Brand Building and Nuances of Marketing in Specialised Sectors
In this enlightening episode, we navigate the intricate world of modern marketing, exploring key themes that are shaping the industry today. A special thanks to our esteemed panel, Berti Munro, Annie Mirza, and Kyra Richards, for their invaluable insights. Read the full report
📖 Storytelling & Emotional Intelligence: Discover the power of storytelling and emotional intelligence in marketing. Learn how brands can make audiences feel not just seen, but deeply valued and understood.
🏗️ Brand Building in the Digital Age: What does it take to build a brand today? We discuss the importance of consistency, transparency, and the agility to adapt your messaging across various channels. Your brand's reputation is at stake; find out how to protect it.
📜 Navigating Regulations in Specialized Sectors: The finance sector is a labyrinth of complex regulations. We explore the challenges of communicating these intricacies without compromising your brand's personality. The key? Finding simplicity in complexity.
🤝 The Human Element: Marketing isn't just about numbers; it's about people. We delve into the importance of human connections and trust in achieving marketing success.
Episode Timeline:
00:00 - Introduction
03:11 - Discussion on the human element in marketing
25:40 - Transition to brand-building discussion
40:15 - Communicating complex regulations
Tune in for a deep dive into these critical aspects of modern marketing. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just starting your journey, this episode offers valuable insights you won't want to miss.
Guests
Berti Munro, Digital Marketing Manager at Digital Marketing Collective
Annie Mirza, Copywriter and Content Publisher at Barclays
Kyra Richards, Content Specialist at ANS
Well, thank you so much for coming today. We are in a new episode of The Future of B2B Digital Marketing podcast. Today we will talk about the art of brand building content challenges and the nuances of marketing in specialized sectors. We will begin explaining the human element in business and marketing will discuss the significance of making individuals feel valued and heard and how language plays a pivotal role in this. We'll touch upon the cultural and generational shifts in language and how they shape our messages. And then we will transition into the evolution of brand building in the digital age as brand identities are constantly changing. And lastly, we will venture into navigating marketing in specialized sectors. So highlighting the importance of of the robust technological infrastructure agility required in marketing campaigns and the challenges communicating complex regulations across the different markets. So let's talk about the human element of business and marketing. Annie. Oh, sorry. Before we start. Could you. Could you start giving giving a short sentence on yourself, please?
Yeah, of course. Hi. My name is Annie Mirza. I'm a copywriter and content specialist and currently working for a financial organization. And, yeah, I've been working in content for about ten to 10 to 12 years now, so, um. Yeah. And I also do a lot of freelance on the side as well in within content and content marketing. Thank you, Kira.
I am. I work in the tech sector and I'm also a content specialist. I focus mostly in the film and creating that kind of content, especially visually. And I've also been working for probably about ten years now and don't really think I want to add it up in my head, but it's been a while.
Yeah.
Thank you, Kira and Bertie.
Hi, my name is Bertie. Um, so, yeah, I'm a digital marketing specialist all around general, uh, especially if you want to call it that. Uh, being in the digital marketing space for about 18 years now. Used to be called Internet marketing that shows the age as two and worked in multiple different sectors, from finance to motor industry to racing industry.
And thank you, Tom.
And I'm Tom. I'm the founder and CEO of Adzact. But I'm also leading the Marketing of Ads Act at the moment. It's a relatively small company of 20 people. So at the moment, I'm playing the role of the CMO and and Building Ads Act's brand from from basically nothing because we started it earlier on this year. So yeah. Well, then to me.
And I work with Tom in marketing, I'm Joaquin Dominguez and we are hosting the this podcast. So as I was telling before, let's talk about the human element in business and marketing. Annie we had an interesting conversation about this. Why is so important making people feel heard?
So think in especially with business to business marketing. A lot of the time people can forget that you're speaking to another person and content that's delivers best as content that tells a story because people like stories. So the human side of marketing is probably in my in my own view, one of the most important elements of marketing and content. And I think that the way people interact with businesses is vital to remember when whenever we're talking about content or creating marketing strategies or content strategies, whether that's digitally or offline. Um, and it's one of the sort of key parts of any business plan whenever I've been working on them, is just to remember that it's the way humans behave. We need to remember how they do, how they do that and what people like, what the what culture is, what the timeline is that we're in. For example, there's always a pop culture Zeit-geist Can we tap into that? Because at the end of the day, it's a human speaking to another human, even if it is, you know, business to business content or business to business marketing.
Yeah, I.
Agree. And well, you didn't mention in your introduction, but you are. You studied linguistics, right? So it's it would be really interesting to hear the, the, the importance of language in in business. So why playing with words is really important in, in marketing and storytelling.
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, as you mentioned, I studied linguistics in my undergrad and then also for my master's and the, the language that we use and the language that we're exposed to shapes the way that we view the world. It shapes the way that we view we view everything and, and think within content and content marketing. It's really important to, as you said, play around with words because words have connotations. They have different meanings. As time goes on, words, meanings change. Some of them become less popular, more popular. I think the example I always use is wicked. If you're in the UK, you know, it used to mean like a wicked witch and then it became something really cool and now it's sort of fallen out of favor. And so playing around with words in particular and content marketing can really change the way a message is perceived by other people. So understanding how language works and how we perceive it with other words and with the culture that we're within and within the time that we're within really affects the way a business can be seen. So whether they're seen as a bit more archaic or a bit more modern or a bit more fun, a bit more professional, you know, think Duolingo is a really great example of a business that really uses language extremely well. They market to a Gen Z audience really well, and there's other businesses that are more professional and that's all down to the language that they use. Also, obviously, you know, depending on the type of videos that they're creating and if they're, you know, on social media creating videos. But 100% think the language that we use affects the way we're perceived. And studying linguistics has helped me to understand that a lot more like the semantics of words and where we place those words at the end of the sentence at the beginning. That can really change the method, whether it's more authoritative or more friendly, depending on the tone of the business. So yeah, that's what I'd have to say.
Is that is that similar to, is that related to a businesses tone of voice or Sounds like it's way more complicated than that because you're talking about like how in an individual email you might want or whatever a message, an ad strapline or something you. Kind of place and structure words.
So think it does have a lot to do with tone of voice, but it's also one of those languages, one of those things which is culturally different everywhere. I mean, even within the UK, you know, I'm actually living in Scotland at the moment and the way people communicate with one another, the language that they use is very different to the language that's used by the South sort of in London. And so I think it's sort of a mix of both. So when we're speaking to like a UK based client, then what kind of words are we using? I mean, you know, ones that they're more familiar with in particular when it comes to what's popular versus someone that you're speaking to in America, what's seen as professional and more kind of formal in America or in the UK, maybe it comes across as a bit more rude or a bit more cold or a bit more unfriendly sort of that that really the culture really affects the way language is perceived. So I think it is a is a big, big, big topic. You know, semantics and sociolinguistics is a part of linguistics. So the social side of linguistics, how people speak to one another. And so within an email as well, like think tone of voice is one of those things in a style guide that a business has. It should be, you know, from the tweet to the email to the to the book publication, it needs to go across the business so that you know, there's. People can associate a business in a particular way just based on the language that they're using. And again, think Duolingo is a is a great example of that. Every sort of message that you get from them is either it's a bit cheeky, it's a bit funny, you know, it's that's their style and it's very obvious that that's them. They're, they're kind of known for that. Like you could probably pick out Duolingo emails or Innocent Think is another brand it's a smoothie brand in the UK their language as well like think you know it's innocent when you read that like you can just tell because of the way because of the style.
Very consistent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the the case of innocence, they they link a lot of their language with their with their culture as well. The culture that they live day to day at the office. It's very linked with their with their brand. Interesting that I.
Do find it quite irritating. Tweet the tweeness of of innocent and what's that oat milk oatly the oat milk brand like their language again they've clearly it's different from innocent but it's it's more kind of ironically it's even more twee than sort of self-referentially kind of twee, but it's again, quite irritating.
Coming back to the initial point that we were talking about, the human element and Bertie, in your work, you need to introduce asset managers to the world, right? Um, so how do you incorporate their thought processes in, in, in your work?
So one of the big things that we do is we we focus mainly on emotional intelligence within our digital marketing. And that emotional intelligence is really key to how we talk in our emails because the the type of person that we are engaging with, they highly intellectual. They've got very limited amount of time. So it needs to come back to to to to what you're saying. It needs to be punchy. It needs to it needs to get in there. The the wording is really crucial. And the linguistic that we put into that into that email, into that communication, you know, social media posts, anything that we do put in, we are constantly looking at those those different factors. But the main driver for us is that emotional intelligence when it comes to the digital marketing side of things, especially with email marketing, because it's a 1 to 1 for us, it's not a, um, I know everybody wants to go, you know, it's a B2B, you know, whether you work in B2B or B2C, you're always working B2B, which is a, you know, business to person or person to person at the end of the day. And I think the messaging really needs to really drive home what you're trying to say and actually show that you have the command of of intellectual presence and and the way you're putting it. And I think what I've seen over the last, you know, while I've been working with all these asset managers, global asset managers across the world, is that they've they've tried to overcomplicate everything because they think that all the investors that they're talking to are highly complex individuals and they will understand all the the the the technical jargon on how they investing. But yes, they are wealthy and they are highly intelligent, but they don't want to know about the complexities. So one of the core things that we've done is we've we've well, when I work with any asset managers, I've actually said, you need to move it down, you need to bring it down, bring it down to a layman's terms, because, yes, they may be investors and they investing, you know, 20, 50, £100 million. It doesn't the size doesn't matter. But the fact is that you want to communicate with them on a personal level rather than going. Right. Oh, you know, I'm looking at this macro and this is going to be the driving factor for the next two years on your investment fund and so forth and so forth. And just getting so, um, so complicated with the, the, the quant side of things rather than just focusing on actually, you know, having a personal conversation. And that's one of the big things that we did from our side. We really drove down the, the, the emotional intelligence to really engage with with investors.
When you mentioned email 1 to 1 is because you also take part on when you send an email to an individual or you meant sending an email campaign to a group of people with similar characteristics.
Well, we're.
Sending to a to a to a group. So naturally what we're doing is from a digital marketing point of view in the business, we are warming them up to get them to a stage where they start communicating with the salesperson or the business development person 1 to 1. We want to get them to that. And when we do these conversations, we really make sure that there's almost no difference that they can feel coming from a mass email that they've gotten or a generic email that we've gotten because our emails are not overly generic and also because we're in asset management, we have a very small pool of people we're targeting. We're not we're not we're not targeting 100,000 people. We're not you know, it's, you know, there's, you know, a very small, small amount, especially if you go institutional. Institutional is really, really small. You're talking about 3000 investors in the UK. That's what you're dealing with. So you need to continue that conversation as how you introduced yourself from from the email marketing side of things. And then the sales team will then take they will know no different. So that that personalization is really, really been been thoughtful. And that's the reason why we use the emotional intelligence side of things instead of just going, Here's a blanket email. Off you go. And because, you know, intelligent people can see through blanket emails that are like like literally, like, like you wouldn't believe. It's we've had we've had a couple come back to us in the past saying, well, this is a very generic, it doesn't really suit me. And that's when we realized we need to change our trajectory in the way we're doing things.
And can I ask, this is probably too practical a question, Bertie, but are there any advantages to if if you could personalised every email down to literally 1 to 1? Would you do that or do you think there are some advantages?
100%? 100%? I wouldn't even think about it twice. If I could get the more data I can get on a person that that I'm interacting with, I will actually create dynamic content according to that, that person within the email itself. And you can do that. It's quite simple. It's quite easy to do. You know, you just need you just need the data and make sure that the email platform you're using can handle that data and you've got the right triggers for that and you can even do it in your in your whole customer journey. So you can you can have your dynamic driving from the first email you send to the 20th email that you've sent over a three month period. You can have that dynamic content change and and be completely evolutionary as to how they are moving with with engage.
They've read on your website, for example. Yeah, yeah.
It makes sense.
Well.
Let's move into into marketing and in social media. Kira, you've been in social media for a long time, so what's your opinion on the role of social media in humanizing brands and fostering this engagement that Bertie was mentioning through through email marketing? But what's the role of social media?
Um, I think nowadays it's essential. Um, I always tell people that you can't, can't even not have it because then people don't trust your business. So when you go to Google someone and you see they've got a web page, that's great. But then especially the younger generation, they'll look on Instagram, they'll look on LinkedIn, they'll look elsewhere. So if you don't exist just on that base level, people are like, Oh, is that company real? What's going on there? It kind of fosters that.
Can't find him on LinkedIn. Is he a real person?
Exactly.
Exactly. Yeah. It's exactly like when, you know, a couple of years ago someone didn't have a Facebook. You were a bit confused. You didn't trust them. Now it's the same with companies. They don't have social media. People don't know. But then it kind of divides into what you're looking for, like for recruitment. You know, I love Instagram for that. It gives you kind of the shows, the personality of a business. You can put the people in there, whereas LinkedIn is where I put my professional is where I give my, you know, marketing advice. I might find people that interest me in marketing. That's what I do personally. So I find companies that, you know, might be experts in what I like. So people do the same with us, you know, especially in tech. You know, those sectors, they will want to look into it, see what the company is, want to see what the people are up to. So I think each one has its own purpose, but they're entirely essential. If you don't have them, you don't exist. And that, I think, creates that. People get a bit worried, but then if they can find you and they can kind of do a little bit of a even just a first round of finding out who you are, what you're like, if they want to work for your business or even if they just want to get in touch with your sales people, I think.
That's when you.
Say, didn't you say you guys were sort of to some extent moving away from Facebook? You're using Facebook a bit less than you did?
Yeah, I don't find Facebook to be essential for not for us. And I don't think much of the tech sector I've seen is on Facebook. But I was shocked that Twitter's really big. I kind of personally I don't use Twitter anymore. I haven't used it in years. So seeing that kind of resurgence in the tech sector and then obviously about things like Reddit and finding forums and it's been fun to find that because it's like, you know, I didn't work in tech previously about a year ago, so I didn't know this existed. And I think that kind of taught me to be a bit more open on, on figuring out what works for certain. What is your brand and then what works then for you to go.
Are you doing like organic Reddit stuff for recruitment or paid or whatever it is? Or is it mostly is it advertising? Is advertising the business itself or.
We use.
I've been looking at using Reddit just for forums of just for the tech forums just to have because we've got thankfully a lot of really great people in tech who, you know, can talk about it for hours and days and weeks. And that's what you want to build that trust, knowing that that experts out there so they can go into a forum and they can just talk about, you know, whatever form of tech, if it's security, if it's low code, they can deep dive well above my head. But that's what their community and that works. And then even if you know someone else who maybe is, you know, in from a different company and then it's just that connection of, oh, well, actually I know that person works there and and they're really seem to know what they're talking.
About supporting people to have these kind of organic conversations on Reddit about topics that are in some way relevant. But yeah yeah. Showing their expertise.
Yeah, exactly. That's all Twitter is, is we just have certain people who that's all our back and forth is. Well, have you seen that they've done this and they did you check out they actually just spoke at this event and people have whole conversations off of one tweet where we've just said, oh, this person is speaking tomorrow, you know, or they spoke on this and we thought it was really interesting. So it's interesting to see. I mean, it's fun. It gets our engagement up and I don't have to do much. So it's really lovely.
You Annie had similar experience, right? Trying to listen what people are talking on TikTok, which are the words they are using. Isn't that something you've done?
Yeah, a little bit. So think again, like echoing what Kyra said about businesses and organizations needing to be on social media because otherwise they don't exist yet, and especially, for example, on TikTok. And that's a really good example. You know, creating content for TikTok from a for business to business and also actually more business B2C or as Bertie rightly said, B2B, because it is, you know, to a person and seeing what words people are using and how those are trending and creating conversations and storytelling out of those, that really changes the way that the content is created as well. So what we notice on TikTok and in, for example, the trends, the videos that are performing within that industry or within that niche for that business, taking that away and then testing it, doing a lot of testing, seeing what works on on other platforms as well. And TikTok and social media I think are a great place to find what people are talking about, what they're interested in within that sector, or even people with a keen interest, you know, maybe they're not working in, for example, finance or project management, but they're interested in it, you know, what kind of language are those people using as well? How can we get them to, you know, take a look at our brand and build that brand awareness using the language that they're using as well? Yeah, definitely.
I actually wrote a I wrote an article about this on on my website about how the trend is actually working is actually changing onto social media is the search. I don't know if you guys have been delving into the search side of things. So, um, uh, who is it? HubSpot, I think it's HubSpot or one of them. I did a article of it from it. Um, they, they actually did a survey and they've actually found that something like almost 30% of users now are not using Google to search. They actually using they're actually using social media to search. So that's a huge trend that's going to be happening over the next ten over the next ten years, I would say. Um, and, you know, we're, you know, even said this in my in my piece that, you know, we're, we're, we're um, Bing and Yahoo! Were the big players. And then Google came along. We started to see now social media being becoming the big player in that it's not just for social media, you know, and businesses do need to get their content onto social media, not just for the sake of putting it out there, but it has longevity. It's, you know, it'll be searchable, it's indexable, you know, it's great. SEO. Um, so yeah, so that's, that's the trend I'm seeing at the moment. I don't know if it's, if you guys are seeing the same thing on your sites.
Yeah, I would say Am That's a really, really good point. It's one of the key things that we look at, especially when we are creating content, for example, typing that into TikTok, changing the filters. You can even change the filters now for the year to see what's relevant, what's most liked and think like, as you've said, a lot of the younger generation as well, like, you know, they will use TikTok or Instagram to find content because people think this is just showing us again, people want to speak to people. They want to hear from people. They don't really necessarily want to hear from a business. They feel a lot of the time like they're being sold to. So whenever you type something into Google a search query, often it's a business snippet that comes up and maybe people don't take that seriously. So then they go on TikTok and scroll.
Down until it doesn't say sponsored anymore.
Yeah, basically. Yeah, essentially. So TikTok is a great place to do that. And it's happening a little bit on Instagram, not as much. I don't think the search function is as it's not as powerful as the one on TikTok at the moment. But I think Instagram is definitely moving there. And I think YouTube is another one, especially for for people within certain in certain industries. I would say project management is a big one. Actually worked in project management for a while. A lot of the time people will go on YouTube to find the answer. You know how to deal with stakeholders or how to use a Gantt chart, things like that. That's becoming more popular now. TikTok is overtaking that as well, right?
Yeah. And I think the short form, the short form is really working well for TikTok. You know, naturally the long form will stay with with YouTube, which is which is great. And you can use both of them. But I think at the end of the day, because my background is video marketing is one of my big, big, big pieces, and I really push all my clients to do the video marketing because that's, you know, it connects people. You know, we're talking today via video and it connects instead of a normal telephone call like you would have done five, ten years ago. Um, this is a, this is much more, it's much more pleasing to feel a connection. Um, and yeah, I think it's, I think it's fantastic the way that social media is really changing. Um, so.
So yeah, my, my most popular LinkedIn post recently was a TikTok style video, like in portrait mode which. Yeah. And, and TikTok and then put it onto I think I've got any viewers on TikTok but on LinkedIn it got quite a lot.
Yeah.
But this is the whole thing so so so you can find your social media platforms are really moving with what what is working you know LinkedIn stood stagnant for, I would say almost a decade. They didn't want to adapt and change. They tried. I don't I don't I don't know if any of you guys remember they actually tried reels on or stories on on on LinkedIn at one stage, but then that just got, you know, chucked to the wayside because people weren't using that that part of the functionality they still wanted in the feed. But you know you get rewarded putting video onto to LinkedIn. You know I've put boring asset manager videos on and they get seven 8000 views for, for for for very you know meet the manager talking to an asset manager or a PM or whatever the case may be. So so yeah highly recommend using video.
Yeah.
Well, let's talk about the second topic we will discuss today is about brand building in in digital. Of course, we are talking about this already, but.
Kira, you.
Had a great talent working with Vitality and to get how to get people engaged with the app. So also that human element of understanding the the psychological things behind why people want to use an app, for example. Could you tell us about that experience and also how brand building helped you in that work?
Yeah, it was a big experiment, but it got me kind of interested on the psychological side and behind just choosing what you want to do, what you want to look at. And for that it was just trying to get people to connect to an app but involved in your life insurance, which is why would anyone do that? But you have to figure out exactly that. Why health.
Insurance. But yeah.
Yeah. I would never think, oh, let me go on my app. And that's connected to my insurance. It's just and you know, and you get perks with it. So how do I get somebody to think of these things on their day to day basis? So they do engage with the app. But I'm not thinking about my health insurance or my life insurance all day, every day that most people aren't. So we were trying to kind of create that engagement and try to see, well, how do we do that? Especially because the life insurance, you never think about it. That's something you just pay for and it lives in the background to think about. Yeah, exactly. You don't want to think about it. So then I'm just there trying to get you to think about it every day, all day, so that you're engaging with this, this app. And we're trying to create that where it almost gamifying, especially with the app, it was easy to kind of gamify that concept of, you know, create that engagement. People, people love that. Also free stuff is easy. Um, but yeah, if I gamified a view and points, you know, you get this even if it's just a graphic pops out you know or if it's with like a fitness watches, you know it tells you when you've hit a goal. People love that. And that's kind of was what we were looking at was, well, how do we.
What were the goals like reaching a certain age or.
No, thankfully, this one was, you know, it was exercising and it was, you know, it was trying to be healthy. So, yeah, thankfully it was a.
Bit like the Health Insurance Vitality app.
Yeah, Yeah. So they're very similar. It was just we were just trying to get people to think about their life insurance instead, which was it was all the same thing.
That's a really interesting case study because it is you could argue like the thing that is most difficult to get people to think about death honestly.
Yeah, Yeah. You don't exactly want to get, you know, an alert on your phone every day. That's like, by the way, you still have life insurance, by the way. You're almost dying. It's not exactly what you want to do. So we're just trying to make it. Well, actually, if you're healthy, there's also your life insurance still going on. And we might bring down your prices if you're exercising, being healthy, if you're considering what you're doing, if you're not smoking, you know, you might get something. You get an extra banner or a badge. And, you know, that's something that yeah, I wouldn't think about. You know, it's good. It is really good. But, you know, you're trying to make it sound fun and nice, but it was yeah, exactly that. And then trying to get people to then say, well, I'm looking at life insurance. Why would I want to buy a life insurance that comes with an app when I can just have life insurance like everybody else? Because then there's a question of that's a bit odd. I don't know if I want alerts or I don't want to have to be healthy. I just want life insurance. So we kind of had to take it into steps and look at it from all angles. And it was it was interesting. Yeah. Something I don't think I'll ever do again because I was like, it's a once in a lifetime and it was really cool.
Amazing. And most recently, you worked on another project that changed the brand and culture at ANS, right?
Yeah, yeah. We did a rebrand. They did a merger. We did a rebrand. And you have two companies and you you start from scratch almost with a merger. You have to go, Well, you know, you can't pick your favorite child, so you have to start from scratch and go, Who are we? What do we want to do? You know, what are the good things from one? What are the good things from the other? What are the bad things? Maybe what's our tone of voice been? Did that work? Did it not work? And I know when I walked in they didn't do much on social for either side. So it was kind of nice but also difficult to go. We're actually going to basically start from scratch and then I have to build up the social. I have to create the brand from the beginning. But who even is that? But yeah, if it's easier or harder to start from the beginning.
Yeah. And then the internal communications is a is a big thing, right? If you are merging. So to keep.
Everyone happy because you've got, you know, big companies coming together. So you have an internal concept of the people in the business want to, then you want to make them share your content like your content, like your business. And then so that especially with sales, you know, you've got their entirely LinkedIn based, you know, we do all our content. I want them to like us enough as a, as a company to then want to share what we've created, want to, you know, engage with us just so that obviously we can get off the ground because you do need internally, you need people to engage with your content almost first and foremost. So yeah, you have to kind of appease everyone in that sense, but also make sure that you're saying the right things.
Sure. Annie, you also have experience with internal communications, right. So how do you see the role of internal communications in brand building?
Yeah. So I think part of the brand or whatever the brand is needs to be throughout an entire company through even within internal comms, using the same sort of language that you'd be using for a message that's going out to you. Sort of like external people. It needs to be the same. I think there needs to be pretty much like the same languages, used, the same style, the same, you know, tone. Everything needs to be similar because when, you know, colleagues are and managers, people, leaders are looking at that all the time, every day, it almost becomes like it when you read it in that way, you think in that way as well. Language really affects the way that we we perceive the world. Like certain words will have different connotations. Just, you know, based on whenever you hear something, you know, you'll immediately think of something and in your head like an image will go off. So when when everybody's using that language internally. So if there's like an intranet that's used with as policy documents, you know, for colleagues, you know, within HR, if that language is the same as the language that, you know, the business is putting out, then people will automatically become part of the brand almost so that when they are speaking to customers or when they are speaking to other, you know, other other businesses, they'll start using that language. It almost become second nature for them. You know.
I never thought of it like that.
Yeah. Yeah.
No innocent and only use there use that kind of tone in internal communication they probably do.
They do probably.
Yeah.
Definitely. And you know, and I've seen it before working in internal comms for a publishing house, just how different that is, you know, how how much more formal that is, how much more academic it is. And it was an academic publishers. And so like even within your emails, you know, you're speaking to your colleagues that way, you're speaking to customers that way, you're speaking to suppliers that way. And then, you know, working in another organization that's a bit more they want to take a bit more risks. They want to kind of be a bit more millennial and Gen Z. They're using different language like even within the communications for having with one another. And so then the comms you, the comms you share with customers and external facing people, that tends to be the same as well. And it does change. It really does affect your psyche. So if you think about the first job you did and the way you sent emails, is that the same way you're sending emails now and especially if you're working at another company, if those companies are different. So it definitely think, you know, that's one of the best ways to engage change, especially if you are building brand awareness, is to get the people inside on board. And a lot of that is by using the same type of communication because then they'll just get used to it and they'll start using it.
Not super interesting. Bertie, is brand building important in the asset management world, or is it more product oriented?
Uh, a good question. Um, brand is very important. Um, so investors will invest with a company that has fantastic reputation. Your brand is your reputation. Uh, step a foot out of line and asset management, and your brand is gone. Your. Your reputation is gone. It's one of those things, you know? Uh, you know, 2008 is a is a clear, clear indication on how bad it can actually go. You know, you had the likes of Lehman Brothers, biggest asset manager house in the world, biggest reputation. They were spending a huge amount of money on marketing and they made a mistake and bam, they're not no longer existent. So the brand is very, very important. Um, but then what will happen is, is it depends on how far the, the potential client is coming on board. They'll be looking at they will be looking at your brand and then they'll put the brand aside and they'll go, Right, okay, I understand your tonality. I understand the way that you talk. I understand everything about it. I like that. That's great. Show me the performance. Do your funds perform as simple as that? Yes or no? And that's where the decisions are made. Um, so they'll come on. They'll come on board with, with, with a with a brand. Another, another big one to look at is, um, is, is Credit Suisse where they, you know, UBS has to buy them now one of the biggest in the world, a great brand you know great story. Everything's there. Uh. Fell on their fell on the heavy side and then naturally had to pick them up and and carry them over the line and integrate that into the business. So you see this all the time where you where you have the brand working, but then the performance just falls and fails. And this is the reason why the FCA and the regulator wants us to be transparent, because for the investor it's vitally important for them to see that you are being transparent, your brand is being transparent and and your communication is being transparent. So yeah, that's my.
I think I think it was.
Interesting. You talked about having a slightly different way of speaking once people are kind of engaged and I think that's probably quite common as well. You probably need to have a slightly different so people that haven't yet given you an email address or replied to prospect email or something, you almost have to have you have to make them aware of why, why they should even care at all. And sometimes I think sometimes weirdly kind of more direct when it's cold. And then as soon as they're engaged with you, you actually want to stop selling and sort of start talking, you know, pointing them at other bits of content and just kind of.
Yeah, it.
Also depends on the asset manager you're dealing with. So if you're an institutional asset manager that a sale will take three years. So that's the conversation that you're having. It's a three year conversation. It's not just happening over a two month period. If you're on the wholesale side of things, then yes, then then two, three months is is a is a norm. So you will come in quite cold. You will come in with, you know, with the trust you need, you need to provide that Trust is the language and the language, the language that we'll be using there. And then and then it's all about then putting people in front of that person to make them feel more comfortable putting the putting the PM in front of in front of the investor depends on the size of the investment, naturally. Um, you know, the PM is not going to sit in front of a investor that's only investing £1 million or, you know, £50,000. Those are, those are small investments. But if it's a if it's a pension fund that's £1 billion pension fund, they'll put three financial they'll put three PMS in front of them. And that conversation will happen for three years. And then that money will come over and then the conversation will change the wording and the tonality will change because they'll come on board from a trust point of view. But then it's like, show us the figures. And then that's the transparency where it comes in through from the where they will show the transparency and that transparency will show in the tonality and also part of the brand. So that is all when we build out a brand at at an asset manager, we talk about from, from, from start to finish how that tone will change with a with an investor.
So it's like starting out with credibility and then once and then pivoting to relationship sounds a bit like like 100% the brand becomes the relationship they have with individuals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I spoke to gentleman about this about a I'll give you a scenario that we, we actually had where, um, a very famous, um, asset manager was losing one of their senior staff and um, the news broke about this. And then I went and approached all the sales team. I said, Listen, your sales team, uh, show me all your people that are invested in this company as well as us, and we'll send out an email, we'll reassure them, we'll give them all of this by doing that email we in, I think it was in a 36 hour span, we had an investment of 250 million just come back into our door just like that.
So what they cared about was not the brand. They cared about that relationship, which is the brand. I know, but.
Correct, Correct. Correct.
But because we were able to take advantage of that situation, not in a bad way, but but it's it's because when this is the thing about in in asset management, they they invest people invest in the PMS. They they they want to know that that person is looking after their money and looking after them then the day because they don't want to lose money. Um, so, so so as soon as that happens, they know that the investments are not going to be happening the same. You know, this is the reason why Warren Buffett is, is so wealthy because he's he's investments are so solid. And the way that he's done it and anybody that follows him and and follows how he invests will make money it's just logical. Um and and what we did there was going right okay. You've already invested with us. Give us some more of that money and we'll look after it. It's all stable here. And that's what happened. And we were able to to, to gain that 250 million through the door in in, you know, in virtually in 36 hours and that yeah it took time to to get them over about six month process but they committed within 36 hours that they'll pull out and pay the fees that needed to be paid and then move that over to to to us So yeah.
Yeah. And what was the you mentioned. The the importance of having a the technological infrastructure to to be able to of doing what you did.
Right 100%. You know, this is one thing that I do stress to to to all the businesses whenever I work with them. Always make sure your data is clean, always understand that your data is if I want to pick up the data immediately and do do something with it, I can do it. I don't want to be fumbling around for days and days for you to go through manage it. So we were we were very lucky in that aspect that we we decided, well, you know, we're going to be using a strong CRM. We moved over to Salesforce and we were using Salesforce at that stage and we pushed we pushed through with that. And then we also used a very robust email marketing system that was talking to the system. So we got so when I spoke to the team and I spoke to my to my content writer to write the email accordingly, I gave him a rough draft. They came back with a finalized draft and we sent out. That email was an hour and a half after the news broke. So it was about moving rapidly.
Missing email addresses missing fields. Yeah you just it would have taken you two weeks. You would have got distracted. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it is. It is a bit of a it is a bit of a nightmare. And this is one of the reasons why I believe that when you, when you're using data, always make sure your data is the most up to date it can be and put as much data in as possible. More data is better. And, you know, at the end of the day, when it comes to a CRM, for example.
But what about the challenges of communicating complex? Because this market is heavily regulated, right? So what about the challenges of communicating in in this market and also. You also need to communicate for a financial industry, right? So all the regulations that you need to follow. Is it too complex to to to mix that also with the human element and everything that we've been discussing?
That's a really good question. I think my answer is going to be similar to something Brad said earlier in our in our conversation about how, um, you know, using layman's terms is one of the most important parts of, of content and getting your message across at the end of the day you want communicating is about getting your message across. It's not about using fancy words. It's not about using, you know, complications. But definitely in terms of, um, the sort of regulations, I mean, not even disclosing where I work, for example, um, you know, not being allowed to do that, that, you know, I don't necessarily think it does cause a challenge. I think there's always ways around, um, you know, understanding why those regulations are there and then using the, you know, words that you can to explain what is meant. So something that is, you know, very policy driven. You know, there's a lot of legal language. So we see this all the time with SMEs within in particular, legal. And, you know, you're trying to communicate across to, you know, internally to to HR, to all your colleagues some new policy. And then because of regulations about how you need to say that that can, you know, impact a copywriter. So it's very much, you know, about balancing between what needs to be said from a legal point of view and also what needs to be said to the person. Understand? So, you know, there's always been conversations with, you know, SMEs and editors notoriously hate each other because we're always trying to change what an author or an is saying. But, you know, it's more about trying to get the message across as simply as possible. So a lot of the time, you know, legal jargon or regulatory jargon will be, um, added in the notes rather than in the actual message that we're sending across. So and then we do try to keep, you know, you do try to keep that to a minimum anyway because people aren't going to be reading that much, you know, if they want to know, can I, for example, can I go on leave? Can I take a career break? How is that going to impact my salary and my pension? All those all those kind of things. You know, you have to be as clear as possible and communicate that as pleasantly as possible as well. Maybe it's an emergency. You know, you've got to think about all the different scenarios that, you know, a person could be going through and try to get them that information as clearly as possible. And then with with the regulatory policy driven language include that. But that's not the answer to the question. So a lot of the time, um, you know, the push back from copywriters or editors has been that, okay, what is the answer to the question? And they'll tell you in an email, yes, we will tell you then that should be what, what's on the page? It shouldn't be this, you know, 200 word paragraph on on, you know, the legal side of it that needs to be included. But essentially, you know, we have to think of the colleagues first and remember that not everybody works in legal, not everybody understands. And then, you know, taking into account Neurodivergence as well, that's a big one. How, you know, how somebody reads something If they do have neurodivergence, will they read it in a different way? And taking that into account and including diversity within that conversation is a really important part of kind of creating that balance. Um, so yeah, it is a challenge, but usually the copywriter wins because we say, Look, this makes sense. So people.
Will.
You know, if they don't know, they can just send an email or if there's a chatbot function, maybe they can ask. But you know, I don't, you know, we don't want anybody to be clicking around a website trying to find an answer. They should just be giving the information as clearly as possible, especially if it's sort of, um, a regulation or something more legal. Yeah.
Yeah. You Berti also mentioned that it was totally fine to to communicate a brand. However, communicating products could be more challenging for regulations, right?
100%. You we can't communicate any product whatsoever. Can't mention the name of the product. You know you can and you can't mention the you cannot mention the you can't mention the performance of the product. So you will hear us in the asset management space. We will talk about a strategy. So so it's all strategies and and that's what we work in. But it's the product at the end of the day. But we use the word strategy for that specific reason because it is exactly what we're doing. We are working on a strategy to invest accordingly and so forth. Um, but yeah, the regulator doesn't want us talking about performance in any way, shape or form and we cannot talk about. Predicted performance. We can only show past performance and you have to be very clear about how you do it. I mean, you know, as a as a copywriter, you know, you know that you got to have your footnotes. Your footnotes have to be, you know, one, two, three, four. They just there if you've got many. It's one of those things, unfortunately. But you have to show exactly why you're saying what you're saying and you've got to back it up. It's no longer just a you know, it's like when when we're talking to the investment, to the the investment managers, we we say to them where they come through and they give us their their insight on the macro or whatever the case may be of of how their fund that they're looking after is is going to perform. And it it goes through so much scrutiny as ridiculous. So they'll do a slide deck for us. You know we've worked with slide decks, you know, 50 to 80 slide slides in a in a deck. And every single one has to be scrutinized before it goes into a webinar, before it gets shared, because we cannot talk about performance. And if we do talk about performance, we talk about past performance. And the the people that we're talking to, they have to naturally be depends on how we're talking. If they're a institutional investor, it will be a complete different, um, content way that we're talking. But if they are a wholesale investor, try and do any of that. We won't even show it. We won't even do any past performance because they are a wholesale investor. They, they, me and you. We don't know anything about investing. We need to go to investment professional. Even if I've invested and I've made a, you know, 50 million, it doesn't matter. That only makes me a sophisticated investor. So yeah, so the communication needs to be very clear and transparent as well from the, the point of view. And it also it's different in different regions. You would think that the FCA works the exact same as the French regulator does, the same as the Swiss regulator. Nope. They all they all totally different. Um, so, so yeah. So my last two two businesses that I've been working with Swiss regulated and yeah, they're like, why don't you do this in the UK? Like you can't do it in the UK. The FCA will not allow that. So it's very, very interesting how the different regulators work as well.
You shared with me an anecdote. This is more brand related, but something that you thought that was foot footprints in the sand. I think it was something that you thought that could be totally acceptable in in a Western society. It was totally wrong in another.
Yeah. So we did a rebrand at at one of the businesses that I was at. This is going back, you know, donkey's years. And we did this whole rebrand, spend oodles of money on it and we launched the rebrand fantastic and went off sent all the brand over to to to the Middle East and they just went, whoa, we cannot show that. Stop whatever you're doing. You can't we can't do that because we cannot show feet in the Middle East. It's a very it's very insulting. So we have to go and change the whole Middle East thing and show how we were doing it because we were trying to show that we were going to walk on this journey together with you. And. Oh, it was yeah, it was just a bit chaotic, but we got it resolved. Lucky you.
Had someone internally that could actually give you that.
Guidance.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we didn't think. You don't think of these things, you know, you think you're walking along a beach sand and. Nope, nope, nope, no, we couldn't show any bare feet whatsoever. And I was just, oh, luckily enough, I wasn't in charge of the, the art side of things. But, but yeah, it was, it was, yeah, it was quite it was quite forthcoming when we went so they ran on the old branding for, for a couple of months till we transitioned them to the new one and we, we brought it in more um, in, in line.
Yeah. That's a very good example that not only technical regulations are important, but also brand nuances. Cultural. Exactly. Well, thank you so much for sharing all your engagement strategies and demonstrating the importance of personalized content and the human element in marketing. It's been a been a really nice conversation.
