"Innovating the Skies" with Oliver Walker-Jones of Joby Animation

Speaker A: Welcome to the Digital Marketing Master Archive edition. Through this series, we'll take a look back at the wisdom shared by our guests in these unpublished episodes. My name is Rachel Keys, the current editor of the Digital Marketing Master Podcast, and I'm excited for you to get a chance to listen back with me. So get ready for an episode that is jam packed with marketing expertise.

Speaker B: Foreign. Welcome to the Digital Marketing Master Podcast where we dig deep into the stories from the trenches of real life digital marketing. I'm Abby from Whiteboard Geeks, and I'm here today with Oliver Walker Jones and he is the head of marketing, communications and brand. So let's start by, uh, telling the audience a little bit about you and your career journey, your background, uh, and knowledge within marketing and comms, and of course, what it means to be the head of marketing today for you.

Speaker C: Sure. Thanks for having me along. So I actually began my career, um, 15 years ago working in government affairs and politics. And I kind of always thought I wanted to be a, uh, political campaigner, uh, leading politicians around the country and introducing them, uh, and making sure that they won their elections and their policy arguments. But over time I actually transitioned into more of a kind of PR style, uh, role. I worked at companies like Rolls Royce in the uk, um, and the world's largest cement company and eventually kind of found my way across to aviation. And I've also, um, taken some breadth in my career. So I've started working, um, in marketing roles. And I feel like there's a real trend and a real reason for people working, um, across both communications and marketing. And they are sort of very connected disciplines these days. And so that's really where I find myself today, working at Joby Aviation. Um, this is the second startup that I've worked at. We're based in California. We're now 1500 people. We're listed on the New York Stock Exchange. But we started, um, when I joined three years ago as a much smaller company, we were only a couple hundred people. And before that I worked at another similar startup in Munich, Germany. And so what really turns me on these days is coming into companies where the profile isn't known, where the company isn't known, where the idea isn't known, where the sector isn't known. Building marketing functions, building communications functions, and helping introduce new topics, new products to the world. That's what connects, uh, my whole career is really kind of persuading people about things that they maybe don't know about or they haven't made their mind up about yet.

Speaker B: Nice. That's incredible. And it talks about passion that you have with the marketing, but also like, uh, getting started and building from scratch. So talking about all that, let's get a little bit deep into what's the target audience and the people that you reach out to and you work for, um, today, how would you describe them? And also how you build engagement and you connect with, with this target audience.

Speaker C: So the great thing about coming into a startup company is there is no guide, there is no playbook, there is no answers on a page for you already. You kind of have to start from scratch, which means identifying who your audience is and how you're going to reach them. And that's really liberating in many ways. But, um, it also comes with some challenges. The great thing about the company that I work at today, Joby Aviation, is we're developing a product that doesn't exist right now. So, you know, what we want to do is to bring electric air taxis to the world. Those are five seat aircraft that take off and land vertically and transport you up to 100 miles to your destination at speeds of up to 200 miles an hour. And it will change the way we travel. Um, and it'll do that in the next few years. But, um, you know, as I explain it, and as probably your listeners hear this for the first time, it evokes, um, kind of vibes of the Jetsons or Sci Fi or the fifth Element. And that's how a lot of people respond to it. They don't know how to come to it first because it's a brand new idea and it's something new. And so when I consider how we build an audience and how we build a messaging platform, we have to consider how people will interpret this for the first time. And we also have to consider how to introduce a product when we don't actually have it in hand. So I can't bring you today and put you on the aircraft and let you see what it's like because the aircraft's being developed at the moment. And yet we still have to go and communicate with towns and cities around the world because it's a product we want to bring. And so we have a very complex set of stakeholders that range on the kind of corporate side from investors and policymakers and federal and local government officials to on the kind of more consumer side, people who may want to fly with us in the future and maybe, you know, tech advocates or early evangelists of products, people that we really want to kind of build, uh, an audience of people that will promote us and advocate for us. And then there's another set of people who we have to deal with public acceptance. So, you know, will you let us come and fly in your city? That's a whole different audience of people who may never travel with us, but equally have, um, a very important voice in making sure that the service we eventually deliver is going to be important. And then we have investors, people that want to come and invest in our business or partner with us. So we work very closely with Delta Airlines, we work with Uber, uh, both of whom are invested in our business. And there's another whole set. So, long story short, there's an awful lot of people who care about what we do, and we have to kind of plan to engage all those people in the right order. And so the thing that I think I've learned over time, doing this in a couple of different businesses is you have to have a really clear plan of who your stakeholders are and the order in which you want to engage them. You know, I don't think. I really don't think it's possible to solve for all audiences all at the same time. In the same way, you have to kind of unpack that journey, have a really clear path from today to market entry. And I know, at least kind of, you know, the first casualty of war is the plan. But starting with a plan is a really important thing to do when you have a new product, a new idea, and a new set of audiences to build.

Speaker B: Right. And getting a little bit deeper into this, uh, how would you say, from a marketing perspective that you guys are trying to, uh, tell people, tell your audiences about this new technology that you're trying to introduce? What are the stories you're telling? What's the marketing strategy that you think of when you, uh, plan about, you know, how to reach out to people?

Speaker C: So I think this is a really fun question because, um, there are many paths you can go down. Um, and there are. I think there are quite a few dead ends. So when you're thinking about working your way through the maze, there are a couple of things I think I've learned. Um, and I would start with content is king. Um, we all know that. But, uh, if you are trying to introduce something that people, when people don't know what it is and they don't know how it works, they don't know what it looks like, then you have to work really, really hard to generate regular content that, uh, explains what it is you're doing, demonstrates it, shows it. And you have to be really careful to have content that contextualizes everything. So, you know, when you're working inside a company and you, you hear about it all day, every day, it's very easy to forget that your audience doesn't have the context. You know, I think if you're introducing the new flavor of Coke, everybody knows what Coke is, and you don't have to do very much explaining. If you're introducing the iPhone 27, that's great because everybody has been using a phone for a very long time. And, you know, even when they introduced the first iPhone, people already knew what to do with a phone. You know, you still, you had to introduce new capabilities, but people knew what a phone was. The problem we have is no one's ever used it. It's a new form of transport. It exists and will do things that we've never done before. And so creating content that has enough context and enough, uh, transparency is really important. That's kind of point one. Point two is there is a very important line to define between hype or excitement or building future understanding of what your product will do and credibility building. So on the one hand, what we're trying to do is something really exciting. We're going to bring flights across cities and all electric aircraft that might land you on top of a building at your destination. It's kind of what we dreamed of all through the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, and now it's coming to reality. But a lot of people, when they hear that for the first time, kind of shrug their shoulders and laugh and think it's not a reality, but it is. You know, all the technology exists to make this real. And so we have to be careful to create content that allows us to build credibility first. I often think about this as, uh, a relationship between two people. If you want to go on a date with somebody and you want to build a meaningful relationship, you have to start with trust. Love is built on trust. If you want to build a brand that has love, a love brand, then you have to start with trust. You can't go with kind of flim flam, exciting, hypey shock, um, and awe for people because people will see through it. They might like it immediately, they might kind of click and follow, but very quickly they'll realize that, you know, you're not all that. You know. What you have to do is start with the nuts, m and bolts, the basics. You have to show people you have an aircraft that it works, that it's safe, that you have a business model, that it works, that it's going to be reasonable in the future that the aircraft's quieter enough. So we've actually done a lot of work, starting with the nuts and bolts and what you might call boring communication, what you might call boring content. It certainly appeals to engineers and serious stakeholders, and maybe it doesn't appeal quite as much to the end consumer, but it's important because it builds trust. And from trust, you can build love. And so we start with that kind of content, and then we move, we will move over time to talking to our eventual consumer, somebody who wants to get in the aircraft and wants to understand the magic of flight, the view that they'll see how exciting it'll be to save time as they fly across the city. But getting that journey in the right order, building content in the right order, that's kind of the most important lesson I've learned across the last five years.

Speaker B: Right. And it sounds like you're super excited and you have huge passion for what you do and for this aircraft, uh, technology and everything that's around it. So what would you say that working throughout the past years with your organization been, like, challenges that you guys had to work on?

Speaker C: So I would say the, um, most obvious one, particularly for me over the last five years has been working in startups. So it's really, really amazing. Um, I would recommend it to anybody who is considering, hey, do I go work in a big old organization or do I jump off in the deep end and go and work at a startup? I would say that working in big organizations will teach you a lot of things. It will give you rigor, it will give you frameworks, it will give you context and understanding. That's really important. But at some point in your career, if the opportunity exists to jump off and go do something in a startup, then I would always fully endorse it. It comes with risk, but it also comes with a great deal of fun. And that fun is not really knowing where to begin. There isn't a playbook. Um, and so, you know, what I have found hard and challenging is dealing with, uh, that kind of monumental challenge of knowing where to start when you have nothing in place. And so, you know, to that, I would say you have to start somewhere, and you just have to start. You know, taking the first step of the marathon, uh, will help you. And as soon as you start, you'll find that you get moving in your workout, which is the right direction, the wrong direction. And to that end, you know, regularly, regularly checking in that you're moving in the right direction, asking around, making sure you have friends who can Advise and help make sure you're moving in the right direction is important. Relying on any data you can get your hands on to help make sure and inform, um, your plan is important. And the other challenge is, you know, doing, doing all of that. You know, building a brand, building content, you know, chucking stuff out daily on our social channels, doing that without a team, or doing it with a very small team or doing it with a very small budget. And you have to work out how to do that. And you know, what we do that has actually worked really nicely for us is we have a creative team in house. That pretty much the first hire we made was not, um, kind of a classic, maybe like a PR hire or, um, a producer or an agency. We actually hired a photographer. Um, and you might think actually it's only mature businesses that have photographers in house. But we found that was a great way to tell our story and it was a relatively affordable way to do it. And it meant that we would have content day in, day out that we could share with our audiences. And so hiring in the right order, getting the right team in place, um, and doing that in a kind of a thrifty way. I think audiences these days, they like natural content, they like real content, they like behind the scenes content. It's okay that not everything is shiny, but they, people like to see behind the scenes. They like to have transparency. And so building that in the, in the right way has been helpful. Um, and then I would say also in a startup environment, you'll find, you know, there will, and probably actually in all businesses there will be a million ideas. There'll be lots and lots of opinions about the directions you should be going in from board members, from senior leaders, from junior leaders, from many other people in the business, sometimes even from your own mother. Um, and what I would say is, you know, you are the marketer in the room. Trust your gut. I, you know, I think one of the things that I have particularly picked up over 15 years is, you know, I think 15 years ago I had a pretty good gut. I didn't really necessarily back myself. I was purposefully listening to other people in the room. But I've learned over time to have the confidence to know that actually, you know, the background that I have and the background that you have, you know, the people who are listening here who do this day in, day out, your gut's pretty good. You need to learn to trust it. You need to have the confidence to back your own ideas. And hey, if, if you get it wrong, throw your hands up and change direction, but trust your gut. Take the first step on your journey. Work out how to be thrifty, um, and make sure that you're always checking the direction you travel in. Those are some of the harder challenges that I've learned over these last few

Speaker B: years, and those are really good ones. They're really good insights for all of us. They apply to every marketer out there, regardless of their industry, because there are core values and fundamentals of marketing that we all need to bear in mind when thinking about strategy and thinking about what to do exactly when we walk into a marketing setup. And, um, so I wanted to ask you a little bit more about that, like, how's it working for you to tell the story of your current organization, and what are the things that you would highlight from what you guys are doing today?

Speaker C: So I think we're doing a pretty good job of communicating. We've established ourselves as one of the leaders, if not the leader, in our industry. And we've done that through a dedication to being as transparent as we can be with the content that we make, of doing that regularly, of making sure that we set clear goals for ourselves and then we deliver on them. And the communication that we make has been purposefully designed to appeal to who we think our first audience is, which is really the tech enthusiasts, evangelists, people who always buy the first Apple Watch, or people that drive Teslas today. We've been meaningful about going out and targeting that audience, and we intend to come on and target a more consumer audience in due course. So, you know, I think we've seen a lot of success in building an early audience. But the challenge that really faces us now is how do we get really, really wide appeal? So, you know, we have kind of two or three tools in our toolkit. Um, we've been doing a great job on media and press, um, over the last kind of year. You know, we. We're featured on 60 Minutes, um, we've been in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, all sorts of different places that the mainstream media turn up. And we've also started dipping our water into dealing and working with influencers, um, on the social side, we've had a couple of films that we've helped put together that have gone up into the millions of views now. And that's a great way for us to build our audience. But the kind of. The challenge that I'm looking ahead to, which I think is a really interesting one, and I, uh, can't claim to have all the answers yet, is how do we right size the audience that we want to appeal to. And by that I mean we want to be a global household name. Um, and we have a kind of meta level of talking globally about what we do as a company, but we're also looking at operating as cities. So we've identified that New York and LA are likely to be two early cities that we operate in. We've also talked about South Korea and Japan being markets that we want to operate in. And I was at the Japan Mobility show, um, this last week, uh, with a model of our aircraft. And it's great to see enthusiasm in all these places, but we have to be building audiences in those locations. And how you go about building city specific audiences versus kind of wider corporate audiences is one of those challenges that we're going to have to face over the next six months. And something I've been doing a lot of thinking about.

Speaker B: Right. And hopefully also, um, podcasting with us today will help out a little bit because we are a little bit global. We are being listened in our third 30 countries today. So at least, uh, we're adding a bit to that. And I do want to take a quick moment to shout out to sponsor vibergeeks and say, do pop points make your eyeballs bleed? Does no one understand your complicated message? Don't worry. Hand drawn wiper videos with your engagement by 235%. So if you're listening to this, go to virgeeks.com to get a price for your project today because why were geeks weird works? And Oliver, now comes my favorite part of the show because it's quite a little bit personal, you know, and it's about an aha moment from your career. And something I truly liked about your career background is that you have, you know, marketing and communications. And if people go to your profile, see you talk about telling the story on your organization. And I love that, um, when, you know, when marketers do have that at the core of what they do, telling stories. And so if you had to pick something special for you and tell a story for us today, an aha moment, some sort of revelation that was special for you, what would that be?

Speaker C: So I think you hit the nail on the head. For me, it is about storytelling. You know, I began, as I said, at the beginning, you know, I began in political campaigning. Um, and political campaigning is all about kind of typically single messages over short periods of times, kind of campaign based communication. But, you know, at the heart of everything we do is a story because that's what people identify with. It's how you get people to believe and back you. And I kind of realized relatively early on that the importance of storytelling, no matter whether you're doing it in pr, whether you're doing it in marketing, whether it's on social media, like, it's very easy to get into, um, the fall into the trap, I guess, of generating content day in, day out, that doesn't really, you know, it might look shiny, my look great, but it doesn't necessarily deliver a message, a core message that you can continue to tell and develop over time. And so, you know, I, I purposefully stepped across from, you know, PR into marketing a, um, few years back now. And you know, I think from a personal perspective, making sure you always allow yourself to have breadth in career, that you, you know, you are, uh, enthusiastic about learning about new topics, about digesting and building your own skills is important. Um, but telling stories is really at the heart of everything we do. And I have, uh, I'd like to think, kind of hone that skill over a number of years and you can't really get past the value of being able to look somebody in the eye and tell them an anecdote or a story. You know, a, uh, picture is worth a thousand words, but a story really, really nails it. So for me, that's everything.

Speaker B: Totally. I have to agree with you. I think growing up, we love to hear stories, and then when we're finally adults, we still love that. And that's why when you truly connect with people, when you can truly connect with your audience, is because there was something on your story that called them, that got them closer to you. And I think that's amazing and it's wonderful because it's one of the most beautiful sides of marketing. And I wanted to thank you today for recording with us, for taking the time, and for also sharing your own story. Um, not only in terms of marketing, but also like a little bit of the traveling you've been doing and the different organizations that you've been at. And is there anything else that you like to tell our audience about?

Speaker C: Yeah, so I would say, um, I would not be scared. This is kind of career advice, I guess, from my own experience. But I would not be scared to change tack. I think people often get stuck in a rut in a career and worry. They keep doing the same thing and they worry about stepping across. I think, uh, several times in my career I've stepped from government affairs into pr, PR into marketing. And actually transferring those skills has been very helpful. I've worked in financial services, and I've worked in the cement industry, and I've worked in aviation, and I've worked in the UK and I've worked in Germany and I've worked in the US and every time, those have been big decisions to make. Big, hairy, scary decisions. But they've always been worthwhile. And so I would encourage people to. If you're thinking about something you're not too sure, you always have to balance the risk. But typically, the opportunity that you'll receive from doing it is a good thing.

Speaker B: Totally. And it's a great piece of advice because we do have a huge part of our audience who's just starting their career journey, and I'm sure they're looking for, uh, advice out there. But also, you know, like you said, if you're pretty much advanced in a career path and you still want to make a change, it's never too late. And there are a lot of opportunities out there and lots of things. Like you say, skills are transferable, so you can move towards a different department or different organization, try new things and keep on growing and stay humble. Of course, that's part of the process. Um, well, Oliver, thank you so much again for joining us today. Uh, today we're recording our episode 207, so we're truly happy and. Well, um, thank you also to our audience for being on the other side listening to one more episode of the Digital Marketing Master podcast.