How to Offend People And Create Great F*cking Content

Why Most Marketers Are Crippled by Fear of Being Honest

Louis: So why do you believe people are crippled by the fear of being honest? Where do you think that’s the case?

Dan Kelsall: Because people naturally as well, people care too much about what other people think and in doing that, they lose sight of who, who it is that they’re trying to actually reach and, and talk to. And, and they end up trying to please everybody. And you can’t please everybody in life or in marketing. So it’s a lot of bollocks in it really.

Louis: How did you, how did you like, realize that yourself? Because I, I think there’s a bit of a personal story in your, in your own kind of life. Right. So how were you always someone who went against the grain and didn’t fear

Dan Kelsall: what other people thought?

Louis: Or is this something that, you know, you learned in your career?

Dan Kelsall: It’s something I’ve, I’ve learned. I’ve got better at it, but I don’t really. You can get better at being a Nobel, but I’ve, I’ve definitely, you know, I, I think, I think when you, when you’re younger, everybody gives a, you all give it. Everyone gives a. What people think and everyone gives a. About, you know, how they come across. And that then translates into, into the business world as well because everyone cares about, you know, what Mr. Director thinks because they want to be able to progress and make a good career out of it and they don’t want to upset, you know, lady manager because, you know, it’ll, it’ll hamper their, their own progress and stuff. So it’s only natural. But it’s something I’ve always had a. I think my dad’s very anti establishment, a bit anti authority. So I think, I think that having him in my life since I was, well, since I was a sperm in his balls has probably rubbed off on me a lot. But I think, you know, the thing is people think I don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks. I do, actually. I do, I give, I give a hell of a shit about what, what the people around me think, what, what those, what the people, the people I’m close to, what they think, what my, my team think, and also what my, my customers think as well. So I do care what some people think. I just, you know, but the people, I’m not trying people are never going to spend money with me. I literally could not give a shit what your opinion is. Right. But yeah, it’s a progression. It’s not a, it’s. It’s learning that, you know, some people matter and other people don’t.

Louis: And so. Yeah. Your dad big influence on you? On my side, it’s the same actually. It’s quite funny. My, my dad is also very anti establishment and never afraid to, to share his point of view. And I’ve learned that from him as well. So I guess that has a big influence going back to content marketing a bit and mistakes companies make. Right.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah.

The Biggest Mistakes Companies Make with Content

Louis: What would you say, like beside not being yourself, not being really honest with yourself, what do you think is like the biggest mistake companies make with their content? Like, what do you see as the, as the biggest symptom of that?

Dan Kelsall: Probably, you know, a lot of it is just Being too safe, that’s one of the things, like, you know, just, just producing content everyone else produces is never going to get good results. And that’s just fucking common sense. I don’t know why people both are doing it. You know, if you’re just gonna keep putting out, you know, 10 ways to get better with your accountancy, you know, people, no one’s gonna read that because it’s shit. And also it’s been done a million and one times before. So being too safe and not, not, not thinking laterally, you know, thinking a little bit outside the box and trying to, trying to think of things that haven’t been done before because that’s the goal. That’s where the goal is. And also just producing content for the sake of producing content. Like, I’m sick and tired of, of these people like Gary Vee that have fucking massive content teams behind them, trying to get your average Joe to produce, you know, I can’t remember what he said recently. It’s like something ridiculous. A thousand concept pieces a day or something stupid. But maybe not that much. But, but you know, it’s, it’s, it, it’s just ridiculous. Like your average Joe cannot produce that much content. And I’d say even most people aren’t capable of producing two pieces of good content a week, like, so just fucking produce one that has impact rather than 10. That is just fucking pointless. The amount of pointless shit I see on LinkedIn, just people just over post and companies just over post just because they think that that is how content marketing works. Whereas content marketing doesn’t work like that. Content marketing works on impact. It works on. You might as well have one piece of content that is standout compared to 100 pieces of content, that pile of shite. So that’s where people are falling down.

Louis: How do you notice when a piece of content is like, the person behind it has played too safe? How do you notice when it’s too safe? Too boring?

Dan Kelsall: No, it’s too safe because nobody reads it. So you can tell it’s too safe and got. It’s got one like off the mum. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it, it like. And also, I can’t get my head around companies that, like, do that and they’ll produce one piece of content. It’ll get a, like off the mum, but then they’ll keep doing the same thing. Like the first piece of content you produced that only got one, like, of your mom, that should tell you a lot about how that content is. So stop doing it or do something else, like learn from it for sake.

Louis: There might be like the counter argument is, you know, you need to kind of to ship stuff to see how people react to it, right? And maybe the first piece is bad, but as you said, you need to learn from it and ship again. But I tell you what, though, there’s something I’ve noticed by, you know, producing content is you cannot, realistically, unless you’re a genius or unless you’re working with people who are very, very good at what they do, it’s very difficult to get and produce one piece of content or two piece of content and already have a massive impact with them. You need kind of to learn on the go, right? So how do you kind of balance those two 100%.

Dan Kelsall: Well, but the thing is though, like, learning doesn’t mean that you have to produce 100 pieces of content in a week. You know, you don’t learn anything like by that because you’re not taking the time. Because the thing is, the important thing isn’t producing the content. The important thing more often than not is the ideas and the brainstorming behind it. Like, you know, yes, you should be producing content as quickly as possible and learning from it, but then it’s not just about producing it. You’ve then got to learn it, learn from it. So there’s a whole process in there. There’s, there’s. You’ve got the ideas stage, all the brainstorming that comes before it, and that’s got to be good. And then you’ve got to pick the best ideas from that. And then you push that out to your audience and then you see how that. And you analyze what does well. Whatever does well. You do more of that. Whatever doesn’t do well, you just put in the fucking bin. Like, it’s not rocket science. It’s the same way you develop like a tech product or something, and yet people are just completely getting it wrong. But this is what’s kind of underestimated a lot in marketing at the minute, is there are. There are tons and tons and tons of people that can execute, you know, technically good content. So you’ve got loads of technically good copywriters, loads of technically good videographers, loads of technically good illustrators out there, right? You can say to, you know, here’s an idea I’ve got. Make that look good. And they’ll make it look technically good. They’ll make it sound technically good. The video will be technically good, right? But it’ll still be because the idea in the first place was. And What a lot of marketing agencies and internal marketing teams are missing is people with good ideas. Like, we’ve kind of lost that spirit of kind of the old ad agency world with, you know, with all its flaws, with all the misogyny and the drinking and the bullshit that came with it. The one thing that the ad agency world had that we are lacking nowadays is good ideas. People who can conceptualize stuff and can understand audiences to the very core and come out with stuff that really relates them and resonates with them. And that’s where the falling down is, the idea stage. So, you know, yeah, you should be learning from stuff, but if your ideas aren’t strong enough and you keep churning stuff out and churning stuff out and you’ve been doing it for six months and you’re never having an impact and you’re not learning anything from it, there’s something fucking wrong there. And it’s probably at the idea stage. Either that or it’s at the analysis stage. And you don’t actually understand your audience and you don’t understand what you’re looking at from your experience.

Ideas Over Execution - The Missing Piece in Modern Marketing

Louis: The analysis. The problem is mostly the creativity side, not the analysis part, right?

Dan Kelsall: Well, yeah, I mean, I’d say both. You know, the thing is, as well, like, if you produce 50 pieces of content and two of them fly, that’s really obvious what’s working there. But sometimes, like, it can be difficult to spot what’s actually working and what’s not. So people do still fall down at the analysis stage. But I still think that the ideas and the creativity is what is severely lacking in marketing nowadays. There’s loads of reasons for that.

Louis: I like your point about the technicality of it. It is, I mean, quote unquote, easy enough to create videos and to produce them well and to have very well produced webinars and whatnot. But the value behind it, the actual content itself, does it actually help you beyond just promoting your product? Does it actually help people? Is it original enough that people say, oh, shit, this is different, I’m going to actually watch this one? So I get that. Beside those mistakes, any other that you think that are very common nowadays, mistakes companies make with their content?

Dan Kelsall: It’s difficult, mate, I’ll tell you another big mistake is who’s leading it. And the one thing that I’ve noticed is with a lot of the internal marketing teams we speak to and things, they’re being led by micromanagers a lot of time. And we’re talking creative directors that have been in position for 25, 30 years, right? And the more senior you get and the more, the longer you’ve been in that environment and the more your lifestyle changes from being on, you know, boots on the ground to Merc driving Viagra smashing apprentice groping lifestyles, you’re, the more out of touch you’re going to be with, with what works. Right. And what, what audiences want to see. So when you’ve got someone who’s there and who, who is now out of touch with what works and out of touch with trends and things like that, trying to now dictate creativity and trying to micromanage a creative team into, into, into, you know, basically micromanage them into the ground. That’s where things are going to go wrong. And I see it time and time and time again, you know, that is not, that is not the job of a, of a, of a creative director of a huge organization. They shouldn’t be micromanaging the people that actually are the other true creatives.

Louis: And usually that happens, please correct me if I’m wrong, but usually it happens in like those brainstorming meetings, you know, where everyone comes in, okay, let’s hear your ideas and everything. Like, you know, one person shares one idea, what, two ideas. And the micromanager would actually just, you know, break it to the, Ah, that’s not going to work until you end up with a brainstorming session with no fucking ideas apart from the manager’s idea.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah.

Louis: And it just doesn’t work well, you need to let people be creative on their own, you know, have their own ideas, test it out and see what happens.

Dan Kelsall: Right? Yeah, you just gotta leave them to it half the time. And also, like, that’s how you get a really strong team is like letting them learn by their own mistakes as well. Like, we kind of got to the stage now where, I mean, we’ve got like a very talented copywriter in with us now who joined like two months ago and already like, she’s just being left to do her own things, like, and there’s no micromanagers in there. And I think. And it was scary for her at first, but she’s like a couple of weeks in and she’s absolutely flying. Her ideas are flying. She understands the audiences better because it’s not me telling her what the audience looks like. She’s got her own understanding of it and that’s how it should happen. Like micromanagement of creatives. You know, you can, you can manage creators to a certain extent, but the more you micromanage them, the more you stifle that creativity.

Louis: Right, so we’ve, we’ve talked enough about mistakes companies make. Now let’s talk about how to do it the right way. Right. Or at least your way, what you’ve learned. The first thing before that, before we talk about a step by step on how to like break it, break down this process. The first thing I want, I need to kind of ask because I know people listening, have that in the back of their head is how do you actually convince me, like as a listener, I’m listening to this episode right now, how do you convince me to actually start offending some people and therefore like actually being loved by some, being hated by others. How do you convince me to take some risk and to move away from this? Me too marketing, Me too content.

How to Convince Clients to Take Creative Risks

Dan Kelsall: It’s difficult, mate, really difficult. And it is something that we struggle with all the time. I mean people think, sometimes think that we’re just going to walk in and go, you know, right, Marks and Spencers, you know, just all you need to put on your fingers, you know, foot, council estates, buy your food at Marks and Spencer’s. We’re not going to go in and do that. You know, it’s just, it’s just kind of, it’s just, it’s just realizing that a lot of the time the only way you can prove to people that something’s going to work is by getting them results. And it’s difficult. So what a lot of the time what we do now and one of the things that we, the ways that we stand out is I’ve noticed that creative agencies a lot of the time go into pitches, right, with companies and with half baked ideas. Even some of the biggest agencies, mate, are walking in to pitches with market directors going, a bit of an idea we came up with on the train, it’s not a word document or it’s on the back of a fucking crisp packet. Don’t know if you can read that. What do you reckon? And that’s pretty much the pitching process. And what we’ve kind of realized now is that if we’re going to actually persuade people to take a risk, what we need to do is we need to actually get there, get the juices for them. That’s fucking horrible saying, but we’re going to do some of the juices. But basically we go in and we actually pitch it like an ad agency. We make sure that we actually conceptualize an idea, we storyboard it all out, we come up with actual full campaign ideas and then we present it on pitch boards and do it properly. And if those People then steal our ideas and fuck off, then so be it. More fool us. But I think, you know, taking that sort of risk and showing them and being open with them that, listen, this is the sort of campaign we’re talking about, this is the impact it can have and this is why we really believe it represents your brand. I think that’s, that’s the way, the way to do it. And I think it’s working. It’s working. That old school method, that effort putting in that effort is working.

Louis: So you need to convince for people to take risks. You need to convince, you need to take risk yourself. Right? You need to first take risk in the way you pitch your ideas. And here you’re talking about an example of where you would work with a client. Right? But I suspect that would work the same way internally. Right? Don’t come in with a half baked idea, just work at it, take some risks, present it very well, package it very well. And maybe don’t come in with three ideas and make them pick one. You pick just one idea yourself and you say, this is it. How do you do it?

Dan Kelsall: Well, you know what, yeah, back your idea. I mean, I was having a big, I’m probably wrong in a lot of it, in a lot of this as well. Like, I always like to put forward an alternative, but maybe that’s not the right way to go, actually. And even yesterday me and she sat next to me and I was just probably glaring. She’s like a little Scottish Chihuahua. And she’s like, it’s like one of our creative leads. And she’s like, we were having a big back and forth on email yesterday about, you know, we presented one idea that we all thought was great and then one idea that, you know, we were all a little bit like, meh. I wanted to put it forward as a comparison. But all the way through she’s like, I really don’t want to want a story about this. It’s shit. So we spent all day going back and forth and arguing and actually probably she’s right in a lot of ways. We should back our own horse. We should be back on our own idea. And if you believe in something enough, then hopefully the client or your marketing manager or the marketing director you’re reporting to you or whatever will believe in it too.

Louis: Okay. And you know what? Once you describe the scene of pitching an idea to a client, the first thing I thought about is Mad Men, the way they.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Louis: That’s exactly what I’m picturing. And I can see you with A suit on. You know, this is it.

Dan Kelsall: This is. You know, it’s not even. The thing is, mate, it’s not even me. So we have a commercial director called Dean, and we call him. We call him Sponge Dean Draper Pants. Because he. He. He’s. You know, he looks like. Well, he’s got a massive square head, so he looks like spongebob. But he also thinks he’s. He’s. He’s Don Draper as well. So he walks into. He walks into pitches and he’s like, you know, right, guys, I want you to close your eyes to really visualize this and take this story in. You know, it’s that sort of rubbish. It’s not rubbish, Dean, you’re brilliant, mate. But, yeah, I mean, you’ve got to tell the story. You’ve got to get people bought in. You’ve got to, you know, you’ve got to wet the. Wet the whistle a little bit.

Louis: So now you’ve pitched like. I think this is the first way to convince people to take a risk, right? So they have your campaign idea in front of them, and they say, you know what? Let’s go for it. I’m convinced. Let’s try it right now. What is your. What is the process to create good content? And I know this sounds very cliche. You can hear that everywhere. Oh, you need to create value. You need to add value to people’s life. That’s, you know, we both know that sounds like bullshit. So how do you do it? What is your process to actually create content that is. That stands out, that makes people, you know, actually buy stuff or whatever else? How would you. If you had to train someone coming in right to your. To your company, a new intern or whatever, and you have to describe everything from start to finish, like the steps. What would be step one?

The Strategy Second Approach to Content Creation

Dan Kelsall: So an intern?

Louis: Yeah. Like, anyone who doesn’t know how you do things, you need to explain. This is how we do stuff here.

Dan Kelsall: Good question. Good question. I mean, this is assuming, mate, that we have a. We have a training process. They would just generally come in, and we basically throw them straight into the fire and see what happens. But I mean, the way that we do things is we’re very, very quick. We’re very, very quick. And. And we are a. What I like to describe as a strategy second organization.

Louis: Okay?

Dan Kelsall: A strategy second organization. So I don’t believe in sitting there for weeks and months trying to define a content strategy based on fucking nothing. I also don’t believe in doing that based on market research, because the problem with the way that most companies conduct market research is they go into a room of people and they ask them questions, right? And more often than not, they’re leading questions. And even if they’re not leading questions, people still feel obliged to give you an answer because you’ve asked them a question. Right? And at the part of the focus groups, they feel like they have to and they end up just giving you false answers. It might not even, they might not even feel anything about your products. And then people go away and they take all that data and they make strategies based on it and they spend months and months and weeks which on these strategies. And then at the end they then execute all the content, whatever else is involved in that strategy, and then when it dives, they then go, ah, that was really rubbish. And then they go all the way back to the start and do the whole thing all over again, which is just rubbish. Whereas actually you would never develop any sort of product like that, right? You wouldn’t develop that. You would develop a feature of a product, you would test it with the market and based on how the market then uses that product or reacts to it, you would then create iterations based on that. Right? And it’s the same with content. So what people should be doing? Well, the first thing, if you’re starting a new brand that you’re trying to find messaging that resonates and something that’s different is you should be pushing out content, you know, and going through this process as quickly as possible to find some messages that resonate that haven’t been used before. And as soon as you do that, then once you’ve got that message, you can start to build a living, breathing strategy around it, you know, because the digital world, the market will move too quick to be sat there around with a six month marketing strategy when you don’t know anything anyway.

Louis: So the first point is the feedback is when you ask it the wrong way, you get wrong data and then you can base your entire strategy on wrong data. And then you’re pretty much fucked. The second point is to instead, to try to see how people actually react instead of overthinking it, just you push stuff out. Right now we are missing a few steps in between, right? Because let’s say I’m your new client, yeah, I want to increase sales of whatever product with content. Do you get into a room with your team and just like quote, unquote brainstorm about, okay, what type of message can we create? Like, or do you assign that to one person who’s tasked to do that? Like what is the process there?

Dan Kelsall: I don’t know. Walk me through that again, mate. So I know what I think I’ve missed the question.

Louis: If you have to, like, if you really have to describe the very first step after you get a new client

Dan Kelsall: in,

Louis: do you have someone goes in a room in their own thinking about ideas and messages to test, or do you get all together, the entire team trying to brainstorm, how do you do it?

Dan Kelsall: So we get everyone together. We have a little thing in our office. It was called Brainstorm Corner. Now it’s called Dino’s Lazy Area. He just sits there on his laptop and doesn’t speak to anything. But we all go in there and we all just brainstorm ideas and, you know, and sometimes it, you know, takes a bit of time, but generally, like, you know, someone will say something or someone will say something else and it’s, it works so much better as a team. And if you’ve got, if you’ve got a creative team that gels really well together and the culture’s right, then it. That’s always the best way to do it. You don’t want to, you don’t want a fucking creative director sat there on his own, coming with every, with every idea, because campaigns will start sounding the same, tone of voice will start sounding the same. You know, you know, you can only be so creative and you’re miles more creative as a group, obviously. I mean, within reason, you know, you don’t want to be sat there trying to brainstorm with 100 people. It’s a fucking disaster.

Louis: What information do you need from a client to actually be able to brainstorm? What do you like to ask them?

Dan Kelsall: We don’t get to know them. We do sessions with the client first prior to us brainstorming on ideas, getting to know the client and what you know. Because the thing is, as well, what I think marketers need to be acutely aware of is you don’t need to be an expert in a perspective, a particular industry to be able to market for it. Right? We market for a lot of cyber security organizations. I, I can barely turn my laptop on, so, you know, so I would not. I’m sure I’ve been hacked. I always, I always click on those, you know, want to enlarge your penis Emails always, always click on them. They never works. You know, it’s still tiny, but the, the, where was I? The point is, the point is we, you know, we go in and we get to know them properly and because we need to be acutely aware that they are the Experts in the day and their expertise, their ideas. That’s the goal. That’s the stuff that we can mold into something to then make it mass market, to make it relatable to an audience. We’re the ones that put the spin on it. That makes it interesting, that draws people in, that makes it clickable, whatever else we need it to do. But they are the people you need to. You can’t just expect to take on someone in a new industry and, you know, hit the ground running. You need their expertise first. So we do do that. We do go and get to know the clients first. Then we do the brainstorming sessions generally. Then we’ll probably pitch our ideas and then hopefully someone will give us a little bit of money and we can all eat.

Louis: So what information do you like to ask from the client? Like, what do you want to know? Because you’re giving a good example about cyber security, right? So specific industry that’s quite technical and all of that. What do you like to know? Like, do you ask about your Personas and all this kind of bullshit, or do you ask for other information?

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, I mean, we get to know them as a person. That’s one of the most important things, especially if you’re building a personal brand. We do a lot of personal branding for like, you know, CEOs and consultants and things. And that’s one of the things that we offer. And that’s all about getting to know the person, because people aren’t just interested in the fact that they are knowledgeable about cybersecurity, for instance, they’re interested in the person themselves. We will obviously get to know the products or the service, because a lot of times as well, I’ve noticed this, that to have outside eyes on a product or service is really valuable. Most people or a lot of organizations we find actually miss unique selling points. Like really, you know, almost don’t understand the product because they’re so close to it. So getting to know the product is really important. Getting to know the culture of the business is important as well. Like, people think that, like business culture, you can just use that to sell, you know, to build employer branding campaigns and attract candidates. But actually that’s not the case. You know, people buy into cultures. Like people are bought into Apple’s culture. It’s basically a fucking cult now, right? I don’t even know whether this Apple Mac that I’m on now is any good. I got a clue. I just like, you know, I like the whole. The whole. The cut of Apple’s jib And that’s why I bought it. It might be shit, but it’s. It’s. It’s about using things like that. Finding. Finding things. Finding unique things about the organization, about the product, the service, the culture that we can then, you know, turn into campaigns, ideas, content, whatever it might be.

Louis: Now, now it’s getting interesting, right, so we’ve been 26 minutes in this podcast and now finally, we’re to the meat of it, right? The value, the valuable stuff.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, this is always my case, mate. I waffle and waffle and then eventually

Louis: you’ll go, all right.

Dan Kelsall: Ah, finally. He’s actually said something of merit.

Louis: I’m used to it. I’m used to it, man. You’re doing great. Don’t worry about it.

Dan Kelsall: So cheers.

Louis: Finding valuable stuff, right?

Dan Kelsall: Unique.

Louis: Unique selling point from the culture, the product, whatever else. How do you recognize that, you know, how do you get. Oh, shit, this is interesting. This is something unique. Like, what is the. I know that might not be a process per se, but what is the attributes that make you think, shit, this is something that we could leverage.

Finding Gold - How to Extract Unique Campaign Ideas from Client Stories

Dan Kelsall: See that it’s a really difficult question that. Because there’s a bit of a. Because this is the other thing that we’ve got to do as well, a lot of is when we go and speak to the client is getting to know their audience, because that’s the one thing that we find as well, is that often clients don’t actually understand who they’re selling to properly or they don’t spot the things that will relate and resonate with that client base. And the one thing I like to do is I like to spot things that are appealing on mass. So they’re very. I like simple things. So the more complex something is, generally the harder it’s going to be to market and the harder it is for it to, you know, get any interest and make decent content. So it’s. It. It’s difficult to say, mate, because every industry is different. Different. I’m not really sure how I spot it, you know, because in some. Sometimes we spend half an hour with clients and come up with the absolute gold, and sometimes we’re fucking sat there all day, you know, banging our heads against the table. So it’s a difficult question to answer that one, mate, to be honest.

Louis: Let’s take an example, right? You don’t have to mention the name of your clients or whatever, but maybe by giving an example of a past client and how you’ve done it, that might be helpful, right? So, I mean, cyber security is an example. You Give. And if you’re able to give an example out of it, let me know. If not, let’s pick something else.

Case Study - Telecoms Elvis Campaign Breakdown

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, okay, so an example of what, how we found gold?

Louis: Yeah, how you found this unique thing that you say, this is simple, that might appeal to like the masses, as you said, that’s. That might be very valuable.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, I mean, we have a campaign coming out soon. It’s not cybersecurity but a big telecoms firm. And we found the guy in there who is an Elvis impersonator, right? So he would go around to weddings doing Elvis tribute acts. And we thought, you know what, why don’t we create on social media, why don’t we create an account and why don’t we build up this guy and get him known as Telecoms Elvis? So what we’ve then done. Bear with me, mate, sounds fucking weird. And then what we’ve then done is he’s taken all Elvis’s tracks and rewritten them to be about telecoms and about the benefits of different systems and stuff and created this huge campaign around it. It makes absolutely no sense. But had we not gone in there and got to know these people, we would never have found Sony, the Telecoms Elvis and we wouldn’t have this fantastic campaign idea.

Louis: So tell me, how did you find out about him? Like, so you met, you went to the client’s office, you asked to meet the people in charge and was Tony in the room or was he like singing in another meeting room to rehearse for his next show? What was the scenario?

Dan Kelsall: No, Tony was one of the people we interviewed. So we were, they were saying, we were saying, where do you need help? And they were like, well, you know, we want to do a lot of paid campaigns. We want to raise the profile of our sales team. So then we brought the sales team in. Tony was in the sales team. Really interesting chat. Loads of shit he’s done before. Guy’s been in the army, owns a few horses. And it, and then it just came out the end at Elvis. And then we all came back into the office and everyone started brainstorming ideas and think. Jess and Cabri came up with, with an idea of, you know, using this guy and writing, writing telecoms related Elvis songs. And so they got to work and we started to then figure out how we were going to raise this guy’s profile and on the back of that, raised the brand of the telecoms company. And it was just, like I say a lot of the time, this is why it’s hard to say how to Spot it. Because a lot of the time it’s. There’s a better looking world really. But the more you speak to people and the longer you spend in that company and the more you understand the culture, the more gold you’re going to get out of it.

Louis: Yeah, no, no, but that makes sense. And I know it’s a difficult question, right, and I know it’s difficult to extract insights out of it, but this example is phenomenal for the reason that, you know, it’s simple. As you said, everyone knows Elvis, therefore it’s going to appeal to the masses. They all going to know Elvis, everyone knows some of the songs. And so what I like about it is that you go all in in a sense, right? So it’s not like you’re going to mention, oh, we also have a Elvis impersonator in our, in our team. So therefore you need to trust us.

Dan Kelsall: It’s.

Louis: He’s the center of the campaign. He’s the campaign. Right. So you’re taking the risk to go as far as you can go with it, really.

Dan Kelsall: Exactly, exactly. And that’s the, that’s the biggest thing. You’ve got to go all in. You got to go all in. And you know what as well, like, there is nothing like. This is the thing that I love is when people use their own employees in their advertising. I think it just adds that people go on about fucking things being real and authentic or whatever you want to call it. But the best way to do that is to use the people and people, the bigger the organization, the more people you find that have really, really interesting stories and things that you can leverage to help grow the brand. Like I say, we’re lucky to have Telekom Zelda. He’s going to be a star, mate.

Louis: So without giving me too many details about the client, right, I don’t want you to be in trouble, but how did you, how was it to convince those folks to actually go for it? Like when you presented the idea, what was the reaction?

Baby Steps - How to Push Boundaries Gradually with Clients

Dan Kelsall: Like, good question. You know what they’ve not actually seen? Well, the idea. I think they just, the client are quite open to stuff because they need to grow the brand. They haven’t had much marketing success in the past. It’s all been reliant on sales and a pretty good sales team. So they’re just open to most things, to be honest. But they haven’t actually seen the adverts yet. Okay. So it’s gonna be interesting because they’ve got a big, big company do on Friday where they’re doing a Screening of the new adverts, even though none of them. Then they haven’t seen any yet. So it’d be interesting. It’d be interesting. But it wasn’t. It’s not a great example, actually. It wasn’t actually that hard to convince them to do that. A lot of the time we do things that are. That are a bit dodgy. But what you’ll find is, if you start off with, I’ll tell you what, it’s like this, whether it’s external. Right. Or internal, persuading people to do things is all about baby steps. So you can’t. You can’t work in a tax firm and then just go in and go, listen, guys, I think we should go in there, post dildos through people’s doors, because everyone will go, are you. What are you smoking? And it just won’t work. Right. But baby steps, it’s all about baby steps. So it’s going in and pushing the boundaries slightly every single time. Because there are clients we’ve worked with where, you know, we work with one client and we got them to deliver pies once with, like, 50 quid in them, and now, like, six months later, we’ve got them going up on cherry pickers to offices like, 20 foot in the air with massive signs saying, you know, download our app. And they’re doing stuff that’s miles out of the comfort zone. So it’s just baby steps. You’ve just got to kind of, you know, get them to push their own boundaries a little bit each time and you’ll be surprised where you are in six months.

Louis: So give me another example, because this one was really good, a good example of your methods. Could you have another example in top of your mind?

Dan Kelsall: Yeah. I mean, that’s the other one, that other brand. We do something called the projects and we’ve got them to do everything, man. I mean, we filled like, you know, misguided, the fashion brand. We filled their offices with rescue dogs. That was one of the things we tried. We got them to put 3,000 parking tickets on cars across Manchester, which weren’t actually really parking tickets, they were adverts to download their app. You know, we got to do all sorts of guerrilla marketing campaigns which, you know, which are going to be awesome. We’ve got one coming up with a. With a big percussion band. That’s going to be funny. But again, these. What I always say to clients as well is that if you’re not nervous before you release a campaign, you’re not slightly nervous, then you probably haven’t Gone far enough. Yep.

Louis: I say that all the time. Like if you don’t have this butterfly in your stomach before you publish something, you’re just not risky enough.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Louis: So I’d like to deconstruct another one, another of your campaign and just to see how you came to this result. Right. So I know you mentioned a few, like the parking tickets idea, whatever. What I’m interested the most in is like, how did you get to this? And I know again, it’s a difficult question, but so let’s try to work it through together. Right, so whether it’s parking tickets or something else, let’s pick another idea and let’s try to remember how you went from meeting the client, talking to customers or whatever to have this idea, like the in between those two steps.

Dan Kelsall: The in between what two steps? Sorry mate, sorry.

Louis: You cut out a little bit there. Between meeting the client for the first time. Right. And shipping the campaign, you know, like this, this process of brainstorming, finding an idea, finding this simple, this simple idea, like talking me through another, another moment, another story or where that happened.

Case Study - Pride-Based Recruitment Campaign for Energy Company

Dan Kelsall: I’m trying to think of one. That’s thing. So we’ve just done, we’ve just done a quite a big pitch for a. Oh, I’ll say this without getting in trouble, a let’s call, let’s call them an energy company. Right. Big energy company. And we, we were approached with the task of, you know, we need to, we’re going to start a new degree apprenticeship program and we need to attract people from a diverse background from, you know, deprived areas because we want to show that we are not just an elitist, you know, middle class organization. And we, so we got that brief and then we had to brainstorm a way of coming up with that because what we didn’t want to do, we didn’t want it to come across cheesy. We didn’t want it like the Nike London adverts where it’s like, yeah, London, we’re gritty and hard and stuff because you’re not, you’re southerners, you’re not hard. And we didn’t want it to come across as, you know, really wet and soppy and, you know, feel sorry for these guys because they’re all poor and they need a job. So we had to figure out a way of getting, you know, getting something, an impactful campaign basically. And the process was pretty simple. And it’s simply just we’ll all brainstorm on the brief, we’ll go out and do some surveys with the people in those areas, to find out what it is they’re looking for. Why would someone want to do a degree, apprenticeship? Why is it important to them? What are their aspirations? What are they proud of? And the one thing that we found when we did those surveys, folks, those people, was that, you know, when you’re from a deprived area and when you’re from somewhere that’s maybe not as affluent as other areas, that you’re still proud of where you came from, you might not want to stay there. Yeah. For the rest of your life. But no matter where, whether you break away from that and you become something, you’re always proud of where you came from. And especially people from those sorts of areas are very, very proud, very, very proud of who they are and their heritage and stuff. So that was the focus of the campaign. And we started to build a campaign around that. And we found that out by, like I say, by doing those surveys, by getting to know those people and all that audience. And we, we did a big pitch around the values of those people. We wrote a really impactful poem about living in the Northeast and about actually, like, you know, the poem is called what if? And it was a really impactful poem. That poem will be delivered over the top of an advert in those neighborhoods, filmed with the individuals that actually lived there. And we’re going to build a campaign directly around the audience and those people. And that was. That was the. The process based on the brief. And that was then all storyboarded up, all looked very smart. And that has gone over to the client ready for the pitch. And we’ll see how it does.

Louis: You see, I told you you had another one in you. This is another very good example. Even though at the very start you mentioned research, customer research, usually very risky, because you might ask shitty question that might lead to shitty answer. Yet you use this method the right way. And when we talk about survey, like, how did you go about it? Did you actually go and meet those people and ask them a bunch of questions with a camera on or microphone?

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, yeah, 100%. That’s what you got to do. You can’t just sit there and do, like I say, a number of surveys and all that rubbish just don’t work. You got to go and get to know people. And like I say the one thing and it’s the same. And even kind of, even when we’d asked that and even when we knew that was the thing, then I was, you know, I was spending a bit of time in the gym. I spend the spending Time with my mates as well. And they’re all the same. They all, you know, and there was a few little comments, like, it was like, weird that way. There’s a few little comments that we were. People were talking about how proud they are, where they come from, how they’re always. Even though, you know, this is shit about it, that’s just shit about it, you know, I’m still proud of where I come from. And we knew we were on something there, I think. And it’s a really powerful campaign. And actually, you know what? Like, it’s the sort of campaign that is so good that we could. If that. If they don’t take on this pitch, if it’s not for them, this is something we could probably repackage for someone else. You know, not the exact same, but the actual. The whole thing around it go and actually get to know the people from a different area with a different company and probably still, if, you know, get the same results, if another company is looking for diverse hires from the private backgrounds.

Louis: And that’s another signal, isn’t it, when you see patterns from people who don’t know each other necessarily, but they say the same thing, you know, like, they share. Like, as you said, the pride is the main thing that just kept coming up to me. Like, every time I do it, every time I do research like this during interviews or whatever, and you hear different people who don’t know each other say the exact same thing multiple times. You’re like, shit, this is like, there must be. There is something there, right? And let’s dig into this. Is it something that you. That you see yourself as well? Like, is. Does. Did that happen before in previous campaigns where you saw, like a pattern?

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, yeah. I think there are. There are patterns. There are patterns and there are. And this is the thing, though. Like. Like a lot of things that have worked in the past will work again. Like when I talk about new ideas, you know, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a good new idea can’t be a rehashed old idea. You know, there are things that will resonate with different audiences and that will work across different campaigns. That’s just. Just life, you know, But. And this is the other thing as well. I always say to the team that if we get. I honestly believe that some of our creator is that strong, that if we get rejected on campaigns or if our pitches don’t go to plan, there is absolutely no reason why we cannot rehash that idea. If it’s a strong enough idea, we can’t rehash the idea and pitch it to someone else. So this is the thing. Ideas are so, so valuable. So valuable. There’s so many people coming up with shit ideas that there’s absolutely no reason that if one idea gets rejected, you couldn’t use it elsewhere. It’s the same with patterns. You know, if something works with one client, there might be a way of rehashing it in some way. Say if you did a social campaign for one client, and I don’t know what, can’t give you an example, but there’s no reason you couldn’t then use something similar for another client in an entirely different industry. That wouldn’t at all impact on your, your other client, but they probably wouldn’t even see it.

Louis: You know what? You shared two very, very good examples. And I’m sure you have one last one, you know, ready to go, right? No, because this is a very good way for me to extract your learnings. And this is working really well. So do you have a third one for me?

Dan Kelsall: A third example? In what context would you like me to give you an example?

Louis: So anything that again, that came from a single focus, a single thing that you noticed either from a pattern from interviewing people or meeting someone in the organization. You just pick this one thing and then you created an entire campaign around it.

Dan Kelsall: I mean, I suppose we, you know, we went over to a challenger bank in Europe and they wanted help with their internal communications. They were really struggling to. They were really struggling to communicate because they’d grown so quickly. They’d grown from about, I can’t remember, it was like 300, 400 people to over a thousand. I think it’s like 5,500 now. Which means that, you know, if you grow that quickly, in two years you’re going to have teaming problems. You’re going to completely destroy whatever culture it was you had in the first place. And especially when those people are from all over the world, it’s fucking difficult to then figure out how to get all those people to communicate effectively. And the one thing that they lost was that they’d lost their edge. This was a bank that had done some really edgy, impactful stuff back in the day, when they first started back in the day only a few years ago. And they lost that and become more corporate and more towards normal banks. But then what they’d also done there is internally. They then started to use a lot of the banking jargon and acronyms and bollocks that people didn’t understand. And they never used to communicate like that. And the one thing that we spotted was actually you had something when you were communicating with each other as a small group, as a small team, and you were using normal words and you were, you know, more chatty and casual and your tone of voice, like the communication was so much smoother. Why don’t we try and do that across the board? And why don’t we write a. You know, why don’t. Why don’t we make sure that we. The tone of voice guidelines, the internal communication guidelines are all around communicating in a way that is human and simple and easy to understand. Because if you do that internally, then that’s going to resonate with your customers externally as well. And that was kind of. And the thing is, that was a weird activity because it took us a while to spot the fact that they had already been doing something early on that was actually probably better than this beast that they created, you know, now. But that’s pretty much all I can go into there, mate, because if I do anymore, I will get. I will get in trouble because I

Louis: can notice the time, the moment where you notice, shit, I’m gonna get in

Dan Kelsall: trouble if I say anything. Yeah, drop the name of the. Yeah, drop the name of the bangle.

Louis: Okay, I’m not gonna make you say more than that, but I think the learnings here are very similar than the first two in a sense that you notice one thing, one single thing from this time, the client itself, and you just extracted that and then creating an entire campaign out of it. Which I think, to be honest, if I have to learn from what you shared so far, this is it. It’s like either from the interviews, either from the customer side, from the company side, their culture, whatever, you just extract something that just seems like, okay, this stands out and you don’t hold back and you just create something that you go all in with this from start to finish. And you mentioned something else, which is, you know, step by step. So even though you might believe in this idea 100%, you might. Even though you might feel, okay, this is it, you still might need to go kind of slow with the client. Maybe it’s an email campaign to start with, then a few more ads, then you do get marketing, then, you know, Is that how you approach it? You start very small, even if you

Dan Kelsall: believe step by step. Yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong, if you present a full campaign and they really bought in, they’re going to pay you millions of pounds and do. And you’re going to take over their entire market and then say, yeah, go and do it. But you know, don’t say ah, we’ll just start with an email campaign because you make no money. But yeah, definitely. If a client is nervous about something, just, just start showing them results. The sooner you show someone results, the sooner they’re going to get become bought in. That’s the easiest way to do it. People can’t argue it. People would never argue in numbers. They’ll never argue numbers. If the numbers are good, they don’t care.

Louis: And what’s interesting about you, and this is how I found you out, is through LinkedIn and the posts you share that are very, just like you, very edgy, very taking risk, going all in with your ideas. I suspect that the people who reach out to you, even if they are big corporations, know that already, right? They’re not surprised by the fact that you just curse like a sailor and everything like that.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, well they don’t care. And the thing is like I say to them, like everyone’s after being authentic, right? And yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of our stuff is inbound and it’s, and it’s a lot of it’s through me and those people like you say, already have an understanding of who I am. So it doesn’t really cause many problems. But it’s like I always say to people like, you need to decide who you want to work with. Do you want to work with someone in a three piece pinstripe suit who you know, wears too much wet look gel brown pasty flickers and, and licks your ass but doesn’t deliver? Or do you want me who’s direct and straight and a little bit rough around the edges and swears a bit. But we’ll do everything I can to make sure that, you know, the stuff we do works for you and performs and I will buy into your brand as much as you will and that’s the decision you’ve got to make. But the one thing I won’t do and the one thing that will never happen is I will never change for anybody. I try to be unapologetically myself and that like I say, that won’t change.

Louis: Yeah, a fair play for doing this, man, because it takes some guts to do it, to have this certainty about yourself and this confidence about yourself. But I think that’s why you’re succeeding in what you do. So thanks for sharing all of that with me. Thanks for sharing all of these examples. I just have a few more questions before I let you go. The first one being what do you think marketers should Learn today that will help them in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years.

Why Reading Fiction Makes You a Better Content Creator

Dan Kelsall: Learn that you’re never going to be an expert. Get comfortable with that. Experts in marketing don’t exist because marketing trends, the digital world moves too quickly for any of us to be experts. So yeah, just, just learn to be adaptable. Like adapt at the drop of that. If you’re, if someone says so, if you’re really good at something, I don’t care what it is, maybe you’re good at a certain way of doing social media and it stops working. Change now and figure out what the next thing is. Yeah. And because that happens all the time, you’re not going to be an expert. But the more adaptable you are, the more you’re not attached to the thing that you’re doing. And you know that. Actually I’m going to have to change and do something different. If things change, the better off you’re going to be.

Louis: What are the top three resources you’d recommend our listeners today? So it could be books, podcasts, anything.

Dan Kelsall: The top three resources. You know what, if you want to get good at content, come up with good ideas. Read a lot of fiction. Read a lot of fiction. A lot of marketers like, you know, it makes me piss when I see these big lists. Yeah. My top 10 marketing tools that I use. And then you look at the company and they’re getting absolutely nothing. No engagement. Nobody cares what they’re writing and they’re using all these tools and automation this and HubSpot this and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, it’s all lovely. But you know what, if you’re messaging your content, you’re right, these are. It all means nothing. Get. Get reading. Get reading. Get reading Fiction. Yeah. Get learning about the world. Get reading non fiction. Get reading science books. Get reading Bill Bryson’s history of nearly everything. Right. Get reading. Stuff like that. Get knowledgeable. The more knowledgeable you are, the more things you’re gonna find that can relate to your client and relate to the industries that you’re working within. And that means the more, the better your ideas will be and the better your campaigns will be.

Louis: Okay, so that’s, I would say that’s two.

Dan Kelsall: Almost two, yes.

Louis: Fiction, non fiction.

Dan Kelsall: Fiction, non fiction, yeah. Books, man. Honestly, books. It’s all I rely on in terms of, in terms of other tools. What would I say? That is pretty decent. Ah, it’s difficult, mate. It’s really difficult. I mean, we, we don’t tend to use tools, mate. We don’t tend to use tools. We use the tools that are given to us, obviously all your paid platforms and stuff like that and we’re, you know, and all your analytics and coping it. But we don’t actually use tools. We don’t actually use tools. We are, like I say, a pure creative agency though. Get, you know, get good with a pencil before you start designing digitally. Learn to draw. Footnotes. Yeah, Books and pencils. There you go.

Louis: Books and pencils. Old school.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah.

Louis: I can’t draw for. I absolutely cannot draw for. I need to learn. That’s one of my.

Dan Kelsall: Learn, man. Yeah. And you know what as well? It’s, it’s, it’s. I can’t draw, mate. My drawings are food. But the. But there’s something in it. There’s something relaxing in it. There’s something that takes your mind away from stuff. Even if you’re drawing stick figures with the willow.

Louis: Relaxing for you maybe. Not for the others who just see your drawings.

Dan Kelsall: But yeah, probably not. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, who cares? Who cares about them?

Louis: Dan, once again, you’ve been a pleasure. Thanks for being so honest, sharing those examples. Where can people learn more from you?

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, I mean, catch me on LinkedIn. What? You know, come into the office for a. For a pint, you know, are you. Every month. Everyone knows every Manchester, trust me, we’ve got an open door policy. Come in, get yourself a can of Stella. Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s debate the world and marketing and stuff.

Louis: Nice. Be careful though. I think there are a lot of listeners based in Manchester, so just as soon as this episode goes live.

Dan Kelsall: It’s fine. I’m never.

Louis: Buy some more beers.

Dan Kelsall: You know, I’m never there anyway. Yeah, so.

Louis: Yeah, that’s how you say it. Easy. You’re not even there.

Dan Kelsall: I don’t care. Just miss my team. I’ll have to deal with it, so.

Louis: All right, man. Once again, thank you so much for your time.

Dan Kelsall: Yeah, no worries, man. Yeah, you too.

Louis: And that’s it for another episode of Everyone Hates Marketers dot com. Thank you so much for listening. I’m super, super grateful. I’d love for you to consider subscribing to my daily newsletter Monday to Friday called Stand the Out Daily. I send very short, hopefully interesting, surprising, shocking, entertaining content to help you Stand the Out. It’s ateveryonehates marketers.com you can subscribe for free. I and obviously unsubscribe whenever you want. I’m just going to read a couple of emails that I got recently as a reply. Juma said your content attacks the mind primarily which is such a good thing because most of us are skilled at what we do, but we don’t have the courage to do it our way. Mark, who just subscribed a couple days before, said, this is my first issue of your newsletter. Love it. Glad I subscribed. Brianna Said, I just realized this morning that my email had been it is now two 1. Skim through the list. 2. Select all unread industry email except yours. 3. Delete and don’t think twice. 4. Quickly scheme yours. Amy said, Also loving the new content is coming from you. It feels really lovely. Kendall Said, I like your writing a lot. It really resonates. There’s so much bullshit out there. It’s good to touch the authentic. And Chloe said, where is the iPhone? Love this email button. Brilliant. I hope you subscribe. You’ll be joining more than 14,000 subscribers at this stage, which is crazy. It’s the size of a small stadium. Anyway, thank you so much. See you on the other side.