Hype File, Swipe File, Hire File
You might have heard of different files, most commonly the swipe file, something you’re inspired by and will use as inspiration in work or play. Think of a private board for things to use in the future.
Something I recommend most is a hype file:
Save screenshots where people have given you compliments
Sent you nice feedback on work,
orWhen friends have just said thanks, something nice or say you have gone over and above etc.
My hype file is pinned in my Apple notes and is great when you’re having a crappy day or need a kickstart when having a low point. I split mine out into work hype, into home hype and friends hype.
A spin on the hype file is called a brag document when you have had great feedback, when they’ve got great coverage (for you, your work etc) about them or your product etc.
Hire File
When I was in-house and developing my department (think of org design with connected profiles) I would create a Hire file.
It is a notes file of the areas we were not as strong in and is not just a list of roles but a file full of examples of very strong profiles from LinkedIn that would be great additions to my department. Hire files are more than just skills but are a well-rounded profile that would be a great hire for these roles or roles to craft in the near future.
I would look at my hire file and see profiles of people on LinkedIn and craft job specs around their style of profile and on a couple of occasions they actually applied for the role and were standout candidates.
In your hire file don’t be afraid to save LinkedIn profiles or export to PDF and save in your hire file and reach out to these profiles, speak to them and say what you are looking to do and the timeline, often they will get back in touch closer to the time of hiring or you can keep them as warm leads.
These are all recommendations I make to my coaching clients, especially for CEOs, CPOs and CMOs.
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My Favourite AI Tools
Small disclaimer: I have to admit I am not a huge AI tool user. Why? Simply put; I haven’t been blown away by many AI first products and I tend to take as long tweaking and editing to make something I would want to put my name to. Most of the time I have to use the jobs-to-be-done framework to work out what the AI tool purpose is and then have to fit my need.
With that said here are my favourite tools
Perplexity - I use it for quick answers, it is quick and acts like an answer engine (not a search engine - it isn’t a new Google) and offers sources from their answers
Bing Image Creator - I use it to create quick and easy images for this blog and presentations. It is a simple and free creator (not exactly perfect images but good for blogs or social content)
Descript - I use it for editing podcasts, it automates and transcribes my podcasts (audio and or video) and then you can create clips to share on social media. If you can create in a Google doc, you can create and edit video and audio in descript.
Notion AI Q&A - I use it to find and ask questions about the documents and databases in my notion. It saves me a lot of time and works better than the standard search does. As a Product person, I appreciate the care and effort taken in this product.
Lex.page - I use it to build out ideas and articles or to question myself on the content. It’s perfect for simple editing and it is like writing in Google docs with inbuilt actions to take with quick prompts to help move you forward.
Claude - I use this as a creative assistant. I find it better for answers than ChatGPT. I have found you don’t need the most detailed prompts for Claude to produce high-quality answers and their artefacts really do help create a better search for better results. It’s a product that puts the consumer at the front vs other creative AI tools.
Bearly.ai - I use bearly as a creative assistant and alongside it being research assistant, as you can select the AI model when you query you can ask it varying questions or question on other AI models (say ChatGPT 4o and then Haiku) to validate or expand out. I don’t use Bearly as much as I should… Something that many people love using it for is transcription (audio and YouTube videos)
Other decent AI products include Grammarly, Canva and ChatGPT 4o.
Google’s AI Ad Problem
Google’s Issue Is It Put Product Ahead Of Their Audience In A Tasteless Way
You know an ad has caused controversy when the brand turns off comments on their YouTube upload… and then Thursday (1st August) night pulls the ad completely.
Dear Sydney (ad below) is one of those ads that has blown up and not in a good blown up way.
A simple ad suggesting how to use their new Gemini AI product has highlighted several issues with how the general public is reacting to AI and how it will influence parenting in the future.
What Google has failed to see is much fear around AI and its potential impact, especially on parents’ hands on / hands off approach to tech and how many fear lazy parenting and over reliance on tech will impact us all.
Google has forced their AI tech into a sporting event without thinking of the second and third-order effects of the ads.
In some respects, Google has done exactly what an ad is supposed to do, create conversation, on the other hand it has been tone deaf to how people are viewing AI.
Did It Miss The Mark Or Was For The Wrong Ad Audience? Google’s media quote is quite telling: "We believe that AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, but can never replace it," I feel for Google ad communications manager Alana Beale who had to respond to media requests on an ad that missed the mark. Being in-house and responding to advertising campaign concerns or issues is not an enjoyable place or position to be in.
Gemini Gone Too Far? If Google Gemini had just helped the father tweak the say ‘sorry-not-sorry’ line for breaking Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone’s record that would have landed much better, unfortunately, this shows this ad might just be for investors and shareholders over consumers.
Keep an eye out for the next series of AI apps and chatbot ads, as the feedback, commentary and kickback will be telling in how AI tools might have to be advertised and targeted moving forward.
>> If you liked this post, read about Google’s AI battle. And how Apple’s approach to AI is likely going to win them the long-term AI battle.
Brands You Don’t Have To Say Anything
One of my biggest bug bearers is how brands fell into the trap to say something every time something happened or every time there is a calendar event happening.
Brands let the social media companies mislead them, chasing engagement and using these channels as news platforms hasn’t brought you closer to customers or fans, it has cut your reach and diluted important things you need to say.
Quality will beat out quantity almost every time.
Why? In every training workshops, in most c-suite coaching and founder expert calls I am always asked questions along these lines, should we talk about this news story or should we share something on National X or Y day, the answer 99% of the time, is don’t say anything unless you are directly helping, immediately impacted by the event or you are the go-to resource.
A free tip: Unless your brand is directly involved - it is often smarter and more authentic to say nothing externally. You will have to cut through internal pressure and say no, this is your job as a leader, knowing when no beats yes and being focused on what makes you win.
Remember this deliberate approach doesn’t mean you (and your brand) don’t care, it means when you have something important to say you will get cut through and it will land with your customers.
The less time you spend in a ‘war room’ making hard decisions and press statements (and social posts) - the better for you, the team/department and the brand.
Hodinkee’s CEO Update & “In The Comment Section”
Hodinkee (the watch editorial and ecommerce site) used to be the go to example of what a content brand could be.
It used to be a signal of how to create a media business around a theme, in their case luxury watches.
I have spoken to five businesses in the last five years who all have mentioned Hodinkee and their approach as the example of what they were attempting to replicate in their business. In most cases the investment costs to even consider this will put most businesses off.
Media Companies Of The Future: I do believe every company will become part media company - some channels and media will be a natural media fit based on their business vertical, while many others will struggle to make the transition.
The shift to commerce was a bumpy one for Hodinkee and in their recent CEO update (“A Note On The Future Of Hodinkee”) suggested they were going back to their roots. Their sub-header said it all “Spoiler alert: It looks a lot like its past, and I think you're going to like it.”
Speak With Not To: This blog post is a shining example of how to speak to and with your customers while knowing your customers and their they would respond…
“See you in the comments section!” cemented knowing how to speak to their audience while knowing them and their expected reaction(s), with 453 comments and counting this is highly unusual.
Would any other company get this feedback on-site in 2024? - I highly doubt it.
Moving into August many brands are disconnected from their customers and from knowing how to speak with and to their key audience, it is great to see a brand admitting they made a couple of strategic missteps and embracing feedback on site, rather than social media.
Best of luck to Hodinkee and if there was a coaching moment here, it would be to embrace your audience, keep them front and centre of your messaging and don’t be afraid to admit a mistake and guide them into the future.
My 6 Must Watch And Listens From The Last Week
Here are six incredible listens and watches to help you understand how decisions are made in large business and with elite professionals.
>> Etsy Scale & Ensuring Human+ (So human have to be behind AI product creations Creativity.
My main takeaway is being deliberate in your choices and ensuring you can build your marketplace with long term thinking in mind and adapt to tech changes.
>> Masters Of Scale - Kat Cole’s approach to leadership and why she joined AG1.
My main takeaway is Kat is very personable and extremely thoughtful and driven, if you want to be leading from the front you have to get deep under the skin and understand the true operating model.
>> YouTube creator sensation Cleo Abram on what made Nike almost ban record-breaking sneakers (hint there’s a flow chart and must be on general sale to be included in the Olympics
My main takeaway is tech is always going to help improve times of athletes but unless they are the elite level athletes its likely not going to win too many races and Olympic and governing bodies will review tech and innovation quickly (for safety and fair use).
>> Rory Sutherland delivers one of his best talks about making time to rethink the question and apply behaviour sciences to make better decisions .
My main takeaway is thinking about the question and what humans want will place us in front of creating better solutions, it’s then a choice (as I said in brand is in 2024/2025) not just optimising to the financial leader’s spreadsheet.
>> How 7-Eleven is repositioned itself and building a better shopping experience
My main takeaway is many can learn from building an experience from international stores and building more relevant shopping experiences.
>> Acquired’s long form interview with Howard Schultz on Starbucks history, strategic moves & why being wrong made Starbucks right
My main takeaway is even when you are a listed company with millions in sales even larger brands will treat you badly (Coca Cola in this instance) and their competitors will leap at the chance to collaborate. I have experienced this a number of times and it rarely ends badly…
What Brand Is In 2024 to 2025
What Makes A Brand Hasn’t Changed Too, However, It Is Now A Long Term Choice & Likely A Brave Economic Decision
I was recently asked in a recent one more question podcast episode what makes a brand in 2024,
“The most important thing is actually understanding whether you can be a brand and stand out and stand the test of time or whether you can't.
So whether that's from an economic perspective, whether that's from a people and resource perspective, or that's something you feel like you can be aggressive enough to win for a long time, and most companies don't want to over invest early on, which completely understand from a financial perspective, but if you want to be a long term influential brand in people's lives, you have to work out whether you can actually physically do it and have the people brought into it to do that.
And if your products don't stand out, your brand can only push you so far”.
In many markets having a brand and creating the brand within your space (by actively deciding you are going to go over and above on customer experience, customer support, customer packaging, for example some ideas suggested in the pod were you might send out your product quicker than you said, include a handwritten note etc) many can compete on price and create middle-of-the-road packaging but do not actively make the long term decision to invest in the small extra’s that can create a wow moment or an experience the customer can remember and associate themselves with.
For the rest of this year and all of next year, it is going to be the year where brands find out where they are placed with customers, if they decide to blend into the crowd rather than actively deciding to stand out and go that little extra mile that will build one step to longer-term brand love.
Remember, if you don’t have existing cultural relevance, a status attached to your brand or product, an experience you created or nostalgia attached to you, you are going to have a really hard fight for your customers to remember your brand and your product name leading to higher re-acquisition costs.
If you actively decide not to fight for a little extra in your product or in your packaging as a Marketing, Product or Growth lead you will be in a Performance Marketing battle with almost every other direct and adjacent competitor in your space.
Being a or the brand is an active choice and always will be.
Listen to the full episode below
Must Reads Drop 0724
This wee I brought back my must reads newsletter from a seven month sabbatical. I now call the newsletter a drop, it will likely be monthly, a little more like a mixtape was than a weekly newsletter.
Why The Sabbatical? We are in the biggest content tsunami we have ever been, constantly bombarded by content, whether thats video, audio, web or app based content and to be honest it is hard to cut through, especially in an email newsletter.
The Backstory: For nearly ten years every week without fail I sent out Must Reads, firstly as an internal newsletter and then once a handful of people asked me I opened it up and broaden it out further.
Why Bring Back Now: I have been writing daily on this blog, I wanted to get back into the flow of content creation and curation and then see how it felt to write it. I actually have 3 drafts that I never sent as it didn’t quite feel right or land well enough when I sent to myself.
So rather than copying and pasting it, here are the 5 most popular stories and my Netflix deepdive:
Most popular top down
BNPL to attempt to replace credit cards (what could go wrong)
Netflix 80 games release (to leverage IP and become gaming relevant)
Charli XCX summer of brat taking over (if you’re in Marketing or Growth dive deep into this music and cultural push)
Netflix Deeper Dive
Netflix Expansion Issue: Gaming is Netflix’s newest approach to capturing and owning your time and attention, the issue for Netflix it’s costing the consumer more money (away from ad tiers) and their bet isn’t paying off for now. Research is showing it’s only one game that is remotely popular. The same happened with other brands, but will this large investment be worth the added pain and expense for the consumer I highly doubt it in the short to mid-term.
Netflix's Game Portfolio is Dominated by a Single Game
Netflix is using the classic dominant media company playbook, leverage your own IP and create more media and games around it, even suggesting 80 games based on their IP. They attempted this already with podcasts but maybe this is the way to win in gaming and owning more of your time on multiple devices. LinkedIn (yes LinkedIn), YouTube and Netflix are all competing to be your canonical media company whether that’s through native content, entertainment series or games.
Below is a quote from Netflix’s shareholder letter about the importance of advertising to Netflix moving forward, with the pricing packages going up to be more profitable; the quality of its programming and cultural relevance of programmes are going to be critical for their success and continuing to open our wallets each month.
“Ads fulfil two important strategic priorities for Netflix: first they enable us to offer lower prices to consumers; and second, they create an additional revenue and profit stream for the business.”
Google’s Next Battle - AI, Gemini & Customer Happiness
Google’s Secret → Habitual Product, Slow AI Timing & Narrative Builds.
In Tuesday’s quarterly earnings call Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said:
“Gemini is making Google's own products better. All 6 of our products with more than 2B monthly users now use Gemini. This means that Google is the company that's truly bringing AI to everyone”.
This was a smart comms line.
This statement was made for shareholders and investors to buy into their AI push and ignore the stories coming out of the internal team cultural battles and reduce the friction around Google’s less flashy approach to AI and right now a slight let-down in terms of features and improvements for paying customers.
What Google is doing well is pushing the narrative that their AI product is the first to be in consumers’ and corporate customer’s lives to send a shot across the bow to Apple (who were the first to embed this from their recent event with their Apple AI partnership approach). Android vs iOS is going to be a long battle especially in the next device to replace smartphones and in AI space, which might blend into one…
Google Wins Are Potentially Google’s Next Big Issue:
What many tend to miss is the incredible results (Alphabet reported $84.7bn in revenue with $24 Billion quarterly profit, from an incredibly strong Search (ads business) and Cloud revenues) Google and competitors can win have arguably declining products: Google’s example is their organic search product (their SERPs are an absolute mess right now) and increasing Google Workspace & Google Cloud pricing for no extra customer benefits, while benefiting from increased ad pricing and ad placements.
Battle 1 Alphabet’s share price dropped Wednesday reacting to the market news and slow adoption in AI, one major concern is failed cloud acquisitions in HubSpot and now Wiz.
But Time Is On Their Side: Google, Apple and Amazon’s secret is almost always timing, especially with AI and not rushing into AI - this is going to win the mass market for them while others rush, crash and burn.
Battle 2 Google’s Ask Fatigue & Friction: Google’s asks from customers will lead to ask fatigue and churn, asks will continue to increase, Google will continue to ask for more budget from advertisers with different targeting (soon to be less opaque) options, more company to upgrade users to Gemini AI and ask consumers to pay for more storage for Gmail use.
If you have ever worked inside of a big company or a listed company you have core workstreams (projects that take company-wide priority) and internal politically driven decisions that to the outside don’t make much sense. If your workstream (say organic search or improving Google Workspace features) doesn’t make the OKR sign off it won’t have any resource assigned or budget for quarters ahead.
Google’s next battle is how to improve their search results (away from optimising the number of ads) while facing competition from answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity and cramming in more ads at increasing prices to keep investors happy.
Here’s a good graphic via Reddit for Alphabet’s results last quarter - take a look at traffic acquisition costs $13.8b — paying for defaults on iPhones and Samsung devices is not cheap.
>> Are you a heavy Google Workspace user? Here are my favourite Google Workspace shortcuts and hacks to improve your productivity
My Recent Recommendations To Coaching, Consultancy And Advisory Clients
Here are the most recent pieces of advice I have given my coaching, consultancy and advisory clients over the last six months.
Learn The Tools: Learn the comms tools (especially new tools) - Gmail, Slides, PowerPoint, Slack/Teams. The tools will help you do more in a quicker time (here are my 7 ways to get the most out of Google Workspaces)
Use The Tools Your Customers Use. That means Discord, Snapchat, and TikTok. That could also mean Notes app, Excel, Sheets, Strava or Pendo etc
Understand AI - I will not tell you to learn every prompt and every tool, however, understanding how ChatGPT works, playing with Claude (Claude is better output than ChatGPT IMHO) and using the new features inside work tools are going to be a competitive advantage for you and cut through when your team might be just using AI tools
Reverse Coaching: Team members will know the new tools, they will know the newest tactics and tricks to help improve the performance of your department or company, set up sessions where the team can officially coach you and reverse coach you, make this their session and help them set out the training. Offer this as a two-way street, they coach you, and you then coach them.
Culturalise Frameworks: Other people’s frameworks and templates only work if you customise and culturalise them for your business. If you don’t you’ll have to teach everyone how it works and then they fail.
OKR Struggles: If you are struggling with OKRs (most people do) look at think BIG, act small by when as an alternative. Here is a free Think BIG act small by when template for you to use. If you’d like to read more about this framework read my think big act small by when post.
Refresh: Get into a fresh environment when you’re stuck. Outside in the garden in the sun, if you’re working from home get a commute and walk for 10-15 minutes, block out time for lunch and break down the days to recap the day and write down the good, the bad and the ugly to give you chance to attack the next working day
The DNA Of Engagement
Entertaining. Engaging. Challenging. What More Do You Want From A Book On Storytelling & Engagement
I was lucky to receive an early copy of the book that will be released on October 17th, written by the super smart and engaging David Pullan and Sarah Jane McKechnie.
Here is my review I sent for the book promo and hopefully will sway you into considering purchasing The DNA of Engagement book
“The DNA of engagement is packed full of stories and frameworks that will entertain you, engage you and challenge you to want to improve your storytelling and connections whether that’s with friends, family or colleagues.
Grab a notepad and I hope you enjoy it as much I did”
If you are in the C-Suite, in Marketing or Growth leadership roles or in a role where storytelling and engaging an audience is key and want frameworks to use and stories to retell this is the book for you.
Congrats to David and Sarah Jane!
If you would like to check out more about David and the free masterclass he gave on my culture and strategy consultancy site check out leaders letters.
Hot Ones Success Broken Down At Paleylive
A Deep Look Into The Internet Sensation Show Hot Ones & Why Guests Love Sean Evans Talk Show For Promo
Why Watch?
Learn:
Why the remixed British talk show host format with hot wings led to breaking the star PR / media-trained answers
How it became a huge success beyond just a new format
How actors see the Protagonist and story arch in the talk show format (and why many are flying them to record them on the show)
Why cutting it down from 45-60 minutes to the TV show format of 22:30mins was critical to its success
How the inbuilt viral moments, shorter form social sharing videos and the meme organically grew from the format
Which stars made it break out to paying to record the show on set for films
Why did the deeper and the level and depth of the research led to better questions and shocking the guests of the unique questions asked
Here are some insane stats for First We Feast Channel (via viewstats)
Total Views (as of 22/07/2024) 3,846,829,699 (this is 3.84b views)
21.8m views in the last 7 days
That makes them the 2855th most popular channels by views on YouTube
Estimated Views: Long Views - 9.6M Shorts Views - 12.2M
Examples Of The Formats Genius
The Most Viewed Hot Ones - 126m+ views with Gordon Ramsey
Inbuilt Viral Moments - Da Bomb Reactions
How Hot Ones Leverages Short Form Clips
If you liked this breakdown, check out the art of going viral with MSCHF post and video.
Ask Fatigue Impact On Your Business
Ask Fatigue is when companies constantly ask for more from their customers without any value exchange.
Here are just a few requests I have had in my email inbox & SMS over the last week:
More orders
Spend more
Share more pics or videos with us (to include in our Marketing)
More reviews (asking for TrustPilot, Feefo and Google reviews)
More upgrades (upgrade to x package)
More UGC requests (for the brand to use in their advertising)
Spend more for free delivery (to increase their AOV)
Costs more for returning orders (which used to be free)
Costs for click and collect (the convenience of collecting isn’t genuinely a value exchange)
Increase your subscriptions
I am a commercially minded executive, I know first-hand and have felt the pressures companies are under to improve financial performance, however, always asking for more and creating an associated ask fatigue, your business is skating on thin ice especially when the cost of living is higher and the unlimited amount of competitors in your space.
Something I push in my consultancy and advisory roles is to reduce the ask fatigue from your customers and if you ask what is the value exchange you are going to provide? If you cannot provide any value exchange
If you would like to hear me discuss ask fatigue more, here are two resources:
Podcast Appearance: One more question
Conference Talk: Community as the next business moat
My Top 7 Google Workspace Hacks
Improve Your Productivity In Google Workspace
Many people especially leaders struggle when it comes to working more smartly with tools, they don’t learn the tools, they are never taught them and when it comes to time many just won’t invest a few minutes to save themselves hours.
So I wanted to share my favourite Google Suite/Workspace hacks to make your life easier and more effective in and around the suite.
Quick URL → Get Creating: Writing into the browser to create brand new docs straight away
slides.new - for Google Slides
sheets.new - for Google Sheets
docs.new - for Google Docs
cal.new - for new calendar event
Quicker Actions: Use the search feature in the left-right side to take the action / command you would like to from styling to adding a table in docs, a pivot table in sheets, to adding a diagram in slides
Preview > Edit: Link into a Google Slides rather than send to edit interface - With your Google Slides URL, look at the URL string and replace /edit with /preview and this link sends the viewer into that slideshow directly without the default edit view (shown below)
Mute: Use the Mute feature to slience noisy email chains or where you are CC-ed in for no real reason - tick email, go to the three dots and select mute
Hide Guestlists: Hide guest list (often this can be helpful with management meetings, big meetings and external meetings) - go into your calendar invite, edit event and untick "See guest list."
Better speaker than writer? In Google Docs - Go to ‘Tools’ and then select ‘Voice typing’.
Get Ahead With Your Daily Agenda: Have your daily schedule emailed to you In Google Calendar settings > Other notifications > Daily agenda
My Favourite Matrixes & Frameworks
Here are my favourite matrixes and frameworks together on Google Sheets, free to make a copy and use for improved goal setting, better ownership and cross-functional alignment.
Frameworks & Templates
John Whitmore Model - Aka GROW Goal Reality Options Will matrix for what you want, where you, what could be and what will you do.
SMART & PURE - Setting the best goals and helping to select the right goals
DACI - A project management framework helping to clarify ownership and feedback in a project (RACI is more well know)
RACI - A project management framework helping to clarify ownership and feedback
Feedback Model - A way to field feedback from colleagues or managers and categorise
Eisenhower Matrix - Work template to go through what to prioritise
SWOT Analysis - Self-assessment of strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats (I run through this template with every coaching client and is a foundation we work on top of)
Subtle Signals Model - Effort vs reward matrix
Maslow's Hierarchy - Score your engagement
One More Question Podcast
This is my One More Question Podcast appearance, Ross and I broke down the modern-day Marketing world, what the business impact of Marketing is really and how the creator space is leading the way for brands to improve their products and the connection with their customers.
So Why Listen?
Why being a brand and standing out is an active business decision
Why Performance Marketing vs Brand Marketing isn’t versus it is and always has to be and - if it’s not you are building a brand ready to disappear
Grasp the importance of your utility level as a company and develop this out within your messaging and growth action plan
Understand that the delivery company you choose to deliver your customer orders is a reflection on your company and your brand, your first experience will be your last if your delivery is impacted
Why my coach+ product is popular and why coaching is critically important to Marketing and Growth team successes
Nostalgia is always going to be essential in Marketing but many overlook it or don’t see the power of the archive
Understand the power of generational brands
Why being a brand not a bland is critical in winning your customers
Learn why brands can go hyper-personalised to beat out competition (a handwritten thank you note will scale for you to win and stand out)
“Brand” is a tribe and tribal - it is critical to understand when to build a tribe or ask customers to join your tribe
Be bold to win - that has to be a business decision
Why community brands could be the next big
Or listen on your podcast player of choice ↓
Chat Apps New Fight Your Love & Attention
For the last couple of decades I have been working with brands to think about the customer and potential customers more than just transactions, I have pushed for brands to become community led businesses (I have embedded my recent keynote deck below).
WeChat (1.35 billion MAUs) and Telegram (+900m MAU’s) have led the way for chat apps (instant messengers) to create community and enable brands, KOLs and influencers to engage with their audience/community.
Discord, Slack and Teams have become professional alternatives to community with some boasting thousands of paid subscribers.
WhatsApp has slowly but surely become an option for brands to cut through the algorithmic filtering of social networks and email and engage with broadcast and polling options.
What has struck me is the reach off the channels within WhatsApp, here is an example from my team Arsenal (football club) official channel with over 5m subscribers.
What - Arsenal’s official channel with a poll
Why - Brand new kit launch with adidas
How - Offering a poll to then post an update with their favourite player
Arsenal then shared the most popular player Bukayo Saka as voted by fans.
With over 4700 reactions (as time of writing this) and counting it shows how engaged football fans and communities could be.
The bigger question for brands to answer is could WhatsApp be a way to stand out for free until they flip the monetisation switch and turn it into another pay to play platform?
My take: If I was in a growth or marketing leadership role (again) with a company today and our brand was consumed weekly and a loved brand I would be pushing my team to test the channel and offer audio, behind the scenes looks and push for engagement from my most loved customers and superfans.
Maybe worth the extra few minutes every few days for your social team to dive into…
HVE - High Value Employee(s)
Why High Value Employees (HVE) Need To Be Identified, Supported & Have Individual Plans Of Action
Imagine this ↓
Your best-performing member of the department comes to you and suggests they are unhappy and have been applying for external roles.
Your first thought was likely FFS, your second was to try and talk to them and hopefully listen to their points.
Your next action is likely to convince them to stay…
If this comes as a shock, there are likely three things that it could be or that are happening:
You are busy and missing the signs from this employee
The subculture or company culture has shifted and the employee doesn’t feel connected
orThe company is not moving in a direction that connects with said employees.
Most department leads do not identify who is your HVE (your high value employee(s)). They have an idea but do not actively treat the identified employee as such. They definitely do not have a plan of action for these individuals.
Yes, you can identify them and treat them well and they will look to progress their career elsewhere but many do not actively check-in, you miss their signals from their performance dropping, being continually frustrated in meetings and hearing what they are saying from their silence, you or they actively miss 1-2-1’s,
In some organisations, they train department leads and executive teams to identify and actively discuss key person risk - when someone is that important it creates a business risk for them to become unhappy and leave the business. If you were to take a step back, would your HVE be a key person to leave the business and create a risk to the business?
Do you have a handful of HVE’s or a high-value employee who you need to connect with and work through how they like to work, how you could support them further or know when to get out of their way?
A coachable moment for the week ahead is to review your team (try not to make it a 9-box exercise), identify your HVE and work out a plan of action for them or the HVE’s.
Remember: It is also great to support them in moving on, often high value employees need to leave and it’s ok as their line manager to support them in reshuffling your org and creating the most effective org design.
If you enjoyed this post why not read more of my blog posts here, if you are interested in more actionable coaching blog content read here
Pepsico’s Price Conscious Consumers
Why The Price Versus Value Debate Won’t Go Away For Any Brand Big Or Small.
I recently read a powerful quote about Pepsico (the owners of Pepsi, lays, Tropicana, Quaker, and Gatorade) about consumers buying fewer snacks (to this point it’s referring to fewer snacks being purchased from Pepsico’s brands) and the performance from their CFO.
Below is a quote from their earnings call:
“There is a cohort of consumers that have become more price conscious,” — Jamie Caulfield, CFO @ PepsiCo.
“They’re looking for more deals to get more for their money.”
“PepsiCo is offering products and package sizes that offer greater value, such as a new 10-item variety pack of snacks that is selling well”
”Shoppers are now less interested in buy-one-get-one-free promotions and want lower price points for single items”.
It is safe to say over the last couple of years consumers have become more price-conscious, we have seen it in spending across the US and the UK and will continue to see consumer spending become more value-based. FWIW Election year always sees a dip in spending.
A topic I raise with almost all of my clients is price vs value, price is part of the debate, however, what most people are looking for value.
Value is an exchange, the value exchange is - what is the feeling I get from a product or service and whether it is giving me value or an experience to connect to a value rather than a price.
If the value exchange is not there is a product or the price has been increased massively (or in recent times shrinkflation) then people will stop buying or look for actively seek out cheaper alternatives. We live in an endless world of competitors and “good enough” competitors.
(Importantly we now live in a consumer world where we don’t just have good, better, best, we have good enough, good, better, best, greatest)
The question to ask in exec meetings now should be:
Are we adding value and are we removing the price from the equation and adding constant value?
If the answer is no, a competitor will be considered or a lower price item will be tried.
In future earning calls I predict we are going to see many companies and CFOs blame:
GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic etc) and their impact on eating and drinking
The price of food and the effect of reducing the size of a product while staying at the same price (aka shrinkification)
Continued extreme weather (hottest summers in the US, wettest summers in the UK)
Poor performance marketing results (constant algorithmic shifts are impacting both organic marketing and paid media results and typically negatively)
The election results (whatever your leaning or who you voted for, elections shake things up)
and the continued blame of price-conscious consumers
If there is a takeaway here I would recommend reviewing how you price your items, how you connect your products (even if it is snacks or drinks) to experiences (I bet you remember your first Coke or your first great experience with food) and consider how you are marketing your product vs the endless competitors who will cheaper or go for discounting to win the battle on the wallet and purse.
Growth Is: Always Be Auditing, Always Be Marketing
I have a motto, Its “always be auditing, always be Marketing”, it is simple, for me it is this what modern day growth is -
Auditing what is working, what isn’t working and what can be optimised (aka keep, kill, cure)
Marketing is an always-on strategic department, that needs to learn from its auditing and market accordingly.
These core components allow you to be smarter at Growth and roll out the best Growth work streams, in and outside of Product feature improvements, optimisations and tests.
It was my birthday recently and I received a great personalised card from my better half.
Moonpig has a smart way of using its packaging to market to the receiver to send a thank you card, you scan the QR code and it takes you to the thank you card section. Why is this smart Growth? It’s
Quick
Easy
Low cost
Trackable
Scaleable
One tweak I would have made (if possible would be) would be to match it to the sender and provide a chance to say thanks in one or two clicks.
QR Code taking you to the Thank You cards on site
I implemented QR codes (here’s my QR code case study) to track the impact of offline to online - it was personal to every user, it enabled us to track the impact of offline promos and every user sharing the code and provided a scalable way to grow our brand foorprint by our users.