The 5- Step Framework to Fast & Slow Social Strategy: Beth & Michael from Slice Social

Speaker A: Michael, Beth, welcome to building brand advocacy. Michael, it's your first time.

Speaker B: First time, Beth, will it be my last?

Speaker A: Let's wait and see. I mean, Beth, this is your second. So you obviously did something right the first time.

Speaker B: Ah, top performing podcast so far to date. The rest of them did not perform.

Speaker C: Laura's bmn Hit me up.

Speaker B: Laura, you suck.

Speaker A: Uh, Grace Andrews has knocked you both

Speaker C: off, but, you know, anyway, coming for you, Grace. Um, right.

Speaker A: You guys are two social media geniuses. I'm throwing that out there because we genuinely believe you are. And I know there's going to be a lot of marketers listening, particularly in the social media space who are, uh, in this space now where, you know, they've got the channels, they're up and they're running, they've got the followers. Engagement looks fine on paper, but there's something not quite right. Something's off. And I think with you two sat here today, I want to go through the framework of what the difference is between someone saying they've actually got a social media strategy versus actually having one. So that's what I want to do today. Dig into what you guys would do going into a brand like that. All good?

Speaker C: All good. Yeah. Happy to share how we get from nothing to a full strategy on a page.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's interesting because again, we balk at being called geniuses.

Speaker A: Sorry.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I think what, what's good about we're doing, like, since daydots, since I've seen Beth doing her thing online is we're curious and we all thought we had it all figured out, but then we started to ask ourselves some honest questions about do we really know what we're doing when it comes to being social media marketing professionals and we're just using words but not actually understanding their meaning. Now, I'll never put my hand up and say I'm the best strategist in the world either, but we were curious to go find out. I think working together and bringing the likes of Chris in with us, we've gotten even better. Um, but most people, when they use the word strategy, they don't have one in the first place. What they have is, uh, three or four pages of a brand guidelines book, a set of content pillars meshed together, and they think that that strategy, and it's not, um, strategy, again, they've probably heard me say it at nauseam, is a problem gap opportunity we think the brand might have in the world. What, uh, we think is the opportunity social can do to solve it and how we going to do it. And what gets us from where they are now to where they need to get to next. And we've kind of built a framework that we use and it isn't like something that is, you know, purely new. There are lots of strategy frameworks that exist out there.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Some you can just use from start to finish as is, and they're very, very good. Others you can learn from and piece together a strategic framework that might work for you. So what we can do is take you through one that we have gotten to. And is this the finished product of how we'll deliver strategy going forward? No. Because every time we do this and every time we present it and every time people respond to it, there's things we know we can improve to get it right. Because the most important part, and another thing we're trying to crack is it must provoke action.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: If it doesn't make people get it or want and understand to take it forward, well then the strategy is not doing its job.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Yeah. Needs to be simple. Something that then I guess the execution team can see and be like, ah, uh, I know what I can do in my job. You know, they don't need to understand how to create a strategy. Uh, right then they are in the thinking and the doing of actually making that content. So it needs to be so simple that everyone understands it. I think people just complicate it, don't they? They think it's like this big scary thing. Yeah. They think it should be like this

Speaker A: massive eight page document that covers ridiculous stuff that you're never going to look at again.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the problem, that when it's done, people don't.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But what it needs to be is something that you almost, it becomes second nature. But you need it to start with. And like it should be a bit over engineered at the start but your job is to get it to the point of simplicity and clarity. If it doesn't and it's not actionable, it's not a strategy.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But like even funny enough, the irony is what we're going to take you through is it is long winded. But it gets you to the point though, like you have to go through the process, do some due diligence and that doesn't have to be the same for every brand. You can do a strategy in a day if you want. And actually big reflection for me, when I used to call out a lot of people for not having a strategy, the more I actually talk to professionals in the industry, some of them actually do have it, but it's in here and it's not documented. So when they take the next step to try and scale or to explain to others, they haven't done the work to make it actionable for everyone else. Yeah, and that's what this is. Uh, it's a journey of getting to that. So after we go through the high level framework of wide, narrow, wide, we now layer this with the actual strategic framework, our process of getting to the strategy. And the first thing we do is discovery. And, um, to me, probably one of the most important things when it comes to actually unlocking a really good piece of strategic work that gives a brand a point difference or an edge or something that they can latch onto. And Beth's going to break down that discovery and how we do it very, very well. Number two then is we have to take that insight and get buy in.

Speaker A: We.

Speaker B: Which means that we have to go on a journey of storytelling the strategy as we take people through it so they understand why we are doing what we're doing and what has informed us. And more importantly, to get buy in. Because that buy in is one of the most important things. And sometimes that might be relaying back insights that they provided to us, which Bell will talk through. The third point then is we look at what's the challenge. We have to then distill all of this insight and get down to core insights that unlock the challenge challenge that is in front of us. And that challenge, then, is the most important part that comes after that, because then that allows us to look at, well, what is the problem we're trying to solve here? Which goes to the next part, which is our problem tension process. Sorry, problem goal process. And in this is we try to figure out what the problem is, what the goal can be, and find a tension in the middle that can unlock the aha moment, which is the strategy. And then after all that work, we get to a point where now we can simplify the work and put it onto a strategy on a page, what people can follow. Okay, so let's start with discovery. Beth?

Speaker C: M. Am I gonna have to draw at the same. Oh, this is what people normally do, is draw at the same time. Okay, good. Okay.

Speaker B: Multitasking.

Speaker C: Beth, I'm going over. I can't move this, can I?

Speaker A: No. Okay.

Speaker C: Okay, so I'm gonna talk about discovery.

Speaker B: You're doing discovery.

Speaker C: Fab. Okay, so discovery is the first thing that we do. And this has been something that I think is the most important part. If you don't do this, none of

Speaker A: the rest will work.

Speaker C: Well, maybe you could with like doing your own research and reading documents. Also, if you're in a company, you will already know lots of the information. But I think in our discovery, we ask specific questions, um, and we do it all around the four Cs. So I'll just write that here. So the four Cs. So we ask all about the company. The, um. Oh, God. How do you spell category?

Speaker B: E, G, O, R, Y. Is that right?

Speaker C: I don't know. Cat is right.

Speaker B: Just a disclaimer. Two dyslexic people on a whiteboard is probably not a really good thing. And we don't have AI to spell check right now.

Speaker C: Goodness. Yeah. We need Grammarly to respond.

Speaker B: We need Grammarly.

Speaker C: Um, hashtag, ad, company, category, um, customer. And I'll go through all these just in a second once I've written them down. And then culture. But so the thing. Chris in our team, always. He's obsessed with alliteration. Um, so actually it's kind of like looking at what's happening in social. The social landscape. But that doesn't just roll off the tongue as well. So we like to say culture, but just for everyone else that is really looking at what's going on on social right now, does this.

Speaker A: Sorry to jump ahead to the last

Speaker C: one, but we were posed by both

Speaker A: you and I in a group chat that we're in about this.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: And the question was a lot of brands are saying they want to be culturally relevant now. Now, is that a point of, like, just jumping on trends, or is it that they are culturally relevant because they really know their audience, they understand who

Speaker C: they are, what they want.

Speaker A: And that's a culturally relevant thing.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's. I can imagine what you're gonna say, but it would need to be bleached. Um, don't bleep it. Go like, what. What does that actually mean? And I think.

Speaker B: Say it the way we wan. What the fuck does that mean?

Speaker C: That is. I feel like I could have that as a ringtone or something 12 times a day. Um, but I think that's a good question. It's like, I think someone came back in the group saying it was very much like how people talked about community and all these things, all these words that have just lost their meaning. So when we talk about this, we look at what's happening in social and, um, we'll talk about it later. It's more about. It would be that searches on the rise in. In social or that in this certain space we're Seeing this thing happening. Um, so not so much like this is the trend happening. We don't, we don't talk about that. More a massive zoom out of People are looking for those closed spaces and like those sorts of conversations rather than the, the general of. Yeah, yeah, still tbc. What. What that, uh, even. Yeah. When people talk about it, I think the good question is asking them, when you ask them back, what do you mean? I think people can't answer.

Speaker B: Most people can't answer. And it's the same. And we don't want to be too ranty here because again, I'm very, again, I guess, familiar to people to rant a lot. But like, it's the language, it's, it's inherent. And, um, what you see in every brief that comes through every door is copying and pasting what everybody else is saying without anybody asking any questions. And it's the same. We move at the speed of culture. We're socially first. What does that mean? People talk about our audience, community. It's like none of that makes sense and translates to the realities of what's happening in the social media landscape right now. And, um, not all brands need to be culturally relevant. I think what's happened is, again, my interpretation of what some people say. Cultural relevance is making lots of content that appears on feeds that they find remotely interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's what they think cultural relevance is.

Speaker C: Or people just move into, like sport, music, tech, tech relevant in those spaces. That's relevant in culture and that might

Speaker B: not always be the actual angle for them to actually win the aha moment. Yes. We need to be, can I hate using this word, somewhat relatable. But when we talk through this and how we teach people as well, it's again, it's a bit like a little Venn diagram. You, you have social media where people like shit on the Internet and they're interested in all of this.

Speaker C: Am I drawing this?

Speaker B: Uh, no, I don't think it's needed because then you have the brands who need to say stuff to people to be aware and sell shit. Most people go on this side of the fence or this side of the diagram and forget completely about their job, which is to actually build brands and sell stuff. What we have to try and get to is, well, what's the sweet spot? What is the thing in culture or the thing in the world that is interesting enough that we can find this interesting connection to what we're trying to say and find a creative way of actually then putting it in front of people? So we show that we get you but also buy our shit.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Um, that's where this really unlocks more if done in the right way.

Speaker C: Okay, yeah.

Speaker A: All right, that makes sense.

Speaker C: Is that a much longer answer than you wanted? Great answer. Okay, so um, I mean honestly you can use AI, there's loads of places you can find questions that you ask about this. But what we're trying to find out here is like what actually sets you apart? Often actually when you dig into it, nothing. Lots of brands or companies I guess, um, have the same products, the same offering, the same support, the same very much everything. So that is very good to just get out there because I think lots of companies, for some reason when we're in them, we sort of believe what we have written in these decks that actually to normal, normal non marketing people, uh, like that is just not the case at all. We're like in this little marketing bubble I think sometimes. So really finding out who we are or who we want to be and then you know, as a brand as well, so not just, you know, we sell these products but you know, what do we want people to feel or think or you know, all of those things. Then the category or our competitors. So looking at um, what the, what else is happening in the category that we're in. But that doesn't have to mean just your direct competitors which everyone seems to be very, very interested in. I spend so much time thinking about and looking at and I think people miss that wider piece. But also on social, literally everyone's your competitor, um, because you are trying to get time on the feed when you know you could be seeing like your brother who's like poster photo of his kid or something. So like you're competing with all sorts of things and influencers who 99% of the time do this so much better than brands and then our customers who actually are there again, often it's, we're trying to target everyone.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Um, we need to, you can maybe try and do that in other channels but in social, is there a demographic or behavior or something that we can. This bit here, like we need to get to this sweet point in the middle. We can't just go, we do everything for everyone. Like that's just not how it works. But often we go into companies and that is sort of how they hope that it will work. So we ask people to really dig into all of these. Um, and we've already talked about culture and we ask these sort of open ended questions. We have a set of questions, we very rarely stick to them. It's more like a conversation that, as you can tell from here, I can imagine. Yeah. And I think the, the best things when I'm thinking about some of the latest strategies we've done have just been from those, like, offhand comments that people have said about conversations that their mates actually had in the pub about this. The company that they work at or this behavior that they've noticed themselves. And they are like a target for the, for the brand. So lots of them are. What's the right word? Qualitative. Not like you can't find that from the data or sending reports and all of that. Looking at. Yeah. What are those conversations? What are those things that aren't obvious? Um, but you hear it and think, yeah, that makes sense. I could see why people think that. And that is often something that totally gets forgotten about and no one ever talks about. But this is. Putting all this together helps us narrow those down. So after we, we chat to people in the company from the cmo, depending how big, small, the company is or how interested some members of the team are in social, like the founders, depending on who they are, right through all different parts of the company, the performance people, people who run the website, the SEO team, which we have started speaking to more and more because we know the importance of search social, which was the first podcast that I did talking about that small plug Watch here, please add a thumbnail. So, um, we talk to all of these teams to get. So we leave with so much information, your brain is like, absolutely fried. You can't do anything after it. You just need to lie down in a dark room.

Speaker A: How long do you spend on this?

Speaker C: We spend, uh, one day, sometimes two days. So like eight hours in a room. People in and out, in and out. And if you're in a company, you already will know some of this stuff anyway. But often social teams are left out and sort of siloed, as lots of teams are. So actually I think putting time in with other people in different parts of the company will be super helpful in general, no matter what you get from it. So that's sort of how we do it. And we then have all of this info and we turn it then into, uh. There's no point drawing it again, but we turn it into like a small blurb for each of them. So what's like that one key takeaway about the company that the category, the customer and culture or the social landscape. And we want those to be those key things that are going to then take us into the next part. So as we're writing this, we already kind of know where we think we're going with the strategy because there's something really obvious that's coming out to us. But we sort of have to stress test that and look for the next part, which Michael's gonna talk about, which is then like this challenge and this problem goal. But that sort of, it's like, coming through from there. Sorry, I've skipped the story.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's good. But the one bill before we get to it, like, nobody knows the brand more than the people working at the brand.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And we can go and find first party, second party data and, uh, try and present that back. But it's nothing they haven't seen or heard before. And the beauty of how we interview. And yes, we have our set of questions and we unpack and we go wandering down rabbit holes. But that's unlocking real insight. And the difference sometimes is they will say the things that they've said already. But the beauty of us coming into this room is they just haven't thought about it in the way we might.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And we can unlock something that in general, BET nailed it all. The company category, insight, they're all the same. It's just then a, uh, competition on performance of who can convert more people. It's a pricing war. Then it's all really combative out there. But. But there might be one thing that they just haven't thought about. And I'll give you a quick example. We work with a retail client, and there was two big problems that appeared every time. There was a quality perception on not having enough range in their store, which meant that they didn't have enough quality products. And people had this perception. The second was their stores are too, uh, cold and functional and not an experience, which meant that it wasn't attractive to go shopping in. And these were the two biggest problems that they had that they worried and panicked about all the time. And they tried to use other forms of advertising ways to convince them that it wasn't. But the flip of it, rather than thinking of a negative, you can turn it into a positive. And the two positives are they have a curated range. And their obsession of the limited products they put on shelf show, all the quality standards they go through to make that decision for you. To make things easier. The second one, cold and functional, means fast. So you might go to another store and have to look at 45 different versions of tomato pasta or Passata and try and decide. And you're there for 10 minutes trying to do the maths. And figure it out. You've got two options. You're in, out, you're guaranteed quality. It's easy. Um, and that knows that the interesting thing is there's an audience of people who have a desire for that type of experience.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But you just haven't been thinking about it. Right. So how can you turn that into a positive? And that's potentially a challenge problem that unlocks an aha moment.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And that's what this is so important. And none of that would have come from us just reading it. We would have done the same thing they did.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: Which was problems, problems, problems here. Let's just tell them we're really good quality. Or let's just tell them we're working on developing our stores and making them better. But that could take 15 years. So how are you making change of people's minds? You're not. That's what unlocking things are. That's what makes it really, really magic.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, we go storytelling.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker B: Cool. So after we have this, what's most important is as we present back the strategy, um, we have to find a way to buy them in because it has to be more than words on a page. So as we get to the point, as we said, we over engineered to get to clarity storytelling, the strategy takes all of these insights to bring them on a journey. And that journey is to understand where they are in the category, what their customers think about them or how they are in perceived or around social media culture or the landscape. And then we get to a point of unlocking, well, here's your problem and here's what we think you can do. And by storytelling this, it allows a few things, allows them to understand the thinking behind it. It takes them on an interesting journey to buy them in and pull them in. And if you're crafty enough with the storytelling of the insight and remember we just talked about discovery here. A lot of this information is information that they have given to us. And what is, what's really good is they feel like they're part of the strategic process. They have been part of it. It's their work, it's their thinking. But we're coming in to put the shape on it that it needs. And normally there's really good examples of how to kind of storytell. And you take them on a journey of peaks and tropes, like there's a problem and it gets even bigger and, and bigger and bigger. And I think the way we normally do it is like there's these story arcs. So let's say a storytelling. And you start with, again, here's where the lay of the land is. This is the category. But it's not just, uh, an issue here. There's issues with the customers and it gets worse and worse and worse and worse and worse to the point where you guys are fucked instead. And then there's no return for us. But wait, there's a moment, there's an opportunity and we feel this inside is going to unlock it. There's a chance for you to go and win. And by taking them through these beats of a story, it means that they're literally leaning in to actually be part of it and believe in what you're trying to say. Rather than here's a strategy on a page where we want to be the most relevant brand and we're going to jump on trends and we'll do all this and get lots of impressions, which is just word salad and nothing. There's no meaning in it. There's a lovely example. Again, if you're familiar with South Park.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And again, people like it or not, but Trey Scott, uh, again, I'll uh, butcher the names, but the two writers did this session where they talked about how to write stories. Most people go, this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened and the story's quite flat and people disengage the way they tell their stories. They use things like. But because therefore, and it creates these new beats to take people up and down and take tangents and ring roads to bring them on a journey that then gets to a point where we have a happy moment at the end of the story. So we take learnings from the likes of those areas and those forms of uh, story time just to actually get them emotionally bought into the thinking. Because if we don't, we'll just go, here's insight 1, here's insight 2, here's insight 3, here's insight 4. Therefore, this is the strategy and it's all just words on the page.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Now we're starting to visualize. Now we're starting to. Again, now we start getting them excited and hopefully by the time we get to here, they almost know what it is.

Speaker A: Can I just quickly ask, when you say like them and like they're kind of like, then they're bought into this. Who is that group of people? It might be a stupid question because you would think, obviously it's a social media strategy, it's a social media team. But you've already mentioned you've pulled in like the cmo, whoever. You know, it's not just like a marketing thing, a social thing.

Speaker B: This has to go to them.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: The decision maker has to see this. Now, not all cases, we get into the room where it is, and sometimes that's down to who engages with us and gives us the brief. But we need buy in from the top down. They've got to believe in this. And this is actually a really good chance of proving to them that, hey, you guys are thinking like ballers. You understand the needs of the business, you understand the challenges of the category, you understand the needs, wants, motivations of the customers, and you want to put us in culture so we become somewhat, you know, connected to people more, and this is how we can do it on social.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker B: I can see the potential of these platforms now.

Speaker A: Do you think that's also a bit of an unlock to social media teams kind of being the left, like you mentioned, we're kind of left in the silo. It's not taken that seriously. There's hundreds of memes around. It's, you know, just you marketing girlies, the marketing. Oh, my God, I was at an event, Everything's a hot girl, um, hot girl marketing girlies like this. And I'm just like, oh, came away seething. But is this an unlock to that gap that we've got?

Speaker C: Yes, I think so. I think when we first met, the thing that really annoyed me was our first ever conversation was I was talking about how I'd felt a bit, I don't know, disenfranchised, the right word. With, like, working in social. And, like, nobody cares. Nobody listens to what I like what I've got to say. And, um, Michael just said to me, yeah, but have you earned the respect? And I was like, oh, sorry, what? I have slaved away. What do you mean? But now I realize, like, I wasn't thinking like this when I was in house. And most people are not like, lots of people I know work in social and they're not thinking on this level either, because everyone's stuck in this doom loop, I like to call it, of just churning out content because someone once told them, you need to fill a content calendar. So they're just like, sorry, when am I gonna have a time to take a single step back? So I think it's. Yeah, because often what we go in with and what we realize is that actually lots of brands don't have, uh, a brand strategy. So this we sort of, um, this we think of, I guess, at like a Wider level. Often it sort of is taken up into brand strategy. That's not what we're sort of the. Our key aim of it. But lots of all of this comes from the work of creating brand strategies. So it's all same. It's then just how that lives and evolves on the social channels. But, yeah, uh, I think, yeah, look, having like this wider picture of. And the thing, the thing that opened my mind was like, what social actually doing for the business. Most people cannot, Cannot tell you. And it's not. It doesn't have to be, oh, well, we don't do sales. Like, that's not what we're saying. It's, you know, you've talked about this for years and years and years about changing perceptions, finding new audiences, different emotions that we want people to feel and relate to our brand. So it's not just. We're just there for. This is what I hear a lot is we're building brand again. Explain that to me.

Speaker B: Improve it, like, measure it, prove it. Because we all, like. This is probably leading into your question as well. Because when we go hard after people who jump on trends and go in that behavior, we get a lot of, um, pushback from people and there's a lot of tension because, oh, don't be, you know, slating people because, you know, they're trying their best, but you're not helping the industry by doing what you're doing because, yeah, you're winning impressions, but nobody's remembering your brand. That's your job. And also, when it comes to this tension between the seniors and the juniors, it is a case of, yes, they do not respect us. Yes, they don't invest enough. They understand the big picture of what social does because it's where most people spend their time. Yeah, but we have not done a good job by going into those rooms to prove it's worth. We go in with viral things with no proof of how it's shifting the business or any sort of metric and we're causing it. And I'm being very careful at the moment of how hard I go because people think we're piling up and, you know, oh, lay off. You know, we're just trying to have a bit of fun on the Internet and I don't want to take that away because we're very privileged in what we do. We get to be on social media, be creative and entertaining as an adulting job. Brilliant. So we're not trying to. We're not discarding having fun, but we are not helping each other convince everyone around us that you can build really big good brands. But it's not just copying Ryanair doing trends or duolingo and a mascot or navel gazing over. There is an other way for you to win if you can unlock it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's what we're trying to teach.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: We've done our storytelling. And this here, this, this. What does that even.

Speaker B: It was meant to be dare for. Okay, stop.

Speaker C: Dare for. Stop.

Speaker B: Now you're making fun of my writing. I'm rewriting that now. Uh, no, again, this is what I have to get live with every day. I'm joking. So it's the dare for.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Great.

Speaker B: Do I spell it right?

Speaker C: I don't know, but I think people will.

Speaker B: It's all caps, I'm sure.

Speaker A: Okay, great.

Speaker C: And, um, when we're doing the storytelling, so we've already sort of gone back and forth. We're finalizing this story when we've kind of already got to where we need to. And we know how, we then tell these different insights or these different truths back. Yeah. And this therefore moment is what we also call, like, the Aha. Aha.

Speaker B: Think all the partridge.

Speaker C: What was that? Um, so gotta stay in to get to this moment.

Speaker B: And a bit of Shei Roll, too.

Speaker C: So to get to this aha. Moment, um, once we've gone through all of these, we then are looking at like, so what is our challenge? Often there's quite a few challenges that lots of businesses face. But again, we need to, you know, it's all about sacrifice. We can't do everything, especially not on social. We need to find, like, what is one thing that we feel like social can actually, um, be a help to. So we look at what are, uh. We pick a, uh, problem. Problems, problem. So we pick a problem that. Oh, my Lord. As other people had issues with the

Speaker A: other two people that have done this. Make it look easy, you two.

Speaker C: Uh, sorry, everyone. Okay, so we look for what is a problem. And often there's a few that we can pick from. And that doesn't just have to be a problem for the business. That could be a problem in the category or a problem that customers face. Quite often I'm just thinking of some of the latest ones. They have been sort of more related to customer problems. Then we've got our problem. Then we're like, okay, so if we. We know that's a problem, what's actually the goal? Like, where do we want to get to? How do we sort of solve this problem? And then between these, there is always a tension and this is the aha moment. Good lord. There is going to be major points for the messiest board ever. So this brand, uh, is in this sea of sameness. They're a telco brand and they are not doing anything that sets them apart from anybody else that's making content similar, whether that's the influencers, their competitors. And then the goal is that how can we make sure that we are a brand that people think of before they actually go and travel. And then that tension that we got to was that people want to go on holidays or go away for work or whatever and have this carefree travel. But in reality we are all so dependent on our connectivity on our phones and that actually you basically can't be a carefree traveler without having sorted all of this stuff out before you actually go on holidays. And that's what helped us unlock this moment that led to the thinking that came next in the strategy.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So like the interesting thing here is like we all go traveling and we expect our phones just to work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: It's like that kind of first world privilege of having things that without happening. But there's a lot of scenarios when you do go abroad, your, your plan or your sim or your connectivity doesn't work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you don't know that that's going to be a problem until it becomes the problem. And that's the tension that that unlocks really, really well. So that allows us to now take this and build out what the strategy could be. And when it comes to building the strategy now again this is very long winded way and we said this at the start that it is, but this is putting in the due diligence now to get to a point of clarity. Like when all of this was story told by Beth and Chris, when they present back the work, they go through all this insight. We told the story of all the issues around the category doing the same thing and nobody standing out. We go through all the connectivities, we all this and we found this point of tension then which was, you know, the problem around carefree connectivity. And you don't realize it happens until it happens. So it doesn't go to plan. Then the goal is well, how can we ensure people know that we exist? Because when they, when they do plan to travel, your wi fi connection is never really high up there because you just expect it to work. So the tension then is well how can we actually then find ways to go like create tension and a reminder that this might happen to you. So you better choose us or at Least know we exist and be available to use it if that happens. And that's where we get to it. And then when it comes to the strategy itself, we create what's called a strategy on a page. And in that we have a strategy statement. So that's translating the problem tension into an articulation of what we are going to do. And your strategy statement needs to be actionable. It needs to provoke effective action and not just be a series of goals and objectives. And we see a lot of strategy when people share we want to be the most relatable brand on the Internet. That's a goal and objective. And don't get me wrong, I'm not calling it everyone else, I would have done that in the past and how I used to write strategies or you know, our strategy is to sell lots of shit. Yeah, that's a golden objective. It's not what are we doing to solve a problem or capitalize on an opportunity that we can evoke effective action and change.

Speaker C: I think something that um, I read once about strategy that stuck in my mind as well was like the opposite should be able to be a plausible option as well. So like no one's going to say we don't want to sell anything or we want to be the most. Well maybe someone would want to non relatable. Um, but that helps me as well to sort of sense check when that you're not going too general or that again that you're being specific and there's a part of something that you're trying to own, um, to then make, to do something with.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And so that statement then is the starting point.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But now we need to put some sort of rules in place and we put what we call guiding principles and a lot of strategies, definitions or what you see on slides from people. You see content pillars.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Content pillars are not guiding principles. In fact, I think content pillars are a distraction and we'll probably get to that a little bit later. But what the guiding principles are and um, they're different to tactics too because tactics can change based on experimentation, creative testing and the changes to the platforms.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker B: But what you need within a strategy is guiding principles that stay the same all the time and are almost like your guidance from where we are now to where we need to get to next. And they are the things that underpin the whole strategy. Now every execution you do doesn't have to have all principles in place, but the principles mean that we actually make change and we move along. And that might be the focus on a specific type of tonality for the brand. It might lean on a specific type of audience or a specific type of format. Because strategically this is the best way to communicate this message time after time. So when we think about concepts, we make sure that we consider these formats in this way. Or it is around messaging and wording. And all of these things become then the rules that keep you honest, that every time you develop an idea platform or a campaign or any type of execution, no matter how big or small in the strategy, you use the guiding principles as your reference point to create discipline and make sure it is laddering back up to all the work that you have done.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say because I put disciplines in our strategy and I put uh, what we do and what we don't do, and I explicitly say what we don't do as well.

Speaker B: I think that's a really good thing to build and I think we've done that in a few as well. Three things you start and three things you stop. So very, very similar. Because that evokes action.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So that means there's something actionable then on your strategy, on a page. That means that these are all the things we're stopping because it is not consistent with what we're trying to do and it won't actually be a priority for making the change we want. These are the things we are starting because these are the things that are going to transform so you don't get distracted. You get the blinkers on to go ahead. And this is where even my experience at the moment is we've done some really good strategy work with people and we've done some really. But the challenge is they've got half an eye on the strategy and a half an eye on to what's going on the Internet. And they see the easy wins over here and they see what everybody else is doing and they just want to play over there. And the commitment to sticking, staying the course. Because even if half of this is right, the difference between everybody being aligned and clear on doing something and moving something forward is going to have far greater impact then all of this diluted. Lots of random things that are happening all the time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So even if your strategy is half right or even half or you're really kind of paranoid that you don't think you've crafted it, this is a hell of a lot better than what you're probably doing right now. And a greater chance of shifting a dial, moving a metric. And when you go into these rooms to present your work and, um, you have the results to show that, well, your senior stakeholders are going to go, okay, I can see what you're doing here now. So then when you ask for more headcount, then when you ask for potentially more budget, you're probably going to earn that by doing and sticking to something and showing change.

Speaker A: Yeah. Is this everything here?

Speaker B: Yeah, we go into quite like executional things. So underneath then we start to build out more of the tactical guidance.

Speaker A: I was going to say, when does the tactics come into it? Because a lot of people would have probably started putting them over here.

Speaker B: We considered in the whole process because also as we do this, we get to know the team, understand the resource, understand the time and budget. And this is a really good point as well. There's no point in us presenting a piece of strategy that is a dream that just can't be brought into action. It has to be actionable and if it isn't, well, then it's a waste of a piece of paper.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: It's a waste of work. So we build tactical cues and guidance under this in kind of two or three areas. And the big twos that we focus on is an idea platform and it's platform priorities. And that is all in our discovery we find out all of this and as we plan and build this, we have that in the back of our heads that this has to be actionable by these people. And an idea platform we choose over content pillars. And the main reason for that is content pillars force you to create more content than what you probably actually need to. And you're just like filling buckets and filling the feed for the sake of it. And this is where people then default to making lots of category content or lots of functional content because we're forcing ourselves to make it. Um, and that may not be necessarily right. Whereas the idea platform is this like single minded thing that is our brief every time we go out. Our aim is it's a creative translation of the strategy. And how can we get creative repetition from this same idea platform time after time after time? Again, because when you think about how silly and fragmented social is right now, if you're so diluted with lots of different things, that's not going to compound into something that people remember some that there's a minority few that will do it and like very high level brand awareness. But for most others, again, Eugene Healey, big fan of ours, a great relationship. He's a really great thought leader in this. He uses this.

Speaker C: Did you say he's a big fan of. He is. But also we're a big fan of his.

Speaker B: Is that what I said?

Speaker C: But I like that. That work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: This is tr.

Speaker B: This is true.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Are you a fan of ours? Maybe. He DM me last week, so I'm gonna.

Speaker C: I gotta take it.

Speaker A: Um, Best mates now.

Speaker B: Yeah, best mates. Besties. But the idea platform was really interesting because, like the fragmented space of all this content, it needs to survive in isolation on its own. It has to do something. But also it all together compounding is what's going to build a brand in this kind of schizophrenic world of social. And by having the idea platform, it means that no matter how big or small the piece of content is, it is a manifestation of that and it has the essence and the sentiment going through. Now, that doesn't mean every piece of content has to look like a branded piece of content. That means how you brief your creator, how you make your own content, how you run a paid ad is a manifestation of that, but done in different ways and executable. The sentiment, what they take around ways are saying, and then it's those building blocks build back up. Now there's a greater chance of you actually building a brand or solving a problem or make actually people think, feel or remember you the basics of what we need to do.

Speaker C: And I think this is the part that helps mostly from what I've seen, uh, the people who are making the actual content as well, because quite often they're seeing this and thinking, okay, and the next question is, what is the content? So I think this helps them see that. And something that we do as well is like, here's a starter of ideas of like, here's how it could work in like earn social, here's an influencer idea, here's a repeatable format or, you know, whatever those things are, just putting some examples out for them. Because I do think, and this is what we talk about a lot, there is this big divide between understanding strategy and I guess like marketing. And then people who create content know how to create a piece of content that has a great hook, maybe has a good story arc, knows how it could be shot nicely, knows the best influencers for all the different sort of talks or FYPs. But this part is always or not always, most, nearly always missing is like, but what is it laddering back up to? And I think this, having this sort of creative way of describing it helps people sort of bridge that gap, which we continue to, to see in the more and more businesses that we go.

Speaker B: Yeah, like it gives you a creative brief with enough constraints but enough freedom to play. And that's a really good brief for creative people to now get their teeth into and try playing.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: So it has the right. There, there are probably lots of other parameters around budget, scope, compliance that you come in as part of your guidance in your brief. But that's your creative brief that you just go play with time and time again.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's all translated and that's what you want to get to. There's like things where people use what's called a get to who by as a, as a creative brief statement. And if you have the ability to write that effectively, that is what you give to creatives to unlock and play all the other little tactical nuances that will all come. But this should be the really strongest translation to get there. Okay, then when it comes to the platform priorities, that's where now we. It's part. We have to go where the audience are. We have to then look at all the fragmented ways of using social within your means to try and now, uh, play and actually make change and actually use these platforms to the full potential. And that's not just we're going to be on Instagram and Tick Tock, it's our primary secondary channel that is a starting point. But how you actually operate even within all of these platforms, there's a far greater amount of ways you can do that. And we started to try and build a narrative around that, which is fast and slow. Um, but it's more than just fast and slow. It's built upon the two discovery systems and maybe that's probably what we break down next.

Speaker A: Okay. Awesome.

Speaker B: Right. Okay. So this is another bit of a journey. And again, this is a piece of work we're playing with and we need to get better. But when you look at social media right now it's built upon two discovery systems. One is prompted and the other is unprompted. And what do we mean by that? Currently the unprompted feeds are your feeds and your social media channels. Right now it's your news feed that is designed and decided by the algorithms. Thinking what you like based on what you've watched and a little bit of propaganda and all the rest that's been thrown in by these billionaire owners. But that is the content that you see quite a lot of the time and that you have no control under. The next is prompted. And this again, it does what it says in the tin. This is you on a specific platform physically going in either through the search bar or other explore discovery touch points. Go in and prompt, uh, a, uh, keyword or information in that you want to look for a specific piece of content or information in this social media app. And I think it's brilliant because we're all playing over here and I know there's ways to do better jobs in the world of Unprompted to win in the gaps of that feed of trending and newsjacking and propaganda content that's been cycled all the time. And again, we could do another podcast on how you can bypass that, but we'll save that for another day. But the beauty is it's almost like organic social. The content you make that you don't pay for is having a bit of a renaissance moment that now you have two ways to win on social outside of creators and paid, which can also live in this, by the way. That gives us a shot of doing something and adding value to the marketing mix. Um, now at first when it came to this, we thought, okay, um, unprompted is a fast feed. Unprompted to search, it's slow. And what do I mean by that? Like both of them, when published, look and behave the same way as you put them on the feeds. But the pace at uh, which they succeed and grow and the pace and the goals and objectives are very, very different. And at first we thought we could just layer over the two. Like Unprompted is fast, um, prompted it slow. However, there's nuance within both. So instead of putting them on top of each other, we thought, let's do a matrix instead, because let's go through the nuance because what do we talk about Fast? Fast is again bite sized content, Entertainment led, always looking for that escapism and dopamine effect that happens on the platforms, what we're all experiencing and using right now. But the data and the behavior is telling us that people are using it as a search tool and that content's also being used and surfaced through AI and LLMs as a source of content. But the nuance here is, yes, you can have fast and prompted content that's on your feeds, but I think you can also have fast prompted content which is born in search. And what do I mean by that? You take things that are happening in culture, in entertainment, in media, and moments are seen, products are seen, stories unfold that people may not have seen what exactly happened or saw it, but they want to find out more about it. So how do they do that? Well, they go search for it. Let's have an example. You have Jessie Buckley at the Oscars wore a dress by Christian, uh, Dior designed by James Anderson. I only know that because they're both Irish. I am not a fashionista by any means.

Speaker A: I was gonna say they came right off the tongue.

Speaker C: Right off the tongue. Who is he?

Speaker B: But that dress looked absolutely glorious. This kind of blue, beautiful patterned dress that everyone saw was like, wow.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Where did you get that? Who designed it? I'd love to have something like that. So once that moment happened in real time, some of it might be put out by the news cycle which you saw, but you don't know who it is or where they got it from. This is the action then taken. When people use cultural moments at speed, the far side of social and they go search for Jessie Buckley dress.

Speaker A: It's like me searching for Claudia Winkleman's outfits after the Traitors.

Speaker B: And that's a great example. And then so what could be there? Like either Chris and Jor need to have a clip of the dress and where it was and where you can get it or fashion brands can have wear the look. Here's a style, uh, or an opportunity. But based on that behavior, it adds nuance here. Like when you think of fast prompted, you think trend jacking all the things here, the basic things we're used to. But fast and prompted can also be things like episodic content that repeatable formats that if you watch time again, there's a chance that it's going to be served to you within your mix of content based on how long you've stayed around. And the feed from time to time will pepper that throughout. So that's the language everyone's saying. Tv, social show formats.

Speaker A: I was going to say that's what everyone is saying to do right now.

Speaker B: It's the new trends. It's like everyone jump on trends, everyone do repeatable formats. But the fear is they all default to the same things. They all look the same again. We won't trash it too much, we'll save it for another day. We'll try and build the matrix first. Then the other nuance over here as well. Slow prompted mix sense. This is again search related content based on new search behavior. People used to use Google, now they're using social and AI. And we know this is happening because TikTok have built creator search insights as an infrastructure and a tool to tell you what people are searching for, where the content gaps are and how you can fill those gaps. You also see then on the data, the sources of the content. It used to be FYP used to be Profile views. Now it has views from search. So we're seeing that the behavior is pushing people and pushing the platforms to build the infrastructure to actually use it as a valuable search tool. And that could be really valuable to some brands because if we go back to the strategy, let's take most people will default over here straight away unprompted and fast. And what ends up happening is the opportunity for them might not need fast social as the solution because it might be a brand who spelled spends millions on TV out of home creators and reach is not the problem. But the problem could be trust or the problem could be consideration. But yet every brand will invest all their time in here thinking that's what social media is.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Whereas if they had an aha moment where our actual place we need to win is we need to win in search. Well that's how we do it. And I'll give you an example of that. Dermalogica mhm Beauty brand, really well known, respected. They were slow coming to TikTok and they went well. Most of the beauty brands are in this space here. They're winning on trends, they're winning on culture, they're building repeatable formats, satellite accounts, the ordinary, all of these are doing the things over here. How can we actually use TikTok to our greatest effect? What they made is decision we're only going to focus on search. And they started to then build out search related content and now they're starting because they knew that when people are ready the category is already lifted. People are searching for the most trusted beauty, um, brands with the best science and the best thing to them. Now they're going to do their research and when they do their research, if they do the right keywords and build it, they're now going to appear. And so much so that I believe there was one piece of video that I saw in a case study that came true on it where I think 70, 70 something percent of the views from that video contest coming now from search because obviously they still publish it on the feed, it has to be posted. They'll get a certain amount of views from the fyp. But that's not the priority. The priority was over a long period of time they would start to see more views coming based on search behavior if they obsess about how they optimize the content here.

Speaker C: And this is where when we talk as well about uh, people ask us often about sort of measuring things and metrics and doing a monthly report. But if you're in this area then you looking at you know last month's content, actually something from six months ago or a year ago actually might now be getting lots of views because maybe it's the time of year, maybe it's summer and that's the best, you know, all of this, the summer related things that people are then searching for. We know that there is, there are things that happen every single year like clockwork that you can lean into, um, which is I guess different from some of these where maybe these are more the um, moments that happen out of nowhere that people then lean into.

Speaker B: And sorry, I'm making a mistake here because clearly we're trying to rework how this is and we're trying to build it slow. Unprompted is actually the area of the episodic content, the slow burning content that appears on a fast feed. But, but the aim is to re engage people with the same world, the same system, the same format time and time again. Think Subway takes. Think, uh, Candid Kittens, cktv. Think Roomies, Roomies, that's the default one everyone goes to. But this is all built on newsjacking and trends, same as this. But the two behaviors are the same based on the two discoveries and this is based on search. So this episode of content is a slow burn and there's specific rules and things you need to build here to try and give it the greatest chance of succeeding as well and sticking out the game. But the beauty of that content, why it's so good is because when people are searching and the content is entertaining, it doesn't have to be built in this world. Yes, you can bring maybe things into your episodes, but there are either characters, cues, assets, distinguishable brand, things that help remember the brand every time you build this. And it's why the likes of Candy Kittens work so well. It's a skit of the Office. Jamie is the central character, he pulls them in. There's familiar characters, non playing characters like in the world of gaming that you start to gravitate towards. There's the likes of again, um, what's a cup of life? The guy who goes around the cup of tea, the hook is the same. It's like your man Simon Squibb. Um, you know, what's your dream? The second you see the hook, the second you see the character in the world, you know what to expect and you know what content is coming true. Which means that I'm going to stick around and watch this because I saw it before. And um, there's the value of building brand here is far greater when it comes to Doing that. Now most people at the moment, as you said, are all over here, starting to go here. But even by breaking this out, uh, it just shows the wider opportunity in the different areas that you can win. Look, the best brands in the world can try and do all this. I don't believe anybody's doing all of this really well at the moment. But if you were trying to prove to a brand strategically how we can have impact and move the dial and what problem, what way is social could solve the problem? This matrix allows you to make a decision on where you put your time, energy and focus. Because what you have is active attention, passive attention, impulsive decisions, considered decisions. And now you're understanding how your content can meet the platforms, understand who human behavior and go back to what we said earlier, which was brand has to say something to sell shit. Culture has these things over here and now you're starting to find a sweet spot to build upon it.

Speaker C: Can you say those four things again? Because I feel like that would be nice.

Speaker B: Yes. Active consumption. This is fast, it happens short window, happens all the time, news cycle based. The second is passive, um, consumption. It is slower episodic content you're familiar with that, uh, you revisit time and time again based on you seeing and the cues in it that make you want to stop and watch. We've then got impulsive decisions where you see something, you want to find out the T, you want to find out what it is, you want to buy the thing immediately. And then there's consider decisions where I now need to research at a huge detail to make a decision on a product or service I'm going to buy. And this is where I'm going to do it. And this is the information that's going to help me make that decision. And it just shows how big and um, beautiful social media could be. If you start cracking a code, finding your aha moment and then making decisions on where on the platforms you can win to convince your senior people we actually do something really powerful.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: This, this is really powerful and has given me so much to think about and I know from previous conversations with other guests it's going to give them a lot to go away and think about as well. So. Micha Beth, thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thanks for having us.

Speaker A: Thanks.