Why Great Brands Win (And Weak Brands Get Exposed by AI) | Nick Emmel

Co-host: So it's now just starting to understand you can't hide anymore behind a brand promise and shouting from the rooftops about what you want to be, because LLMs are going to expose what you really are.

Host: Um, today we've got another renowned guest for you, Nick Amell, who's the founder of Mr. President. Mr. President is one of the UK's most distinctive creative agencies built on a simple but radical idea. Why are most brands kind of built in the wrong way around?

Nick Emmel: Brand is often framed as this slightly superficial device that it's something which informs

Host: what are sort of the, the levers that you guys pull as an agency to be able to help organizations or brands really discover their single truth.

Nick Emmel: It's people. And I think this is the number one untold truth of an idea is it only exists through the people who live it. So when trying to get to what is this defining idea that should sit at the heart of it. It already exists in the minds of the people who bring it to life every single day.

Host: And he's got a refreshing, no nonsense take on why most brand strategies are broken and what it actually takes to fix them.

Nick Emmel: When you get genuinely charismatic leaders who can speak to a wide church and make them all feel involved and get them invigorated and rallied behind an idea, that's how you always generate momentum. M. I want people to be so excited about the core idea that they're like, yes, I can do this too. I see where I'm going. I want to be with you on this journey. I've got conviction and direction. I know where we're going.

Host: So let's get right into it. Welcome, Nick. Nick, it's amazing to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

Nick Emmel: Thank you. This is a little bit intimidating, I will say that.

Co-host: Be afraid.

Nick Emmel: I'm very relaxed.

Co-host: Don't worry.

Host: Let's get right stuck in here. I mean, one of your mantras at, uh, Mr. President is the thought about the notion of sort of the inside out brand.

Nick Emmel: Yeah.

Host: So in simple terms, I mean, tell us a little bit more about what does that mean and why are most brands kind of built in the wrong way around?

Nick Emmel: I mean, we all talk about brand all the time, but I generally find that brand is often framed as this slightly superficial device that it's something which informs your identity or the way in which you look or you sound or your feel or your personality, or it's the thing which is at the root of the comms campaign that you're doing, or it's the thing that gets turned into a pithy set of three words, hopefully with something like elevate or moment in it, whatever that might be. But the reality of brand in its strongest form is it's your everything. You know, it's actually got to define, yes, how you look and you speak and you sound, but how you behave, how you walk, the type of experience which you give someone. Now, it should be true of your place in culture, and it should reflect the culture that you live as a brand. And for a brand to be truly powerful and to use all of the potential which is within it, you want it to be something that everyone can live as much as what you can say. So for a brand to come from the inside and be genuinely true to the full experience of how everyone is living it with an organization, you get a much stronger signal going out there to how it is experienced externally as well.

Host: This is fascinating. I mean, you've got to give us an example of somewhere or some client you worked on that really just brings us to life for us.

Nick Emmel: I mean, I. There's ones which I pick apart often because you sort of see the ones popping up in the press. And there's one which I. It probably appears in my WhatsApp group more than anything, just from my neighbors being annoyed about this. But every as a brand, that's. I mean, there used to be Hermes. Would you say Hermes or Hermes? I'd go Hermes.

Host: It's the delivery logistics, delivery people, rather

Nick Emmel: than the high couture people who also do delivery. Um, but I mean, they, they changed their brand in what, 20, 20 ish, when they were realizing that Hermes was not particularly liked. They had lots of issues with their, uh, service and their behaviors and everything which came with it. And it went through a big, grand, very public rebranding into this every world. And all the storytelling that goes with the identity that came with it is about how, you know that the logo is made up of lots of different fonts and it's got infinite things to represent the infinite ways that it's personalized. And the experience is tailored to everyone who receives it. And it's all this grandiose truth. And I think at the time it was always about, is going, well, we are getting better at this service thing. But this is not true. You know, the. The reality of everyone's experience with every is still just as blooming awful as it was with Hermes back in the day. And I'm sure it's slightly better, but they're always tainted as a brand as having an experience which never matched the Promise. And however much you're polishing up that external brand idea to say, well, I know we're now all about service here, it's like it's not true. And every person's experience of that and every reflection which you get of it from other people's experiences, like, well, this is bad. And you always wonder that if this was genuinely an inside out brand, they've either got to do some huge structural changes to the operation to actually make it one which is a genuinely service led operation, which it's not in comparison to everyone else, or you need to build a brand which is possibly truer, uh, to the reality of the experience which you are going to get with every. And I think that to me is one where there's a disconnect versus you. Look at Ryanair, one of my favorite all time brands, because it's, it's, it's awful, but it's brilliant. Um, and it's an incredibly successful airline. It's the fastest growing in Europe. I think they're up to 200 million passengers now. And um, they've always been awful. But there's brilliant brand strategy in what they are doing. They're recognizing that they're always going to cram as many people as they possibly can onto their airline. The experience is going to be terrible, they're going to treat you badly along the way. But everyone is making a trade off in their heads going, well, if it's that bad, it must be cheap. And it's almost the worse we are, the more you're landing that brand idea that actually this is the most cheap way which I get. I'll take an hour of pain and awfulness and be dropped 50 miles from where I actually want to go. But I don't mind. It's cheap and it's like the brand idea is there. Everyone goes, well, if I'm a bit of a dick, then I'm living the brand. And it's almost. You could sum up their brand in that. And it works because the strategy is there and it's fulfilled and it's from the inside out. And I wish Hermes every when actually look, we are the cheap ones. There's a reason why you choose every as a small retailer or someone who's actually sending something because cheap and m. It's like, well, fine, build a brand which is resonant to that. Let everyone know, well, I'm doing this. I know that it's painful, I know the drivers have to throw stuff over windows, but fine, you know, I'm, I'm

Co-host: loving this conversation already because you're not going to pull any punches here. I mean, like, I totally get it right. Air. Uh, like the words and figures match. Whereas if I paraphrase what you said with Hermes. Hermes, whatever it is, you know, uh, possibly lipstick on a pig or even polishing a turd. But, um, the point is, often there's a disconnect.

Nick Emmel: Yes.

Co-host: And so if I sort of push you on a bit, you know, you, you've said, I think, that often there's sort of like silly brand words. M or even empty brand words. And so. So maybe in some cases the process of branding is a bit broken. What. Tell us more and what's the antidote?

Nick Emmel: I mean, it's something which I think we've all done. You know, we can sit there for months and push adjectives around a page and you're trying to create this framework which reduces the brands down into the most pithy form of whatever it can be. But I think if we're all being honest with ourselves with a lot of the brands which are built, the number of times I've seen personal, human, innovative, progressive, customer at the heart, you know, the same little buzzwords that are in there to define what a brand is, they are so open to interpretation that they could mean anything. If I'm someone who's working within that organization or for that organization, I could make up anything to say I'm being a little bit more human. So actually I'm going to stop that initiative where I was being a little bit more robotic than I was doing before. You know, I'm not going to put the customer at the heart of thing. Oh, I should now, because it's part of the brand. It's like there are things which don't add up to anything. And I think for a brand to truly live beyond marketers who obsess about this stuff, and we can interpret it and we can see the nuance in it and we can work out clever ways to interpret it. For the majority of the people who actually live the brand and express the brand, what are they supposed to do with that? And, uh, I find it a real tough challenge versus I know what I'm going to be like if I work for Ryanair, because I know the culture and the feeling and the output of what the company is, but it allows you to be part of that and be proud of that and know the outcome of it. And there's a big dissonance between a word versus a story, perhaps, which you can actually.

Co-host: Is that what Brian do Because they have to write something down. So. Or do they not? I mean what's.

Nick Emmel: I wish, I wish I knew. But with a brand like them, they've got a Michael o' Leary at the top who is a living breathing story.

Co-host: There you go.

Nick Emmel: You know he's such a character and a personality and he's got his narrative and he knows what he's doing. He's a very smart guy. You know he's not doing this just to be annoying. He's doing this because he knows how it shapes the perception of the business that he runs. He has great success out of that. And I think because you can recognize that if he is your leader in that organization, you know which path you're going to follow and you know the character and the behaviors which you want to bring to it. And I think it's such a powerful thing to have within a business to know what it is you're supposed to be, to know what it is you're supposed to get to and how you're supposed to act.

Host: Today's program is brought to you by two fantastic organizations. First up is Studio Space, A uh, leading on demand marketing agency platform. Studio Space gives marketers complete control over their projects. From matching the right agency to your brief to managing contracts and invoicing and even tracking all of your spend data, uh, all in the one place. They take care of everything and it's totally hassle free. They even guarantee the work. So check out Studio Space today. Our uh, second sponsor is, is the Marketing Skills Trust. A ah, charity with a mission to make marketing a better place for everyone. They provide grants to help create a more equitable industry and support initiatives that really do drive diversity, inclusion and create opportunity. The Trust has been instrumental in leveling up the marketing skills across the board and do take a look at their website for more information. Now let's get on with the show. It's really resonant because I remember back in the day when we met at HSBC I was working on the advance proposition which was a mid tier proposition between the normal bank current account and indeed the premier one. And there was a moment when I was in retail and someone in the ivory tower of Canary Wharf decided to name that particular product Club Class Banking. Although they failed to inform anyone at the branch what that actually meant. And therefore one day all our customers walked in seeing the TV advert going I want Club class Banking service, I

Nick Emmel: want some peanuts with that and a glass of champagne.

Host: So there is absolutely validity in what you're describing in and around perception versus reality and therefore big disconnect. And that causes all sorts of issues. However, I then a few years later jumped in the shoes of being the advanced current account manager in the ivory tower. And I had a different slight marketing lens on it, which was the thinking that marketing often leads the organization and therefore to your example, even with, um, every, it may be the case that you create an aspirational brand in order for the organization to catch up. So there's an element of that that plays in. Right. So the fortuitous circle is hopefully marketers are the ones who are showing the organization what the future looks like and therefore becomes aspirational in nature. So in some respects maybe it's okay to have a short term disconnect as the organization catches up to your. So how do you view that? How do you view the jigsaw in that regard?

Nick Emmel: I think it's absolutely fine. There's a short term disconnect because you're trying to get somewhere. You're reshaping what the brand could be and what the business could be and how it could play out. But it's got to be rooted in a truth. It's got to be something which resonates with people and it makes it feel like, yeah, actually I was kind of doing this all along, but actually now I can focus in on this is the thing that I need to repeat, repeat, repeat and turn up to 10. And I think that's the thing which is often missing. We worked for, um, Metro bank for a number of years. I mean, what fascinating brand that is in the retail banking space. It's the first new bank on the high street in 100 years when it popped along. And that was about 15 years ago or so. But the way in which they appeared into the market was Vernon and Shirley and their little dog. The founders of it who came across from America were very amazing, inspirational people who set the equivalent up in the US and when they did that, it was very much under this idea of, uh, be more like McDonald's than a retail bank. You know, it's all about hospitality, service, store frontages, people, people interactions which come with all of that. And they sort of scrambled by with this sort of very weird presence for the first 10 years where it was all sort of stilt walkers and people handing out popcorn. Lovely stuff. They hired everyone from the hospitality industry. There was a very particular group of people. They weren't necessarily the best bankers, but they were lovely people that you wanted to hang out. And it drew in a certain type of crowd from the local Community. I mean they had issues when they reached their 10th birthday that they had some well publicized accounting errors which got everyone freaked and going. Actually suddenly all the things were kind of cutesy and fun and weird about them. You're going, but you've got my money. Um, maybe I'm a bit scared of this. And it's like well we need to quickly give them a grown up brand positioning so they can go out there and act with a little bit more stature and solidity and trust to make people go in there. But everything about that process was going well. There's an absolute truth of what they are, that service is their thing. The people who are on the tills believe that about themselves. They like that part of it. When you join the company you have to do a conga around the room. Even if you're the FD joining. It's an insane organization but you go actually you're playing a role. You're the ones who've still got ah, stores ah on high street. You're the ones who are still valuing human interaction. There is still a big audience of people rejecting. I don't want the fintechs or the traditional banks which are taking away my high street presence. There's an audience for you but it's going well. Just be about the people, people nature of yourselves. You know there is a story which is true. It's like the way in which you interact with people. That's what people love. The fact that you're at the top of all of the rankings for best service in store regularly. You are award winning for this. There is a truth which you already are. You just need to turn it up to 10 and point A finger at it. And as soon as you've got that it made sense of all parts of the business because you go out there and you go well just ramp your service up. Win that award every single quarter please. You have to keep doing that. All of the advertising was effectively McDonald's advertising. Whereas out of home within 50 meters of the store pointing people to say come and meet our lovely people who are in the store right now. And you would do things like they're open from eight until eight and seven days a week. So you advertise and digital out of home between five and eight every night and say well we're open, no one else is. And then when it comes down to the product propositions you go when they launch their um, business to business current account and the original proposition was you can open it in 15 minutes and it's like I don't really care if it took 50 minutes or 15, it's not really. But you flip it around and go, actually when you start thinking through this people, people lens, they go, we could make you have a local area manager who is dedicated to you, irrespective. Even your one man band will give you a local area manager and they'll be your bestest friend and then you can work together and you go, great. That is a people people proposition. And it suddenly it cascades through and the reaction within the business is, yeah, we're already, that, we're already doing that. But that's the thing that we're all definitively doing now. And we're all doing it with conviction and clarity and cohesion. And suddenly it's like, well comes out. And suddenly everyone sees that externally because you're acting it and you're being it at every single touch point of the brand and suddenly it becomes believable and it makes a big difference to the way in which the band but the band, the bank comes across.

Host: Yeah.

Co-host: So Nick, everything you said so far makes total sense. Intuitively talk us through the commercial impact of total brand experience. How to make the commercial case. Let's put this into numbers and commercials.

Co-host: I mean that's the big question of

Nick Emmel: all of this because it's all very

Co-host: good talking about this in theory. And I think all of us instinctively would go, properly aligned brands equals a better performing business. But the reality is we're always going to be going up to the C suite and um, trying to make the case for the investment that is required to do this. And I think there's three things which I consistently come back to in these discussions.

Nick Emmel: The first is the brilliant research of

Co-host: a company called Mesh and an amazing lady there called Fiona Blades who I think you guys know.

Nick Emmel: But she obsesses about share of experience

Co-host: of brands and quantifying the impact of that. And it comes back to that 75, 25 rule that uh, only 25% of brand building effect is through paid comms. 75% comes from everything else. And you know, that could be your experience of opening the packaging or your conversation with someone online or seeing some litter on the street with McDonald's written on it. All of those little things all add up to our perceptions of the brand and the impact um, which that has on my purchasing potential of that brand. And she has got a methodology to measure this so she can literally follow people around and count all of those moments where there is an experiential cue of that brand out in the real world and then quantify the impact which that is having on people's experience of the brand. And she's done this across so many different brands in so many different categories. And the total understanding which he's getting to in the fact which I love the most from this research is that if you correlate the share of experience of a brand against its share of market, it correlates far better, far more closely than share of voice does. And that becomes really interesting that if you can understand the quality and number of those experiences and ensure that they are all aligned behind one thing, you can have a bigger impact than you could possibly have through the share of voice of that brand. So that's number one. Number two, there is also a brilliant study by Forrester which looks into the commercial impact of brand experience and customer experience and how well they are aligned across a number of big companies.

Nick Emmel: And um, the outcome of that is

Co-host: that those businesses that have close correlation between the brands and the total experience which they are delivering have a three and a half times revenue multiplier versus other brands which do not. And that is an immense thing to have sat on the table which is not being exploited. And I think that leads to my

Nick Emmel: third part of this is that we

Co-host: are not talking about going to the C suite and saying I need an extra 10 million in media expenditure here. I'm not saying you need to go in there and invest 100 million in building a new product. I'm going, how can you just re steer the existing efforts within the organization behind a clear cohesive thought and approach which makes you special and distinctive and then just resteer everyone behind that? That is the thing which just unlocks the pre existing potential within the business. And why would you not want to pull those levers? In many ways it stops you doing many of the things that you might be considering to do otherwise. Because you've now got clarity of thought of what actually is going to make you special and what's ultimately going to resonate out there.

Nick Emmel: So all of this adds up to

Co-host: get that focus, get that clarity of what you're trying to be and then just pull every single lever that is open to you just by re steering the ship and you can reap that three and a half times multiplier for the business who is not going to take that.

Host: It's super exciting and I really do think that it plays into a marketer using our entire toolkit as opposed to just one of the elements of it over and over again. So I think it's an empowering place to be for a marketer as opposed to anything else. And I think for a marketer really, to some degree, some organizations are doing this much better than others, but it's definitely to be embraced across the board. So, Nick, I mean, of course things are transforming at a rapid rate and it's an exciting time for you guys at Mr. Pull in and around the new way of diagnosing some of these core brand alignment issues and problems that you've spoken about. So tell us a little bit about the sort of the new NPD product development that you've got at the moment in and around this area.

Nick Emmel: This will probably be about Verity, which

Co-host: is, uh, our new brand cohesion diagnostic tool which we're getting a lot of interest around and I'm super excited by. And it's to answer, uh, sort of a fundamental question around this, which is we all talk about, uh, the need for brand alignment, but there is no way to measure it. It's one of those things we kind of instinctively look at and try and sort of work out and sort of

Nick Emmel: go, I get a sense of it

Co-host: being right, but I think we need to have a way to quantify it to help make the case for the job which we're doing and help to show the progress which we're making against the goals which we're setting ourselves. So we've built this really brilliant platform which essentially measures three things, which is clarity, conviction and cohesion. And the way in which this works out is we do this across a number of different audiences so we can look at them all together. So in its simplest sense, we can go to consumers and do a large scale quant survey with that audience and we can ask them about their understanding and perceptions of the brand, what it means to them, and all the questions which we need to ask in a very traditional way. But what we're really looking for out of these answers is the story strands of what people are saying. So how many different versions of their understanding of the brands actually exist out there.

Nick Emmel: And the joy of Verity is it allows us to put an LLM behind

Co-host: it and actually use it for the case which it's meant to be used for, which is interpreting large language. And so you can ask people very rich questions.

Nick Emmel: And then Verity passes all of this

Co-host: through and goes, actually what I'm seeing here is three, four different threads of stories that people are saying and tell us what those stories are and quantify the number of people who are saying those particular story strands, which allows us to then apply a Clarity score to it, because we're all aiming for a moment where all of our consumers are going, yep, we agreed this is the single thing which makes your brand particularly special and why I like it and why I want to buy from it. But many brands might have four or five different story strands, which might be very conflicting. And so Verity can both identify what these are, but then apply a score for your clarity. The higher it is, the less story strands you have. It can also look at the conviction with which that's told, which is effectively the emotional resonance. Like, are people buying into this? Are they believing it? Are they saying it with the sort of passion you need to make people go, well, I'm going to buy as

Nick Emmel: a result of this.

Co-host: And that can be positive, it can be negative, too. But you can apply that score to it. But then we repeat that exercise with your employees. And this is something which we never do. We ask employees lots of questions about their career progress and their understanding of the values.

Nick Emmel: I. I want to ask them the

Co-host: same questions that I'm asking my customers. Do you understand what the brand is? What is your perception of it? And from that, you get your story strands coming out. I get my clarity score, I get my conviction score. But then we can also go and say, well, actually, how does your brand appear online? So if I'm searching for it or I'm looking at it through an AI lens, what are the story strands that come out from that? What is the clarity of that? What is the conviction of the story that's coming out from that?

Nick Emmel: Because that's the reality of how people

Co-host: are discovering the brand. And then finally, I can put in the leadership vision. So I can go, all right, uh, what is the board trying to communicate about the strategic imperative of the brand and the special source that we've got and the angle which we're going to win within the marketplace? What is our brand's story and what is the internal values, culture, statements and everything which goes with it? I can put all of that into Verity, too, and that will interrogate those and go, well, is there clarity in what's being said there? Is there conviction with which is being said there? So you have your four individual diagnostics

Nick Emmel: of those four key areas, but then

Co-host: the magic of it is, it then does an exercise of going, how cohesive is each of those to one another? Because that's where you really get your diagnostic understanding of where the challenges are. Because you go, is it that my employees do not buy into my leadership vision? Is it that the consumer just does not see the brand in the same way that the employees do? Is it that the way which we discovered online does not marry up to what we're hoping us, uh, to actually be in the leadership? All of those things and you quickly get a picture of, uh, both quantifying what the problem is, but seeing where the problem is so that you can very quickly go, great, I am now going to make sure that my employees understand this better. Or maybe my vision is just not a reality that people can fulfill. So perhaps we need to change that, or maybe it's just that the consumer perception is lagging from what we trying to change ourselves into. So great, we just need to work with comms to make that better. But the joy of the platform is, is that you can quickly diagnose yourself, you can quickly understand what it is you need to do, and you can quickly re diagnose yourself to show the impact which you are making. So we get a lot of interest from brands at transformational moments, a lot of interest from CMOs who are actually coming into a business for the first time. Time. Because you can go, right, let's look at what the problem is. I can quantify that. I can say, these are the things I'm going to change. And in 100 days I can come back and say, look, I've made an impact, I've made a change, and it's a quantifiable number. And the joy of the platform is, is we can do this in a very bespoke way for clients who are putting in live data. But I can also do a light version of this where I can look at entire categories and all of the brands within that category and effectively do a proxy for the employee understanding, the leadership vision, the consumer understanding and the reality of how it appears online just by scraping all of the data that

Nick Emmel: already exists out there.

Co-host: So we can create league tables, which we do right now for categories, which you can quickly go, this is where we are. I want to delve into this further. Now I can do it more. But it's such a powerful tool to be able to take the vision which we all should be having of going, I want a properly cohesive, powerful brand, but you can just start to align that against, well, what actually is the problem that I need to fix and then show your progress afterwards. And that's what we all need to be able to justify the job that we are doing.

Host: You know, it's interesting because as soon as you said that, it, for me, it kind of, when I started thinking about these iconic brands where intuitively I can understand how the entire organization just kind of get it and get with it. Um, I think to Apple, for example, I can't put my finger exactly what the core brand idea for Apple is, but I certainly walk into an Apple Store and I get a sense of energy from those guys who are being uber helpful, knowing their products well, really living and embodying what I think the perception of my head, what Apple is all about, that expertise, that credibility, that ease of use. And it really comes across. So I totally get the thought of what you're describing there. Um, and then you take the converse of organizations which feel so disconnected, and I can imagine the growth potential that you have, and maybe Apple's a great example of it, versus those other organizations which just feel completely broken down and siloed and therefore we just don't know. You know, as a customer, you kind of feel like each department, the worst thing that happens is when you're on the phone in a customer service example and they say, oh, yeah, that's the bank. I'm like, but to me, you are the bank. And how, you know, if you had that singular idea which is all keeping people together, that probably would never happen. So it's a really powerful thought.

Nick Emmel: It is. I mean, Apple is a great example because that's always been so clearly defined in people's heads. Almost to the point where the current situation with Apple, particularly around Tim Cook and his political affiliations, is starting to show people where the cracks could be in it. Because a brand which is brought about through think different and all about the creative communities and trying to be countercultural to the, uh, establishment behemoth of Microsoft and how it's been embraced and become so much part of the identity. People who use a brand like that, you buy into it, everyone buys into it. But now when you start to see cracks happening again, but they're doing things that maybe I don't fully agree with, it suddenly doesn't feel like this for me, and you're going, well, that's it. This is part of it. You know, that is a huge lever, uh, in people's perceptions of the brand. And it's just the way in which the CEO is being perceived to behave right now. And it's all of these things are the constituent elements which need to be kept sacrosanct or they need to evolve over time. If that's the reality of how the business is evolving.

Co-host: I don't think this is a trick question. It's more of a practical reality. But how does this Principle work in a multi brand environment. So if you, I remember back in the day hsbc, you know ultimately some people might be answering to a first direct customer one minute and then to an HSBC customer and then to an Ms. Money. And uh, if I think about obviously Mars Nestle, all of these companies as well that have multi brands. So yeah, I mean m. That just how does it work?

Nick Emmel: I mean it's, it gets tricksy and messy when you start to get into organizations like that. I mean when you're within a uh, uh. I mean we work with the likes of White and mackay and there's lots of different whiskey brands which exist within it and each of those need to have their own affiliated idea which is just purely for them. And you're not trying to leverage anything off the wider White Mackay brand. It's going, you just have to be what you are, are because that's your route into the market. Even within an hsbc. I mean we work with the HSBC private bank. So uh, that's a very singular part of what the bank is and you've got to be beholden to the wider idea what ah, HSBC is trying to achieve. But there is space and breadth within that particular part of the bank that you need to have a singular idea which to them is about making the right connection which is entirely everything that's is differentiating and important to their ultra high net worth customers. That I've got a world full of connections which are open to me. I'm an ultra high net worth, everyone wants to connect with me but I know that if I go to HSBC they will find me the singular one who will do the best job. And because they've got the breadth and the scale and the reach that an HSBC does, you know that they're going to have a brilliant person for every single thing that you need to go and do. But that's going actually in that instance it's better to wrap the story around the particular audience and the particular area which you're speaking to rather than trying to dilute it to have something which is everything to everyone.

Co-host: So uh, that makes complete sense and I think to some extent we crack that direct line in across the portfolio of brands there. But I know you've got a specific one where the rubber hits the road, the Vodafone example. Because you've got to take an organization on a journey here.

Nick Emmel: Yeah.

Co-host: And that will be including calling out some uncomfortable truths. So tell us a bit about the Vodafone example.

Nick Emmel: I mean this was probably when all of this idea first formed in our heads, I mean a lot of the team@ uh, Mr. President all came from dare, which was a big digital agency back in the wild west days of when digital agencies were a thing. And um, I guess we're all doing expensive banners and flash websites and it was the future. But the reality of what we're really understanding was that what we were doing was a very new role for brands and for agencies in that we suddenly had this view that we were in charge of the everything that yes, there was the comms there, but then what's that mean for the experience, for the website, for the social, the service? All of those things started to come under the remit of what digital actually was. And there was uh, sort of a really pivotal moment when we were working with BBH as the above line agency and I think it was OMD at the time, the media agency and there was a CRM agency and PAA and there was all of these people and we were challenged by the board, um, by Nick Reed I think it was at the time. Um, they wanted to have a big new brand refresh and where was it going to go? And BBH did some beautiful BBHE type work and it was going to be a 20 million spend in out of home and it was gorgeous stuff and it was picking up all these different product areas and everything. They wanted to talk about all the progressive stuff that Vodafone could be to you but we had to go and present this and then it was my job to do the now I do the digital bit afterwards. Well, I guess the ambition in your head is going well now I'm going to show you the, the out of home but in banner format. But they did this beautiful presentation. Everyone really loved it and then when it came to us, uh, I couldn't resist. But they had just presented all this lovely out of homework and so I showed a slide of that and then my second slide was a picture of their website and it was this geocities type website. We still had blue links with underlines on it. It was a website that didn't even work on your mobile phone. This is Vodafone and um, you're going, you're spending this huge amount of money proclaiming the future of what Vodafone can be to customers. But the moment they actually go and do something about it, the moment they have an interaction with the brand, it's freaking awful and it completely undermines everything which you're doing and respect to the team at uh, Vodafone and Nick Reed at the time because they just went well all right, fix it. You know, it's like this is it, this is the priority. I know we're spending money there, but we've got three months make the website at least better. And that kicked off the whole mentality within your organization of going. It's actually your everything needs to be building up to every part of what you could actually be. And it actually led to the switching round of almost the agency relationship that it was no longer about. We're waiting for the tele to be created, then everything else to going actually what is our experiential idea, uh, at the front which informs our everything. And then how does almost the advertising advertise that versus it being about the advertising idea? And that was in 2004, 2005. And I genuinely thought that by now that would just be the way things are done. But it still feels, it isn't.

Host: It seems really interesting and actually I love the reframing of it. It reminded me of uh, the example of Burberry and their digital experience that they had and they often talk about. Rather than in the olden days, the digital experience was in and around. How do you emulate the in store experience on your phone? And actually they conversed that and changed it to the digital experience in store. And just because of the digitization process that took place. I think what you've got here is something quite powerful. But actually lift above, lift us, sort of take the lift off of the hood and tell us a little bit about the process you would go through to actually get to the answer to this, to even start a campaign of this nature. What, what are the sort of the, the levers that you guys pull as an agency to be able to help organizations or brands really discover their single truth?

Nick Emmel: You know, this is the most old fashioned answer. I want to give you some cool AI thing but I can't. Um, it's people. And the thing is that the number one untold truth of an idea is it only exists through the people who live it. So when trying to get to what is this defining idea that should sit at the heart of it, it already exists in the minds of the people who bring it to life every single day. From the founder to the frontline staff to the customers who are experiencing it, more often than not, the singular answer, uh, which gives you that clarity is already there, but it's often that it's muddled. Everyone's in the woods, you're hearing it in lots of different ways, you're saying it in lots of different ways, and it never quite comes to bear. And you can see the confusion in people. They're almost there. And the job is always just speaking to a big diagonal cross section of that organization, allowing people to be heard, allowing them to have their voices aired. Partly because there's so much insight to be found within it when you actually start speaking to people, but also because ultimately you need those people to buy into the idea which you're giving them. And by bringing everyone along on that journey, they were way more likely to buy into what's being told when they're part of that contribution to the idea in the first place. And so so much of it is extensive stakeholder interviews and workshopping to try and get to that singular truth. And then being able to have an impartial eye, which is slightly removed from it, which allows you, with a bit more clarity, to be able to see what's already being said and be able to ratify that with your place in the market, to ratify that with your audiences and say, actually, that is powerful. And more often than not, when you're going back in to say, this is your truth, it's always met with, yeah, yeah, it is. I always thought that I could just never articulate it quite like that. And that's the correct moment, because that's almost the moment of resonance where you're going, yes, and now I can articulate that back in the same way. And, um, the big lever which we always found is the most useful is I do some brilliant strategy slides. They're amazing. I do hundreds of them. Graphs everywhere. But really, the thing which makes a difference is when you creatively articulate it in what we call an ethos, is if you can find a way to tell the story in a, um, pithy way, which reflects some of the language and personality of what you are as the brand, but actually tell the strategic story of what makes you special and different and everything which goes with it. And you can articulate it creatively. You suddenly land a story in everyone's, um, heads. It's the sort of thing which you go, if you can make the founder cry, you've probably done it right, but it's like, it's my baby, as I always saw it. But now it's all polished up. And suddenly when you give people a story, there's something really powerful in that, because stories are passed down through the ages and you remember the storyline roughly, you remember the characters are in it, you remember the tonality, the morality of it all of those sort of things tend to come through, but you can interpret it in your own way and there's something powerful in it. When you go, actually, I can retell that story, but I'll tell my version of it, you're still landing the same point, but there is flexibility in how that is brought to life. And that's the thing that when you go and speak to people all across the organization, to actuaries sitting in there, they go, actually, I can now talk about the brand. Um, and I know that I'm pretty much on the ball, on the nose with what I'm saying. And I think when that lands, then you start to see behaviors change. And all of this is people. This is like, how can I get the stories from people and then re engineer it back through the organization so that everyone can buy into it? And that's when people are ready to go. I understand what I can do with this now.

Co-host: So, Nick, the, the world is changing in front of our eyes with generative AI and LLMs. So I'm going to ask you to look into your crystal ball. What's going to be the impact of AI on brands?

Co-host: I mean, that's a big one, isn't it? And it's one which we certainly are all talking about and we're all trying to understand. I mean, we're all working this out

Nick Emmel: as we go along.

Co-host: But I think there's one fundamental truth that is changing is the way in which we are discovering brands and understanding what they can mean to us is now going to be disintermediated via, uh, the lens of AI. Your traditional methods of searching are going to disappear and you're going to be starting to ask questions of what I should be buying and why I should buy it and who I should choose and everything which comes with that. The challenge that that presents to everyone is that your brand is now going to be represented by the many signals of what your brand actually is out there in the world. Every single one of those comments by one of your employees, every single press release, every single interaction that someone's had on Reddit about it, uh, every single

Nick Emmel: trustpilot review is now going to be

Co-host: smooshed together to represent the truth of what your brand is. So you're now in a state where the funnel is effectively collapsed. And I'm going to be going direct from going, which things should I buy? What should I actually be doing? And then being presented immediately with a generified answer about what, what the brand is that I'm looking for and therefore There is an imperative to go, christ, what does AI say about my brand? What are those signals that it's pulling in? And for most brands, it is quite a weak generic signal. That's what LLMs are, uh, looking for. They're just trying to go, what can I find about this? The job now is going, how can you ensure that every single one of the things that you are saying about the brand and every single secondary and tertiary wave of the impact impact of what your brand is and therefore how people are talking about you, starts to have a truth and a singularity in it which represents the angle which you're trying to get out there. And that is the reality of why we need to be assessing about the total experience. I want every to not be constantly talked about in every way of, my

Nick Emmel: God, their service is awful, because that

Co-host: comes right to the fore.

Nick Emmel: But also, if you look at, uh,

Co-host: every, when you search for it through this lens, it also comes through as cheap, which is also referenced many times. And that's why I go for that strategic imperative again. Well, actually, perhaps leverage the fact that you are known for your cheapness and make that more of your salient point you're trying to make because it's already out there and you can re emphasize that point against the service queue. So it's now just starting to understand you can't hide anymore behind a brand promise and shouting from the rooftops about what you want to be, because LLMs are going to expose what you really. And our job is to make sure that it's now picking up a truth that we want it to say about us, which genuinely could appear through that disintermediated lens.

Host: You talk about a lot about the thought about the internal stakeholders and the articulation of the broad idea with them and therefore playing it back. But clearly the art of marketing plays part internal and part external. And therefore what's the methodology that's adopted to get the customer lens? And then how do you marry that up between the external and the internal

Nick Emmel: when you're doing your interrogation of the brand in the first instance? It's always a nice balancing act between the reality of how the brand exists in people's heads internally, the reality of how it currently exists externally in people's minds, and the ambition of where we want it to go so it's got its place in the market. That gives us distinction and salience in people's minds. So there's always a balancing act to try and work out the trajectory and the path which you want to go on. But always keeping it to the guardrail of what is true and achievable and realistic for that organization to actually own. Um, and be interesting.

Host: You know, the other thing that I wanted just to touch on, Nick. Right. Is that marketing as an industry has gotten extraordinarily short term. Um, m. We all know this. And yet it goes against the grain potentially of significant value creation. Because if you look at the core theory, 60, 40, brand versus performance and so on, so forth. And then therefore, when you're with your clients, with your CMOs, discussing the big brand idea, many of them will be sitting there going, this is all well and good and yet I'm under significant pressure to move my needle this quarter. So how do you balance the, you know, the ongoing pressure, shall we say, of your clients to go down more performance? Whilst actually, in many regards what we talked about here today, brand is a

Nick Emmel: real unlock the difference in my head. And I really hate the distinction between direct response and brand. I think that's always been one of those weird fallacies that we get ourselves wrapped up in a little bit too much as though they're two separate entities. Because if you have that mindset, you go, well, there is this direct response engine and it's going to be Zuckerberg powered and it's going to be programmatic and it's going to be churning out the best possible message to make the best possible thing fly out the other end of it. Every part of what you're expressing should be born of a fundamental idea. There should be something which you are ultimately trying to communicate and reference with your brand. There should be consistent equities which you're building up in your brand which should be appearing in every one of these places and spaces. So you get the cumulative effect. The reality is now you're often coming into places which have already a strand of, uh, performance or direct response flying out the door and it's doing a particular job that should never stop. The short termism is always going to be there because there's always going to be a requirement for stuff to be sold at any given point in time. What you're essentially coming in with, with this additional layer is the opportunity of a multiplier. Something which can start to increase the efficacy of what it is that you're already doing and build longer term potential for what that brand could ultimately get to. We're often in the situation with a lot of our clients where they're at that performance plateau where you're going, there's only so many more ads I can Stick out of there in the market only so much more I can wring out of the bottom end of that funnel. And you've got to start to reshape the way in which the brand is going out into market to give yourself the longevity of uh, what the brand can be and the ultimate potential with which that can get to. And you can only do that by having consistency of brand idea and brand assets being put out into people's minds to help with the recognizability of what that brand is and the consideration drivers that come from that. But that's just got to be a long term beast. But it always comes back to the same thing. What is the core idea, what is the ultimate thing you're doing? And then stick to it and be relentless about how you build up all of those assets and equities within it and then explain, express it at every single touch point.

Co-host: So we've had lots of great brand examples today. What makes a great client, what do they need to hold on to and what do they need to let go of to be a great client?

Nick Emmel: I think that there's probably two camps which we often find is that there are clients who are beholden to creative and beholden to showiness, beholden to the big bang which is often very much wrapped up into this is the big expression of what we can do versus there are clients who just seem to be ones who are the everything within an organization. The ones who, who seem to be able to work the politics, who seem to be a friend within all parts of it. The ones who can show their true value to everything and everyone within that organization. And whenever we have had our uh, most successful moments of embedding a big proper inside out brand idea within an organization, it's been because of the ability of that client to bring in everyone and make them feel included and see the value of what they are doing through the value which it can bring to the rest of the organization. And it's almost that gregariousness of character that allows things to go through and gives them more perfection to be involved in everything. And I've always been a big believer that marketing should be imbued throughout the organization. It should never be a siloed function because it does impact everything. But it definitely takes a certain character to be able to be that interlinking node within a business.

Co-host: So Nick, I'm just going to push you a tiny bit further on that point around character. Mhm. And I don't know where this question will go, but can you what Type of, maybe who's a metaphor of the type of person that good clients need to be.

Nick Emmel: Um, it'd probably be remiss of me being, uh, a founder at Mr. President, not to talk about the presidential analogy. I mean, we're talking about inside out ideas. Mr. President was built from its foundation so that we could enact that sort of presidential rallying cry. I've always been fascinated by politics and the effect which can have on people. And when you get genuinely charismatic leaders who can speak to a wide church and make them all feel involved and get them invigorated and rallied behind an idea, that's how you always generate momentum in society and how you can generate momentum within businesses and brands. And it takes a certain sort of character who can stand there and excite people and make them feel like they are part of this movement together. And I think that's the role that we always want to be playing as an agency. I want people to be so excited about the core idea that they're like, yes, I can do this too. I see where I'm going. I want to be with you on this journey. I've got conviction and direction. I know where we're going. But that to me is the ideal image in my head for the perfect client is someone who can grasp hold of something like that and rally the organization behind it and get them excited, excited about it. Because that's when it really embeds and it really starts to happen. And it might be that you get that from a great founder of a business. But often as businesses scale, you need other voices who can do that and can represent that. And that's why having these defining ideas is such an easy vessel for people to buy into. To say, this is a thing that we're going to get behind and I want the energy to go with that.

Host: Look, guys, the time has flown by so quick and it's been fascinating, Nick. And honestly, I think the methodology here is really rich and how you've articulated is absolutely spot on. So it will resonate with the audience. But I want to end with more of a career related question because you've had a stellar career, um, and clearly founding one of the iconic agencies here in the uk. Um, but if there's other people looking to kind of go in your footsteps, whether it's someone, maybe client side who wants to join agency or um, um, agency side, or indeed someone who's looking to forge successful career agency side, what advice would you give them?

Nick Emmel: Don't do it now. I mean it's, it's it's an industry which is changing a lot.

Host: Yeah.

Nick Emmel: And the traditional paths with which most people would be engaging with the agency would have been through big network agencies and how they used to exist and the, the grad schemes that they would nurture people through. But it's, uh, it's the, a scary place out there from that environment, if you look at it through that lens, because those are the networks, the ones which are cutting back and removing people and trying to automate everything and trying to justify their costs whilst not particularly performing well for their clients. The flip side of this is that there's never been a greater amount of really interesting specialists who are popping up in lots of different places with really smart people in it. And I think that the environment for marketing and creative agencies and media agencies, all the specialists in between, is fascinating right now because there's brilliant independents working in very different ways, doing very specific, brilliant stuff. And that's often where the opportunity lies because it's like, what thing am I going to get interested in? Could it be that it's influencer? Could it be this version of media? Could it be this version of design? And there is a lot of that going there and there's a lot of hunger and there's a lot of appetite. The thing which we see from it is that there is a need for a role for people who can orchestrate that, because almost the flip side of when you end up with lots of specialisms, doing lots of brilliant things, you end up with a level of fragmentation in capabilities and skills. And I think the relationships with a lot of clients are now having is with multiple small agencies who do things brilliantly but do it in their own ways. That people who can start to bring a mindset of where they can see the whole picture, where they can see how it fits into the whole picture, who can play a more cohesive role across all of those things, that's where the real value lies. And whether you are in one of the smaller agencies and seeing your place and how you can contribute, or whether you're the ones who are sat in the middle and pulling all the strings and making all of that work, there is a huge need for that skill set and ability right now.

Host: I'm glad you ended on that note, because if you just said the first part of the answer, hey, but there you go. Look, it's been a wonderful conversation, Nick, so thank you so much for your time and yeah, uh, good luck with, uh, everything that's coming up.

Nick Emmel: Thanks.