I recently caught up with Brad Farris of Anchor Advisors to chat about the links between your confidence and the performance of your digital agency.
We spent a little over half an hour unpacking how, as the owner of the business, your confidence influences the performance of your agency.
I’ve plucked out six key take-homes from our conversation to get you on your way to boosting your confidence, winning more leads, and growing your agency.
1 — Confidence In The Pitch Room — Delivering a sales pitch with confidence.
The first area youcan practice improving your self-confidence is within the pitch room. The majority of agencies who win their sales pitches understand that their prospective clients are buying results, rather than processes, and as such — their pitches always lead with a direct, measurable benefit to the client.
“No one cares about how you do something unless they know it’s going to make a difference for them.” — Brad Farris
They deliver this claim with confidence and support it with facts and evidence in their ability to deliver exactly what the client needs to grow their business. This power and confidence resonates with the client and leaves no room for doubt and the deal closes more easily.
Brad summarised this idea nicely when he said — “We have to lead with the transformation that we’re going to make, and then people might care about how we’re going to do it.”
The actionable item? Start your pitch with an Executive Summary that illustrates what you do, the results you deliver and the investment required. Deliver this Executive Summary with confidence and watch your win rate grow.
2 — Confidence In Your Pricing — Positioning yourself in the market appropriately
At Digital Agency Coach, I see some digital agencies within the UK that serve local businesses and are charging less than the average living wage for their expertise. This is particularly common in start-ups, where new agency owners are suffering from a combination of imposter syndrome and price competition.
As the founder of a new firm, it’s not uncommon to be daunted by what you see in the marketplace. When you’re up against established agencies with a portfolio of big-name clients and an impressive team, it’s easy to think the only way to compete has to be on price, and you end up charging next to nothing.
Most agencies start off from this position of low confidence and wait for a moment of validation where they earn the merit that will allow them to charge an appropriate fee.
Ask yourself how you can take that leap sooner rather than later, and price your services and your products as a reflection on the value they offer.
3 — Confidence In Your Market Positioning — Be disciplined in the projects you chase
Most agencies who consistently pitch well and regularly land new clients have taken proactive action before they’re even in the pitch room.
If your digital agency is tightly positioned and you’re only targeting clients within your niche, you have the opportunity to deliver your insights and expertise with confidence and ask your prospective clients smart, leading questions that demonstrate your domain expertise.
“If there are (services) that people are asking for that’s not really in their wheelhouse, they’re saying no to that. Because they know they can’t walk in there with that same, ‘knock it out of the park every time’ kind of voice.”— Brad Farris
If you’re not playing within your niche, you’re speaking to a broad spectrum of clients and you’re unable to offer that same level of confidence and conviction within your pitch, and nothing seems to stick.
Positioning your agency correctly begins with asking where your expertise and passion are. Once you have this cemented, all else falls into place and your knowledge and enthusiasm is conveyed in the quality of your work.
4 — Confidence In Your Expertise — Knowledge is power
In this episode, we talk about building confidence in your expertise, for both your personal brand and your agency’s brand.
When you’re confident in your expertise and you’re pitching within your niche, you’re able to listen to your customer in a different way. If you know the market, the industry trends, best practices and benchmarks like the back of your hand, you can respond to those unspoken fears and unknowns from your client.
If you’re confident in your knowledge and understanding, you’re able to be present in the room to listen and ask deeper, more insightful questions which demonstrate you know your client’s industry as well as they do.
This forms a deep connection and level of trust between you and your client, and they’re likely to pay a premium for your service because they know you have the level of expertise required.
Alternatively, having confidence in your expertise could mean building your own personal brand and sharing your opinions, perspectives and insights. This could be as simple as publishing regular thought leadership pieces on your blog or creating a monthly newsletter to open up opportunities for conversation.
5 — Confidence In Your Capabilities — Understanding your limitations
Brad and I spoke about the importance of understanding and respecting the limitations of both your agency and yourself.
If a prospective client makes it known that they’re looking for an agency partner with specific expertise that you don’t have, be honest and say you’re not the right fit for them. If you know you won’t be able to deliver what the client needs, then it’s best not to continue the conversation.
The client will appreciate your transparency and the confidence you have in where your expertise lies. They might decide to change tack and go on to buy a different service from you as a result of your honesty, confidence and willingness to say no will change the power dynamic.
Put simply, don’t sign your agency up to deliver something you’re not good at.
When it comes to building confidence within yourself, you have to understand your own strengths and weaknesses. Know where you can add value to your own business and where outsourcing or delegating certain tasks will improve your productivity.
If you know you’re not great at managing your calendar and you have a fear of letting people down as a result of a potential mishap, allocate your diary management tasks to someone else and eliminate the chances of you making mistakes. By doing so, you’ll eliminate feeling discouraged and unconfident as a result.
Outsourcing tasks that aren’t within your remit, gives you the space to do more of what you love and what you’re good at, giving you a better sense of job satisfaction and self-confidence.
6 — Finally, Confidence In Your Team — Understanding your team’s capabilities
If you’re the agency owner, chances are you’re not the one working on the deliverables — you’re working with an exceptionally skilled team to get the job done.
If you’re pitching to a prospective client, understanding your team’s capabilities and being confident in their ability to deliver on your promises once you’re back at the office is key to building trust and repeat custom from your clients.
Make sure you invest in your team and equip them with the best resources, training and skills to deliver the projects you’re promising to your clients. Avoid the pain of making a commitment to your clients and then being fearful of the ability or capability of your team to get the job done.
To Wrap Up, Here Are Our Top Tips For Building Confidence As An Agency Owner
1 — Practice making big promises to yourself. Even outside the office, if you’re committing to rising early and working out each day — you’re boosting your confidence levels, just from achieving something and accomplishing a challenging task before the day’s begun.
2 — Take existing clients and start making bigger promises to them. Use these comfortable, established relationships to practice making your big, bold promises. Identify a metric from within the current service that can be improved and make a commitment to your client. Regularly achieving these ‘little wins’ will give you the confidence to make similar promises and commitments to prospective clients.
3 — Practise Ikigai — Ikigai is a Japanese concept combining your Passion, Mission, Vocation and Profession to create a real sense of purpose or direction. If you’re happy and fulfilled in your work and you’re skilled and passionate about what you do, this will shine through in the quality of your work. If you genuinely love what you do, your clients will buy into this authenticity.
Are You Convinced?
Your self-confidence can influence the performance of your digital marketing agency and if you’d like to find out more about how you could improve yours, Watch The Full Video or Get In Touchwith the team at Digital Agency Coach and one of our consultations would be delighted to help.
With Valentine’s day just around the corner, love is well and truly in the air, making it the perfect time to explore the crazy and kooky ways our feathered friends expressit. Bird Buddy, the world’s first smart bird feeder, have brought us the best, from jealous power couples to vomit kisses and water ballet, to show you these wonderfully delightful antics.
1 The way to a bird’s heart is through its stomach
Some decisions are best made with a full stomach, a fact kingfishers know well. To woo their beloved, they catch a fish and store it inside their mouth. When the time is right, they present the fishy offering. Aside from a cute gesture this shows the female that her mate can provide for her.
Bonus points for theatricality!
2 Home is where the heart is
In blue tit pairsthe female builds the nest, furnishing it with moss, straw, grass, hair and wool. However, male blue tits believe homes need beauty as well as functionality. When the female is done building the place, males decorate it with feathers, sticking them on the nest or making a neat pile in the corner or just outside.
3 Power couples
Ravens mate for life butaren’t so keen on others doing the same. In raven society, breeding couples top the social – pun intended – pecking order, while single ravens languish beneath. If a power couples spies two single birds getting cozy, they disrupt the coupling to protect their social status, consequently keeping more territory and food resources for themselves and their babies.
4 Gender bending
Strong dominant females are not unusual in the animal kingdom, lionesses for example and praying mantises. With birds, however, it is generally the males singing, defending territory and generally being bigger and louder. Not so with African black coucals. Males mate exclusively with one female and are stay-at-home dads, incubating the eggs and providing all parental care. Females are larger, mate with several males and are also the ones you can hear singing from the treetops, be it to attract a new mate or defend territory.
5 Kiss and… vomit?
Kissingis rare in the animal kingdom – but it is a thing in bird world. White-fronted parrots, for example, are always up for a smooch, one of the few animals to do so. Pairs exchange longkisses, smushing beaks together and are even up for a bit of Frenching – ooh la la. When things get heated, males finish the passionate exchange with a unique “gift” – but not what you think. Males regurgitate food into the female’s mouth, combining a make–out session with a yummy meal.
6 All’s fair in love and throat bursting
Elaborate mating displays are the norm among birds, but some are much stranger than others. Male frigatebirdshave a big red pouch on their neck that they inflate like a balloon and drum on to attract females. Size, it seems, matters, as the bigger the pouch, the more successful the performance. This enrages less well-endowed males who often try to amend the anatomicaldisadvantage by confronting rivals and trying to burst the other’s throat pouch.
7 Grebe lake
When it’s mating time, crested grebes engage in a display that would put Strictly’s dancers to shame.First,they approach each other, mimicking the other’s movements, elegant long necks making the display all the more spectacular. This intricate ritual finishes with the pair running-dancing across the water’s surface side by side, followed by the “weed dance” where two pieces of grass are held between their beaks and used to paddle on the water’s surface, chests facing each other.
Today, we have access to a wealth of data about our customers’ buying behaviour. We’re increasingly reliant on sophisticated AI systems to analyse this data and optimise our marketing on our behalf.
The results are often impressive, but I would contend they can only go so far. Why? Because a machine can only make decisions based on a rational analysis of HOW customers are behaving, but it can’t fully understand WHY.
To understand why we buy, we have to look at our sub-conscious motivations.
“B2B purchasers are almost 50% more likely to buy a product or service when they see personal value — such as opportunity for career advancement or confidence and pride in their choice — in their business purchase decision. They are 8x more likely to pay a premium for comparable products and services when personal value is present.”
As an example, this classic advertising line from IBM tells us a lot about the corporate culture back when it was created. The opposite would probably be true today, as risk-taking and innovation is powering competitive advantage over safe decision-making.
IBM were dedicated to providing a quality, reliable service to their customers. However, the IBM marketing team understood the true psychology of the executives making decisions in their large corporate clients. They knew their customers had climbed to their position through self-preservation; job security at all cost. Sure, the advertising line implied quality and reliability, but the emotionally-charged phrase proved far more powerful and memorable.
In tough jobs, emotions run deep
Here’s another example, this time taken from our work for Panasonic TOUGHBOOK. The performance of these rugged computers make them a natural choice for the emergency services and armed forces, and engineers working in tough environments. But tapping into what motivates people to do their job in the first place proved far more effective than shouting about the features and benefits of the machines themselves.
Pride
‘The Specialist in You’ campaign understood the pride that engineers working in different sectors had in their expertise. We portrayed them as heroes, unique in their deep understanding and needs for the sector they worked in. The campaign achieved an ROI of 51:1 – proof of the power of pride as an emotional driver.
Yes, but I make widgets…
You might think that this works for business products but has no relevance for commodity components. But consider that the engineers using your widgets have their own personal and corporate motivations.
For example, every manufacturer is looking for competitive advantage. No matter how good the battery technology you sell to them is, you’re more likely to appeal to their sense of ambition with a line like ‘power to the innovators’.
The heart of the matter
So, why don’t I think that we can automate the emotion in marketing? Well, to make it work you need a deep connection with the human condition both strategically and creatively. The process relies on a combination of insight and empathy.
Your strategy team must delve deeper into the motivations of your customers – past the USPs of your product, and the behavioural data from your research. They need to talk to your customers, looking for the corporate and personal psychology that drives and motivates their decision-making.
For the complete picture, they’ll also need to research sector trends, the strategic objective of your customers, as well as the LinkedIn profiles and job adverts of your target customers’ decision makers, and those with buying power. By creating pen-portrait personas, they can bring these characteristics to life, and deliver key insights and truths which will inform your creative team.
Crucially, the next step involves a creative leap.
The greatest human attribute your creative team has is empathy. Empathy with the deep-seated desires and fears your strategy team has revealed about your customers. Without it, they can’t translate the psychological insight into something which connects and resonates powerfully at a human level.
At its best, the process produces market-beating commercial results by injecting warmth, heart, humanity and emotion into the creative output of your marketing.
These are things a machine can’t fully understand.
Yet.
At P+S, our in-house team of strategists, creative directors and business analysts has been helping world-leading brands to strike a chord with their customers. Our 40-year reputation has seen us deliver campaigns which have inspired, delighted and engaged businesses and consumers alike – all while boosting our clients’ bottom lines.
Looking to create movement in your market? Or ready to stir up emotion from your customers? Talk to us at [email protected].
As we creep into Autumn trying to decipher the news of topsy-turvy exam result algorithm’s, that throw the already questionable academic inflation and future of A.I into question, it’s time to simplify our lives surely?
With unprecedented (article word of the year) and gloomy unemployment data, broadcast with an almost ubiquitous frequency, (as I write 7000 Marks and Sparks loyal employees are the next wave to go) – now is the time, whilst sitting at home with many posturing increased productivity, through the worlds new connectivity window of Zoom, to think smart and think small.
I thought just for fun it might be a good time to experiment with some lifestyle writing (let’s face it AA Gill started at 38 and he was dyslexic), so there’s hope for all of us and if you’ve got this far it bodes well. I also feel morally obliged to disrupt LinkedIn content a little, to help break up the monotony and repetition of the posts, centered around the ‘look at our training day, its bigger than yours’ company updates, or almost ad nauseam, the often rather awkward photographs promoting the ‘certificate of recognition’ awards, to keep the Learning and Development Departments engaged in these troubled times.
So where is this all leading, well, let’s start with a just-for-fun simplification strategy that centres around ditching something in your everyday life, like your coffee machine, because if its anything like mine it drives you mad doesn’t it? Every time you ask it to do what it was designed to do, it says that it needs water, or beans, or some form of complex decalcifying procedure, which means you have to spend the next half hour shouting at your family or partner because the instruction book is not in the drawer, where all the instruction manuals are supposed to be kept. If you do then find it, it’s full of complex annotated drawings that make no sense.
Of course, you may have a much simpler Nespresso machine, which produces coffee without much palaver at all. Yes, but is there anything on God’s green Earth that generates so much waste? One day we’ll all drown in a sea of Clooney capsules. Talking of capsules have you ever tried to buy them? I visited a store the other day and they asked if you have an account with Nespresso, by which it means a facility to sell your data to more luxury suppliers after obtaining your inside leg measurement, biometrics and a retinal scan. If you do have an account and put your purchases on it, it takes exactly ten minutes longer than by just paying with your credit card.
So if like me you wish to pursue a simpler, happy, and stress-free life, put your machine in the bin and crack open the Nescafe jar, remember that?
While you’re at it you could turn off the TV and listen to more records. Cut yourself off from the world, it’s so liberating. I do this more and more and find myself enjoying and slipping into an almost blissful ignorance around Trump re-election shenanigans, Covid-19, and the gloom and doom of recessionary woes and enjoying an almost utopia of a trouble-free world. In fact, I was so ignorant from my frequent unplugging from the grid, I thought the Michael Jackson tour was passing through, judging by all the face masks in town and he’d renamed his pet monkey Wuhan.
Next, you should throw away everything that needs a charger. Just imagine actually travelling with a suitcase full of clothes and your favourite book and not cables, adapters, plugs and wires.
It’s the same thing with your complicated driverless lawnmower and your octopus pool cleaner or motorised pepper grinder. You imagined such things would make your life easier, but instead you have to spend every spare moment shouting at them because they’ve gone wrong.
So what’s happening? Well, it only dawned on me recently how really important we actually all are. Our years of mass consumption, and consumerism for all these gadgets, devices and aspirational luxuries that you just don’t need, is what kept it all sticky, greased and turning. I’d fallen into a space that the brands I was loyally purchasing from were doing me a favour, when in fact its vice-versa, food for thought here and a big shift in consumer behaviour and beliefs is already unfolding. Rolex and Hermes perplexed at the disappearance of luxury consumers can you believe for the first time have stopped production, only this week. Mass consumerism grinding to a halt perhaps is actually bigger than Covid-19, hard to believe but truth well told perhaps. There’s no vaccine for consumer spending reticence/resistance, just high-street closures and more unemployment. Governments stretched to the limits with burgeoning deficits have already splashed the cash in stimulus packages, that as predicted fell short and was a flash in the pan offering only a brief respite.
The solution perhaps, ‘live light, love local’. I’ve found myself in this simpler, less noisy, brave new world and it’s currently working for me. I was forced to adopt a very Coke Light approach and existence to my life a year before the pandemic. This re-centering was well-timed, giving me more flexibility and freedom to reboot, retool and evaluate what really matters in life including a much-needed speedy departure to leafy Gloucestershire before an intense and strict lockdown in Dubai. I can assure you the latest car and tech gadget is no longer relevant for so many now, which is already wobbling the world of many super brands. This gloomy retail index type news is for all to see, assuming your TV News is still on and you’re not listening to records.
With the national debacle of the GCSE and A-Level results fading in the news, albeit still with a flurry of newsworthy revolts, mass school appeals and pitchforks at dawn, I’m sad to confirm an even bigger academia blow, with the sad passing of one of my personal heroes – the educationist Sir Ken Robinson. Sir Ken was the proponent of the encouragement of creativity and the arts among children. The engaging world of TedTalks that launched his brilliance will just never be the same.
He was the protagonist that literacy and numeracy should not predominate a flawed educational system, born only in legislative centralised government buildings, which are far from the classrooms. He struck a real chord with me from the get-go and challenged the institution of educational standardisation and mind-boggling academic inflation, that quite often overlooked the arts and creativity pursuits, which he believed convincingly schools were killing. His wry and witty extempore style, honed in Liverpool, was characteristically engaging. Subsequently posted on YouTube, the TedTalk ‘Are Schools Killing Creativity?’ has been viewed by 380 million people in 160 countries and has influenced schools around the world.
His contribution to understanding the dynamics of the education system and the negative effects it has on some learners should never be undervalued. He conveyed it with great wit and charm, but also with an enormous amount of empathy for those of us, like me, who remained a square peg in a round hole academically. When I first saw his TedTalk I felt relieved and valued at last. I discovered I was a right-brained creative thinker and he helped me rise above the narrow, often-standardised, view of aptitude in schools.
Talking of schools I was lucky in many ways and avoided being packed off to boarding school at a tender teddy bear holding age like my poor brother. Deftly this was sheer luck or skill on my part flunking the entrance exam in hindsight; I’m not too sure. The cold capacious character of the stone buildings located in deepest darkest Wales did little to welcome you. I knew how unhappy he was as a boarder at the time, but I didn’t realise how unhappy, how alien it all was and how cruel. His saviour eventually was an MOD funded military school in Germany, where we were stationed, that was exempt from the league tables, didn’t speak in Latin and just let us get on with it and truly celebrated creativity, Sir Ken would have been proud.
Even now as I write this with the wildly inflated or deflated exam results and criminality of the applied algorithm, the UK will have thousands of children leaving school for good, confident they’ve learned all they need to know and are ready for whatever the world may throw their way. But as my brother rightly points out when he escaped the clutches of a Welsh public school, he still had no idea about the difference between a credit card and a debit card, and while he was pretty well versed in the periodic table, he had no clue how to secure a mortgage or even what council tax was.
I’ve long held the belief that schools exist now solely to maintain their position in the league tables. Children are like meat. They’re taught how to pass exams in the easiest possible subjects so that, when they do well, other parents will send their young fresh meat to that school, rather than a rival establishment.
To maintain the illusion that its all for the benefit of the children and not just about the league tables, kids are told they have no time for frivolous pastimes such as reading newspapers, enjoying live concerts in muddy fields, stealing bicycles, or socialising (outside of their dark web smartphone world) because they must get to University, for which they will need four straight A*s and no less than Gold in the Duke of Edinburgh Awards.
University is held aloft as the be all and end all, which you must pass through to avoid a front-of-house career in fast food – “you want fries with that”?
But in my experience this simply isn’t true. Take me for example (albeit many years ago), I was offered a role in a Saatchi Agency straight out of school and I jumped at it and have never looked back. Why did I get it, because I had bluster, confidence, the required eighties bow tie look and of course a motorbike pre emails, to courier the agency’s parcels all over town (in all weathers I hasten to add, at my cost) simple as that? It does sadly rather sound like the model of internships even today, something’s never change, but thankfully in fairness I was well remunerated all things considered. My counterparts all chose the University path and, unanimously, they delved in drugs and guaranteed their membership to Alcoholics Anonymous, while duly attending the token one lecture per week, to hear a professor transmit standardisation checklists. Ironically they all struggled to find work for several years thereafter and amounted huge student loan debts owed to the government, who ironically recommended this path in the first instance.
Now, it seems, my eagerness and entrepreneurial spirit to commence gainful employment to really learn the ropes in the real world and not in the classroom, bites me in the rear view mirror all too often. Today’s online application forms, employers and recruiters dedicate almost 70% of the interview process or online data fields chasing this piece of degree paper from twenty years ago, proving I could hold my drink and attend one lecture a week in a designated building. My twenty years sweat blood and beers industry experience honed in brand marketing is of inconsequence.
I’ve interviewed and employed many a young person in the agency and corporate world (I’ve also turned that many away with degrees who can’t spall, punctueight or even kraft an interesting attention grabber intro paragraph). Their interview experience often only amounts to no more than a trial of the intimidating boardroom chairs, a free glass of water and the gesture of the bus fare home. Lets be brutal and honest, an upper second from Warwick didn’t get close to a spot of cronyism. If you looked the part, (shameful I know but advertising is in the image business, take it or leave it), or I knew your Mum or Dad, or even better you were the just left school offspring of a potential new client, you stand a pretty good chance. If you weren’t, you’re just another name on a mile-high stack of CVs.
It may well be you were studious, completed all your coursework and you maintained a neat daddy’s haircut. But what do you think an employer wants, a kid who knows about Newton’s Third Law, or a young gun who can monetise Zoom and use pay-by-phone parking without calling his mum for help?
I’ve been staggered how inept and naive some school leavers are. Common sense and understanding around day-to-day things like average speed cameras, social distancing directives in public places, knowledge of where troubled Lebanon actually is and civil rights revolutions around why black lives matter ‘too’. – the use of too is important here.
They mock the Gen Xers like me for not having a thousand followers on Tik Tok or being able to fathom out the in-car infotainment centre. But conversely they can’t boil an egg, use a saw or change a fuse in the car and have a baffling indifference to the term patience. When I grew up we had Dukes of Hazzard on a Sunday (my favourite) then had to wait until the following Sunday to watch the next episode. Today, television or streaming I think its called is immediate, hence the term I guess. As a result of this ‘I want it now’ mentality, they can’t understand why after only a day in the agency, they are still account executive? ‘Why am I not Group Account Director?’ they protest after they’ve only been in the job a week and barely made it past reception!
Schools could rectify this by teaching patience instead of maths. I would also encourage kids to gamble, so they can see how easy it is to lose, and take out a loan so they grasp the problems of paying it back (unlike their student loan) and the difference between APR (annual percentage rate) over Interest Rate. Or how about learning the art of massage, that would be more potent in the fickle modern dating game than a Tinder in app purchase of a ‘super like’ ensuring your prey is notified of your desires, not that I’d know, I just researched this.
Could they be tested in any of this stuff? No, not really, which is why I would abolish all exams past the age of eleven. Exams ruin childhood and exist only as a yardstick for universities, to maintain their pursuit of academic inflation.
The end result then could be a country full of young people who have no idea about subglacial erosion, ox-bow lakes and algebra, but who are worldly-wise to get to a party without Google Maps, date a girl for real and not on WhatsApp only, make a Pot Noodle without scalding themselves and the realisation Donald Trump is as dangerous, stupid and foolish as rocket man Kim Jong Un.
I WANT WORDS WITH YOU.
Words that were banded around abundantly in and around the bike sheds at my school during breaks are extinct and banished these days. Spastic, Queer, Gimp, Poof, Gyppo, Wuhanker (sorry couldn’t resist the last one) as we find ourselves standing at the precipice of viral extinction. This laddish 2-cool-for-skool vocabulary back then, would be ground for being expelled today or instant dismissal from work and in many ways rightly so, I guess. It’s a little derogatory in this new PC world where even the words to Rule Britannia, dating back to 1740, are now under scrutiny it seems?
You can’t use these words anymore, just like you wouldn’t name your child Adolf. And yet, strangely, it is perfectly acceptable for those of us in travel and hospitality to pepper our conversations, websites and social media posts with the word ‘beverage’.
There are several twee and unnecessary words in the English language. Tasty. Meal. Cuisine. Nourishing. All should be erased. But, without a shadow of doubt the worst word, the worst noise, the screech of fingernails down the biggest blackboard in the country, the squeak of polystyrene on polystyrene, the cry of a baby on an aircraft when your hung-over, is the word ‘beverage’, surely?
PUNCH DRUNCH.
In Dubai it gets even worse. The mandated use of the term ‘grape beverage’ abounds, in a bid to soften and ward off the associated evil spirits (not the revenues) around alcohol. And, don’t get me started on ‘flavour’, the new secret squirrel code name everyone knows for Shisha, which the Health Ministry is instructing in a hopeless bid to try and eradicate this wheezy age-old social pastime, which is the last bastion of cultural traditions on the glistening streets of modernity.
Talking traditions the expat ‘BRUNCH’ is so last year I’ve heard. The fickle crowd, all now head to the new weekend pilgrimage ‘DRUNCH’. Clearly eating is officially cheating. Why waste precious time consuming food when you can just ‘drink-as-much-as you-can’ on grape beverages all day at the drinky drunky lunch?
As an ex-hotelier, I never knew where to hide my embarrassment during Brunch. For the new guests checking in from a long flight, who had to witness the unceremonious stretchering out from the hotel lobby, of intoxicated and scantily clad Brunch girls to the waiting ambulances was not exactly the warm Arabian welcome they were expecting. I would try in vain to avert the guests bewildered gaze at check in, to ensure they also avoided witnessing the customary, fully-clothed, freestyle swim in the hotel lobby fountains as the DRUNCH crowds parting gesture.
Apparently, they used to have ‘bever’ days at Eton when extra beers were brought in for the toffs. This almost certainly comes from some obscure Latin expression that only Boris Johnson would understand.
Therein lies the problem. People who work on planes and in hospitality (myself included) have got it into our heads that the word beverage, with its Eton and Latin overtones, is somehow posh and therefore the right word to use when addressing business class passengers and luxury hotel guests. The trouble is these customers in question are almost certainly (Mr Businessman – see my last post). They take flights all over the world and stay in business hotels and remain fairly average in the pecking order. The hospitality industry doesn’t need to treat them like they’re on the set of Downton Abbey. They don’t cut off their crusts on cucumber sandwiches Dorchester style, or say grace before dinner. They’re called Steve and Dave from Swindon. You know what they were doing in the departure lounge? Organising a merger with Heinz and Kraft? Fraid not, they’re looking at some Hooters swimsuit pageant pictures from the Internet, assuming they could even get airport Wi-Fi!
I’m middle class; I went to a military school most people would call relatively posh (it was certainly well-funded, thanks in part to the MOD). But if I came home to my wife and said I fancied a cold beverage and could she pass the condiments, or would she like help washing the accoutrements later, she’d punch me in the face!
DON’T SAY IT WITH FLOWERS.
As hoteliers grapple with new PPE ‘keep calm and covid on’ protocols, the glossy hospitality language we’re used to has been disrupted and is now punctuated with almost medical side-effects style leaflet copy, found with your antibiotics prescription. This new language is designed to rescue room nights and promote our new found, overnight, medical advisor acumen. Back in the old world though, we do still need to understand that guests don’t want to be treated like Mr Darcy. We need to embrace that they will understand there’s a kettle in your room. We don’t need to say there are ‘tea- and-coffee-making facilities’. Whilst we’re at it we should probably abolish ‘at all’ too, after every question. Can I take your coat at all? Would you care for a hotel car to the airport at all? Care for another complimentary welcome beverage at all? What’s wrong with saying ‘A free drink?’
Perhaps as hoteliers we feel that using more words than strictly necessary is somehow polite or helps justify the extortionate room rates? That’s why in a high-end restaurant last week I was offered some ‘bread items’. Maybe the change should start with the illustrious ‘food and beverage’ department, whom should be educated that the haughty, shizzle of embellished, vernacular-spectacular, mumbo-jumbo, foodie dialogue with restaurants and cuisine today, needs a serious, keep-it-simple-stupid rethink? When was the last time you even understood a menu?
Having written copious amounts of copy for luxury hospitality brands in my time, I’m guilty of all of the above too. My father used to read many of my extracts whilst holidaying and jokingly requested from room service a sick bucket, to relieve himself from this swamp of superlatives. He used to say, why couldn’t you just write simple English everyone understands, cut the flowery crap? – he has a point bless him. My brother also busted me during his stay, where he stumbled across a resort-wide food and drink (sorry beverage) guide I’d crafted. Page six; I remember it vividly introduced a new hotel bar concept, which exuded a nautical theme in its proposition and interiors. From memory the descriptor was something like, ‘Nakhuda Bar is the captain of comfort and the admiral of ambience’. How did we get away with it, I’ll never know? I guess very few guests on holiday read anymore, except my family, who tease me still to this day and treated it like a sport and pastime to find the most cringe worthy flowery crap as my father used to say!
A NEWSPAPER FOR YOU, AT ALL?
Finally, to almost validate today’s musings, I remember just before returning to the U.K from Dubai earlier in the year, I had a coffee in the hotel lobby next to my apartment and there was the familiar friend, the rack of newspapers. You know the ones that are wrapped around a long wooden pole and remain almost impossible to read without injuring yourself or taking out a passer by. The accompanying notice said ‘Newspapers for your reading pleasure’. All they had was the Gulf News and Khaleej Times, so it wasn’t even technically correct.
Before the COVID cloud descended, I was fortunate in my chosen career to travel and see the world from a business class seat, but like so many now, not anymore. This does however give me the opportunity to share, just for fun really, some peculiar observations I’ve made over the years with the corporate traveller; regarded as the life support of airport retail and a dying breed now, no thanks to the pandemic.
Clearly the Zoom platform is the new normal of 1-2-1 human business interactions across the globe and the unimaginable cemetery of airlines. I guess inadvertently, we’ve found something Sir David Attenborough can for once be chipper about, with the dramatic reduction in ozone depleting, cancerous, aircraft contrails, so that’s a little good news from all this bad and who knows even Greta Thunberg might relax a tad.
In retrospect though this unplanned sabbatical from corporate travel for me is quite a blessing, as I no longer have to endure ‘Mr Corporate’ on the move, which is baffling at the best of times.
I consider myself a relatively humble traveller, who knows what to wear, what to take, where to sit on the silver bird (with no fuss), for the all-important swift strategic exit, to beat the immigration queue debacle on arrival. I know my gate and don’t rely on airport staff lazily for anything, and i’m always conscious of what time to leave the business lounge leaving plenty of time for the marathon to the gate. My personal KPI to aviation etiquette success, 35,000 feet up, is when I believe the crew almost don’t know I’m there. A far cry from many passengers I have witnessed, who believe they deserve the attentive service of a five star hotel guest relations manager, at all times.
My fine-tuned departure diligence and commitment to my fellow passengers thankfully never made me the subject of the Captain’s weary announcement, that we’re just finishing up the paperwork, which in reality, translates to, we’re still waiting for some selfish bastard traveller, who believes it’s OK to still be sipping champagne in the lounge. Shamelessly, and almost like he’s been inconvenienced, he eventually saunters on-board the aircraft for the inevitable walk of shame down the aisle, his air of nonchalance that 500 fellow passengers including the crew are now delayed, knowing full well we should have already pushed back and we’ve now missed our slot, beggars belief.
I’M COOLER ONLINE
What I could never get to grips with on these frequent trips is the regularity of corporate travellers who believe ‘my laptop is in front of me, which mandates its use’ behaviour. Personally I think laptops should be banned from airports. They hold up security checks, they break if the person in front of you reclines without warning (in cattle class) and it seems the world’s businessmen are incapable of sitting down at an airport for a moment, without flicking open the computer and pulling a serious face, while pretending that the machine is actually doing something. It isn’t.
The alpha males fortunate enough to locate an electrical socket, which is coveted, strictly guarded and comes at a premium in the business lounge, usually flex a muddle of about five different cables and devices as invariably none will have any charge, and settle in to assimilate productivity with short-lived red-eye eagerness. They then spend the first five minutes waiting for it to stop making chiming noises on start up and the next twenty discovering it won’t connect to the lounge Wi-Fi, something to this day I have never succeeded with in any airport. I would put money on what I call the existence of the airport Wi-Fi hogger, who lurks in dark café corners, downloading the Star Wars trilogy in glorious HD for free, effectively blocking the bitstreamy pipe thingy for everyone else. The alternative then is to login through your hotspot, but frustratingly this requires you to dig deep for a password you can never remember and by the time its emailed to an account you don’t have access to either, they have called your flight and its time to go.
I think instead of pretending to be international mover and shakers, who cannot be out of touch for a moment, leave the damn thing at home, speed up security checks and spend more time thinking about stuff or reading The Economist. This will make you a better, cleverer person and more people will want to do business with you, not a dinner party bore who believes his MacBook Air with high resolution, 14 inch retina display and four million pixels makes him look svelte and important.
IT’S A COVER UP
The other phenomena of the businessman on the move in airports, is the mobile phone. I started to notice several corporate types holding the handset with one hand and using the other hand to shield their mouths, huh? This is absurd; I mean how many people do you know that can actually lip-read? You really can have a normal conversation you know, because hate to say it, the reality is we’re genuinely not interested in what your saying. You might think you look like an arms dealer who’s negotiating with Kim Jong-un about the next consignment of solid state rocket-man fuel or the market price for plutonium rods, but we know you aren’t because your called Steve from Swindon and your crumpled egg stained suit is from Zara.
MEN IN BLACK
Which brings me to the next travel savvy recommendation. Don’t wear suits when you travel, it only means you have to carry a suit carrier. I did this once (never again), when I was shallow and stupid, worrying more about the creases in my Paul Smith trousers than what I had to sell. The carrier was the size of a house, with so many pockets, it created what I call ‘pocket-paranoia’, similar to what you experience with ski-suits, and almost cost me an extra airline ticket based on volumetric mass alone. My advice, adopt the ‘in the know’ travel convenience of a timeless polo shirt and chino’s, but never, ever, tuck your polo shirt in, as this will make you look like an American and if that isn’t bad enough, it might then find you in the concourse retail area perusing and contemplating fanny packs, the beginning of the end for most of us.
Furthermore when you are in the business lounge at 6 a.m. do not drink vast quantities of alcohol and pile your plate up high and mix croissants, curry and fruit like an apostle at The Last Supper, because it’s free. I witnessed this show of gluttony all the time, often while in the queue for the Clooney capsule coffee machine. Interestingly Dubai Airport business lounge was the worst, its like a Calcutta railway station in rush hour. Every man and his dog is in there and the capacious concourse a floor below almost looks empty because of it. This free dining for all concept and generosity from Emirates (not known for their freebies) creates an almost supermarket style, free shopping, trolley dash atmosphere around the various buffet stations, that one must skilfully now navigate or get trampled on. Lets also be honest here, your about to be served an hour into your flight with reconstituted eggs anyway so this poor eatery etiquette just reaffirms everyone’s suspicion, that you’re a business lounge virgin and only here as a ‘poverty guest’, on the back of your colleagues platinum airline loyalty card.
WORK IT OUT AND GET OUT
Finally, if you’re staying in an international hotel try not to go to the gym. I’ve stayed in fabulous cities all over the world rammed with art, culture, bars and many quirky restaurants with the option to truly eat and mix like a local. And yet my hotel’s gym was crammed with Anthony’s lifting things up and putting them down in the same place again. What an earth are you all doing? Get out of your shorts and immerse in some culture. You are blessed with a job that lets you travel, so don’t waste your time in the gym locker room, talking credit swaps, putting your suit in a silly trouser press that never works and lifting up stuff that’s just too heavy.
It seems ever since the 1990’s a bizarre code of conduct for businessmen exists often resulting in a decimated stock market and the prospect of many years of economic austerity and doldrums to right the wrongs. I put this down to the people that should have been oiling the wheels of commerce being in the gym or trying to impress colleagues with their MacBook Air, that never ever connects to airport Wi-Fi, as its probably too thin to even pick up a signal.
My ‘Mr Businessman’ travel tip conclusion then with all these observations is, wear a polo shirt and chinos, read The Economist, talk normally on the phone and make stuff people actually want to buy. Alternatively you could just Zoominar and make the world a cleaner better place.
The world’s found itself with a lot more free time over the past few weeks. The Covid-19 crisis has seen many of us confined to our homes. Plenty of people have been searching out new ways to while away the time. TV and streaming services have never been more appreciated. It’s for that reason that Netflix’s latest sensation, Tiger King, has become a talking point the world over.
Many social networks are dominated by Coronavirus information. The rest of social media is awash with the extraordinary true-crime series. An horrific yet compelling story, Tiger King has many different strands. From animal abuse to alleged murder and polygamy to politics, the show has it all covered. One particular element of the tale, too, piqued our professional interest.
Taboo SEO, Copyright Violation & The Tiger King
Much of the Tiger King series looks into G.W Zoo owner, Joe Exotic, and his feud with Carole Baskin. Baskin owns an ‘animal sanctuary’ on the other side of the USA. Despite the geographical distance, the pair are the closest of rivals. One of the episodes, too, explained how the rivalry entered the realm of digital marketing.
Far from the worst of his crimes, Exotic was guilty of some pretty crude blackhat digital marketing efforts. Interviews from the show revealed that the shady zoo owner went as far as changing the name of his business.
Exotic wanted to exploit the popularity and online presence of Baskin’s ‘Big Cat Rescue’. To do so, he adopted the moniker ‘Big Cat Rescue Entertainment’. That wasn’t all he did to increase his chances of stealing search traffic, either. Exotic also created business cards and ads with Florida addresses and phone numbers. That’s despite the fact that G.W Zoo is in Arizona.
The bold and underhanded move saw some success in the short term. In Tiger King, Baskin talked about fielding calls from people assuming a connection to Exotic’s business. It’s safe to believe that plenty of people made a similar mistake online, too. Retribution was definitive and significant, though.
In 2012, Baskin took Exotic and his company to court for copyright violation. Unsurprisingly, given the details of the case, she was successful. The Florida businesswoman gained a settlement worth close to $1 million.
Tiger King – The Digital Marketing Takeaway
Who’d have thought a Netflix true-crime series would have an SEO takeaway? We truly are living through strange times. Tiger King, though, can teach something about SEO. Particularly, it can educate you on the unethical shortcuts you may get tempted to take.
Such blackhat methods for siphoning traffic or usurping rivals can work in the short-term. You might see a boost in visitors to your site. In the long run, though, you’ll do yourself more harm than good.
Google’s algorithms are now smarter than they’ve ever been. They’ll often catch you out and rain down punitive penalties. If not, you could see the same kind of legal ramifications as Joe Exotic. The bottom line is that the best digital marketing comes via hard work over time. You can’t cheat your way up the SERPs.
Exotic’s Big Cat Rescue Entertainment logo (left) and Baskin’s Big Cat Rescue logo. Source: Netflix
Two of Bristol’s creative agencies have joined forces to launch a brand new arts community to raise money for the NHS and Mind charities amidst the current Covid-19 crisis.
Duchess Media and Hey! What? have come together to launch ‘Life on Hold’, a campaign designed to generate a new creative community, producing designs, illustrations, animations and music inspired by the current change in pace of life for a lot of other agencies, freelancers and creatives in digital, music and arts, who have suddenly found themselves out of work.
Working with a range of well-known and up and coming artists from Bristol and beyond including Inkie, Mr Jago, Feek and many more, Life on Hold will launch online with a selection of curated pieces of art and music, all based around the theme of ‘Life on Hold.’ The produced works will then be made available to participants for download through the Life On Hold website for the creative community to remix.
Participating artists will then take elements from the original creations to produce their own pieces of work. Their creations can then be passed on to other creatives, generating a chain of ever-evolving ‘remixed’ art, graphic design and music.
The project will culminate in an online exhibition including the original pieces of work alongside all of the remixed prints and music tracks, all of which will be available for purchase with all profits raised going to Bristol based NHS charity Above & Beyond, who work to support city centre hospitals.
Speaking about the project, founder Hamish McWhirter said:
“The NHS and charities like Mind are so vital to our society at times like this. Using our connections within the creative community to show them some gratitude and support for what they are doing is the least we can do. It’s also a great way for creatives to produce works that connect with what will be remembered as a seminal moment in our generations history. Doing good is the best we can do right now.”
Life On Hold will launch with the original pieces available for applications on Friday 27th March, with original artworks available for ‘remixing’ on Friday 3rd April, and anyone wanting to participate will be able to make a charitable donation to support the amazing work being done by the NHS in Bristol’s hospital during this crisis and all the time. The remixed pieces will then be showcased and be available for purchase at a later date.
Following a successful exhibition in 2018, AMBITIOUS PR is supporting the return of the Bristol Gaming Market this weekend. The gaming expo is set to draw over 2,000 gaming enthusiasts from across the region to the Passenger Shed for a one-day gaming extravaganza.
With the highest concentration of gaming companies in the South West (and the 7th highest in the UK), Bristol is home to studios such as the award-winning Mobile Pie and Reach Robotics, the company behind augmented reality game, MekaMon.
Following the success in cities including London and Doncaster, Replay Events, the company behind the PLAY Expo is holding the Bristol Gaming Market to give gaming enthusiasts and collectors from across the region a chance to browse hundreds of tables of video games, tabletop games and mechanise for sale.
“We are witnessing a real growth in retro gaming as collectors and gaming enthusiasts stay loyal to classic games and are willing to travel the distance to get their hands-on classic games like Console Passion and Deadpan Robot.” Commented Andy Brown, Managing Director, Replay Events.
The Bristol Gaming Market will take place at The Passenger Shed, next to Temple Meads train station in the centre of Bristol, on Sunday 22nd September. Early entry tickets (giving access from 11am) cost £5.00 and are pre-bookable at: www.bristolgamingmarket.com/tickets. Tickets after 12:00 cost just £2.00. Children under 16 can enter for free when accompanied by a paying adult after 12pm. Tickets are available on the door. The Bristol Gaming Market closes at 16:00.
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