If you have an interest in branding, feel your agency brand needs a makeover or you’re looking for help to offer branding workshops to your clients, this episode is for you.
Bill Wallsgrove has been helping companies with branding for 30 years.
He’s worked on some of the most exciting and well known brands such as Heineken, Budweiser and Benetton to name just a few and has held Creative Director roles for some of the most prestigious strategic design agencies such as Coley Porter Bell and Future Brand.
He has been guiding agencies with their brands for years and his brand consultancy services include mentoring the likes of Studio Blup (recently bought by the LAB Group) known for their work with brands like Nike, MTV and Ministry of Sound.
Today I pick his brains on everything branding related and ask him to share his thoughts, opinions and observations about how branding has changed during his career.
In this episode Bill chats to me about:
* His definition of a brand
* Why he disagrees with many companies who believe they need a brand purpose
* What a ‘digital first’ approach to branding means
* How brands and the process of branding has changed over the years
* Why we are in the third generation of branding and examples of brands who are leading the field
* Why and how he works with agencies to help them with their brands
* Why he believes agencies need account managers and some tips for great account management
….and lots more.
Transcript:
Jenny: So today I’m delighted to have Bill Wallsgrove, who is a bit of a guru I’d say in the branding world. He has over 30 years experience helping companies with branding. And now he helps agencies established their brands. And that’s particularly one of the reasons I wanted to invite him along today was to talk a little bit more about this. Bill has such an impressive background that I struggled to pick out some key points in his career to kind of highlight, but there are a couple of things. One, you were Creative Director for Coley Porter Bell and also Future Bands. Obviously, run your own branding consultancy for many, many years. And you have a lot of experience both in paint and branding beers. And some of the names are Heineken, Budweiser, Pils. You’ve also worked on Benetton, B&Q, and I’m sure hundreds of others. You also run workshops for agencies to establish their brand. And you’re also a university lecturer, I don’t know where you find the time to do that. Is if that wasn’t enough, you also advise agencies. So you sit on the board of a couple of agencies, one of which is Studio Blup as non-exec. So Bill, welcome to the show. I’m really delighted to have someone with such experience here. So thank you for joining me.
Bill: Thank you. That’s just a great introduction. And I feel like it’s like if I was on stage, I’d say, Hello, London town!
Jenny: You can still say that. But I will always say, would you mind spending a couple of minutes first of all, just kind of filling in the gaps to your background and experience?
Bill: Yeah, well, it’s interesting what you say, I’m not a university lecturer. I’m a visiting lecturer at several art colleges, universities, and one of the lectures I give is all about personal branding. And personal branding is really to help some third year students think about how they brand themselves to go out to the world, how they launch themselves, how they celebrate their differences and their unique qualities. And one of the slides I put up is saying, ‘where I never knew that I’d be where I am now 30 years ago’, because you know, here am I now a brand consultant, specialising in digital strategy for agencies. And talking about personal branding, talking about colour theory. These are not things I started out doing. When I kind of left school, I went to art college, to be a graphic designer. And that was a pretty difficult choice because I also was offered a place to do history, which is my other passion, at University. Well, I told my father, I said, Look, I’m not going to take the history place. I’m gonna go to art school he said, and I’ve used this adage before, he said, you know, go to art school, you’ll never get a career out of that. Also it’s, it’s it’s sex, drugs and rock and roll. I said, Dad, you just sold it to me.
Brilliant account management. So yeah, I went to art school and thought I wanted to go into advertising. In fact, I did, I spent, after I left art school, I went to the creative department at Ogilvy and Mather.
And I was there for about three or four months, I really didn’t like advertising. I didn’t like being in a creative department that had no contact with the clients. And I was talking to friends about it. And they said, Well, you ought to go work, maybe for more branding agency. And you know, you’re not stuck in advertising. I then went to work for a very small agency before I joined Coley Porter Bell and really enjoyed it because with a small agency, you were both creating, and also presenting your work to clients. And I began to realise my passion was not just about the creative work itself, but also being passionate about explaining why the creative solutions, right from clients, I began to enjoy talking about why creativity, creativity mattered. And I went on to be creative director at Coley Porter Bell. And I was stopped one day by my managing director who said, and she was a very bright woman, she said, you know, Bill, I think you’re wasted in the studio. And I thought I’d been told off, you know, you know, you’re no good. And she actually didn’t mean that as well. She said, you’re much more valuable to us selling design to our clients, than you are actually being stuck on the drawing board as it was then and then the computer. And I began to think about so I went back and told my wife this and she said, Oh yeah, she’s right. You know, you’re passionate about your subjects and obviously, you know, she’d seen when I’ve been out with friends at dinner parties and describing the latest projects, I’m working on how passionate I was about. And so I kind of moved from being a creative to by default, being a sort of client manager, if you like and managing fairly large accounts at the time, which included things like Dulux Paint, Holsten Pils, which is where the beer and paint thing started. And several other brands like Nestle and Unilever and retail brands like Tesco and began to become really interested in, then I started reading up about the theories of branding realising that I couldn’t just talk about design, I had to talk about why design worked for business.
So then began to read books like The Big Idea and, and Fishing in the Deep Water and several other books, which were all about how brands have to differentiate themselves and it’s interesting Coley Porter Bell was a great place to sort of start my career because it was a strategic design agency, which was one of the sort of pioneers in the 90s actually talking about strategy and design. Which is why in the end they were bought by WPP, because Martin Sorrell could see that see what capable trying to do had a very close link to what his agencies were doing. So ironically, I started working with Ogilvy and Mather again. You can’t get rid of it. So since then, is it okay to carry on?
So since then, after WPP bought Coley Porter Bell, I didn’t like being in the larger agency group to be fair. And that’s when I then broke away and formed my first agency. When I say formed, I didn’t, it was an existing product design company. But I joined it as a partner to introduce graphics and branding, its product design. And that was particularly important for new product development, particularly when you’re doing beer brands where you’re both creating brand new bottle shapes, which is the product design part, but also creating the branding. And of course, the bottle shape is part of the branding there. It’s what we use called 2D and 3D means 60. It’s the kind of it’s how it comes together. So became passionate about new product development. And obviously, the branding as part of that. We had that for about eight years before we sold that to Interpublic, which is the McCann Erickson agency, we then sort of sidled up alongside McCann Erickson. And again, I realised I didn’t like being part of an agency group. And that was my kind of, I guess it was my kind of midlife crisis, as I never really want to work for anyone ever again, I quite enjoyed running my own agency. So that’s what I should be doing. So ever since then, I’ve had several other consultancies. But now I’m an independent brand consultant.
I think somebody described you know, the hitting 40 moment as being you want to only work for yourself, means that you’ve decided you’re unemployable, which I think was probably what I meant. Because I was too opinionated.
Jenny: There’s nothing wrong with that, Bill. There’s so much that I want to dive into. And before I start asking my questions that I’ve kind of established, I want to pick up on something you said about strategic design. And I talk a lot to agency account managers about talking the language of the C suite, you know, talking the language of business outcomes. And I would just love your thoughts. If you can explain to me, how do you, perhaps you don’t need to, but how can you convince the C suite? That design has a place at the table, that it’s going to actually make a difference to the bottom line?
Bill: It’s a good point, I guess it’s why almost all projects that I’ve been involved in for the last 15 years always start with a brand workshop, which is actually when you sit around table, with all the key stakeholders and work out what’s the current status of the business? What’s the current status of the brand? What are the things we need to do which define what the communication creative briefs should be? Because obviously, a design is only as good as the brief. But of course, everything is designed. You know, you can’t say design isn’t at the table. Because there’s nothing that isn’t designed, everything we see around us is designed by somebody. Because design doesn’t just mean drawing, design from the dictionary term means problem solving. So design doesn’t mean you have to actually draw something design means you have to solve a design. Scientists use design to solve things like creating a vaccine, you know, the brief was, how are you going to create something which is going to attack this particular virus? And what are the solutions? So it’s design and through experiments, you come up with the right answer. But why strategic design, which I think is more key to your question, is if strategy really means, you know, very basic marketing means, what are you trying to sell? Who’re you trying to communicate to where do they gather? What do you want them to do? What’s the call for action? It’s very simple. It’s why I almost hate the word digital marketing is because it’s all marketing, it’s selling to people. And it’s knowing, you know, you’ve got to motivate people, you’ve got to provide them with information and stuff, which is going to engage them and make them buy something or make them do something. And design is both the process and obviously one of the outputs.
Jenny: This is great. And the other question I was going to ask you was a lot of people have different interpretations of what a brand is, you know, and I know there’s lots of descriptions of how to explain what is a brand? How do you define a brand?
Bill: Yeah, well, I think for me a brand is a price. And I agree with you the problem for me with a lot of sort of brand strategy stuff is there have been so many things going around the world of branding in terms of, you know, is it a brand mission, a brand vision, a brand proposition, value, and people get confused by the terminology. And for me, it’s about a promise delivered. That’s what a brand should be. And my latest bugbear, I guess is a lot of people talking about it seems to be en vogue. In vogue, whatever the phrase is? I think En Vogue were a group, that’s my DJ past! In vogue is to talk about brand purpose. And I kind of get slightly irritated by that. Because some brands do have a purpose or some brands don’t. You know, I’m working for an engineering company at the moment. And they do fantastic engineering, it’s high precision customised engineering. And they said, What’s our brand purpose, I said, I don’t think you have got a brand purpose, you’ve got a brand promise, which is to do highly efficient robotic engineering. And they went Okay, that’s fine. Whereas I’m working on another brand, which is all about combustible packaging. Now, that definitely has a purpose. Because what it’s trying to do is reduce packaging waste, it’s a purpose is about giving something back to society. Now, whether it’s environmental, or community or some, a purpose, I think is a much more human or Earth bound thing. It’s not about you know, if you’re just making widgets, you don’t have a purpose, you have a promise that we’re going to make the very best widgets. And we’re about efficiency. So I think promise and relevance is what branding is about. I personally use something which I love, which I kind of used and going back to the personal branding side, which is I like the term Ikigai. Do you know the term Ikigai? Yeah, I’ve used it in lots of brand workshops. And it’s a very simple thing. It’s Japanese philosophy. And it, it asks, but it’s really Ikigai means your reason for getting up in the morning. What motivates you? And if it was a Venn diagram, sorry I’ll draw a Venn diagram in the air, and then it’s got four component parts, and it’s What are you good at? What do you love? What does the world need, and What can be rewarded for. And at the heart of that is your Ikigai. And Ikigai really means your personal sense of purpose. And those people I think, who find their Ikigai early enough, they do find things, they’re really good at things they love, things that they really need to provide things that people need, and they can be rewarded for it. They’re going to be happy in what they do. I think when you’re doing something, which doesn’t suit your Ikigai, that’s when there’s a sort of dysfunctionality. So I tend to use Ikigai to define, not just purpose, but your kind of mission. What’s your role? What’s a brand’s role, and if a brand defines what its role is, it will then define what it needs to promise to people and then deliver that promise, and brands fail and they don’t deliver the promise that they sell.
Jenny: Do you think that too many companies right now are thinking we have to have a purpose? Because there seems to be a rise in brands having to have some bigger purpose, then?
Bill: I think so I think, well, I’m not saying it’s the Emperor’s New Clothes, but a bit of me thinks that people try and oversell it. I think purpose is very clear. There are some brands for the purpose. And there’s some brands who don’t say some businesses that do and some don’t, maybe that’s me just being very black and white about it. But I do think that when you strive to, you know, give a fizzy drink a sense of purpose, you know, and the way you justify is saying, you know, we liberate people, you know, and let them express themselves, I kind of go, no you’re just a fizzy drink. And I’m sorry, it’s you know, I love marketing, but I can also see through the bullshit.
Jenny: I love that you’ve said that because it almost seems sometimes a bit contrived, doesn’t it?
Bill: That’s my problem. And of course, the great thing about marketing now is people are very marketing savvy, I hate the kind of Z generation or Millennials or whatever you want to call it, but they’re very aware about how they’re being marketed to. And I think if you strive to over market, and you don’t use human terms to describe what you’re trying to do, because brands succeed, now, if they’re discovered, they don’t really succeed by selling hard to people, people discover brands now. And also, they like peers, peer to peer recommendations as well. So I think trying to sell purpose when you really don’t have one absolutely is probably, it makes me cringe. It’s like scraping nails on a blackboard to me, though, I can see through what you’re doing. It’s just it doesn’t work.
Jenny: I think if everyone’s honest, I think that’s the same kind of impact that it has on individuals as well. So moving on to thinking about brands, the actual, how do you think branding, the process of branding, and also brands themselves have evolved over the lifespan of your career thus far?
Bill: Yeah, it’s a really interesting thing. I mean, I read an article recently about sort of three generations of branding. And I thought what was great about that was it sort of it kind of clearly says because when you think about the history branding, branding sort of started with almost you know, what it is it’s putting a mark on your animal in a field. It’s or, you know, the Romans use branding for various things, But branding sort of post war and I think post war is really where branding kind of took off in America in particularly, and obviously spread across to here was all sort of fast moving consumer good lead. And it was all about product performance, and it was all about aspiration. And it was branding was about ownership of something, of course, it was about owning a product or service. And then it was about giving that message out. And that’s why all the classic kind of David Ogilvy advertising stuff, which is all about pushing messaging out, which engaged people. And that feels, to me, that was the kind of first generation of branding. It kind of really changed, I think, at the turn of the century into now, when I say turn of the century, that’s my history thing coming back up. But I think now it’s much more about customer, it was much more about customer experience. And it was much more service led. And I think you found things like financial services, and computer companies and hotel groups and airlines started talking, and coffee brands, started talking much more about service and the experience of that brand. You know, how did Starbucks grow so quickly? Well, they branded what should be very simple process, which is buying a cup of coffee. And I think we’ve gone past that now. Whereas I think what’s happened now is moved and particularly with the huge success of the technology companies, we’ve moved into this third generation, which is much more entertainment led. And it’s much more about a kind of engaging people’s intention. Apple, of course, the past masters of that, and I hate to say like many brand consultants, I use that example. Because, you know, Apple said very early on Steve Jobs said we’re about think different. We’re not about selling computers, we’re selling to consumers, what they can do with our computers. How can they be creative? What music can they create? What designs can they create? What films can they create? So the think different was trying to be almost anti technology and saying, we’re empowering you because we made a computer system, if you don’t have to be nerdish to understand, sorry, for the nerds out there. Thats kind of what I think it is now. And I think that’s why tech brands have used much more of the elements of the entertainment industry. When Apple do new product launched, it’s like a new film being launched. Or it’s like a, you know, it’s like everyone I know last night was waiting for the for the new episodes of the Crown on Netflix. God, I even put it in my diary, The Crown’s gonna be on, but I think brands now use much more about that. It’s not my thinking. There’s several people writing about this kind of three generations of branding. And I think they have moved from the hard sell of products, then the experience of being with the products. And that’s much more about the expectation, and particularly as a lot of successful brands now are not tangible things. I mean, Google massive brand, but we think it’s a free service. It’s not a free service. It’s Google, you are part of the brand now. It wants to own information about you, you are the content. And so you know, and I think it’s interesting how brands that were traditionally FMCG brands are desperately trying to catch up with that sort of, you know, so to use my fizzy drink, I will call it out but when Pepsi Cola did that awful ad, I think a year ago, which was sort of young people marching, protesting in the street, not protesting about anything, it’s just, you know, we’re Pepsi. We’re providing people with the power to go on the street in protest. Of course, there’s blank signs, not really protesting anything. And that’s when going back to the two things I was talking about, it’s trying to pretend you’ve got purpose, your fizzy drink is motivating people to go and talk about revolution on the streets. And also, you know, trying to pretend you’re involved in entertainment that you’re not. It’s just sort of, don’t try and pretend you’re you know, and the problem is young marketeers, I think jump on a bandwagon very quickly, and they say, we’ve got to have a purpose. We’ve got to be relevant. We’ve got to, and they don’t stick to their knitting. No, maybe maybe this is just me being the Victor Meldrew of branding? You know, you can see through it and and I kind of watch how my my son engages with branding as well. And you know him growing up just seeing the brands that meant stuff to him and the fact that I don’t think he has ever really looked at a laptop. I think he uses his mobile phone for everything.
And the brands that he has loved and liked have been usually fashion brands, music brands, you know, Spotify is big to him it’s just, he’s not particularly you know, I can wax lyrical about, you know, the history of fast moving consumer goods. How Unilever, with Sunlight was one of the first kind of brands, but it doesn’t mean anything to him. You know, it’s, I’m interested in the history. He’s actually interested in, you know, what engages with me, you know, what, what do I use? And I remember when he first, you know, said left us with him about 10 years ago, who can probably have got the timing wrong. And we’ve had dinner I said, I’ll just go and get a taxi and he said, No, I’ll get you getting an Uber. What? So, you know, he was introducing me to brands long before I knew about them.
Jenny: I love this, there’s so much. I love that third, you know, first, second and third generation branding, I think that’s really clear to understand. I mean, just this, I don’t know if you’ve got one off the top of your head. But given that we are in this third generation, it’s all about entertainment and expectation. And I can certainly see from my partner’s son, actually, following fashion brands, they have the drop of the new range of clothing that everyone’s lining up in the streets for, so I can see what you’re saying about this. Do you think that there are any FMCG type brands that are doing that well?
Bill: That’s a really interesting one. No, is my honest… I’ve kind of gone..it’s more kind of retailers. I think online retailers who have been smarter than anyone at engaging people, I don’t think FMCG brands themselves. And I think actually, there are things like good design on shelf and standout, good packaging, and good advertising still matters. You know, I don’t think these things are dead. And of course, advertising doesn’t it could be just a fantastic YouTube campaign. It could be just a fantastic. But you know, wouldn’t it be great if they got podcasters like you, or bloggers talking about how great their brands were to people who actually bought into them? You know, I know that my partner’s youngest daughter, who’s she, she does fantastic. She sells fashion through Bing Bong and bang bap that I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what it’s called. And she uses Tik Tok and I have to admit, I’m lost now. Whatever you’re doing, you’re doing it well. But you know, she seems to love watching people dancing in her clothes that she’s made.
Jenny: And before I go on to how you help agencies, specifically, I want to kind of pick up a little bit further on this because you work with Studio Blup, I had to look them up, to be honest. But I realised how trendy they are and how kind of what a famous youth brand they are. So on this point about, you know, the third generation branding and your experience with guiding Studio Blup, can you kind of just give us a little bit of background on how you help them and what they’re doing that’s different?
Bill: Yeah, I mean, in a way, Studio Blup has been sort of a happy accident for me and serendipity. I discovered them because they did a website that I admired for a client of mine. And I said, How did you find it and find these people? And I think it was through a connection through college students or whatever. And said, Well, I’d love to go and see them found out they were in Islington, went up to see them and got on with them, like house on fire. And we started talking away and they’re a different generation from me, they were probably 10 years out of, or eight or 10 years out of college, and just doing some fantastic stuff. And they were sort of founded on the basis of being much more sort of design and illustration agency, because the creative director came from a background of graffiti design. And he had lots of friends in the sort of grime industry, the music industry. And so they were being used by brands like Nike and Universal for doing great social media campaigns. And when I started talking to them, they said, well, we’d really like some help on two things. One is more on our direction. So I’m no longer a non executive director, by the way, I’ll explain why. A non executive director was always a kind of inverted commas more, I was more a mentor for them. And they wanted to think about how to repurpose themselves to make their brand more relevant. And they wanted to add in branding services to what they were doing. So I started doing brand workshops for them. Because brand workshop helps clarify the brief, they were very frustrated that some of the briefs they were getting were pretty fuzzy. And, you know, I when I was at Future Brand, we were forever offering writing the briefs for our clients service, because actually sometimes clients know they want to do something but actually writing the brief is a really hard thing to do. And so I started doing brand workshops to help clarify the brief, of course, they could add that as an additional conscious consultancy service into their fee basis. So I was both a mentor but also doing projects with them. But for them, I began to say stop trying to pretend you’re a design company. It’s quite obvious you’re not a design company in the classic sense, what you are is a much more like a style house. You have a very idiosyncratic style, which people really love because it’s relevant. It’s now it’s funky, cool, fab I can use all the 60s groovy words you want. But it was a very engaging style and their social media reach was huge. Their Instagram page is fantastic. And I said, instead of saying we are another design company, because there’s hundreds of them knocking on the same doors, why don’t you say that we are a style house. And that we’re rooted in, in in culture that we, you know, we, we look at the streets we absorb it, and we put it back into our designs. And almost say, we have our own distinctive style, if you want some of that come and work with BLUP, but because nobody else has it. Not, we’re another design company knocking on your door. And so we kind of pushed that further that that they are a style house with this unique way of remixing things. If you look at their work, and I would say look at their Instagram page, because the website isn’t the key thing, really. Their following on, on their Instagram page is huge. And the fact they get so many projects from people going, we really like what you’re doing. And they’re hugely cheeky as well, in terms of, you know, they started doing what they called Disney remixes, which were taking, and I know, Dines the creative director loves, like me, he’s got a love comic books and cartoons, all that kind of stuff. And they did these Disney remixes. And they got approached by Disney and I thought, Oh, my god, they’re going to be sued? And they said we love your stuff. You know, would you do some work with us? So it’s that kind of it’s, it’s an attitude, which is not that we’re yet another design agency, we have our own style. And if you buy into it, we can prove that people really follow it. And so much so that they started managing some of their clients’ social media accounts as well.
Jenny: Wow, do you know, as you’re talking, I was just thinking of a slight sort of a different industry, but a similar kind of thing where, you know, George Northwood. I get my hair done at George Northwood. And if you go to George Northwood, it’s a type of cut that you get, you know, they cut all in the same way in George Northwood style. He’s really very popular on social media, he does some stars. And it’s a similar kind of thing, what you’re just describing, and I, I don’t know whether many others sort of, you’ve called them a style house, but originally, they were a design agency, that have that kind of, you come to us, and we will help you with all the way WE do this, that’s going to keep you relevant. Do you know anyone else that’s doing that?
Bill: No, but I’ll just finish, but I will go on to that. But BLUP the other thing they were doing, which I thought was great is because their other passion is not just design and illustration, and graffiti, and video and all that kind of stuff, animation. But they love clothes, and fashion. And so very early on, they started doing their own fashion items. So when you go to the BLUP site, it’s not just to look at their work, you can buy a T shirt, or a bag or a hat or whatever. And I thought that was extraordinary. And I thought it was just a sort of vanity luxury bit of project. But weirdly enough, the fact they do that makes them appear more like a style fashion house. In fact, their clothes have been very popular with the community they know. So in the grime community, you know, and they gave samples out, and it’s very, very clever marketing, so much so they did a pop up shop last year, just to test it in Soho and sold out all the items within the three to four weeks. So I think the analogy of because if you think about it, you know, I know, my partner has particular fashion brands that she buys into, and you know, she will constantly look either online or in store, see what the fashion brands are doing. And I think that’s what people do with BLUP. So and, of course, there’s still a very good creative design house, they do great identities and stuff, but I think it’s kind of you’ve got to buy into the BLUP way. And so much so part of their success and I’d like to think I contributed part of that as a mentor, is they were bought by the Lab group at the beginning of this year, actually during lockdown, which is extraordinary. But that’s because Johnny Tooz. who is the chairman of the Lab group he was also another mentor to BLUP, the managing director, Alex. And you know, they were kind of chatting away about what the future was. And I think Johnny must have had a eureka moment. He said, why don’t you join our group. Because the Lab group is one of the companies that I really admire, what they’re trying to do is build up this sort of digitech way of approaching branding, which is what I call all brands should be doing this now which is having a digital first approach to branding. Much as i say i hate digital marketing, I do, the terminology of digital marketing, but you have to understand and particularly when brands are becoming critically aware of this lockdown has exposed, this things won’t change after lockdown. You know, all sorts of things that happen the way people work from home, the way people buy things, the way people engage with things, you know, as soon as who you know, who’s the biggest suffer when they announced this potentially a vaccine, Zoom shares must have dropped you know?
Jenny: What is a digital first approach to branding?
Bill: I guess the prime example of that, I’ll say Apple, I won’t use them again. But Airbnb would be one that I would say is that it starts off with is, what’s the first thing you see on Airbnb is probably the app on your phone. Okay, so if you work backwards from what’s the app on our phone, and we have to have a distinctive app on our phone, and brand backwards from there, you know, how then does that identity express itself across different social platforms, how does it engage as a website, you know. I used Uber, you can use Deliveroo, all these brands have realised it’s about digital first. Whereas a lot of the companies I’m working for now haven’t thought about that, because they designed their identity maybe 15-20 years ago, when it was much more print based world. So the identity actually can’t be transformed to a digital first brand. So most of the work that we’re doing particularly a lot of work here in Brighton, my other part of my job is with a company called New Juice, and almost all the work but we’re much more sort of, say a classic, purist, typography based company, we create classic identities, but we are a digital agency as well. So we work from what’s the smallest place your brand is going to be seen. You know, it’s going to be if you’re a B2B business, it’s going to be your website, and probably your LinkedIn page. So work out that how those things work. And also, from a digital first point of view, realise that don’t put repetitive copy in because Google doesn’t like that. Make sure you say the same thing but you say in various different ways. So you begin to, digital first means make sure that your identity works at the finest point it has to, work backwards from there but also think clearly about the words that you use, you know, understand how organic search works. And so there are a lot of tools of how digital branding works that you need to incorporate in your next generation of branding. So literally, I love working on brand new briefs and working on some great ones at the moment. But I love working with companies who actually come to a realisation that actually, probably we need to go into the next generation of our branding, it just is not fit for purpose anymore.
Jenny: This is so fascinating. I’m loving it. And to that point, there’s obviously agency owners, leaders listening to this thinking, I love what Bill’s saying. And actually, the first question for you is, why would an agency come to you about their own brand, when a lot of them are experts in themselves?
Bill: Actually, weirdly, it came about, I’ve done more for Brighton agencies and I have for London agencies, it came from BLUP experience, I didn’t change the way BLUP looked, but I changed the way they talked. It’s a different thing. Sometimes because when you’re not an employee or a shareholder or a director, you can see the wood for the trees, it’s what consulting is you can stand back and be more objective. And sometimes, so when I was trying to explain the benefit of using brand workshops, quite often, an agency would go, can you do a brand workshop on us because it’s a bit like doing a health check or an MOT. It’s just going where we are fit for purpose. And of course, when you do a brand workshop for an agency, and I’ve done several now, I’ve done four or five here in Brighton the last two years. They’re just checking from an objective point of view that it’s not that they don’t have the skills themselves. But quite often, you know what it’s like when you’ve got your own business, you’re immersed in it. And sometimes you just want it’s a bit like having you know, and my joke is, you know, being a consultant is stealing someone’s watch and telling them the time. You’re not telling them anything they don’t know, but they quite like having it as a health check.
Jenny: I so see that. And being a consultant myself, it’s so true. And you’re right, you get so immersed in your own business. You cannot see it objectively, you cannot see the wood for the trees. So I love that. Can you, I mean, do any particular agencies spring to mind apart from obviously the ones that we’ve mentioned, that do their own brand really well.
Bill: Yeah, I think my my favourite agency at the moment is one called You and Mr. Jones. Do you know You and Mr. Jones?
Jenny: I don’t actually, it kind of rings a bell.
Bill: Well, I think what’s clever about, they’re an American agency, and they were founded by
somebody who’s rooted like you in advertising, but began to realise the world they call themselves you know, they are helping brands through digitech. They’re helping brands understand how to use all the skills out there to be more effective. I love the brand name as well mainly because I’m a soul fan. So you know if it’s a Billy Paul, Me and Mrs. Jones, it used to be when I was a DJs to be the song I played at the end. You know, it’s what they call the dance section. There’s another phrase for it, which I use.
Jenny: How did you how did you manage to squeeze in DJing as well?
Bill: I’ve been an owner of a house music label. I’ve been an investor in a nightclub I’ve yeah well, no, it’s kind of you follow your hobbies. I mean, look, I couldn’t, I failed miserably at the things I really wanted to do if you want to know my Ikigai. So I’m not centre forward for England, never was, never played for Arsenal. And, you know, was never, you know, successful drummer in a band. So all of which I’ve tried. And you know, what they say about people who fail at being musicians themselves, they become DJs. You realise, you know, you’re not going to make your own music, play other peoples.
Jenny: So I completely cut cross you there. So You and Mr. Jones is…
Bill: It’s worth looking at their website. It’s just I think they’re very clever. And I’d say the Lab group are probably following a similar model whereby it’s much more using thinking about neuroscience, thinking about behaviour. You know, it’s much more, you can’t motivate people if you don’t know more about psychology about what motivates people. And I think so it combines this, I think You and Mrs. Jones do it very well, which is, is it combines research, it combines constantly having your finger on the pulse in terms of how platforms are changing. It requires creative solutions to navigate those. So they’re what are called post advertising agency. Because I think the old advertising agency model is dead, but that’s another thing.
Jenny: Okay, brilliant. I’m gonna have to look them up. And if there’s an agency leader thinking, I love what Bill saying, and I would love to work with him on my brand. Can you just give us a kind of brief overview of how you approach that task?
Bill: Yeah, well, I mean, with, I’ll go back, it’s good question. I’ll go back to why I’ve worked with some agencies in the past. One agency I worked with, they wanted to reframe what they were doing, because their agency name, I won’t name them, was the two partners names, and the two partners have fallen out. So the remaining partner wanted to then reframe what the agency was about and rename it, of course. So that was a very specific task. So I don’t just work on agencies, the reason I do it with agencies is to help them sell brand workshops as part of their service. And I say I do run workshops with them to show them the process. But go back to the reason you’d want some third party help, some objectivity, is because you’ve obviously decided you, you either want to change your proposition or your promise, or you want to add existing services, or you want to go to new markets, or there’ll be a different reason. And like anything until you ask the right questions, you can’t come up with the right answer. Everything is, I like the word bespoke. But that’s the fashion telling, it’s probably customised. Everything has to be customised. The problem is every problem is different. It shares similar things, because branding, you know, branding is like tree rings, or fingerprints, everyone has a unique fingerprint, and every tree has a unique tree ring. But they exist, and we know why they exist.
Jenny: And is the process of working with that agency. Do you do what you mentioned before about getting all the stakeholders around the table to do that process with you? And if so, how long does that take?
Bill: The classic brand workshop is probably about three days, and it will be the first day would be me researching the competition and researching the category. And if this is I do this for clients, as well as agencies as I say, it would be, you know, let me go and find out how the world sees you in this sea of other brands that you’re competing with, you know, tell me who you think your key competitors are. And in that, I’ll also probably look at some other categories as well, where other people are doing good stuff. So that audit and research happens first, research is really critical for any workshop. That means you go into a workshop with a few preconceived ideas. And this is what I’ve seen and observed, what do you think? So it’s like putting a straw man into the conversation, which allows the stakeholders around the table then to go actually, yeah, and, of course, in a brand workshop, there’s no wrong or right. You know, it should be a sense of everyone can just bring ideas to the table. And quite often you’ll find somebody who’s maybe more junior has really bright idea for the business. And the workshop actually brings it to the surface where I guess that’s a really bright idea, whether it may not have come out of the normal systems, you know, within the office, you know, it’s a chance to talk about our brand or our business in a kind of objective, consistent, the workshop can be a half day or a full day. And of course, a lot of these workshops now being done by Zoom. But of course, you can do that with the audit and questionnaire, then the Zoom call. And then the third part is the report which comes after which will be based on everything that everyone said, This is what you said, this seems to be the consensus. This is the criteria for the brief that you’ve set yourself, which is usually a new communication strategy. It could be, you know, a new look, it could be, so a creative brief. So it’s three parts and say it’s the research the activity which is the most critical part and then the honest, objective review of what you all collectively said. So putting, like I said, it’s the watch back to you, isn’t it? It’s, it’s almost putting the mirror and saying this is what you are. And this is what you say you want to do. Is that right? And of course, if they then say that’s right, that can either go onto a creative brief which I can feed into one of my agencies, well, they can fit it back into their existing agency, it doesn’t require me to them do the work. However, it’s sometimes it does. Because you know, what it’s like, and we go onto account management, when people like the way you talk about things, and they like the way you think they’ll work with you. You know, it’s nothing to do with I have a unique process, or I have unique proposition, I have a personality. And, you know, I have, I hope, a promise, which is that people like my personality, and some people don’t, I can understand that. And people like what you’re promising, they’ll work with you. So it’s a, I love workshops, because I guess in the same way that we all probably like counselling, you know, whether it be the counselling of friends or professional counsel, whatever your situation in life is, sometimes you do need to stop and take stock.
Jenny: I totally agree. I think this is such a, an actually, I can see why this is so valuable, both for agencies who are looking to look at their brands in more detail for themselves, but also, as you say, as a service, that you step into that role to help agencies with that, with that, with that thing, because many agencies I work with, for example, they don’t profess to be experts in branding. And yet through working with their clients, this comes up and the need comes up. But it’s not something that they offer in house. So this is great to know that you do this. Let’s turn our attentions to account management because many of my audience are account management and I, having worked in the industry for so long, Bill I’m just really interested in, first of all asking you the question, where do you see the value in account management?
Bill: Good account management is so critical, as you and I both know, we’re involved, we have been and are involved in the whole thing about relationship audits anyway, where you know, account manager, account management is about understanding the nature of both the business you’re working with, and also the people you’re working alongside, you know who your counterparts are in the business you’re working for. So I think the value of account management is it, sometimes I say I had to learn by default, because I moved from being a creative into being a client director. And I tend to use the same things I use in my personal relationships was it’s all about listening carefully. You know, knowing when to talk when not to talk. I think it’s a lot to do with empathy. Because sometimes what you’re being told to do isn’t actually the whole brief. And sometimes if you’ve got some empathy, and you begin to ask the right questions, you’ll know other aspects of the brief, which are equally as important. And of course, that’s really important in account management, because good account managers actually can take one brief and turn it into two, you know, it’s that kind of thing. Write a proposal, I always say this to people, whenever you write a proposal, you know, your proposal might be that one activity, but always put last sheet at the back of the proposal, did you know we do these other things? Because it doesn’t matter if that’s just seen as being a wasted page, or wasted PDF, at least because sometimes we’ll go I didn’t know you did that. Yo do copywriting? I didn’t know you did that, we’ve actually got copywriter. So it’s, it’s got to be a sprat to catch a mackerel, you know, good account management should be about, of course, it’s about continuity. It’s obviously about success. It’s about making sure that what is promised is delivered on time, at cost, accurately. And but I do think it’s this, this. And the other thing, of course, with really good account management is, as I said, about workshops, research is so critical, not just research on the company you’re just about to work for if you won the pitch, research on what their competitors doing, and research on the individuals you’re working with, you know, I know that Simon a friend of ours, that said that, you know, he made it his job whenever he can’t imagine would find out, you know, what are the interests of the person you’re going, you know, are they interested in music, fashion, football. I mean, the weird thing for me is I know when I’ve been a successful account management because some of my great friends on LinkedIn are former clients of mine, and you know, we talk about football, music, politics, how much we hate Trump, you know, all that kind of stuff. You know, what cat videos we like, I’m joking. But you kind of and I say to an account manager, don’t go out to try and be somebody friend, just be a really good professional. But if a friendship evolves out of that, then, you know, I probably in my career, worked for the same person in three different roles for three different companies. In other words, they’ve carried me along with them, no matter what agency I’ve been working with, it’s my own or for somebody else into that. So people, I think people develop a shorthand together. Good account management is developing that shorthand, so that actually everything isn’t laboured. Because I think the other thing we got to remember is, we think what the services are providing are so important, but they’re not the most important thing in the client’s life. You’ve got to recognise what you’re doing, it may be a fun part of what they do, it’s probably more fun than, you know, doing reviews of packaging lines, or whatever it is. But, and obviously, they love the results and when it motivates them, it really motivates them. But it goes back to if you have all that thing, that listening empathy and you really do some research, you’re bound to probably have a better relationship. It may not be the strongest bond ever. You either want people to like you and like what you do, or just really like what you do. The liking you isn’t the critical thing, but it often goes hand in hand.
Jenny: I love all of that,everything that you’ve said. And I think, like you said, research is really important as well. It’s bringing insight and ideas to the client that perhaps they hadn’t considered.
In terms of any high performing account managers you’ve experienced or you’ve worked with in the past, can you think of any examples where they’ve, you know, specifically delivered a lot of value, either to the client or the agency?
Bill: I mean, when when we grew Planet very rapidly, Planet was the first company that I was the director of myself, which was the new product development agency where we used 3D design, product design and branding. We very quickly realised that as a group of creatives, and we were all creatives, that there were limitations to some of our skills, and three of our clients over a period of two years, then said, I really like your agency, I’d love to work, I’d love to switch sides. And two of them came from Unilever, one of them came from DHL, I think, and they were the best account managers we ever had, because, and they ended up they’ve all actually gone on and started their own agencies, we were just a stepping stone for them. Hey c’est la vie but that’s life out there. But the fact they’d come from the client side, meant that they instinctively knew what clients wanted, and how clients needed to be talked to. And also, the key thing we learned from them was actually how to provide stuff to your clients, which they could use to sell up to their bosses as well. In other words, how you provide information in a way which is useful. So I what I got out, there was a real understanding about what it must be like to be working inside Unilever or Nestle or the Diageo, you know, what are the things that are important there? Or Coca Cola? I remember once I was speaking to the marketing director, Coca Cola, a good friend, and I said, how come Coca Cola has all these problems launching new products? Should the problem is we’ve got too many clever people. I said, What do you mean, she said we’ve got so many clever people that often ideas get stuck in the system, because everyone’s adding their, you know, it’s almost we don’t have a streamlined system. I think what they did for some of the revolutionary new products is they had a breakout team who went and worked in a separate office completely. Because the problem is, if you have too many people, you don’t get clear cut through.
Jenny: This is brilliant. Bill, I feel I could talk to you all day. But I’ve just looked at the time. So I’m really keen to get your view on. What do you think is the future of agencies and the future of the agency model? Any thoughts on that?
Bill: Yeah, this is this is an area again, Simon Mishra and I were talking about the other week, which is that I think it must be so tough for clients to work out where to get the services they need. You know, it used to be simple, you know, you had your advertising agency, you had your design agency, you had your public relations agency, etc. The digital world changed all of that. And the problem is, I think you’ve got digital agencies who have claimed their branding agencies, branding agencies, who are saying that social media agencies, people saying.. it’s not being, not sticking to themselves. So I think the future of agencies is actually saying, again, going back to branding themselves, so they really know what their promises, what are they really good at, focus on what they’re really good at, doesn’t, they can still sell a whole bunch of other services, but understand the hierarchy of how you communicate what you don’t pretend to be things you’re not, you know, if really you’re greater public relations, and you have fantastic insight about how to, you know, speak to magazines, and you’ve got great relationship with journalists, that’s your strength. The fact you can do social media stuff, as well as, don’t pretend you’re a social media expert. You know, and you’ve got you got hands on touch to all the, you know, the guru bloggers out there, and it’s just, I think, stick to your knitting. But the future agencies means that lots of agencies are going to be confusing people by pretending they’re everything to all men, and that’s it’s a very grey area out there. I think shopping it must be really difficult. I think it’s why you know, the clever agency groups now you know, much as there are things about WPP I don’t agree with but what Martin was brilliant at was sorting out what was.. this is a digital service within our agency. This is an advertising services agency, this is a creative, you know, saying it’s all about you know, we’re passionate about doing branding, and okay, that’s why You and Mr. Jones is an agency out there talking about guiding people through digital technology. That’s what we’re best at. And then okay, well, what’s the service that you need to guide you through this changing digital world?
So I think, and it’s why with Studio Blup, it’s very clear what they are good at. And it’s why they’re, they’re part of the Lab group now. They are great creative, hotshot have their own style, their own unique way of doing things, which people buy into, and has that way of working. And with New Juice here in Brighton, we know that we’re when we’re not a B2C agency, we’re much more B2B agency, where we love doing business to business brands, and we’re working, we’ve worked on several startups, they’re probably my favourite kind of work at the moment, which is where you got a blank sheet of paper. And so we don’t claim to be things that we’re not, we’re, you know, we say we’re a branding agency that has our finger on the digital pulse, it’s, it’s fairly clear.
Jenny: I think that makes so much sense stick to what you do really, really well. And just finally, to wrap up, do you have any sources that inspire you, sources of information, any books that you’ve read, that you think would be particularly relevant for the audience to read? That would help them either with their thoughts around branding or account management? And, yeah, or anyone that you follow?
Bill: Not so much books, as I said, I’m not really, you know, the only book I’ve really loved reading recently is The Body by Bill Bryson. And that that was a very poignant book to read right before this whole COVID because it talks about, you know, the immune system and things. I mean, you know, so learning about your own body is pretty interesting. But that’s irrelevant to what we’re talking about. I mean, I guess the people I really follow people like Mark Ritson. Just because whether you agree with him or not, he pumps a lot of stuff out of there, which is worth.. It’s like anyone you know, you can agree or disagree, but at least there’s stuff that’s being put out there. I really like Michael Wolff. Now, don’t get confused, there’s two Michael Wolff’s. If you Google it, that one’s a journalist. I mean, Michael Wolff, who used to be the creative director of Wolff Olins, the branding agency. His website, which has got an A-Z of branding, it’s fantastic. I mean, it’s quite frivolous and lovely. But, you know, I know him personally. And he writes stuff on LinkedIn, which I always read. And I like him as well so probably, it’s not books, it’s magazine articles. You know, there’s, there’s just some great people out there. I could go go through a long list, but I think it’s kind of, definitely I suggest Michael Wolff, if you’re a creative, I think if you want to, as you know, if you want to know what your client’s needs are, you’ve got to be reading Marketing Week and Mark Ritson has great views about marketing. Marketing changes all time.
Jenny: Great advice. Thank you. And just finally, if anyone’s listening to this thinking, Bill sounds fantastic. I’d really like to kind of contact him. First of all, who would you like to be contacted by and and how would they do that?
Bill: My real passion at the moment is helping people. The lovely thing about, not lovely, if there’s any, any good news, but lots of people coming out of the woodwork who wants to launch their own new businesses. So I think it’s been a lot of time for people to do their own Dragon’s Den in their head, going, actually, maybe is this the way I want to work again? I’ve had an idea. So there are lots of new businesses being formed or new entrepreneurial ideas happening. And I love working on those because quite often, it is a brilliant, I’m working on one at the moment, which is an absolutely brilliant idea. But they haven’t really got a brand name, or the one they came up with is not really clever. They hadn’t really researched, the branding wasn’t really important, the business idea. I can help on the branding side, so I love startups. Particularly I can really help those and of course, the other thing is because I’m not an agency with overheads, I can give much more of a personal service, which is valued for money, I have to say, people. I’m advertising myself! I love that. And of course I love working with agencies, but I’ve kind of restricted myself now to working, I’ve kind of done my job with BLUP, I’ll still be working with them, but they’re part of the Lab group. And that’s their extended family, which gives them international reach. Doesn’t mean I don’t still work with them. But I’m really enjoying working here in Brighton with New Juice. Because the great thing about I weirdly moved to Brighton to work from home seven or eight years ago. So I kind of think I’m Nostradamus. I predicted it. But the lovely thing about looking Brighton is they’re very small agencies here but the sense of collaboration is huge. It’s a kind of mini Silicon Valley. There are so many digital companies and so many games developers and just really diverse. Wired Sussex is great, you can connect with people and I’ve connected with great video makers, animators, all sorts of people. So I think the future model of the agency world, from my perspective, is we’re going to keep very lean at New Juice. But it’s a bit like a film production company, you bring the right people in when the right brief needs them, you don’t need to employ them. It’s much more about the collaboration. And Brighton seems to have a great collaboration culture, partly because it’s essentially I think it’s Camden by Sea. It’s got a love of music and arts, which is you know, that’s why I lived in Camden.
Jenny: Amazing, Bill, listen, I feel like I talk to you all day. This has been absolutely gold. Thank you so much for spending the time with me, sharing all your knowledge and all your views. I think it really has been fantastic. So thank you so much for joining me today.
Bill: Always a pleasure, Jenny. It was great to be introduced to you and I think your podcasts are great. I think that’s the other thing is podcasts are something which have been hugely helpful during lockdown. I think I’ve certainly enjoyed doing several now. And it’s got me listening to a lot as well, which is again, it’s weird, isn’t it? I just don’t read books as much.
Jenny: I think you should do one yourself.
Bill: I’ve got an idea for one.
Jenny: Okay, all the best. Thank you so much, Bill.
