brand. So at the end of the campaign, performance is amazing. But actually you have these really juicy, gooey, psychological insights into why this brand is appealing to the audience that they’re speaking to.
Jenny 11:16
This might sound like a dumb question, but presumably, the starting point is you coming up with the idea? And you coming up with the messaging? And then you putting it out? And then iterating from there? Like how many versions do you have to kind of put out there? Am I getting it right?
Tom 11:32
Yes, it’s pretty close. So typically, what happens is we will work downstream of a creative agency. So a brand will have a creative agency, they’ll have a big creative idea. And they’ll have like a TV ad or thousands of gifs or statics or whatever it is, and then we work out strategically what the brand is trying to achieve. And then based on that strategy, we will generate all of the variants, we need to deliver that job. So it’s not a case of like, how many, it’s a case of what does the brand want? Are they trying to drive sales? Are they trying to drive awareness? Do they want to get people to watch their video? Do they want people to go to the website and stick around for a bit? So it depends on what the actual goal is. But we combine what they want to achieve with what they have, with the insight from the social listening or search keyword analysis. So it is a bit of a ‘depends’ answer, so I apologise.
Jenny 12:26
No, thank you for explaining that, I’ve got it. So does that mean then that you work alongside sometimes agencies, rather than clients bringing you in to work alongside their agencies?
Tom 12:40
Yes. So we sit in a very uncomfortable place, which is, we’re a tech platform, but we do a lot of things that you would expect from an agency. So obviously, we’re all ex agency ourselves. So we sit between the creative discipline, the creative agency and the media agency. So we create a fluid relationship between those things. So instead of the creative agency producing a thing, giving it to the creative agency, and then then running with this, what we do is we put a kind of catalyst in the middle, an extra step that explodes the effectiveness of the ads, but also delivers the insight. So yes, we have to sit alongside other partners. So KFC for example, Mother are the lead creative agency, and Mindshare are the lead media agency, so we play nicely with those guys.
Jenny 13:31
Got it, thank you so much. This is all becoming a little bit clearer for me now, that’s really useful. Thank you. I’m interested, I’ve watched a few of your episodes of the Advertisers Watching Ads. And I love it for a lot of reasons. A, you get some fantastic, high quality, great guests on there. But also that they’re only 10 minutes long. So I’m just interested, why did you start both the Shiny New Object podcast and the Advertisers Watching Ads show?
Tom 13:58
So the podcast was started, when I started the business pretty much, because we are social, and they’d essentially built a massive successful agency off the back of obviously delivering the work. But they had a blog called The Monday Mashup, which was just, it probably still exists, which is just the kind of list of everything that’s happened in social that week, it was really granular, like really nerdy. And the whole industry would just converge on that blog every Monday and they just developed this trust for those guys. And I just thought, right? Well, when I set up my business, I need my own media platform. And I thought, as we were discussing before, I’m not a great reader, not a great writer, but I can talk a bit. So I thought, I love listening to podcasts, why don’t make a podcast. So I thought well, I’m running this business, I’m the account manager, the salesperson, I’m wearing so many hats that you can’t go to conferences, you can’t sit around reading blogs, you’ve got to make bank you have to make this business make money from day one. And so doing the podcast meant I could network, I could make sure my business was relevant, I could learn, I could create content. So just doing an hour long podcast, it’s now sort of 20 minutes, we started off as an hour long podcast, but I did that every week interviewing the most interesting people I knew in London, then they would kind of tick all of those boxes, and I think 160/165 episodes later, I’ve interviewed some just amazing people. And yes, we finally took pity on Martin Sorrell and got him on the podcast the other day. He was a nice guy. But I reached out to the global VP of marketing for Lenovo and I said join me on the podcast, he’s like, Yeah, sure. And so now I have like all of these people, I’ve got this lovely relationship with. I’ve spent time with them, talked to them and understood like where they’re coming from, what their vision for the industry is. So that’s what the Shiny New Object podcast is. And it’s a real labour of love. It’s brilliant. And then Advertisers Watching Ads was a kind of lock down project and everything slowed down as it did for everyone. And there were all these awful things on LinkedIn, like ‘here’s nine ways to have a great zoom call’. And we’re just like, no, that is not us. And then I saw Gogglebox, which for anyone who doesn’t know, is a TV show where you watch people watching TV, but don’t actually see what they’re watching. And I thought, well, what if we did that in advertising? Everyone’s got an opinion on everyone else’s ads, so why not record that. So I get three or four brands every week to review. And we’re partnered with Contagious. Contagious go and source these weird and wonderful ads, do a LinkedIn poll every week, and people can vote on which ad to go on the show. And then we have like, just brilliant guests. And we don’t what the brief was, we don’t know what the budget is, we don’t know the context. But nonetheless, we all have a stab at trying to work out what was going on. And I think we just did our 65th episode of that. And I love it, brilliant. And you get to network and learn and be inspired by a real range of different people. The other week we had, I think, someone in London, Singapore and New York, all on a call, all discussing an ad from somewhere else in the world. So what a treat that my job allows me to do that stuff as well.
Jenny 17:05
And what high quality content. I mean, they’re brilliant I have to say, I mean, there’s probably agency leaders listening, thinking, that’s a really good idea. Maybe I should go down the podcast route. How beneficial has it been to your business?
Tom 17:19
Oh, transformative. it’s done all the things that it was supposed to do. So we’re creating content, which drives traffic and interest, it’s opened doors to start new conversations, it’s helped me learn and stay on top of things. And it’s always kind of different. You’re meeting people from different backgrounds and learning about their lives up to the point at which you recorded the podcast. And with the Shiny Object Podcast, people always talk about their shiny new object. So that might be technology or it might be like a mindset thing. So I think Riley Dunn from Unilever, his tiny, shiny new object was extended parental leave. And I was like, what? Okay, cool. So tell me about that. And he said, Well, if there’s longer parental leave for dads, then they’ll be closer to their families, make them a more rounded person, therefore they will do better marketing, Or I interviewed David Byrne from Aviva and he was talking about NFTs. And so both of those things aren’t necessarily, I don’t know a great deal about, but you get to dive into these topics and really learn. So it’s making me a more rounded, knowledgeable and hopefully more interesting person for spending time with these people. But it’s been great. So it’s really good for their profiles, i’s good for my profile, good for the businesses profile. And hopefully the agency can learn from these experts sharing some of their vision.
Jenny 18:39
Absolutely agree. And even, you get the insight behind the client, don’t you? I mean, from an account management point of view, everyone’s trying to understand the clients better, how they think, what’s important to them, but actually, there’s a lot of insight that you’re generating from how they think, how they use language, what’s important to them. So it’s even more clever than I originally thought. And what you mentioned that you learn a lot. What have been kind of the standout things that you’ve learned through doing those 165 episodes?
Tom 19:10
I think that the main thing that I’ve got is that adversity, builds rapport. So it’s made me look back on my life and my friendships in and outside of work. And my mini theory is, you can challenge me on this as much as you like, is that you form the best friendships through adversity. So whether you’ve got like an awful job and you’re just sort of surviving it with someone or you’ve got a terrible teacher or a boring commute or a difficult boss or work on a difficult project, or if you’ve like ever done creative stuff, so if you’ve ever been in a band or in a theatrical production where, if you put yourself in a position of risk and adversity and almost discomfort, then naturally you’re looking for comfort at the same time. So therefore, you form bonds with people a lot quicker. So if I said to someone Do you want to come on my podcast, probably they haven’t done one before. So they’re in a position of like, elevated stress. And even if they’re confident about doing it, they’ll still be like feeling they’re on stage. And then I hopefully give them a positive experience and guide them through that and allow them to shine in their best way possible. And it just means that you get to know people because you sort of go through that adversity together. It just means that you have a report afterwards. So like, of those 160 people that I’ve interviewed, if I saw them at a conference, I could go across and say, Hey, do you remember doing that podcast? And I know we’ve never actually met in person but I really enjoyed that we were talking about X, Y, Z. So there’s no way that that report isn’t just instantly there. So that’s the thing that I’ve really learned, that doing creative stuff where people are slightly exposed, you can form a deeper, better rapport, stronger relationship by doing this. And another thing would be that I sort of turned into a unpaid part time recruiter. Well because you’ve built this rapport, emotion…
Jenny 21:13
Do you know anyone?
Tom 21:14
Yeah, it’s like, oh, I’m sick of work in this company. Oh, what you want to do? Oh, I’ve always wanted to work in automotive, or FMCG? Well, look, I’ve interviewed 15 of these guys, do any of these people seem interesting to you? And so I’ve helped clients get jobs and start conversations. And because if someone’s been on the podcast, and someone has been on the same podcast, you go, Hey, guys, you’ve got this thing in common. And I’m not selling that person myself, I’m just going, you should talk. And then that allows that thing to happen. I just love, that’s just such a cherry on the cake to put two interesting people together and have them be like, to connect and get on with each other. And yeah the other thing, it does open doors. Like I’ve met people from all over the world that I now have this, the beginnings of an interesting and hopefully sort of lifelong relationship with because we’ve done this creative thing together, because we’ve made a podcast. So yeah, those are the three things. Building rapport, sort of being a recruiter and opening doors.
Jenny 22:20
It’s so powerful. I mean, anyone listening to this is thinking, wow, I mean, I can’t believe, I actually can’t believe that more agencies don’t do podcasts for these reasons. And I hadn’t really thought about the adversity angle. But you’re absolutely right. I think maybe that’s why coming from an agency background, where there is that constant pressure and everybody’s under stress and maybe pitching behind the scenes, it bonds you doesn’t it? And you form, I mean, I’m still in contact with people that I worked with 25 years ago, because of those intense periods. So I think this is really well articulated. Thank you, I really can see that that would be the case. And I’m interested, Tom, in talking about the marketing clients you work with. And just thinking about, obviously, we’re coming, are we coming out of the pandemic, who knows? But during that period of time, where everyone was locked down, how have you seen their needs changing from when that happened, to now?
Tom 23:26
This is the one question you sent over, and I was like, oh, God, like this could go on a while. But I think like, ultimately, the changing needs of the clients haven’t been so much defined by the pandemic as more like, the type of work that we do with them. So where some businesses really struggled during the pandemic, we’ve grown like, quite aggressively, because we have a technology that makes people’s ads work a lot better, but we also deliver the insight into why. And so this has been sort of transformative for our clients, as they realise that the old school method of do some research, make an assumption based on that research, write a strategy, and then the creative idea gets made based on that strategy. And then that gets produced and delivered. And that was the sort of the process give or take. Whereas what we do is, we do the research, the social listening bit, and then we produce tonnes of ads, and then based on which of those ads work, reinforms the new creative, so with all of our clients, we’re all teaching them a new skill set anyway. We are using technology, we’re using automation to make advertising better by doing it in a different way. So I think that agencies are going to have to change because we are creating an expectation from the client that they’re going to want speed and scale as well as good ideas. So I think in five years time, 10 years time, all campaigns will work the way that we’re doing them. So there will be a great idea that comes from a sort of creative agency but then there will be these multiple versions that iterate, that develop over time, it will become a lot more fluid. So I think agencies and brands need to, like get educated on exactly how that works, because we’ve done nothing else for four years. And there’s a process and there’s as a technology that needs to be understood and deployed to do that.
Jenny 25:27
I think you’re totally right. I mean, like you said, you’re changing the expectations of the clients. I mean, you’ve already talked through the amount of clients you’re working with, the blue chip clients, and their expectations are going to change of other agencies and other agencies are going to think, well we’re going to be left behind if we don’t get on board with this. I mean, to that point, how do they do that learning? I mean, obviously, from a client perspective, they can come and work with you. Maybe some clients, I mean, is there any resistance or is this kind of a no brainer offer? Because you’re offering a faster process that’s more cost effective I would imagine, efficient and more kind of using insight? What’s the barrier? What’s the challenge to them?
Tom 26:09
The barrier’s always apathy. So like to do something new, it’s going to take new knowledge, going to take more effort. It’s so much easier just to go and do the thing that they normally do. And with innovation, there’s risk and with innovation, there’s effort. And with innovation, you never know quite what you’re going to get until you’ve done it. So that’s the journey we take all of our clients through from being excited about it, to getting on board and to eventually our clients using our self serve tool. So you know, at any one given time, there’s like, hundreds of ads being made by people all over the world using this technology, and using it in a way to suit their strategic needs of the brand. So, yeah, you can’t you can’t read a book on it. You can’t just gen up on it over the weekend, you’ve got to do it. So we’re breaking the model. We’re revolutionising the way that technology is used to make ads and ultimately, actually, that has a real impact on account management so we’re revolutionising the way that people work within this kind of service We’re not that old agency model of like, just get the juniors in, don’t pay them very much and make them work evenings and weekends. We’re very much focused on a, like, 40 hours is enough, if you can do the job in 40 hours it’s great, we don’t work evenings, we don’t work the weekends. Occasionally those things happen but it’s not the norm. It’s not the expectation. Because we can create 1000 ads in like an hour, not that we always need to do that many. But we’ve removed all of the sort of the boring work and the manual stuff. So we’ve automated that. So hence why we can do this stuff so quickly. So yeah, it’s brands, agencies have just got to try and do it, because it’s being defined right now. And the revolution of ads at scale and producing performance and insight at the same time is, it’s happening right now. Brands and agencies have to get involved in it.
Jenny 28:07
Glad you brought up the topic of account management and their role that they play, because I’m sure there were some account managers that maybe this is the first time that they’ve heard what you offer as an agency, and they could, at the moment there seems to be a real shortage of account managers to go around and they might be drawn by the fact that you are at the cutting edge of what’s changing, you’ve got these blue chip clients, you’re doing something different. And they’re probably going to be attracted to that, to working with you. So can you spend a few minutes just talking about your account management philosophy? You’ve talked about 40 hours a week, that’s enough, but what other things are important for you, with the account manager role in your agency?
Tom 28:47
Yes, so it’s just basic principles really. Like, I love those jobs I had where I could presume permission, yes asking for forgiveness, not permission, just like we’ve hired you because we think you’re really smart and we’d like you to go and get on with it. I really believe in hiring incredibly intelligent, driven people and pointing them at a problem. And they know they’re not going to get it right all of the time, but most of the time, they will. But then they need to look after themselves, like if you need to take lunch, take lunch, you have to nurture you. And part of that is finding their best place to work. So we worked remotely for the first year and a half, and then we worked in an office and then the pandemic happened. So we sort of obviously like everyone, we’re pretty fluid, but the thing is like, find the best place to do your work. If you’ve got a like a deep problem to solve then, probably best, certainly pyjamas on the couch. Whereas if you just got a bunch of small things to do, and you want to chat and work from the office, and we we’re big on like, we just don’t want to see a work version of people. We don’t want to see a corporate version of someone we just, yes, we like the whole person and we just want that person to be themselves as much as they can and feel comfortable to do that. And we’re also a big believer in family first. I’ve got a young daughter who refuses to sleep and creates all kinds of problems, and the team are very sympathetic to that. But whether that’s a partner or a family member, you have to have that core in place. And so we we’re really big on making sure that family comes first. And yes, as I said before, like respecting the weekends, you need time off. But yes, ultimately, it’s about doing the right thing by each other and by our clients. And we also have a spirit of transparency. And trying to where possible, just be blunt, just be open, just be transparent. And not just having a laugh as much as possible but like when that good time’s happening, let it happen. Do you know what I mean? Assuming like right now we’ve got to get back to work and be all serious now. So those are the kind of loose principles that we work around. But yes, we’ve done our best work before Automated Creative when we had autonomy, we could be entrepreneurial, we could take ownership, we knew that our bosses trusted us. And so that remains, we want our staff to affect the process. It’s not like here’s a deck on how to be an account manager at Automated Creative. It’s like no, you write that deck, you write that process, you tell us what needs to go into the product from a technical perspective. So yeah, so account team get exposed to incredibly senior clients, because we have this really unique seat at the table because of the technology, because we’re delivering this performance, because we’re delivering this insight. So hopefully we’re revolutionising advertising, but also the way that account management works as well.
Jenny 31:43
Love that. If I was 30 years younger, Tom, I’d be chasing you for a job. Not that what you do now would have existed 30 years ago. But absolutely, I love the fact that you said bring your whole self, we want to know every aspect of you. You’re talking about what Google coined Psychological Safety. If you make a mistake, don’t worry, it’s not going to be that kind of, what’s it called, environment where you’re going to feel punished. And you said that you want, you choose smart, driven people. In order to get those people that can hit the ground running and take over and take that ownership, what’s your hiring process? How do you attract new people?
Tom 32:25
Well it comes back to what we’re talking about at the start. Having your own publishing platform? So we have 1000s of people that watch our shows, or podcasts or read our stuff. So we are in a small way a media owner. So if you’re like, oh we’re hiring for this, we are hiring for junior accounting folk at the minute. So it’s like, alright, well I’ll just put a number on the podcast, turn on the microphone. Hey, actually listen to most recent podcast I think that the ad should be on there. So hey we’re looking to hire this, get in touch, here’s my email address. So actually, once again, going back to the things that you own to leverage.
Jenny 33:02
Love that. Have you filled the role?
Tom 33:07
No, no, we haven’t actually. So yes, if anyone is listening to this, please get in touch. We want to meet those hungry, curious, creative, innovative, divergent thinkers. Because that’s what this business needs.
Jenny 33:21
I really hope that you get some responses from this podcast, that’s for sure. I hope you don’t mind me saying this but I looked at your website, and I looked at your hiring account manager role. And I looked through the job spec. And what I loved about it was there was this massive list of benefits of working for the company. But at the end, it said dot, dot, dot, and anything else that you think you would like to suggest that could be beneficial to the role, or to to you joining us, which I thought was phenomenal. I’d never seen that before.
Tom 33:49
We’re a startup, right? It’s not like we’ve got all the answers. It’s not like we’ve run businesses like this before. We were inventing it every day as we go along. So I want to hire people that make me look at it differently and go, Oh, well, obviously, we should have this benefit. Well, why don’t we do this? Or why don’t we work four days a week? Or why don’t we have an office here? Because like, I don’t know what I don’t know. And that’s where the smart driven, exciting people can come in and help.
Jenny 34:15
Bet you’re a brilliant leader to work for, because that humbleness could just come through in droves and your passion for what you do also comes through and that’s so important at the top of an organisation. You set the tone for the whole agency, and I’ve worked in enough toxic agency environments to know that, you don’t have to look very far, you just look at the top of the tree and you’ll find the problem. So I hope that people listening to this, find it inspiring and will get into in contact with you. And Tom, is there anything that I haven’t asked you that I should have asked you because I just can’t believe that I’ve got you on the podcast and you’re doing something so innovative. Where do you see the industry going? Can I throw that one at you?
Tom 34:58
Well, hopefully we’re leading the industry. We know that we’re right. That this really odd way of doing advertising, where we listen to what people are actually saying about brands, making ads that reflect those wants, needs and desires and then showing them the ads back again, for them to qualify what works. Like, it just makes so much sense to us. And obviously, it works when the clients we’ve won, have the success that we’ve had, and but yet, it’s not commonplace. So I don’t know how this isn’t going to scale, I don’t know how this isn’t going to become sort of best practice. So that’s where we’re trying to lead the industry, we’re trying to change it so we get better results for clients. And I think also, it’s much better for the consumer as well, as opposed to being sort of shouted at by the brands, they’re having ads that reflect them, I think is super interesting. And one of our clients, actually quite a few now I come to think of it, but it’s, what we’re doing is using nano influencers to create user generated content. So not like influencers that say, ‘Hey, I’m really influential about this subject, you should like like this product’. Just what we’re actually doing, is just getting the asset from them themselves. So they just good with a smartphone, basically. So we’ve got ads that are reflecting the conversations that consumers are having. And those same ads have got images or videos in the made by the consumers themselves. And those ads are also being kind of voted for and ratified by their interaction with them in social, which I think is crazy. So weird, but so exciting, so much better than like, a focus group where 20 people will say, Oh, yeah, I really like these trainers. And then someone comes up with ideas and I’ll stick an athlete in them and then put a million quid of media behind it. We’ve had enough of that. It’s time for change.
Jenny 36:39
I love it. And I’ve been reading a lot about the creator economy and Zoe Scaman is very much, she was on the podcast as well, very much at the forefront of what’s changing there. So yeah, that’s a genius idea. Final question that’s just occurred to me and I know it’s a bit of a boring one but you do a lot of B2C brands, direct to consumer, have you applied your methodologies in a B2B context?
Tom 37:05
We haven’t got any B2B clients. Which really annoys me because I was like, yes but you’ve never done B2B but I’m like, look, we have a technology, we listen to the audience, we create ads, we use visuals and text messaging, and then we look at the data to work out what works, which is completely portable across the B2B. But I’m yet to convince anyone of that. So if anyone’s got any B2B clients, then yes let’s talk about what I missed.
Jenny 37:30
You never know. Listen, this has been fantastic, Tom, I’m so grateful that you came on the show. Well done for all the podcast episodes. Really enjoyed the chat. And who would you like to hear from and how can people reach you?
Tom 37:45
Yes, just reach out to me on LinkedIn. I obviously read every message, I live on LinkedIn it’s embarrassing. And yet, we’re looking for hiring a Global Head of Growth. So anyone who’s got experience in growing tech platforms would be great to hear, but yes, if you go to our website, which is automatedcreative.net there’s a Jobs page and as you say, has the spec there. And contact details, my email tom@automatedcreative.net or get in touch. So we’re growing that account management team which is why it’s so brilliant to be on this podcast. Thank you so much, absolute truth.
Jenny 38:23
I really hope it’s fruitful for you, Tom, and you attract the right people to you. So thank you again. It’s been amazing.
Tom 38:29
My pleasure.
