Marketing
At a time when marketing has infiltrated our physical and virtual worlds, how should we think about it? Is it just advertising in different clothing or can it reveal deeper insights into our psychology and social interactions?
In this week’s podcast, we discuss marketing with special guest David Folkman, who has had a 20-year career in marketing and entrepreneurialism. We discuss the impact of technology, the psychology of advertisers, advertising models, Tinder, canned water, AI, creativity and the future. Finally, we ask David about his biggest marketing disasters and industry takeaways.
David has a long career working for consumer brands including Mars, Nestle, and Innocent Drinks, and co-founded a number of food and drink businesses including CleanCo and Cheesies. He has also advised numerous companies on sales and marketing strategy. His new website is coming soon and can be found at www.davidfolkman.com
For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email podcast@alephinsights.com
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights, and also this week with our special guest, Dave Folkman. And this week, we're discussing marketing. Nick, who's that? I don't know him. So let me just, why he's here, then I'll tell you a little bit about him and then he can tell you about himself. He's much more interesting on the topic of himself than I will be. So you may have heard me mention the great profession of marketing in the past. I'm sometimes a bit critical of it. It turns out this is actually a position of complete ignorance. I have known Dave for zillions of years. We actually studied economics together. Oh my God, he's not another economist. Well, he's much more than that. I didn't know that. I would have vetoed this. Much more than that. But Dave is also one of these people who has, he's got an uncanny, he's got a finger on the prostate of the zeitgeist. And we have actually, we worked together on a startup that was way ahead of its time, about 15 years ago, which was about trying to turn sort of pictures into data that you could use to try and work out, if you were a food or drink company, trying to work out your shelf presence and that kind of stuff. It was too advanced. The idea was amazing, but it was a bit too advanced for where the tech was. But the point is that Dave has been working in the world of fast-moving consumer goods and brands and he's kind of an entrepreneur, set up loads of different companies and a perfect person to talk about how the game has changed in that world over the last 20 years and where it's going. So that's why I've got him on here. We're talking about the state of play with marketing, where it's gone and where it's going to go. The big M. Right. And I want to find out how wrong I am about all the rude things. So one thing, I probably think marketing is advertising and Dave's probably going to tell me that's bollocks. Okay. Over to you. And Dave, lovely intro. Dave, beyond what Nick has said, anything else you can tell us? Flesh that out for us a bit. I mean, a bit more about yourself.
Speaker B: ed Nick to my wedding back in: Speaker A:I mean, we could delve into that further. That infuriates me, actually, on your behalf. I would only ruin things. True, true, true, true. It's better off without him. Okay. I mean, would it be fair to describe you as a kind of serial entrepreneur?
Speaker B:My career today has sort of been a game of two halves. So I first started off in the big bad world of corporate. So I was at Mars and Nestle and then at Innocent Drinks for about a decade or so. Within marketing? Sales and marketing.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker B:And then I took the jump into the world of entrepreneurism. So at that point, I did a bit with Nick and then I started three brands. One of those was a posh cordial called Fiavanna, which turned out not to be the wild success I hoped it would be. Another one was a cheesed snack called Cheesies, which was and did rather well. So I managed to sell that business last year. And then another brand in the non-alcoholic spirit space called Clean Co. Which is huge now. It is very big. Well, it's very large if you think about the amount of press and attention that the category gets, but the sales numbers are actually not that particularly large.
Speaker A:I'm sorry, what's the name of, I missed because Nick was talking over.
Speaker B:A company called Clean Co.
Speaker A:Clean Co. All right, cool. Where are you from, Dave?
Speaker B:I was born in Twickenham, but then moved to Sheffield when I was about one, and then moved to Manchester until I was about 18. And then went to Edinburgh with Nick here, and then back to London. He's actually a soft southerner despite his...
Speaker A:He's got an interesting accent. Anyway, anyway, I digress. Nick, over to you. Here's our wonderful special guest, Dave, go for it. What's marketing? Is it advertising?
Speaker B:No, I think is the very short. So marketing is a lot more than advertising. I mean, I think both marketing and advertising, this is how are you competing for someone's attention. You know, I think it simply boils down to that. Marketing is much more encompassing. So marketing is around, it could be anything from how your employees answer the phone at the office. It's what the product itself does. It could be packaging, it could be price. So I like to think it's marketing is it's earned attention. So what are the things that you're doing to get attention from the consumer without you having to pay for that attention? Whereas advertising is bought attention. So in the old world, it would be, well, let's play some adverts on TV, where people's attention is naturally directed. And I'm going to buy that attention from ITV or Channel 4. So I think they are very distinct, but quite interlinked subjects.
Speaker A:I mean, isn't advertising just, you know, one weapon in the arsenal of marketing?
Speaker B:Very much so. And there are many brands who've been successful without spending a penny on advertising. I mean, take Tesla, for example. So the world's most valuable car manufacturer, they've never spent a penny on advertising. It's all been done. Yeah, they don't spend any money on advertising. It's all been done through, I mean, I've got a controversial figurehead, but they have managed to build the business without any traditional spend.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, that's, I mean, so is it fair to say that, like, everything you do is basically marketing? Like if you're a company, even choosing not to consider, if you don't sit down and think about, you know, e.g. the way that your people answer the phone, if that's even a thing these days. Do people have front desks with phones and receptionists? Absolutely. Let's say they do. Like if you don't design something for them to say, that in itself is a kind of choice about marketing.
Speaker B:No, absolutely. So when I was at Innocent Drinks, on the back of their bottles, they write, fancy a chat, call the banana phone. And that was a very deliberate piece of copy. And then that phone call would then go into a random table at Innocent Drinks. So part of your training was, you're going to get a call from consumers. And this is how you answer the banana phone.
Speaker A:Did people actually dial the banana phone?
Speaker B:Yeah, we got calls all the time. And you could speak to one of the founders or to someone in the post room. But that was a very deliberate choice as part of their marketing mix.
Speaker A:Because they were very like, we're a friendly new kind of, they were that kind of, there's probably a technical word for it. But that kind of chummy style of marketing, which I've got to be honest, really, really riles me. It just makes me think there's something super sinister going on underneath. And I'm looking forward to hearing the goods. Yeah, like it turns out it's made of mashed up baby chicks or something.
Speaker B:Well, they famously put on the back of the ingredients, they put apples, strawberries and one and a half nuns. And then they had a number of complaints and they had to remove that.
Speaker A:So I know we had a quick chat about this. How would you say, I mean, it feels to me like the technology has changed a lot of things, but it must have changed. It must have had a really significant effect on how you approach marketing strategy. These days, it must be totally different. What would you say the biggest changes are in the last 25 years?
Speaker B:Well, I think the big stuff is on the technology and the number of points where you can take someone's attention. So you look at mobile phones, that's probably the most obvious place because we are all sitting on the tubes nowadays, rather than reading the book or pondering the life coming into work on the tube. So having a significantly more number of avenues where you can advertise, I think has been the biggest change in the last 20 years or so. In the good old days, let's go back 20 or 30 years, sort of pre the internet, pre mobile phones. If you're a brand, you want to reach a lot of people, you could go on to ITV channel four, pay for your advert, and you reach several million people. Now that has become significantly more fragmented over the years, you know, TV has less reach that used to do. So it's become perhaps slightly harder for advertisers to reach a very large number of people.
Speaker A:Hold on, before we go on. I find myself in the unusual position of feeling both ebullient, triumphant, but depressed as well. I know. Share your problems. Yes, I shall. Which is because usually on these podcasts, we talk about stuff where you start banging on about AI or LLM and stuff like that. Oh, we're getting to that, don't worry. Well, I want to because and usually I sit here going, I don't want to do it now. Well, where I sit here going, what? But in this case, I feel sorry for both myself and for Dave, because the stuff that you're asking is super basic. Okay. And wait, wait, because I come from a background where I've sort of been involved in marketing, digital marketing, Yeah, you know about that. Yeah, I know about this stuff. Okay. But just as I mean, maybe it's thinking about our audience.
Speaker C:Maybe this is why we've never asked you.
Speaker A: orship section, like it's the: Speaker B:Well, I think it's becoming increasingly easy to reach a vast number of people. And if you think about the role of a marketeer, it is fundamentally, how do you reach those consumers who purchased your products on few occasions? Right. So if we think about, let's take Coke as an example, because everyone understands Coke. You know, Coca-Cola is purchased an average number of 12 cans per year. Okay. But the distribution... Per person, right? I was going to say, because they're not doing that well, if it literally is. No, but the distribution of those purchases is significantly skewed. So most people buy a can of Coke once or twice a year. Right. And then you have some super loyal people who buy a can of Coke three times a day. Right. So actually, the job of the marketeer, it's not to attract the people who are buying Coke three times a day, because they're going to do it. Yeah. So marketing is about how do you reach all those liked buyers, because they are the people who are ultimately going to drive and grow your business. And by having technology where you can get to anyone pretty much all the time, whether it's on YouTube, on their phone, on their TV, in the cinema, podcasts, for example, it's become much easier to do that than back in the days when we
Speaker C:just didn't have access to this technology. Yeah. So I guess easier in some sense that everyone is staring at a screen a lot of the time, but harder because the options are so vast and different. And so designing it, designing an optimal strategy is probably quite complicated
Speaker B:compared to how it used to be. Yeah. And I think that's partly where some of the art comes in, in terms of what the content and the creative is that you then see. And I've got a friend who runs an advertising agency, and he said that their number one priority is to make brands famous. Now, that's harder than it sounds, because you can come up with a wonderful campaign full of creativity and it falls on its backside. So it's still that I think that what you show people is where the art comes in, whereas the technology has allowed a more structured way to reach those
Speaker A:people. But also, at some point, it's got to tie into a bottom line, even if the point is making these brands famous, let's say, at some point that needs to translate into sales as well. And the way that happens is tricky, right? But is it better understood now, though? But also the consumer is
Speaker B:more savvy as well, I think. But anyway. Well, I think that the chief role of advertising is not to generate sales in that moment. So the main reason why you advertise is to build and reinforce memory structures for a brand. So if you think about that Coke example, if I ran a Coke advert for Christmas, and I know that most people are only going to buy my can of Coke once or twice a year, the chances are they're not going to buy during that time of year. So it's why Coke will run the same adverts again and again and again is so that when you are in the mood for a cola, you go to the shop, and you remember red. You look at all of the different brands of cola available. And remember, Coke is cola. So you pick up a can. So it advertising is about the memory rather than trying to sell to you immediately, right? And the way the way I think about it is
Speaker C:like they, the advertising implants are sort of heuristic in your head, that when you think of thirsty, and I'm in a shop, you go, ah, Coke, it kind of like links those that that feeling of thirstiness and seeing people being satisfied when they drink a Coke with that thing.
Speaker A:I guess that we must have some sense of confusing familiarity with with quality or something. I mean, that must rely on us thinking that something that we're we've seen before or heard about is more likely to be good, right? That must Is that true? I know it makes it sound kind of like
Speaker B:they're exploiting us. But no, I think that's completely true. And part of the role of the brand and advertising is to make you feel comfortable and familiar with those brands. We're all very busy people. So we don't really not really sits there and ponders and about brands, you know, that really doesn't happen. But it's in that occasion, when you're looking to make a purchase, you will pick up the product that you're most familiar with. And we often talk about physical and mental availability, right? So to grow a brand, you basically have to have both. So Coke wouldn't be where it is unless it was physically distributed everywhere. They talk about within within arm's reach, they want a can or a bottle of Coke to always be within arm's reach of any consumer on the planet. That does sound very dark. So rest. Yeah, don't give an AI that. So part of the growth of a brand will be from where it's simply placed. And then the other side is mental availability. And that's where advertising comes in, and the ability to, over
Speaker A:time, for you to remember that brand. So in the old days, I was, I think I've heard this from someone, or it was just a commonplace. People used to advertise, but they had no idea whether it was worth doing, right? They used to everyone knows you spend a certain amount of money, I don't know how much, maybe you can tell me, but how much it costs to run an advert on BBC, on ITV, or whatever, you know, you run an advert, and then some people buy your products, but you don't really know whether the advert has caused them to do that. Whereas, whereas, you know, nowadays, you think, well, I can actually see what they're looking at, almost, I can see what they're clicking on. And, you know, how many times they've physically seen it. So it feels to me like we must have a really good idea about how much you get from, you know, advertising. And also, like, what affects it? Does it help if it's flashing on and off? Or is that worse? Does it help if it's red or green?
Speaker B:You know, is all of that true? Or is it still? Yeah, I mean, advertising agents will sell you very sophisticated models to demonstrate that the adverts that you've just purchased to influence sales in various ways. So I think we are getting much better at that. But if you go back to my point that advertising is sales are built over time, rather than you run an advert, and you suddenly sell twice as much as you did the day before that, right, that doesn't really happen. So the influence of those ads is actually less impactful than perhaps you may think. But how do they know it
Speaker A:works? Is it just voodoo? They just hope it works. And because everyone spends money on it?
Speaker B:No, well, they'll go out and they'll speak to consumers. So they'll understand why you picked up product X, Y and Z. So that you may say, well, I saw it on TV three months ago. So that there is some qualitative research that takes place, but it's still a little bit of a dark art.
Speaker A:So that's really interesting. I would have assumed it's just techies pressing a button, estimating a model and saying, right, we must up our advertising spend by £3.50 per click or something. Yeah. But also, I mean, clearly, I'm not the expert, despite what I said earlier, David. But also you're in danger of confusing advertising and marketing again. We keep getting sucked down. But also, and so therefore talking about this thing of why you're spending money on a certain thing, because it's not necessarily for direct sales. But also things like stuff has changed to do with tech, thinking about social media advertising, stuff like that, where it is more measurable, I think. But it's still just, you know, when I've advertised myself, there you go, I'm doing it as well, marketing, advertising, just because you get more clicks. It's still like, where's my bloody money? Like, I'm spending all this money with you, and I'm getting great awareness or engagement or whatever, but I still need people to spend money with me. But anyway, my point is, it has become more measurable. There are more metrics available, right?
Speaker B:So it's certainly on the digital side and running adverts on Instagram or TikTok. Even if that is you're selling something, which is purely online, it could then influence sales in mainstream distribution. So if I think about Cheesy's, which is a snack brand, which I had, we started off purely on direct consumer. And we knew exactly how much it cost us. Dave, sorry, what does that mean? Direct consumer.
Speaker A:I know you know what it means. I think I know what it means.
Speaker B:So products that you can only purchase via the internet that you will receive. So it wasn't in shops? When we started, we had no physical distribution. It was purely online.
Speaker A:So that explains why I've not seen Cheesy's in my local shop, even though I want to have some now.
Speaker B:Well, it's now in your local Waitrose, and I think WX Smith's around the corner. Oh, cool. So we should pick up that.
Speaker A:We should definitely get some, unless you've got some free stuff you can give us.
Speaker B:So with that model, you can have a very clear acquisition cost. We call it CAC, so customer acquisition cost. And that's very measurable, and you can track that over time. But actually, as we then went with Cheesy's-
Speaker A:Wait a minute. So this is the, how much you have to spend, is it to get on average one person? Correct. Right. And what- To buy on one occasion. Is that 1p? Is it £10? What's the ballpark kind of-
Speaker B:Well, it's very much category dependent.
Speaker A:Also, because it depends what you want them to buy. If they're buying a Ferrari- You mean it's category dependent? Yeah, I think Dave was about to say that. Can you carry on?
Speaker B: d Cheesy's, which was back in: Speaker A:But he just said they could repeat purchase. I know, but like two to three, so I don't know how much it costs for one impression, as I believe it's known. But is that because you're spending something where a million people see it and only one buys it? Is it that kind of, yeah?
Speaker B: imately purchase. But back in: Speaker A:So all of this data that the advertisers get, and I guess it's like if I read a story about a dog, I'm likely to see adverts about dogs. Is that what they use it for, essentially? How do they measure my, how do they know what my interests are?
Speaker B:Well, less now than they used to be able to do, particularly if you're an iPhone. But they, you will have cookies placed in your website. So you'll be tracked around the internet in terms of what you follow and what adverts Google will show you to as an example.
Speaker A:So great. I wanted to sort of broaden this out a bit and maybe get a bit more sort of high level thinking about this. High level thinking, I think, Nick, go. That's a lie, of course. But go on. Yeah, I think, so you touched on something I think is really interesting, which is this, like, is it good for me to have my data used to show me adverts that are more likely, or let's say products in general, like for me to be aware of products that are more likely to suit me? It feels obviously the case that that's better. If someone goes, would you like, if you really like cars, are you interested in learning about new types of car or new types of dog biscuit? The answer is types of car. And yet, people don't like it. Like, I don't like the idea of adverts being targeted to me. Why? Is that a known phenomenon in the world of marketing? And how do people, how can you, you know, what do you do about the fact that people don't like
Speaker B:adverts? Well, I think some people find adverts a necessary evil to find out about new products. But the idea that a targeted advert is going to be better received, if you look at the data, it's true, because you have those interests. But for a brand to really grow, they still need to go back to this point around reach. So, you know, you've seen adverts which aren't necessarily specific to your interests, would still mean that at some point, you may go on to purchase that particular item. Otherwise, how do you find out about new things, new categories?
Speaker A:On my 40th birthday, Facebook showed me an advert for incontinence pants. Yeah, my wife. I missed myself in rage. But I thought that was extraordinary. On my 40th birthday, I'd never seen an advert for incontinence, incontinence pants ever. Yeah, my wife, she's got a leaflet through the door addressed specifically to her for, is it Stenna chairlifts, whatever they're called? She was outraged. Quite rightly so.
Speaker C:Well, the answer to that is give the advertising system more data about you, isn't it? To make it more targeted, to make it more sensitive.
Speaker A:I mean, what's the difference between that and, you know, like, it's a bit like Tinder or something, isn't it? I mean, you know, you want to be matched with products that you like. And those products want to be matched with you, right? So it's kind of, you know, there's a market for that information. I mean, hold on, but we've covered this ground before, which is as it should be, Aleph, which is, you know, algorithms within Spotify and Netflix, et cetera, generating stuff for you, is that good or bad, right? So this is the same, yeah? But also, we're still talking about advertising again. Now, that's okay if we want to talk about advertising, but we keep going back to advertising. But more importantly, I want to hear from Peter. Peter, if you've got a question or observation.
Speaker C:Well, I think the A reaction to the version to this perceived invasion of privacy is to give the system more data. I'd be quite happy to outsource essentially to some sort of agent in the world, lining up for me things that I might want, if it was good enough. You know, it'd save me time searching for things. It'd be something like, oh, I need to buy some new shoes. What are all the shoes out there that suits me? If the system knew my preferences and knew my requirements better, and could just sort of do that query for me and occasionally put them in front of me, I'd love that system, but that would require me to give it more data. So I think it'd be reasonable to do that, to sort of have an advertising profile that I fill out loads of information in, and then companies like yours can use it with my explicit kind of approval.
Speaker A:I, it makes me wonder if, I mean, you know how like matching technologies have been a really big part of, you know, the growth of kind of, well, the things like Uber, like, you know, we all in theory matching a driver to a, someone who wants a journey and, you know, Airbnb and all these other kinds of things where a market is made to exist or Deliveroo, you know, we've got a proliferation of companies that can, that now, you know, it used to be just pizza. Now it's loads of restaurants because it's so easy to sell to people, right? And those apps are trying to match me to the products. If you had that and it worked perfectly, would there be any need to worry about marketing at all? Or would it be all about just the product? Would you just go, well, I want my product to be exactly what as many people as possible want? Well, I think that there are
Speaker B: s back in LA, back in the mid: Speaker A:the business. That's brilliant. And the genius to have the perception to see that, because it's when you explain it post event, it's like, yes, of course. But he's the guy who did it, right? Which is remarkable. I've got a couple of questions I want to ask Dave, but you go for it, Nick. Is it fair to say that a lot of marketing, and I mean, marketing, rather than advertising, is about information, right? That actually, what you're trying to do is there's a kind of information problem, which is that we don't all know everything all the time, right? And so you want to inform people primarily that your product exists, and that it's going to suit someone. You want the people who are going to buy it to know about it, right? Is it fair to say that that's the mission of marketing? Broadly, yes. What is there apart from that?
Speaker B:Well, generating consistent and ongoing sales. I mean, I guess that's interlinked with finding new people. But fundamentally, marketing is about getting the attention as many people as possible with your product. Now, the best way to do that is have such a blindingly good product, it sells itself and is remarkable in the sense that people remark about it. You don't have to spend a single penny in advertising. And there have been some, you know, examples in history where that has got
Speaker A:done very well. And I guess social media has really, in theory, you'd think, well, that will allow the word to spread, right? So word of mouth now has vastly more channels. You know, if I like something, and I talk about it on Facebook, because I'm a boomer, then, you know, 150 people find out about it rather than just me talking to some three people down the pub. Yeah. So it feels like that
Speaker B:should massively improve the reach of a good product. A key part of that is how would you make a brand or a product distinct? So rather than simply differentiating, let's take water, for example. I love that stuff. We love a bit of water. So there's a brand in the US called Liquid Death, right? And they sell cans of water. So there's actually no real differentiation versus any other water product. You know, water is water. Where does the death come in? Well, it doesn't, right? It's just a thing. But in a very crowded, bottled water space, these guys came out with essentially two distinct assets. So they put water in a can, and it looks like an energy drink. And it has an image of a bleeding skull on the front. Right, cool. And this brand is now doing multiple billion dollars in the US. That's inspiring or depressing.
Speaker C:So it's tapping into the energy drink market who don't necessarily want to drink energy drinks.
Speaker B:Completely. But it was so distinct, people talked about it on social media. And the brand basically blew up because it looked so different to anything that was else on the water shelf. So as a marketeer, one of your key requirements is how do you create a product or a brand that is completely distinct? It doesn't have to fundamentally be different. It has to look.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's really interesting. Because this is like what they call, I think it's, I can't remember the term for it. It's basically a kind of self-defeating sort of approach of, let's say you come out with something new and novel. By definition, you cannot then just copy that because it'll no longer, you know, when someone else brings out an obvious, you know, liquid death clone, it's not going to work now, right? You've always got to find something new. The question is, is that something that we might be able to automate? To what extent is the world of marketing finding uses? Yeah, AI, like to identify, okay, this is sold in the past, but in order to get this, in order to get people interested in this, it's got to be different in this way. I mean, because it feels a bit like, well, it's like trying to get a trained AI to come up with a picture that is unlike any other picture ever made. Well, it can't really because it's trained on only the pictures from the past. So it feels like, you know, if you're a genius marketer, if you're the legend who came up with liquid death, AI isn't going to be of much use. Like you've really got to kind of think of something totally new in order to, you know, in order to get that kind of differentiation.
Speaker B:Yeah. And I think, you know, that creativity is still going to come from people rather than AI. But I think as we move into the future, the AI is going to help with how you then place your adverts, where you put them, what you pay for them, because it's such a proliferation of, you know, right now we could go and advertise on TV, we can go on radio, we can go on cinema, we can go on social media, we can sponsor football teams. You know, there is an incredible number of avenues you can go down. Whereas I think AI will provide some value to help the brand owner understand where they should be, where they should place the adverts.
Speaker A:Okay, so we need to start to draw to a close. I've got a couple of questions I want to ask Dave. But before we do anything, any burning observations or questions? Peter?
Speaker C:So yeah, I'm interested to dig a bit more into how AI is going to fundamentally, I posited the idea of like, giving a system more information about me to make the targets, make the adverts more useful, allow brands to develop an even more data-driven approach to their marketing strategy towards people like me who are, you know, consumers who've got a sort of strong awareness of data privacy and what data I release, but would like more control, would agree that it's a symbiotic relationship between brands and the consumer of which I'm one. So like, what else could AI actually change? I mean, the pure creativity of coming up with liquid death aside, what else can it do to bridge that gap between the marketeer, the brand and product and the consumer?
Speaker B:Yeah, I think we're sort of veering into this sort of space where you have AI driven virtual assistants and a world where you are no longer interacting with the brand necessarily, you know, via a website or on your mobile phone. So you could have a scenario where a AI driven version of yourself is answering questions that you have about a particular product, you know, rather than you going to the EasyJet website, you log on to their app and it is a version of Stelios responding to questions that you have in a very sort of personal way and that could be driven by or by AI.
Speaker C:So that opens up a whole other way that the brand can engage with people, you can engage through some sort of chatting phase.
Speaker A:I've just had an idea for a brilliant co-project you can work on where you're interested in buying something to do with analysis and insight and you go, you search and you get this version, this holistic version of Nick Hare, who will talk to you and, you know, Talk over you. I mean, just expanding that a bit and I'm just thinking about, you know, what you're saying about really, this is about trying to kind of, the reason that that data is useful is it allows you to find the people who, but what about allowing that, using that as data to help drive your, to change your product? And also like, I was just thinking about things like, so I've got some AI art on my wall, which was, I took a photo, turned it into a painting by Edward Hopper, printed it out and it's now, I really like it. But that's the only copy in the universe, right? Because it's a, you know, it's a one-off driven by the AI. It's not an MFT yet though. Couldn't they use my data to design the perfect crisp flavour? You know, and so it's not just about finding the people who like salt and vinegar, it's about actually saying, oh, Nick Hare, he likes, you know, crab and horseradish crisps.
Speaker C:This is where I was going, yeah, personalisation I think is a growing trend in everything that you do online, in life now. So yeah, is that something that people are exploring is to really kind of almost personalise brands to individuals.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, it's a very interesting space that the challenge is, how do you, from an operations perspective, how do you actually... How do you make money from that? How do you do that? Because if you want your own flavoured crisps, just make them at home. You know, a brand unfortunately is not going to have the manufacturing capacity to do that.
Speaker C:I think things like crisps probably that relies on you suddenly deciding you're hungry while you're in the shops next to some crisps. But things that are virtual online, so maybe, you know, for example, like the Times newspaper, right, it's very stolid and has looked the same for decades. An alternative to that would be something that changes the font, changes the content, the selection of content changes how it's presented to you to be personalised to you. But it draws from a common batch of things that's created by people or by agents, but it's somehow adapted to you to be more appealing.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, we're already seeing that. So if you go onto any of the grocery supermarket websites, what you will see will be very different to what I see. So you're already being based on, particularly if you've got a purchase history, based on your historical purchases. So that is very much happening.
Speaker A:So it's champagne and you see champagne and coffee, Peter sees a bag of potatoes. Yeah. Sorry, we need to stop there. I've got a question and a half for you, Dave. It's I think it's a brilliant question. Could be really banal. Let's see. It's quite simply this. You've been doing this kind of stuff about 20 years or so, 30 years, maybe. Not 30. We're not that old. And so my question is this, but encouraging you to think from a 40,000 foot view, right, which is what's and it is very simple. What's your biggest sort of disaster that you've had conceptually, like where you might have missed the point about the whole marketing game or something like that? If you see what I mean, what do you think you've got wrong? What would you go back and tell, you know, 25 year old Dave to do differently? It's not and I don't mean the time that you spent, you know, 100 quid on clicks and end up spending a million quid by mistake. More just a general thing. And also turning that around. What's your big thing? You've been in this world for quite a while. What's your big takeaway to use a, you know?
Speaker B:That's a wonderful question. I knew it was brilliant. I knew it was brilliant. Right. I think the biggest takeaway is not to underestimate the need for distinctiveness. So I've had a few, you know, worked with some very large brands who didn't do this particularly well and they released products that didn't set themselves and position themselves any differently from what else was on the shelf. From a packaging, branding, product perspective, whereas the brands that have been much more successful I've worked with have done things in a very distinct and ownable way.
Speaker C:That itself poses some interesting challenges because there's only so many colours that you can achieve and there's only so many kind of things, you know, designs that you can have without becoming just a polluted noise on a shelf.
Speaker B:Yeah, no, no, I completely agree. And then I think that's where the art comes in. So there's an author called Seth Gode and he's written, you know, a million and one marketing books and his first book was called Purple Cow and he sold the book inside a milk Tetra Pak. So on a bookshelf there are a series of Tetra Paks which is completely distinct, completely unexpected and he did rather well. So it's the artistic creative side comes in there where you're trying to be distinct.
Speaker A:Great answers, by the way. And what's, and so then flipping over, what's your sort of biggest, interpret it as you like, regret, disillusionment, but like I say, from a very... This podcast. One of those. Absolutely catastrophic.
Speaker B:Probably the biggest pain point, one of the business, I won't name it, but we spent a significant amount of money on a TV campaign and the thing we didn't really think about was could we do it again and again and again? So we ran one TV campaign, expected it to change the world and it did absolutely nothing. Now, if we'd managed to run that campaign, you know, once every six months, once every 12 months over a number of years, then I think it probably would have worked. So conceptually, what does that translate to? If you're going to build a brand or a marketing, make sure you've got very deep pockets to run lots of advertising. Yeah.
Speaker A:If you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna, as Napoleon said. Nice. Okay. So if I were to meet you in the pub and say, what do you do? What would you say? What would be your quick answer to me? What would you say? This isn't the question, by the way, but... Yeah, this is a softener. I'd probably say I'm an entrepreneur. There we go. So my question is this. If you weren't an entrepreneur, what would you be in this parallel universe of Dave Folkman elsewhere? What would you do? Who are you?
Speaker B:That's a good question.
Speaker C:You gave me an existential crisis now.
Speaker B:Well done. You know what? I would be an artist. So when I was 18, I had done my A-levels and I did economics, art, and maths. And I had a placement in Manchester Art School and I had an offer for Edinburgh University. And I had a conversation with my dear father who said, if you go and do art, you're going to be penniless. So I went and studied economics and business studies with Nick.
Speaker A:I think that's fascinating. Fascinating. Oh, there's so much to ask beyond that. But I can't. We'll leave it out there. But I think that's really... It's not too late, right?
Speaker B:Exactly. You know, you could go back.
Speaker A:Well, that's true. It's easier to become an artist from being an economist, I think, than the other way around, I would have thought. But maybe that's just economics arrogance I'm talking about. Yeah. Surely not.
Speaker B:Well, being an artist, you should really sort of die young, right? You know, I should have died in my 30s. You're too old to die young.
Speaker A:All right, we're going to stop there. Dave, that was brilliant. Loved that. I really did. I thought that was fantastic. Yeah, what to say other than thank you very much. Thank you, guys.
Speaker B:Absolute pleasure.
Speaker A:Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph. And our special guest, thank you very much, Dave Folkman. Goodbye.
