The Real State Of Content Marketing - Now Is The Time To Break Bland Content
I was recently joined on my latest podcast for Marketing Unfiltered by my friend Chris Hutchings a former CMO, a content creator and now a consultancy helping brands create brilliant content through It Better Go Bang
We discuss content marketing, how to be successful in it in 2025 and beyond, and why so many are getting it wrong (hint: bland and boring content is killing you).
The most important chapters to watch & share with your team:
What do you think brands get wrong about content and marketing their content? 00:30
Brands are playing it safe 01:11
What is the point of some content that brands put out 01:29
Paddy Power leading the light 02:56
Goal setting has killed content 05:41
The true misunderstanding of what people want 09:00
Losing to the algorithms - allowing to be engineered by the platforms 10:02
Guardrails, not guidelines 15:22 Duolingo the example everyone loves (but could never do) 16:17
The modern web has confused Marketing Leaders & CMOs 22:51
The Substack influence 29:40
Understanding the power of distribution 34:12
The power of brand personalities and connecting to employees 38:33
Own your audience - Go Direct! 39:52
Boring & vanilla, Or Do you want to stand out? 43:14
The Maya Jama Opportunity 53:22
The Power Of IGC (influencer-generated content) 1:11:05
The difference between content creators, influencers, KOLs and b2b influencers 1:16:00
Does live still have a place in the future of marketing? 1:27:35
Great example of employees joining podcasts - OpenAI researchers joining high-profile podcasts 1:29:28
Are there any quick wins for marketing leaders 1:35:05
The sweet spot? Mid form content 1:42:54
Prefer decks? Here’s what Gamma created from the transcript:
Missed my other two podcasts recently,
(i) Here is Carl’s masterclass on SEO and AI’s impact on search
(ii) And here is my chat with Harry on The state of the CMO role
Want to discuss anything being discussed? Get in touch below
The full transcript : Chris Hutchings Content Marketing
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[00:00:00]
[00:00:01] Danny Denhard: I'm joined today by Chris. He's a good friend of mine. He's achieved many different things. He's been a CMO now helping companies with all different types of marketing, more specifically around content. We're gonna dive into a load of good questions. I wish we recorded numerous conversations we had before, just on phone calls, 'cause I think they'd be incredibly useful.
But we're gonna dive straight in. So, Chris, what do you think brands get wrong about content and marketing their content?
[00:00:30] Chris Hutchings: Do you know what it, it is kind of hard to talk about this without sounding like you've really putting the boot in to 95 plus percent of brands. I think, I mean, I guess first of all, I think we should talk about content, right?
Content spans a whole spectrum of what companies do. So a lot of people look at content and think, oh, it's just social media content, or it's just content. I think where [00:01:00] bla where brands go wrong is actually there's, all of that is content and some of it gets more focused than others. And even the places that get focused, I think a lot of brands play it too safe.
And I dunno if it's a fear thing. I dunno if it's a perception of what their brand thing is or just a lack of knowledge of what's going on in the world. But I think it's often just a little bit too vanilla and doesn't do anything right. It's just, it almost, I almost wonder what the point is of some content that brands put out.
I dunno what you think.
[00:01:33] Danny Denhard: Yeah, I completely agree. I think where there used to be this real fear of branded content and putting content out under, under a brand, we, we kind of shifted, right? We went from not really putting much out and then it was a big bang reveal and an advert. It's a social work. You could have basically put anything out at any point.
At any time. Yeah. And you could have put anyone in control of it and it could have blown [00:02:00] up or, or, or gone really well or blown up in your face and gone tremendously badly to this part we're in now where it just feels like everyone's a little bit confused of what to do, why to do it, how to do it, and where, where they naturally fit.
And I think this is where people like you can really help steer brands in the right direction or have a real, you know, crystal clear vision of, of what they should do, why they should do it, how they should do it, and b, rather than being like overly policed like a lot of bigger brands are.
[00:02:31] Chris Hutchings: Mm-hmm.
[00:02:32] Danny Denhard: Actually being able to do tests, learn, iterate, understand, understand their audience a little bit more and don't talk at people anymore. Talk with them.
[00:02:41] Chris Hutchings: Well that's the funny thing I, I think because everyone is doing very similar styles. The, the potential to stand out is huge, and you don't even have to, don't even have to change things that dramatically to do so.
Yeah, I think one of my favorite, I mean, if, [00:03:00] if we're gonna pigeonhole this in the kinda social media world for, for two minutes, Paddy power, I, by far one of my favorite content creators, right? They, they, they work in an industry that is very highly regulated, frowned upon a bit, borderline with, with how they sit in the world, in, in gambling.
And I'm not advocating gambling, obviously, I, I don't really gamble myself, but I admire how they go about it because in that world where they face those challenges, some of the content they put out is the funniest, it's the most. It's very, very, they're very quick to respond to trends, to news, to things that are going on in the sporting world.
The sporting world provides hundreds of topics to talk about every week, and they get on it quickly, and they also, their target audience, and again, it's a bit generous thing, but they play into [00:04:00] it so well and, and what they're doing is not high value. It's not some iters I guess they're, they're outrageous stunts, but excuse me, in, in the world, in some of the social media stuff, it's just, you can tell, they, they, they've obviously, I mean, it must be such fun to work in that team as a, as a man who loves sport.
I mean, what dream gig that must be for some of them. And, and then I remember seeing their CMO in a conference a few years ago and, and someone asked him the questions like, oh, you know, how far are they allowed to push their stuff? And he was very open. He said that they can go as close to the line. As they possibly can.
How many CMOs, I mean, you know, hundreds of CMOs, right? As as I know, quite a few as well. I can't imagine many saying that to their marketing team. I'm sure you've probably seen it like I have, you work in teams and you come up with a concept of something. And this isn't just social for the record.
This could be any piece of content. You come up with a concept, you think, what? Great idea, it's emotive. It's, it's [00:05:00] outlandish. It's, it's gonna hook people in. It's great. And then it goes to head of brand and they're like, oh, no, no, we'll water that down a little bit. And then it goes to head of legals and then we'll water down a little bit more.
And then, and then the CMO gets this, oh, no, no, we'll water that down just a little bit more. And, and then before you know it, you, you, you're three weeks in your idea is just a shadow of its former self and it goes out and
does
bugger all
this
[00:05:24] Danny Denhard: is where people have. Have forgotten what, what they're, what they're doing while they're doing it, and actually, are they looking for, you know, what moment are they looking for?
And is it, very often it's the quality versus quantity debate. Often. Yeah. It's, are we hitting like a, a goal and an okr, or actually are we trying to resonate with our users, or are we trying to create a little bit of a moment for ourselves? Or a lot of the time I think it's lost on the goal setting. And then as you said, like the brand police element of it just sort of takes away.
I've seen some things on, you know, [00:06:00] TikTok and Instagram reels, which I. Kind of make my skin crawl a little bit, as in, oh my, they're so close to the line, or they've just jumped so far ahead. Yep. And then if you flip it back, actually what people do want is that relatability, that that moment with, with brands and with content.
There is this, there's this such shift in swings that's happening at the moment.
[00:06:22] Chris Hutchings: I think you raise an interesting point about goal setting and I think a lot of brands where I've worked in the past and where I'm speaking to currently as a consultant, I think a lot of brands set the goals of what they're trying to achieve with their content totally wrong.
And the problem with, with that goal setting, a lot of brands are think, oh, how much, what's the ROI? How many sales are we gonna get? And then what invariably seems to happen is they'll go out with the three months. Half our strategy. I was like, well, we haven't, we don't even talk about attribution, but they go, well, we can't get the sales in, or we haven't got the follower jump, or we haven't got this, we haven't got that.
And we'll just [00:07:00] can it. Whereas, and I'm not saying that they shouldn't drive sales, but it that shapes what the type of content they put out is. And they basically, you said it earlier about talking to, as opposed to talking with your audience and your community, that they're putting out content that's trying to sell to you and essentially an advert.
I mean, Christ, how many adverts do we see? Like, and I'm not even talking about social content, about actual adverts. Every day you open, I went on someone was telling me about his new pillow and I went on Instagram and I saw, instantly saw his advert for this new pillow, this fancy look like a spaceship type thing.
And I'm not kidding you, Danny, I saw 10 adverts for that same pillow from different brands within, I don't know, two minutes of scrolling. We see enough adverts. I, I think where, where brands should be going from is not creating adverts. They should be creating content that makes people think that, that keeps your brand top of mind, that [00:08:00] you are almost entertaining or informing as opposed to, and you can do that, you know, even if you're informing right?
You can do that in an entertaining way. And I think so many brands lose track of that. Something you and I have talked about a lot is how individual content creators create content and the, and the huge golf in the way these people build their personal brands or, or create videos or whatever that gulf between how they do it and how brands do it.
Yet you've got these content creators who are create building audiences of, I mean, it's a cliche example, right? Mr. Beast, everyone talks about Mr. Beast, but even. E even lower tier creators, are generating hundreds of thousands of views per videos or getting subscriber accounts. And it stuns me that more brands aren't looking at, these individual creators are going like, how are they approaching that?
Why are they doing that? 'cause something's obviously working there. Right. But brands I think are getting too stuck in their own [00:09:00] heads.
[00:09:01] Danny Denhard: There's like a true misunderstanding of what people actually want when they're consuming branded content.
[00:09:08] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:09:08] Danny Denhard: And the best content is either like inspirational aspiration.
Mm-hmm. It's how they connect, it's how you connect with that content. So whether it's with an individual, a mascot, with like a product type which can lead to social status or you know, some sort of other sort of status with it. Yeah. But I do think when these Content creators, like there's professionals that do it, have really thought, they've just thought about how it's gonna connect.
Like the first four isn't sell stuff. Mm. It's how's this gonna tell a story that will connect enough? Yeah, it's fine on, on TV 'cause that's what people are used to. But even on radio you have to do something different. You have to like sell something, use emotive sounds or a story to connect. And I think we've just, we've been engineered a little bit by social networks and they've kind of pushed us [00:10:00] down.
This let's just create loads of content.
[00:10:02] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:10:02] Danny Denhard: Loads and loads of content and then push out and, and you need to do more. 'cause that's what the algorithm needs. And it feeds off off the content for me that just, it emphasizes where brands have been lost a little bit and they've been di they've kind of been engineered by the platforms.
Yeah. As opposed to engineering the content. So people actually want to consume it. And we've talked around this before, but I think there should be a rule if you're not gonna pay for it and want to do paid, but put paid behind it. Is it good enough to put out there?
[00:10:32] Chris Hutchings: Well, let me, let me interrupt you there.
Right. So this, this touches on what I think is one of the biggest myths around social media. And it's the death of organic reach. Yes. Organic reach has been slammed across many platforms. However, there are many creators out there who are not suffering with rubbish organic reach. And it begs the question why.
And my answer to anyone who answer that is because they're creating content that people want to watch and [00:11:00] people enjoy watching and people want to share WhatsApp to their mates or dms to their mates. And I think so many brands are hiding behind this organic reach as is getting smashed. And it isn't what it was 10 years ago.
No one's disputing that. But if you can create good content, it's in the interest of these platforms to put it in front of people who will engage with it. And I, and I had this conversation with someone last week. They were, oh yeah, where's no point doing social? 'cause organic reach is dead? I was like, no, you're just creating crap content.
Like your expectations. I can't name who they are, but I, I was pitching to a client a little while ago and they were saying they had, they had, in particular on Instagram was one of the channels we were talking about. They had a hundred thousand followers, which they had built up legitimately, organically over the last five years.
And they're like, oh, well we get 20, 20 likes on each post we put out. So we're just thinking like, what's the point? [00:12:00] But you look at the content they're putting out and it is just awful. It's just nothing to it. And what amazes me, Danny, is I just, I, I think, how can I not. I, I dunno how people can't see it sometimes, I dunno if they're too close to it, maybe.
Or they get in, you know, they're sitting in their team meetings and someone comes up with this idea and they just, they just lose track a bit. I don't know why. I suspect there's different reasons for different teams, but it's a, it's a roundabout way of saying organic reach is not as bad as people think it is.
[00:12:31] Danny Denhard: Yeah. I think if people are worried around creating content and worried around engagement rates, you've gotta look at the wider industry and wider spectrum. Yeah. Engagement has dropped because more and more people are creating content. Yeah. It's far easier to create content now, and it's far easier for them to understand what your content is.
So as you said, the for you page or serving you content and entertainment, they're gonna constantly be doing that. And actually when you show intent on something, it's gonna show you some [00:13:00] more and some more. Yeah. Until you decide your engagement rates say that you like or you don't like it. If you've got a Instagram account and you're posting on it, people don't like as much anymore because there's stories.
Yeah. So, and some people live doing this and scrolling, you know, right to left and just constantly downloading that and consuming that. And we'll get into whether it's, you know, useful content, you know, or is it like. Worthwhile content or useless content up there. And then other people are so engineered to go top to bottom.
Keep scrolling to see that. So if you are expecting to get, do you know brand dopamine kicks from engagement? I actually think you're probably not understanding how platforms are working, how they wanna con take on content and then post it in front of your non-engaged audience.
[00:13:51] Chris Hutchings: I, I think as well though, I just, I think you're right.
And, and to add to it, I would say that I think a lot of brands have this weird perception of how [00:14:00] seriously they take themselves or how, and I've seen it in companies I'm sure you have as well. Like they, they're like, oh no, well, we, we are not gonna, we're not gonna, we, we we're too high brow. We're too, we're too serious for that.
And I think that it stifles a lot of brands, stifles a lot of teams. And that's not even, that's a cultural shift I think, in a lot of companies. And that's not even taken into account how some, you know, especially founder led companies, you know, there's, there's even worse, right? You've got the founder who basically dictate, dictates what the messaging is and, but the positive spin on all that is, I think if you get someone in who's prepared to sit down and, and ideate and get, create, I mean, strategies don't even have to be that complicated, right?
I work, I worked with a company last year and they were creating stuff on an iPhone in the office and they're getting hundreds of thousands of years. And I think that the [00:15:00] beauty of it is, is yes you are right. There's so many people creating content, but there's also, I don't think it takes a lot to break into that next level where actually you really start getting some views 'cause you're creating something that's a little bit different and a little bit interesting.
[00:15:16] Danny Denhard: Completely. Something you said that sort of screen. Screamed out for me to like jump in. But it's guardrails, I think for, for rather than having really, really strict guidelines have guardrails so people know where success is and they're on the way to success, but let 'em bump into it from time to time.
Yeah. And let 'em cr create it and let people feel when they're on the right path or not, because I've gotta bee in my bonnet about brand guidelines and people overinvesting and wasting their time and spending a long, long time in saying what you can do and what you can't do. Yeah. And there's this huge gray area in the middle.
And what happens is they just bump 'em into the, into you can't do it. Yeah. If they're [00:16:00] unsure. And I think what that all that does is drives people to, to create bland content or create content that people don't really wanna consume. And even your biggest super fans don't really want to, don't understand it and don't get it.
And everyone loves the Duolingo example of what they did on TikTok and, but that took years of, of, of understanding what it is Years of actually saying and going, being flagged up to the CEO. And he said it in many podcasts that that's what happens. Yeah. But now they've got into it so they know how weird they can be or how wild they can be.
And even to the point of killing them, their mascot to generate enough interest and, and buzz and engagement around them. So I think there are ways and always examples of, of companies that do a great job
[00:16:52] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:16:52] Danny Denhard: And can give you confidence when you are recommending something different or a little bit out there that, that enables it.
And [00:17:00] I think that's something where many brands can bring someone external to give them the reset and the anchoring that they need.
[00:17:08] Chris Hutchings: I, I think, I think the guardrails is a good analogy. And, and just, I know we've got a lot of questions, so I'd draw a line under this one. I think where, where the, the, the upsides and downsides here as well, right?
So like, unless you are really creating content that is super offensive, it gets forgotten about tomorrow, right? It goes up into the for you page or the feed or wherever it might go. Vi you know, best bit of luck. It might go viral for 24 hours, but realistically, especially the short form content, right? I mean, you're not seeing it a week later.
And I think people can stick within brand guidelines without upsetting genres or groups or whatever. And I think there's, you know, so I think [00:18:00] brand should be a bit braver. I. I think that, you know, you can have brand guidelines, but you know, what you wanna do as well is like you're trying to create a place where people aren't afraid to put out their creativity and ideas.
You know, we've all worked in places where you don't really get a say in anything, and it's not very rewarding. It's not very exciting. You know, you want, you want your team to come in, in the morning invigorated about something. Like, we all know these best ideas that we have happen in the shower or as we dropping off at nighttime.
Could you imagine you, you're sort of walking into, you know, you, you're lying there in bed one night and you have this great idea about this concept that you really wanna introduce to your boss the next day. And then you're sitting on the bus, you're going into work, you're like, ah. And you start watering it down in your own head because you think, oh, he's never gonna say yes to that, or she's never gonna say yes to that, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I think that you wanna foster an environment where people can come to you with [00:19:00] these. I don't even wanna say outrageous ideas because it makes it sound more extreme than it really is. But like, you wanna have an open door with ideas, right? You might not agree to it straight away, but you don't want people to hold back thinking, oh, there's no no point in me even raising that.
So yes. Long story short, two vanilla needs to be braver.
[00:19:19] Danny Denhard: Maybe, maybe it's like a spin on a, something we've spoken around before, but it might be a case of do we think that the marketing leader or the growth leader has kind of become, are they letting their, the team, are they the problem?
Basically? Have they become, we're going
[00:19:36] Chris Hutchings: there already, are we,
[00:19:37] Danny Denhard: have they become a little bit too disjointed or disconnected? Or is it a case of having to be the, the steward of the brand? So
[00:19:46] Chris Hutchings: I remember a piece of advice I got years and years ago and it stuck with me and it was about, some of it was along the lines of don't let your own views.
Extrapolate out to the way you address [00:20:00] everyone. And then it was in, it was, it was in relation to a conversation I was having with like my boss at the time. I was like, oh, well I, what's the point in? I said, what's the point in doing this? No one's gonna be interested in that. And he said, no, no, no. You are not interested in that.
Doesn't mean nobody else is. And it, I mean, I was like, oh, right. And I think that a lot of senior business people probably look at the likes of TikTok and short form video content in a way that's not as serious as the huge numbers that watch it. There's a huge disconnect there, isn't there really? I mean, you've talked about this before many times and I think that comes back to what I was saying a minute ago.
It's if, if you've got a younger team and they're gonna, well, we've seen this trend about, I don't know, people throwing ice buckets on, on heads. Wouldn't it be great [00:21:00] if we got the CEO to do it? And you know, and you've got this stuffy CEO in his suit. Oh, I'm, I'm not playing up to that. You know, that childish when the truth of the matter is, is they showed that bit of personality and,
you know, a bit, bit of cha I dunno, I, I, it's a bad example maybe, but I think, yeah, I think a lot of senior leaders, particularly in marketing and maybe not quite as giving the short form video stuff as much credit as it, as it, I mean, tiktoks a great example, right? About organic reach. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you?
If you are, if you are, and, and, and the, and the audience is getting older there as well, right? It used to be just kids dancing. And if you and I had had this conversation a couple of years ago, then yes, I'd probably say, oh, don't worry about it so much. But the landscape's changed. So I think that [00:22:00] some people don't really, haven't really moved with the times or maybe frown upon it or don't think it's as important as it is.
They're missing, they're missing a trick.
[00:22:10] Danny Denhard: My theory on short form is because a lot of it feels disposable. It can to someone senior when you are super busy and you are having to defend so many different metrics being down or performance not doing so well, or the performance marketing, you know, CS gone through the roof.
[00:22:29] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:22:30] Danny Denhard: Actually trying to like argue the case and be the, be the fort leader or be the steward of marketing and or growth and bringing 'em forward and saying, no, this is an awareness play. No, this is, you know, this is actually middle of the funnel for us. Yeah. Or alternatively we're using it as retention.
It's like a retention play. Yeah. And where I've, where I think a lot of marketing leaders are getting lost a little bit is trying to actually understand how the web is now. Yeah. Versus how the web [00:23:00] used to be when they were, they were coming up. And I think that, I truly believe the web now is such a different place because there's three, three phases of the web.
There's the public web, open web, which every, you can go and see, see a lot, and a lot of it's published there. But actually you see probably like one per, you know, under 1% of the content. Mm-hmm. There's the semi-private web, which is gated, where you have to subscribe and you have to log in, and then it's actually a little bit more manageable and only a small set subset of people will see it and most likely won't go anywhere after that.
So it's kind of the world. People are comfortable in. And then there's this private, you know, private world, which is your WhatsApp groups, your telegrams, your dms on Instagram, on on TikTok, et cetera.
[00:23:47] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:23:48] Danny Denhard: And what, because they can't see it and can't measure it, it's very difficult for them to view it as something that's important.
I've got a, a theory that companies in the future will be [00:24:00] creating content sports specifically for people to share in groups and to share with their, with their audience. Completely private. So brands will never get to know that it's been shared.
[00:24:11] Chris Hutchings: I think you're probably, I think we're already seeing that, right?
I mean, I think you're spot on because it is a long-term approach and in this world of ROI and short tenure for marketing professionals, I, I think a lot of them may be a bit afraid to. Go to the CEO and say, oh look, I want invest a couple of hundred K in this social thing, but we're not really gonna see any results until, I don't know, maybe like six months, a year down the line.
And even then it's not guaranteed. And the CEO's like, oh no, no, no, just, just stick it into PPC and we know we'll get, we'll get that thing. Like, I mean, you brought up a great thing Duolingo right? How many brands would've had that Duolingo type [00:25:00] conversation and just gone, no, no, no. And then several years later, you go on LinkedIn and every marketing professional in the world's got a view on what an ingenious idea duo is.
And it's true, right? Because most CMOs that you would go is, oh, how about we introduce this character? Oh. I dunno what 90% would say no, if not higher.
[00:25:29] Danny Denhard: Easily higher.
[00:25:30] Chris Hutchings: Yeah, easily higher, right? And then, and then a couple years later, it's, oh, well what a great idea. And I, I think, you know, we, again, nothing we talked about is like tenure.
It's a bold CMO or head of marketing or marketing director that goes to their CEO these days and says, look, a lot of those need to align for that, to that, to kind of take that bold idea and, and, and bring it to fruition. I think [00:26:00]
[00:26:00] Danny Denhard: should we play the other side of it? Should we try and help CMOs and CGOs and VP VPs of marketing, do we have any recommendations so they could take it, take this onboard and say, Hey, rather than it's all our fault.
How do they go forward and, and help the team do better or
[00:26:18] Chris Hutchings: do more? I don't think it is their fault. I don't think it is their fault. I think it's just it's a safe play.
But I think in this day and age where, I mean, costs are going up for marketing, right? Whether it's hiring costs, they're going up, whether it's CPMs, they're going up, like all of it's going up. So it gets to a point where you have to try and say to yourself, what, what are we gonna do to protect things for the future?
Can we, can we build up our owned audience again? Can we do it in a way where we can talk to people who know us and people who don't know us? Can [00:27:00] we, can we build up this? And it comes back to content, right? I mean, we've, we've talked a lot now about how social content, but it is more than just that. You start, you said the three aspects of it, right?
Can we create content that actually is for our target audience and questions they might be asking about? The services or products we offer. It doesn't always have to be a duo, right? You don't have to create a duo. It could just be better content, more relevant content, more engaging content. And I, I think the, the way to try and sell it into the CEOs is like, look, you know, our costs, our marketing costs are here at the moment, but if we can start introducing this, we can, we can, maybe it's a brave, brave thing to say, but maybe we can reduce the dependency on paid acquisition.
Can we get it to a point where people are sharing it? You know, the word of mouth is always about buying products, but can we get it to where we're, we're growing that audience? Can we grow the community? Right? Everyone talks about community, right? [00:28:00] It's like community's a buzzword, but no one really knows how to build it because they think that it's gotta be in a CRM list or it's a discord server or whatever.
But you can build a community of, of Instagram followers and you can create it in a way that actually people are chatting to each other on it, or. I think the braver, the braver brands will start having a bit more of a serious approach to this. Whether it's, and again, I know content's wider than we've talked about it, but from a social perspective, I think they will start looking at different ways of creating stuff.
[00:28:38] Danny Denhard: The way that I explain it and bring it out through, you know, consulting or coaching at the moment is you are, you're gonna be creating this huge amounts of volumes of content. Mm. And you're gonna be creating quite a lot of, curating quite a lot. And a lot of it'll be locked in some box somewhere because you think it's a no or you think it's not gonna see the light of day.[00:29:00]
Yeah. However, there are gonna be proportions of people who already know you that might actually wanna receive it. So when I say to people, what are you doing to think around distributing in different areas or different ways, you can create short form video. Really quick, short form video. That's just a little thank you.
Yeah,
[00:29:18] Danny Denhard: and you can send that out and connect it, you know, upload it directly into your CRM and send it out to your customers. Or you can
[00:29:24] Chris Hutchings: Don don't even get me started on CRM man, I think, but I think we are gonna come to that later in our chat. But the way people, brands approach CRM content blows my mind, and
[00:29:37] Danny Denhard: this is, sorry to jump in, but this is where I think, you know, the Substacks, Substacks of the world and that are being looked at in a diff, completely different light versus CRM because they're offering a, a different feel under a new banner, right?
Yeah. So there's a lot of newsletters and I've been guilty of it. You send newsletters out, think it's a great [00:30:00] idea from a brand perspective. And you get a response from, from your audience and you're like, why the hell have you sent us this? Yeah. And that like one person that's a bit sweary or a bit ranty in a reply to this email instantly puts you on the back foot.
But actually what, what you can do and what, you know, what we can do with all these different tools now is have different content and have different opinions and styles and, and have them on the right platforms. Because I'm not one that loves going across those more platforms 'cause there's too many.
Yeah. But I do think you, we have to be really smart now in understanding the culture of apps and the culture of, of where you're putting your content and then how people will engage with it. Or, or maybe not, but how are they gonna consume it? And are they gonna be entertained inspired, or are they, is it gonna be informative enough for them to want to take an action or think, hey.
I had no idea that they offered this, but when I do really need it, and it might be in the next six months, yeah, [00:31:00] this is really gonna stick in my mind. So for me, this is why these more modern platforms have really thought about becoming the canonical home for, for that style of
[00:31:09] Chris Hutchings: content. It's, it's also like an ecosystem, right?
You can use those other platforms to cross pollinate with other platforms. So you can, you can take the people who are Substep audience and, and you can show them, actually, I also create content on TikTok. So if you wanna, you know, it's a little bit different maybe, or, you know, if you wanna follow me on TikTok and, and then you just, just going back to the CRM thing.
I can't say who it was, but someone I, I used to work with, they had a huge, huge database they built up over years. And I, I'll, I'll never forget the CRM manager telling me this. She said she was, oh, Chris, do you know what the number one action is when we send out an email? I said, oh, dunno sales, I dunno.
She said, no, no, no. The [00:32:00] number one action is unsubscribe. I was like, what? And she said, yeah, yeah, for I like, how long has it been that way? Oh, about a year. I was like, whatcha you doing? Like, why, why did you keep how many times do you need to learn that that's the wrong, like, and that's not, I've heard that from other companies as well.
It just stuns me, blows my mind. But, but it's substack just going, being countering. To your point, Substack, it's just another platform, right? If you're still putting out vanilla content, that's not great content, you're not gonna.
I agree with you. I think that there's people who should be approaching substack and creating stuff there, but it just, what I find crazy is, Danny, I I, I look at a lot of brands and I just, I mean, we've talked about this many times. I'm, I'm an ideas person, right? You're an ideas person. We look at brands and we think, how are you not [00:33:00] doing this, that, and the other?
Why are you not doing a format about this? Why are you not introducing this approach? And none of these things are particularly complicated, right? We're not talking about hiring Hollywood directors and CGI or Pulitzer Prize winning writers,
so many brands. Just, I, I just, I dunno how to, I dunno how brands can get past that and just start creating, like, they should be on substack. Maybe they could have their head of product, like, you know. Just doing a weekly diary about what they're, what they're working on this week or people would be interested to see that stuff.
But that's how you build community, right? That's how you build affinity. That's how you build that relationship with people. They're like, actually, like you said, especially in in businesses that got long sales cycles, it is very hard to create content that is gonna be always selling B2B. Companies suffer with this all the time [00:34:00] and, and, and they struggle with it.
So why are you not just creating content? That's interesting that people wanna follow, like behind the scenes what's gone on in the office this week. You can build that community of people and, and, and distribution we sort of touched on earlier on one hand is really tough at the moment. Can be very expensive, but on the other hand it's never really been easier to build a community of people.
You actually want to. Who have the same interests or have the, you know, are exactly target customers or whatever, right? So distribution, while it might, might be tough, and it might be expensive in some industries, B2B in particular, where you've got long sales cycles, but you've got high average orders.
You don't need a million people reading your substack. You know, you might have 10 or 20 or a hundred, but actually could drive huge revenues at the end of it. Something that you
[00:34:54] Danny Denhard: did in one of your, you know, one of your previous clients is you really rethought the [00:35:00] format of. Of what you're sending out.
So one of the thing that you did was, you know, you incorporated audio and it being like a, you know, almost like a, a voice note. We've, we talked around this a couple of years ago and one of your former pods, but actually leveraging like voice notes or like a long voice note, which Yeah. Is almost commonplace with people and send it to him.
So there is this affinity to a voice and to a person. Yeah. I think it was, you know, super smart and is gonna be something that people should be thinking around doing with AI tools. Now you can do it, you know, 11 labs. You could, you can knock that together in, in seconds and change it. Or you could use stuff.
I mean, you can knock it together
[00:35:38] Chris Hutchings: with AI quickly. You're right. But actually when we were doing that, it didn't take that long. It, it genuinely didn't. It was a very low lift piece of content. You know, we, we'd sit and talk about what messages we were trying to get out that week. And that was driven by what had gone on that week.
Right. And what it wasn't, it wasn't that overthought. [00:36:00] And then it was literally voice recorded straight into cap cut, few edits and it was, it was ready to go. But the feedback we got on that was huge. Like, and you, you're right, people want to hear from people, and this comes back to what we were talking about, personal brand and how people like why, why are c
probably gonna answer my own question here, but I I, why aren't, why aren't CEOs and senior leaders and stuff really just being a lot more communicative? I just dunno. I had it, I had it when I was, I was CMO at Quidco and we, I'm gonna be very careful how I phrase everything here, but we, they changed the membership model and it was a very, it'd gone from quite a simple membership model to a little bit more complex.
And you know, it's like right, people, people fear change. People think they're being ripped off. And, and it was [00:37:00] because it had that layer of complexity and it was quite hard to communicate to people. Anyway, long story short, the founder was like, Nope, I want this. And it got done and went live and, and unexpectedly loads of people complaining about it.
However, at the time, as I said, we can't, I said, we're getting killed on social media here. I said, we have to do something. So I, I did a live and I basically said, right, I as CMO, I'm gonna go onto Facebook at whatever time, midday. And I said, if you've got any problems with it, I said, come talk, I will talk to you through it.
And everyone's like, oh my gosh. Like, you can't do that. You can't. I said, why not? And everyone was very fearful. It was come back to this brand guardrails thing, right? Everyone's very fearful about it. Anyway, fast forward a couple of hours, all these people came on. We were having great chats and the whole it's probably still on there somewhere.
And, and loads of people were coming up and they were moaning. And I, and I explained to them, you know, why they were wrong or what they'd misunderstood [00:38:00] and it was transformed, the viewpoint and the trend on social of everyone moaning about it to the point where people would moan about it and then someone else, like a customer would come on and go, oh, no, no, check out this guy, Chrissy works there.
Check out what you said on Facebook.
And now, weirdly, I had a message about it. I mean, this was five years ago or something, and I had a message about it the other day. Someone from still at Quidco was, oh, your name just came up in conversation talking about it.
[00:38:32] Danny Denhard: But that's the power. But I think that's the power of becoming and enabling your company to have personas or having people who are brave enough to get in front of a camera.
Yeah. Or
[00:38:46] Danny Denhard: in front of a mic or, or be it, there's a couple of similar stories. I worked with a international takeaway company and they used to have, someone used to send, and it used to come from their name.
Yeah.
[00:38:57] Danny Denhard: And they wanted to transition away from it. [00:39:00] They had, I think it was over 11,000 replies to emails when they said that she was leaving.
Wow. 11,000 emails and that just proved how important that this person who would land in your inbox became to people. They really bought into it. It was this huge, it was this huge thing. And I don't think the brand were never, we're nowhere near ready for that. But it just proves that if you are brave enough and you want people to connect, if you're landing in your inbox or you know, you are, the, the live feed in someone's in someone's life, they're gonna connect to you.
And over the last couple of weeks, the Shopify, CEO, Toby and the box, CEO, last night, Aaron in Levy, they both were saying they're an AI first company. So they've just gone AI first, and rather than it leaking, they've published the internal email onto social media. Yeah. So in the US and they would call it go direct now.
So rather than it being leaked and going to into big [00:40:00] publications, they're going direct. They
owned it,
[00:40:02] Danny Denhard: they owned it. But what I'll say is if they were, if they really wanted to, they could go that step further and record a really quick video.
[00:40:08] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:40:09] Danny Denhard: And talk it through and add the, an additional human layer to it.
[00:40:12] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:40:13] Danny Denhard: And that would've, yes, that would've leaked as well. But I also put all these people off edge and saying, Hey, AI isn't the overlord and it's not gonna remove me. But actually there is some logic. There's some human element to it.
Yeah. And
[00:40:27] Danny Denhard: actually that, that's gonna resonate with customers when they see it.
I'm one of these people that says, you should, as much as possible, you should try and own distribution as much as possible. You should understand that you're a newsroom. And what you are creating internally will most of the time probably become external content. Yeah. And if someone does decide to leak it.
It's no different than someone being copied into an email by accident.
Yeah, yeah. Which
[00:40:51] Danny Denhard: happens all the time. So actually, if you can own it, add the personal touch onto it and talk, talk to people, not at people and [00:41:00] talk with them.
Yeah.
[00:41:01] Danny Denhard: It gives you this brand longevity and in this performance first world that we, you know, we operate in, it's very difficult.
The CMOs cycle, for instance, is really diff difficult. You've got there. Brand CMO that's there for a long time. Yeah. They're then removed and then they bring someone probably from a, more of a performance background, a more modern style marketeer. They're there for 12 months and then they wonder why things have nosedive and then it's circular again.
'cause then they have to bring someone who does brand or they remove the CMO title. And then you've got multiple different people trying to control it. If brands want to be thoughtful and they want to be more specific and they wanna be more relevant, the more personalized you can become, the more, the more that people will connect with you and want to want to engage with your content.
So how I recommend, and in coaching and consulting or advising, when people come to me, I always say, how do you wanna show up? How do you want people to [00:42:00] understand who you are, what you do? Yeah. And if something bad is coming down, like the m&s hack and every, all the other company's going through a hack, rather than just sending an email saying, we're doing everything we can.
That isn't helping put your, the customer's minds at ease. So yes, you can manage by press release and internal measures and getting goal set. Yeah. But actually if you can come out and just say, Hey, we're doing everything we can for you, for the internal customer, for the, you know, staff and the external customer, the better it'll become, the more people will, will like it resonate with it back and more that they wanna do that the
[00:42:35] Chris Hutchings: same thing.
It it, it really isn't that high bar to stand out from the crowd and you're, you're spot on. Like if they, if their CEO just comes out with a quick video, it doesn't have to be highly produced. I mean, it's probably better if it is not highly produced. iPhone up, Hey everyone, listen, this is a bit of a shit storm and we get it.
We know you are worried about your data, we are worried about it, blah, blah, blah, blah. Trust us, we are [00:43:00] like that, that that goes viral. And I'm not saying you should be doing everything to go viral, but I. You should learn something from the fact that that would go viral, right? Rather than just a press release.
A boring vanilla comes back to the same thing, right? It's just boring. A vanilla, like, what, how do you wanna stand out? Do you wanna stand out? I, I, I think people underestimate the power of engaging content. And I, and I'll come back to what I said earlier, I think you see these, these independent creators creating huge communities and audiences, and I, and I think there's a lot to be learned from brands.
I'm kind of, I'm kind of conscious we're still on your first question.
[00:43:45] Danny Denhard: No, we've, we've gone, we've, we've flirted with almost all of them, and I think this is okay, but this is the best start of conversation because
[00:43:53] Chris Hutchings: Yeah, we're
[00:43:54] Danny Denhard: trying to help people. You know, diagnose the problem. Yeah. Understand it and then make [00:44:00] recommendations on, on how to improve it.
And I think that's, unfortunately when you read articles or you see video out very often it's the diagnosed, you are the problem or it's diagnosed as you have to do more. Yeah. Whereas actually what we're saying is you can do, you can do less in lower quality to have higher results. And often when you go viral, it has this impact that people understand you, they wanna connect with you, they'll have something to say, they have an opinion.
And rather than blending in a being what I call a bland, not a brand, people will want to be, wanna be connected with you. They will want to be part of it and they will wanna show it. Like I've worked at brands, which have been the validation for them (users). They've been there like the blue tick where because they're using your platform and you've decided to be a platform, it's doing a great job for them.
They're, they're, they feel safe, they feel. Of something, something bigger.
[00:44:56] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:44:56] Danny Denhard: And our job is to make you as successful as possible [00:45:00] and talk with you and help you to, to be successful as opposed to just send you product nudges that just tell you to do more. That's not gonna make you successful in that space.
Buy me by me. By
[00:45:10] Chris Hutchings: me.
[00:45:11] Danny Denhard: Yeah. No, that I, you know, we've spoken about it numerous times. I have this real, my biggest bug bearer is what I call Ask fatigue A SK fatigue. It's where brands and companies come at you all the time and they're saying, give me more. Give me more. We're doing a sale, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this.
And all you're doing is you're saying to a customer, we don't care about you. We just want your wallet. So if you can be, if you can prove to be more than that transaction or transactions, people will buy into you and will want to be with you when they've got the opportunity to open a wallet. Most companies aren't gonna be in a place to ask for something and a customer's gonna open their wallet and go, oh, brilliant.
Know,
[00:45:53] Chris Hutchings: the, the easiest test of that is, and I'll ask you, and anyone who's listening or watching can, can do this exercise as well, is like, [00:46:00] how many emails do you get from brands that are a straight away, open and read? And for me, I I, I've been through the exercise recently where I've just unsubscribed from shed loads of emails and there's a couple of brands who are from the same organization.
They're the only brands I ever read, and that is Hyatt Denim and do lectures who are both owned by David Hyatt and his wife. And, and the reason is 'cause I find it interesting content and they, they very occasionally will put in a piece of, you know, but it's not an outright sales email. It's just good content.
It's just interesting content. And I genuinely can't think off the top of my head of another brand. I could care less about what is in their email or I think, you know, that blows my mind, [00:47:00] honestly. Blows my mind. How much is being spent on marketing and advertising and social media and the rest of it. And, and you've got and
can't think of one brand that I, I look forward to getting their emails. Isn't that crazy?
[00:47:20] Danny Denhard: That's so, so telling, because what most people have decided, and it's a choice and you choose to do it every year and you, you know, you do your marketing strategy or your action plan and you say the CRM budget is X, we are gonna do Y by X date.
And what that, all that does is we're gonna do it the same or slightly different and people who unsubscribe they unsubscribe. Because what we're gonna do is just send on the Tuesday we're gonna send. The trendy topics, trending topics, and on a Thursday we're gonna give you an offer or we're gonna give you something that other people have come up with.
But yeah, the ask is there, [00:48:00] actually, what you could do is, you know, get someone in maybe Chris to help you and you say, Hey, what, what, what we're actually looking for is to make CRM like an extension of our brand.
Yep.
[00:48:14] Danny Denhard: And what we wanna be able to do is, yeah, we're gonna put an ask in there because we're a business and that's what we're here to do, but we want to make it so it's engaging that people look forward to something we're sending out
[00:48:27] Chris Hutchings: you.
So, but just so he is interrupt Danny, it's like, it's not just the ask, right? It's like you are giving something as well. Exactly. Yeah. It's, it's, you might have a, a newsletter with a list of five or six pieces of content you're sharing. One of them is an ask and five or six M is is something interesting.
Sorry to interrupt. This is a good exercise for people to do as well is around employee advocacy on social media. And I love, I love having this conversation 'cause it doesn't often make people squirm. It's like, [00:49:00] how many, when, when, when Brand X, Y, Z puts out a piece of content, how many of their employees are either at worst liking it, at best sharing it?
And it's very rare. It's so rare for, for normal everyday brand, it is rare and it tells the same story, right? If, if people are working there are even embarrassed or maybe not embarrassed, but not proud to share the content. There's, there's gotta be alarm bells ringing. And I, I just,
I tried to, a company I was working with a few years ago, I tried to introduce an employee advocacy program where we went out of our way to get people to share it. The CEO was right into the whole company. It's like, look, we're changing the way we're doing our social. We would really love your support.
Can you, can you do your best to share it? And even then nothing happened. Yeah. [00:50:00] Says a lot. Right.
[00:50:04] Danny Denhard: I, I've worked somewhere in, they used to send around an email with all the updates, the product updates, and it used to have a copy and paste or like click here to share it on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn used to have a, a platform that you'd do one click and it would share it to your audience.
Yeah. Obviously that that's not part of their engagement goals now. So that, that's sort of gone. But I do think where we. Where we've landed a lot of the time in marketing is, is the spray and pray approach, which is we're just gonna, we're gonna put as many messages out there in as many ways. Yeah. And kind of hope a little bit that, that it gets out.
And the way I think we have to engineer it differently and be really smart about distribution is understanding now we're in a hyper personalized world where most of the platforms we spend most of the time in, gives us the content that we'd most likely want to, to consume. Yeah. So I think there's the one-to-one [00:51:00] audience.
Yeah. It's how do I enter, how do I entertain or engage or intrigue? One of our users, it's one to few. So these are the small cohorts who are gonna love this side of content. How do we give it to them and how do we want 'em to, to engage? There's one to many or one to a group, which is slightly more mainstream, a little bit more entertaining possibly.
Or giving you something, you know, like a tip or a recipe that makes you wanna come together and do it. Mm-hmm. And then very rarely should you send an email to everyone, your whole database anymore. And even when it comes down to, if you really think about it, most of them feel like it's one to everyone.
It's not actually from us, from someone to someone else with
[00:51:45] Chris Hutchings: something that, that comes, that, that's a strategy conversation. Right. Because I agree with you a hundred percent. I, I think, but I think there's,
it is still going on, right? It is just a [00:52:00] upload piece of content, whatever it might be. I. Sent to all. Is that, so something we were talking about the other day actually, and you said about, we were talking about how even just once someone's bought a product is having that separate email flow where it might be a, a thank you for buying it, followed up by some instructions on how to use it or whatever.
And then, you know, even after that it might be like, you know, if you, here's some FAQs that normally get around this product. I can't remember what we were talking about. We were talking about returns, I think, or it might, and then the follow up is like, oh, you know, hope. You know, and once you've done that process, people are kind of almost expecting or happy to see you in their inbox.
Is that then you, then you send the ask. I mean, how many times do we get asked for reviews or feedback without sort of being taken on a first date first? Right. It's like just if you go through that process, you get less returns, you get more engagement, but then you might actually [00:53:00] get a better review. I think just, just this kind of, all this stuff is like, I think, I think people get a bit consumed with what content is and actually how much it might cost.
But just a, a change in the email flow like that is not, doesn't really take a lot of time or it shouldn't.
[00:53:18] Danny Denhard: In this world that we're in at the moment, if I was like Maya Jama, I use this example a few years ago, Maya Jama sells face masks. Okay. It's like a, a beauty product. It's like a vanity product and you can buy it direct, like a D two C.
You can buy it direct from her. You'll then get like, you know, the standard flow, what you could do and it'd be really easy 'cause there's so much content of her and she wouldn't have to read out if one's possible names wouldn't have to do the Coca-Cola style approach of the most popular a hundred names.
Yeah.
[00:53:47] Danny Denhard: But could you use, not to jump on the AI band bandwagon, but you could do it. So it says, thanks for, you know, thanks for ordering this Dave, Dave, here's some great ways other people are [00:54:00] using it and have had great successes. If you wanna take a picture, you can, or here's, you know, here's other people using it.
Thanks again, blah, blah, blah. Right. So it's really simple, really easy direct to you.
Yeah. And
[00:54:11] Danny Denhard: then you could follow up and say, hey, because what most people do in that situation is they're probably buying it again. So then you could say like, you could know the repeat user and say, Hey, here's what other people are doing.
[00:54:22] Chris Hutchings: Is, is it a product that you buy?
[00:54:26] Danny Denhard: Yeah, it's basically, it's a eye mask that you put on and it helps you with bags.
Here's what I think brands could be doing and smaller brands are gonna be, have, take the opportunity where larger ones won't. And it is the whole, you know, oil tanker slow to turn an oil tanker around. Mm-hmm. But I do, I firmly believe that if you are a big brand and you, you are constantly thinking like one and operating like one, it doesn't take too long anymore.
To be disrupted by someone who understands what their customer wants, [00:55:00] understands what the customer needs. Yeah. And how they're connecting at a deeper level. So the, Maya Jama example is really simple and you can apply it to Mark multiple others. Yeah. Lemonaid, which used to, which was a US product, you only could order through SMS.
Okay. That and now that you can have like a full conversation if you wanted to with them. So there are unique and interesting ways that you can buy products, but if you buy on that medium, you can then have conversations on that medium. So you, you've already been invited. Yeah. A smart way to do it. And something I think that if I was to give away some top tips would be to really think around how you can connect with your customers at a deeper level through some of the content you've either already created or ways you can create something at scale.
At low cost to make them understand that you've really thought about them. Yeah. And in hard times with money and, and, and [00:56:00] different situations that you might go in. So when you send a payday email, there's a lot of people that are out of work. So actually that payday email could probably offend people.
Obviously people get offended by all sorts of things. Yeah. But are there ways that you can rethink the stuff that you've, you've done over and over again that might help you create a different schedule or a different flow of information. So whether that's on your email and your thank you page when you've ordered to the, the CRM automated CRM that you receive.
Mm-hmm. So then on social media, because otherwise what you're going be doing is reacquiring that customer and spending more and more money Yeah. To get them to come back as opposed to actually retaining and having a lot lower churn for something that people will naturally wanna keep coming back to you over and over again for.
[00:56:46] Chris Hutchings: I think that that, weirdly, it comes back to something you said earlier about people being aware of what others do. I, I, I love collecting funnel flows from, from creators online. I love signing up to stuff just to see what they're doing [00:57:00] or how they're going about it. And some of these are very smallish brands, but you can tell the amount of thought and effort that's gone into this chain of emails or social comments or whatever it is.
And, and it is funny how many people I speak to who don't do that, who particularly work in marketing, and I dunno if that comes back to what we were saying earlier about these people who are not living on, living on is probably the wrong word, but like consuming TikTok content or, or Instagram or YouTube or wherever.
And I think there's a lot of lessons to be learned there in line, basically of what you're saying, right? There's so many things to take away from people who are doing it and, and actually are very agile. You can change this. I mean, it's that oil tanker thing you said, right? I, the amount of times I've, I've worked with companies, they're like, oh, I was like, you know, you could change the wording in this email or this landing page or whatever.
They're like, oh yeah, well, we need to sort of, we'll get a copywriter in and then we'll, we'll run that through legal [00:58:00] and then we'll run it through compliance, and then we'll run it through brand and it takes two weeks to change a paragraph. Whereas a lot of these smaller brands can move quickly and can change content and can come from ideation to having something live within an hour.
[00:58:19] Danny Denhard: In my previous chat with Carl, he said, it's amazing how many people can't update a website still.
[00:58:26] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[00:58:27] Danny Denhard: And then I've said it's amazing how people can't update a homepage or landing pages yet, can be let loose on social media and say whatever they want in whatever format, whether they're leaving a company or, or what have you.
So I do, it's something that I've struggle with having led product side as well. Yeah. Which is, is, yeah. If it does take a long time to get signed off, it can also take a, a tremendous, tremendously long time for it then to actually appear on anything on your, on any of your platforms or, or [00:59:00] profiles or websites.
Well, that comes
[00:59:01] Chris Hutchings: back to what we were saying earlier, right? And then when it does take a long time, people just think, oh, what's the point? And, and then won't, won't suggest it because they just can't be bothered to have to go to the boss and say, can we do this? And then No, it's gonna take two weeks. And it's a shame.
Really.
[00:59:18] Danny Denhard: We're in this place now where AI gives the ambitious goal that we could do anything we want as quickly as we want with as little time and effort as we, we sort of want, I'm suggesting to clients and potential clients that you have to go quality over quantity. You can't, you can't dive in and just create, create, create.
Yeah. You should look at the quality interactions that, the quality content that you're creating and something that I think will land in, in the future is there's gonna be so much that's hitting our feeds and our inboxes and the way that we want to, we, [01:00:00] you know, decide to hear from our friends, our, our family and the companies that we're connected with that.
Actually, a lot of it is gonna be so much AI slop and Pinterest have already struggled with this, is there's this huge. There'd be a huge demand to go all in on AI and AI just let loose or looser than, than we've ever been able to. Do you think that AI is a gift or do you think it's gonna be a curse for, for a lot of brands and CMOs and, and companies?
I,
[01:00:30] Chris Hutchings: I think it's ironic though. It's been, we are saying, or you are saying that AI can push out more content and actually kind of goes against the guardrails thing. It's almost like, we'll let AI put out, but we won't let our teams put out stuff. Is it a gift or a curse? I think seeing it all depends upon the person using it, right?
And it's cliche as anything, but in my mind I use it as a tool. And [01:01:00] if you've got someone using the tool who doesn't know how to use it, then it's a curse. And if you've got someone who knows how to use it, it's a gift. I. Again, my thought process is we we're going from a period of vanilla, dust and blandness to we'll go to a period of everything's ai and, and, and weirdly we'll just create the same generic where everything's vanilla, everything being ai, it will have the same impact.
Right. And, and the answer is the same for that. I think if you wanna stand out, I think that actually, you know, not being totally AI driven, will, will, will benefit you. I was using this business podcast a little while ago and they were talking about opportunities in the business world and, and the host was saying that he thinks that there's a huge opportunity for people creating businesses that are non-tech.
So like retreats where people will go to who's got [01:02:00] no electricity or no phone signal or, you know, it's just going back to farming or horse riding. And actually he said he, he thinks there's gonna be a big boom in people who are trying to look for opportunities in life to go and, and digital detox or tech detox for, and I think it's the same for ai.
I think that I use it every day, but I don't rely on it to put output content for me. I use it as a personal assistant. I use it as you know, if I need clarity on something, I let it help me, especially in this day and age where I, I mostly work on my own in my little pod here. You know, when in the old days when you and I were working, we were in offices, right?
And you'd have people to bounce ideas. That's the way I look at AI at the moment, is someone to bounce ideas around. If I, I think if everyone starts using it to create stuff and to put content out,[01:03:00]
I, I don't see it as any different as hiring a cheap copywriter. You're still gonna get crap landing pages, right? You're still gonna get crap email. And I think that there are total pros to it, and I do love it, but I'm learning every day how to make my outputs better. But I don't think it will get to a point where I'm just laying in bed and AI's creating videos of me talking about X, Y, Z.
I could be totally wrong. I hope little bit of me hopes for humanity and for society's sake it doesn't go that way.
[01:03:41] Danny Denhard: The pressure's gonna be on the companies who have got headcount pressures. Yes. That's, that's exactly what I was just gonna say.
[01:03:47] Chris Hutchings: It comes down to money for a lot, I think,
[01:03:49] Danny Denhard: and the, the battle will be, you know, there's a balance between quality and quantity.
We're gonna, yeah. We're gonna let AI decide, which some brands are doing already, rightly or [01:04:00] wrongly. There are going to be AI creators. There are virtual influencers already that mm-hmm. That have that, and they've been investigated and they're already seeing like an over influence that they have on, on people.
And AI bots are gonna be something that everyone dives into fairly soon. That's,
[01:04:16] Chris Hutchings: that's first adopters. Right. I mean, that'll soon, if everyone starts doing it, that'll dilute very quickly.
[01:04:22] Danny Denhard: Yeah. But most don't understand how to prompt and they're not sure how to test or set test environments, what most will end up doing is kind of letting, either letting it loose, or it just become this over-optimized.
Very same cookie cutter approach. Yeah. It has worked for, 'cause the way we know with trends now they don't last a week anymore. They last literally four hours. Yeah. And they don't even really make a dent anymore. So where I like, where I think we're gonna get to is the most senior marketing or growth person is gonna have to say, here is the [01:05:00] line and here is how we're gonna be different.
And here's where AI can be our collaborator or our editor. Yeah. But actually for taste purposes, for brand purposes, for success purposes, we are gonna adopt it for 1, 2, 3 reasons. And this is how, and this is how we distribute. And maybe you're gonna let AI distribute in, in different ways, whether that's cutting up the audio or video and sending it out.
Or it's a way to work out to the top 100 customers how to send thank you messages to them.
[01:05:33] Chris Hutchings: There's two things I wanna talk about. One was, so I read your email this morning, the Marketing Unfiltered email, and I thought it was a really good read about how people were approaching what was pure SEO to now ai.
And then, and then further to what you're saying, I, I guess AI is only getting better and better every, every week, right? Every update that comes is getting better. And you know, if me and you have this [01:06:00] conversation in a month's time, six months time, a year's time, what AI can do and how it can do it is gonna be, it probably be night and day different from what it is now.
And I, and I suspect what will happen is it's gonna come down to money ultimately, right? You've said about headcount you know, someone, someone's probably sitting there, they've got a team of three copywriters who are churning out blog content or social content or whatever it might be.
Theoretically you get rid of those three people and just sign up to, you know, whatever for 20, 20, 20 quid a month. That's my biggest fear is brands just start cost cutting and using AI to cost cut because they think, think it takes away something from what's being put out. But unfortunately, as it gets better and better, the tone of voice, the brand messaging, the the way that CMO [01:07:00] or CEO wants the content to come out, like the AI will learn it and learn it and learn it to the point where it's almost perfect.
And I don't think we, I don't, I don't, so you asked me is a blessing or a curse, like, depends how you want me to argue it. I could argue it either way. Is, is it's a blessing. If you're trying to cut costs and you want to put, you need to put out more content. You know, you need to optimize your emails or blog pages, landing pages.
It, it can do that for you quickly and cheaply. Is it a curse? Because actually it's taking jobs away and it's taking that humanization away. And we are gonna be living in a world in three years, five years time, where all we are consuming is AI content. That's, that worries me a little bit, but ultimately I see it as a tool and I see it as people who know how to use it well, will do well with it.
And the people who don't, you just, you'll end up with the same [01:08:00] vanilla plan that actually is, is kind of live now.
[01:08:04] Danny Denhard: Yeah, we've got, there's so many unique things that you can, you can leverage from internal data that actually no one else is gonna have or mm-hmm. There's all these insights that you're gonna have and lanes that you can, that you can create away from letting and enabling tools to it.
But everything's gonna end with AI. It's either gonna be end up in either like an assistant or a co-creator, or it's gonna be baked into tools and you, you let it do it. Whether you get really deep in MCPs and stuff like that now, which, you know, you could create
[01:08:34] Chris Hutchings: an agent, right? That hooks up to your analytics and that's, that's spot looking for trends.
It's looking and, you know, so even that sort of owned data that you have where you can create a narrative and a story outta it that no one else can create, you can still have an AI do that for you.
[01:08:50] Danny Denhard: And then that's one, thats one thing I talk about
[01:08:52] Chris Hutchings: a lot, a lot of clients is like, what, what stories can only you tell?
And that could be trends that you have. It could be data that only you've [01:09:00] got. And that's important because no one, that's your moat, right? No one can, no one can pinch that. But I mean, I don't really know. My AI knowledge is, I'm not a dev, I'm not a coder, but even I can build a pretty basic agent. So you get somebody who really knows what they're doing.
Like our mate, Phil, he, he's doing loads of AI automation for companies at the moment, and you get someone with his sort of knowledge and capabilities and yeah. It's, it's a different, different color of fish.
[01:09:31] Danny Denhard: Yeah. For obviously I've gone deep for the last, since the turn of the year really on it, and I see it, I see it evolving in a way that is brilliant and inspiring. And then I see how people have or haven't looked at it and it worries me a little bit then when people haven't and say they're too old for it, which, which worries me. Yeah. And then I've seen other people gone dive so far in it, they don't understand how to get out of it. So I think with it, like you said, it's gonna, [01:10:00] it's gonna evolve.
[01:10:01] Chris Hutchings: I was gonna say, I did, I did an AI workshop for a content team a couple of weeks ago, and it was exactly that. The people who were in the team, some of them are using it every day for all sorts of things. Some of them didn't wanna touch it because of the environmental impacts and the political impacts and all this sort of stuff,
[01:10:17] Danny Denhard: We haven't gotten into enough is probably the user generated content, UGC versus the EGC, the employee generated content.
Yeah. And throughout the conversation, we've kind of flirted with employee generated content or something that's really valuable. Where, where do you stand? And is, do you have like a, a guide that can help people understand the most useful way of tackling both?
[01:10:42] Chris Hutchings: Okay. So I, I am a hundred percent of the belief that UGC and EGC are so underutilized that it's almost criminal.
I think they both bring different things to the [01:11:00] party. And I also think, I mean, even, even I, I, I include influencer stuff as well, so IGC as well, so I, I talk to companies about those three. IGCI think is an interesting angle and I think a lot of people are doing influencer stuff. I won't go on too much about it, but I think people are trying to shape what the influencer says too much.
Whereas what I always try and explain to people is like, these influencers or creators have built up their audience knowing exactly how to do that. And if you start trying to inject too much corporate talk in there, it turns off the audience. The audience know they've, that they've sold out. And I think then that you end up with poor, poor returns, poor conversions, whatever.
I, I think with influencers, you have to work better and smarter and let them almost drive the creative as much as come back to guardrails, user generated content and working with a a, a mental health app at the moment who are trying to [01:12:00] include more user generated stuff. And I think user generated stuff is powerful if done the right way.
I think a lot of brands, again, try and sway too much what the users say and end up with this kind of convoluted thing that actually doesn't really do anything. Whereas it, it is tough because you, you want it to be good content, but if you, if you interfere too much, then the user, it doesn't really work.
So where we, where I've done stuff before is like. Basically sent our message, right? You know, who would like to be, would you like to provide us with some content that we can put on socials? And we've negotiated either product or money or whatever, and usage rights and the whole nine yards. But then from that, we give them a template that says, this is kind of the structure you should follow, right?
It should be a good hook. And then we we're given some frameworks around like what they're trying to say and, and, and how it fits better. And there's like, call to action. UGC if done right is powerful [01:13:00] because people want to buy what other people are suggesting, right? It's like, you know, Danny, like if, if I said to you, oh, you should check out this product, the chances of you buying that product are exponentially higher than if the brand themselves come and go, Hey Danny, we, you know, we've been emailing you, you should buy our product.
You're like, yeah, whatever. If, if you've got someone you trust, or, and I'm not, it's not always the way for users, but. It's, it's a lot more likely that they're gonna get like-minded people or, you know, I mean, we are both middle-aged white guys, right? If, if you see someone from another middle-aged white guy talking about the, the benefits of this Mya Jamma eye mask for your, for your bags under your eyes, you're more likely to buy it.
I won't say too much more about UGC 'cause I think it's, it's kind of, people know the benefits. I just think my last thing is just make sure you do it right, otherwise, it's just a waste of everybody's time. Employee generated [01:14:00] content, I think is arguably one of the biggest untapped resources in content.
And I think that
people, we, we talked briefly touched on it earlier, people want to hear from people, right? They want to hear from. They want to know. And it comes back to the same thing with, with U gc, you have to be careful what you're communicating. If it comes across too salesy, then you know you're getting nowhere. But if you can provide that behind the scenes, look at the company or the product or the service or whatever, it's, I think people relate to that really strongly.
And I think that if you can find, you know, people communicating messages on a regular basis, people look forward to hearing from them. And I think that you said about, earlier about the, the woman who sent out the emails, people bond to them, right? They, they, they, they, they become, they look forward to seeing that name in [01:15:00] their inbox or on their social feeds.
And it comes back to guardrails conversation. And it comes, a lot of companies I speak to have this fear about employee generate content. It's always the same thing, right? Oh, well what if I let Jessica go and put out all this content, then she's gonna get poached by a competitor. Honestly, I hear it every time it gets discussed, and I say the same thing, like, you know, if it is the same as, you know, anyone, like if everyone's on LinkedIn these days, you know, if your company starts doing well and you're looking for a new head of product, you look, you Google your competitor, you see who their head of product is.
It's not a new thing. So to have that as your excuse of not doing it is crazy. I think the reach that employees can get on platforms, particularly LinkedIns a hundred thousand x anything you're gonna get on a, on a, on a company page, I just, it's just, yeah, it can be amazing if done [01:16:00] well.
[01:16:01] Danny Denhard: Here's something that I think a lot of people don't really understand the difference. Some do, some don't. But creators have an audience and they, they are the people who create content, who understand what great content looks like, what good content works with the audience.
And they're not just a grab a product, say what the link, say the lingo they sent. And, and sort of just post a video that's, that's an influencer. And they've got, they influence people by saying they do X, Y, or Z And that isn't something that's, you know, it's not easy 'cause people can't create a big audience really quickly.
But there are very different, and then when people say B2B influencers, there are some, but what most people are getting confused with is KOLs, like key opinion leaders, actual experts who come in and have an opinion or can talk with high authority, high agency on really complex and complicated topics.
Mm-hmm. I think what, what we're seeing at the moment is people [01:17:00] misunderstanding what what they need and when.
Yeah. And
[01:17:02] Danny Denhard: having worked all the different sides, agency in-house to brand side, and having been part of a few campaigns, one with PepsiCo many years ago, you either see a brief that is so specific, don't, it makes you feel a little bit sick and you don't wanna be part of it anymore.
Yep. Regardless of how much they do or don't pay. And, you know, some people will, will contact you to be a key opinion leader. That's much, much more, that's a really important distinction. I just think people a, need to understand it. And b, when you talk to key opinion leaders, you kinda have to think of the creators as that as well as in, they're the, they're the key opinion leader in their space with their audience.
So give them what you want them to give them, give them the guardrails and help them be successful because you are not gonna tell someone who has spent their life in science what to say in an interview. You'll give them a, a cheat sheet, but they're, they're there [01:18:00] to give, you know, authentic authorized content, tell them their opinion.
So I think people should understand the difference.
[01:18:06] Chris Hutchings: I agree. You've actually just, you've stumbled upon something. I thought we were gonna talk about it a bit later, but I think one of the big opportunities out there is creators, as opposed to influencers
said, look at it the wrong way. They're like, oh, influencer X has got a hundred thousand followers. Whereas there's creators out there who are very niche, who might not have a huge audience, but they are, they are very talented at creating content. And you might argue, and we could argue it differently, they might argue, oh, well, you know, well if they were that good, they'd have a big audience.
But it doesn't always work like that. Right. And I think that there's a huge opportunity for brands to look at smaller creators. And it sort of aligned with something you said earlier about would you be prepared to put paid spend behind something? I, I've kind of one of my notion folders, I've got this thing about creators, [01:19:00] hiring creators, not influencers and hiring creators to say, look, can you help us create a piece of content about this?
And allowing them to go off and work out what that might look like, because I've seen it a few times now where you could then that creator, you could basically then use that creator's content on your own socials. And it's not because you're trying to tap into their audience as an influencer campaign.
It should, you are actually asking someone to create a specific piece of engaging and interesting and good content. And I think that brands who look at that are, are, are gonna find that's a really good opportunity because they're, I mean, Danny, we're talking about like this, you know, some of these, you and I are a bit older now, but there's some of these people like sub sub 30 who have lived.
Total digital natives have grown up on, iPhones, have grown up on premier Pro and After Effects and [01:20:00] Photoshop and all this, and can create stunning content these days. And I think if you, if you start looking opportunities where you can get a creator to make you something rather than an influencer to shoehorn your branding something they're already doing, I think you might end up seeing some really powerful returns.
[01:20:20] Danny Denhard: Completely agree. Completely agree. And the more, the more that we realize that we have such a variety of options and we can put 'em into really smart buckets where we, we use them for different outputs, different goals. Yeah. And they actually become talent. So they become part of, part of you.
The amount of brands that end up hiring celebrities as, as chief content officer or chief. You creative chief creative or editorial, right? It just shows you the, the investment that they make, whether it's for PR or actually that they are hands on, which most of them seem to be. I think it's really important.
One thing I was gonna call out there is the more we are gonna [01:21:00] get into where brands can self-serve and they can go on these platforms and create episodic content that actually they're gonna wanna be on. They might not get a Netflix deal or they might not get a Channel four deal, but they could go out and they could produce good content, you know, high quality content that put out on YouTube, which people will want to see, and then they can leverage, creators, influencers, that be part of the journey, part of the package.
It can have employee generated content. That's something that they can use for years for recruitment. Customers and consumers will wanna buy into the one person that's really quirky or says something that becomes a meme. I think these are all different areas where we're gonna see, and we've seen it with, you know, Netflix picking up a WhatsApp documentary.
Yeah. We're seeing it more and more on brands that are decided to be a little bit more involved with product placement in, you know, in like a Mr. Beast video or on equivalent. So I think here, where I would recommend people to start looking at is if you really wanna go down the media first route [01:22:00] and be really smart.
You've got so many options as opposed to wait months and months or something to come out. If you've got an in-house agency or you're looking to, to roll something out, here are ways that you can do it really smartly control some of the messaging. Also have in-built advertising, in-built marketing, in-built distribution, and have ways that you can create short, mid, and long-term content now that really resonates with people. And you're, you've seen that with a load of the fashion brands. Yeah. That created all these content that were on Channel four, channel five, et cetera, and Gregg's documentaries, all these brands. You, you can have create episodic content now. Yeah. For, for next to nothing.
And it really resonates with people.
[01:22:40] Chris Hutchings: Two things I just come to mind as you saying that. One is you said about recruitment and I think that's something that shouldn't be overlooked. If you are a brand that is known for trying to put out interesting content, you will find it a lot easier to recruit and you will recruit the right kind of, it becomes [01:23:00] a self-fulfilling prophecy where you, like you, you, you'll end up recruiting people who want to come to you because you're creating this great content and they themselves can help you make even better content.
And it'll snowball into even better content. But it's not just about picking up business. I think you will pick up people who want to work for you. And on that note, my second point is. Can we as a society stop underpaying content, creatives, beggars belief, how much I see it all the time on LinkedIn because I kind of, I look at this sort of stuff for an content creator, 10 pound an hour or you know, social media person.
We want you to create this like 18 grand a year. Get it, that, that times are tough at the moment, but that is not the way to get the people you want in who are really gonna be able to make a difference.
[01:23:56] Danny Denhard: And you go back to that cycle of higher fire. Higher fire. Higher fire. Yes. Hundred
[01:23:59] Chris Hutchings: [01:24:00] percent. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It's, it's is, it's a waste of money. Basically in the end. Exactly.
[01:24:07] Danny Denhard: Should we do a quick fire round? Go for it
[01:24:09] Chris Hutchings: mate. Go for it.
[01:24:11] Danny Denhard: What are one or two formats that you, that you know are underappreciated? Employee
[01:24:18] Chris Hutchings: generate content? I. C-R-M-C-R-M is a gold mine that so few brands utilize. Well, I think micro influencers as opposed to influencers.
I think there's a lot of people out there who have small followings but actually create interesting content that, that that can be a previous company. We, we used to get these finance based creators. They didn't have many big audience, but the audience they had was hyper engaged. And especially now in the world we're live in where actually follow account doesn't quite matter [01:25:00] so much.
I think that too many brands are still using it as a metric when actually, if you look at the, the number of views they're getting on some stuff compared to their follow account, I think it's a, it's a big opportunity.
[01:25:15] Danny Denhard: Gone. Couldn't agree more. One, if people wanna gonna have a look at an example of this is how Microsoft have just rolled out their co-pilot advertising, like through influencers.
They've been really thoughtful on people who can create 62nd videos that are going to sell their product and co-pilot and all their features much better than they could put out a 25 minute video or release a book. I've not seen that.
[01:25:40] Chris Hutchings: So what they've, they've gone out to their audience, get creators in?
[01:25:43] Danny Denhard: Yeah, so they've, you know, they've reached out to Excel directory, they've reached out to people who are Microsoft influencers who talk around office and pivot tables and stuff like that. And they've reached out to them and they've created content so they can show the new [01:26:00] copilot, like in a table you can click a copilot logo and then you can ask it any question and it creates the answer for you.
Okay. So it does all the pivot tables, Xlookups, all of that for you. And they can, people have been able to, you know, these micro influencers and you know, let's call them mid, mid two, influencers can really explain the product so much better than so like an actor could. Yeah. 'cause they use it, they show it and they can, and you can see how excited they are because it just makes their job easier.
I haven't seen that.
[01:26:30] Chris Hutchings: I'll have a look at that.
[01:26:31] Danny Denhard: That that's a, that's a prime example of how you can be really smart around understanding who can explain your product better than you can, who can demo it
and
[01:26:39] Danny Denhard: how they can distribute it in the right way.
Yeah.
[01:26:43] Danny Denhard: So one thing that we talked around earlier, so do you think live still has a place in today's landscape?
So Instagram, TikTok, et cetera?
[01:26:53] Chris Hutchings: It's kind of a running theme of this whole podcast. It's like, do you wanna stand out? And when I originally thought about this question, [01:27:00] I was like, well, probably not. But actually if, if we are sticking to the, do you wanna stand out themes? Like how many brands do do lives?
And the answer is not many. So if you want to stand out, is it, I think you should. I think, why not? I mean, again, it comes back to the guardrails. It comes back to the people in your, in your teams. Who are they? Do they want to? But I think there's a lot of value in, say, the head of product, talking about there might have been a release this week, you know?
So you could do a li it comes back to the copilot example, right? It's like, how can you talk to your community? How can you talk to your potential customers audience? I think that there is potential. I, yeah, I, I think, I think lives could be done well, and I get that there's a fear there.
I think lives would be good. [01:28:00] However, if there's a fear there that people don't necessarily want to commit to going live, then you could replicate the live experience, right? You could say, look, we've got our head of product, product, we've got our head of customer service, we've got our CEO, our COO, whatever it is.
You know, and you could put out, it could be a, it is another way of communicating. Like, give us, give us your question that you want them to answer so you could, you could create the similar sort of live impact, but actually do it. A delay or you
[01:28:28] Danny Denhard: can Yeah. Delayed live as I
[01:28:30] Chris Hutchings: call
[01:28:30] Danny Denhard: it. Yeah. Yeah. If you can, if you, if you're a brand and you want to feel authentic, but you're really excited about something and you're not doing TikTok shop,
[01:28:38] Chris Hutchings: yeah.
[01:28:39] Danny Denhard: But you can definitely go live, you can definitely build rapport with, of individuals and like, again, leans on employee generated content. You can really have stars that, you know, stand out on their, what I call their, their platform, their performance. They have a, they have a platform to perform to. They have a wider audience, and they wanna hear [01:29:00] from
[01:29:00] Chris Hutchings: people, right?
They want, they want the brands to have a little bit of soul that actually, you know, we're all, we, they're all faceless corporations. So if you can be that non faceless corporation, you can have a bit of personality in your, or allow your, your chief, your CTO to have that little personality, the quirks that you like about them and why you've hired them.
And actually they can resonate with the other, you know, your typical client. Yeah, it could be really powerful.
[01:29:28] Danny Denhard: The really good example of this is what OpenAI have seemed to enabled a little bit. Okay. So rather than Sam Altman being the, the front and center, which I can only imagine he loves, he's great at it, but I can only imagine that's one of his favorite parts of his job.
Okay. But they, they're putting out the open AI researchers, so the people that are working on it, creating logic and reasoning, and doing all of the modeling, they're going on podcasts, they're doing like live interviews, and they're, they're so relatable. Although they're, they're highly, highly intelligent. So they don't, [01:30:00] they're not PR trained, which is actually a benefit to them.
[01:30:02] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[01:30:03] Danny Denhard: They can come out and they can tell them secret, they can give you secrets. Mm-hmm. So they can say, actually don't just prompt once prompt multiple times, because you'll get better and better answers. And you can decide which is, which is a great example. And you, you find all these hidden gems that you're never gonna get because they're not gonna have the opportunity to talk, talk in front of people.
So,
[01:30:21] Chris Hutchings: okay, so lemme ask you a question then. So I think we're both agreed that. People should be speaking for companies more. Is it just a trust thing? Like why, why is it that more people aren't doing it, in your opinion?
[01:30:32] Danny Denhard: History, because it's never, it isn't really done. I think there's like muscle memory where you just default into what you know, as opposed to, and really being thoughtful and having first, second, and third order effects and understanding that you can do it differently and you should.
Mm-hmm. And what can be optimized and or cured? Do it if it, you know, do a keep kill, cure, copy, exercise. Keep it, if it's working well, if it can be [01:31:00] cured and optimize, optimize it. If it isn't gonna work and won't work, kill it. But actually there are other opportunities where other people are doing it in a great way.
Copy it, like replicate it and do it that way. So I think it's history, muscle memory, and then confidence. And with the pressures of delivery on, you know, delivering on results straight away. If you can't draw an A to B line or an A to Z line on it, with attribution, it's very difficult. However, almost everything that you do can be attributed.
Yeah. And also when you think of it, and 'cause the funnel does exist, whether you believe it or not, the funnel does exist. So each different channel has, has different opportunities. And now you can reuse content, recycle it, put it in different areas. So actually it's for you to distribute better, to be smarter at it and understand how to, how to do it differently.
And if you don't want to, there'll be hundreds of people who are happy to come in and take on your role to do it. So unfortunately for some it'll [01:32:00] work out and they don't wanna do it for others. It will, it will be, let's just go and do it.
[01:32:04] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[01:32:06] Danny Denhard: So why does brand content still suck?
[01:32:12] Chris Hutchings: I dunno. It's boring,
isn't it? I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it's, I think there's so much. I mean, we've talked about it, I guess, like it's, it's vanilla. It doesn't stand out. It's, it's not taking any chances. It's too worried about perception. It's too worried about, there's just a fear there. I think that actually it's,
and it comes back to the same thing I've been saying. I think it doesn't take a lot to stand out, and I think that that there's too many teams who have got different reasons. [01:33:00] Maybe they can't work together. So maybe it's the social team, the brand team, the SEO team, and actually they're not sort of working together to create content that actually suits everybody.
I honestly don't know. I, I think that there's, this comes back to that Duolingo example right there. There's, there's companies out there that have taken the chance on it. Paddy power, another good example. They've taken the chance on it.
And then there's, there's, there's a million other companies who haven't and they're just a bit scared of trying something new, not getting the results that they want or need. Coming back to the 10 year thing, right? I mean, are we, are, are people scared to suggest something new because they don't want it to backfire and then, you know, be out of a job?
Do they just want the safe bet? And the safe bet is spending one pound and they're getting one pound 50 back. And [01:34:00] as opposed to going to your CEO and saying, look, oh, you know, I need a hundred grand and you're not gonna see any return from it. Possibly ever, or at least for six months. It's just, I, I think that, I think that there's, I mean, you know, you know more CMOs than I do, but I think a lot of them are not to take the big gambles at the moment because of job security.
I could be wrong with that thought process, but
[01:34:27] Danny Denhard: I don't think you're off off there, one thing I say to a lot of people who are looking for coaching, and we do in pre-calls, I say, are you the leader? So do you own it, co-own it, or you're a collaborator on it? If you're a department lead, you're a leader, you should lead on it.
Yeah. And it's on you in your department to prove it right or wrong and understand actually, do we push it harder, do do more or less, or is it actually, that was an experiment and we can't do it again? But it has complimented in many different spaces. Yeah, you feel yourself as a collaborator or a co-owner, then you're probably not doing yourself or [01:35:00] the team real justice in what you're trying to achieve.
[01:35:03] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[01:35:04] Danny Denhard: Do you think there are any quick wins for marketing leaders that can just move forward and, and take on our podcast and say, Hey, here are some really good things that you could do?
[01:35:15] Chris Hutchings: Yeah, I probably do actually. I think from a low lift example, we talked about CRM, we talked about landing pages, we talked about sign up flows and the rest of it.
I wonder how many people listening to this have looked at their landing page in the last six months or a year or five years, or have looked at the email sign up or whatever. You know, or, or, or implemented new tools. I mean, for instance, Instagram, many chat, right? It's a very Marmite topic. Some people love it, some people hate it.
And I think there's probably a level of snobbery around [01:36:00] marketers who are probably like, yeah, I'm not sure about that. But you see creators using it all the time and, and growing their audiences on the back of it with, with target customers, right?
I think that there's so quick wins was the question. I would look at CRM as a starting place for all content. I think it's, you're not competing with anyone, right? You're going straight into an inbox. If you can start creating engaging content in there, that is not adding to the ask fatigue, I think that's a no brainer, right?
Whether it's just changing the way you go about it, not making it sales, email every email, just talking to your customers. That could be anything, right? You could ask them a, you could ask them questions. You could ask them, oh, you know, like. We would like your opinion on how we can get our, make our product better, our service better, whatever.
Or, you know, could you give some honest feedback? [01:37:00] Just start it like to, sorry, just start it to be an engaging process rather than buy this, buy this, buy this. We talked about it briefly earlier, like the follow up after buying a product. I think there's, there's a gaping opportunity there, like to, to engage with people more.
And it comes back to, that's the word, right? Engage rather than anything. But can you send them a video from the head of customer service going, you know, especially there'll be some products and services out there where you get a lot of returns. And we talked about this, like where people might not understand it fully.
It might be a complex product. So you might get your head of customer service and go, well, hey, I'm Frankie, I'm head of customer service. We know that this is a complex product again, owning it. And we, we hear. These problems all over again. So we're gonna nip it in the bud now and we're gonna tell you how to solve this.
It could be the head of product going these are the three things you should do to set [01:38:00] up your thing. Right? It's just, it creates that opening, that communication that's not just one way traffic or just selling.
Yeah. There, there's a few. The game is social. Again, just remove all the social stuff, all the selling stuff from your social to begin with. Also about paid social, like if you wanna do paid ads, fine. But I think if you can build a community, you can feel like you're talking to your, to your audience rather than just at them.
We, we introduced careful how I phrase this. We introduced a Facebook group, a former company of mine, and it was incredible. The engagement on it was incredible that people were. We talk about word of mouth, people were communicating with each other. We, we spent long time working out how to create rules around it, about what people could and couldn't say.
But when we introduced it, people were chatting to each other and they were telling each other about when new products were released and when [01:39:00] new initiatives were put out. And it had, I think it had about 10,000 members at one point. And this was, I mean, I haven't looked at Facebook groups in a while, but this was when, you know, you put out a Facebook group post and everyone in the group would see it, and it drove so much revenue.
It was unbelievable. Yeah, for some reason it's not, I looked at it the other day, it's not going anymore. But yeah, I think there's loads of quick wins. I think people get obsessed about content and think they need to be creating cinematic YouTube videos or, or eng like cinematic tiktoks or whatever.
And I, and I think that there's, I. Ways you can get in before that, that actually can drive a lot of conversions or attention or whatever.
[01:39:43] Danny Denhard: Yeah. My rule of thumb for brands really is video can be slightly lower quality than you think it can be.
[01:39:49] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[01:39:49] Danny Denhard: And actually, it, it doesn't have to be the best of the best.
It can be, like you said, slightly shaky on an iPhone or on the, on the tripod.
[01:39:57] Chris Hutchings: One might argue Danny, that that's a better way to do it. [01:40:00] Right. That it's not overproduced and it's not looking because that, that has that level of authenticity that resonates a little bit better.
[01:40:08] Danny Denhard: Yeah. And that then I say with audio, you go up
[01:40:11] Chris Hutchings: Yes.
[01:40:11] Danny Denhard: Increase your, your expectations, get a mic, get some, get mics above you and, and whatever. And, and actually your audio quality is really high. So if you're putting out audio content or visual plus audio, definitely have good mics. 'cause they're, they're worth the investment.
[01:40:28] Chris Hutchings: Danny, they're not even that much of an investment these days.
Right. I mean, you can get very solid mics for. £20, you know, and even, I mean, I've got a mike, I, I'm pretty shure that's only like a hundred quid or something, and it's, it's studio quality like it's you. Right. It's a no-brainer investment really, because it doesn't actually cost that much money. Exactly.
[01:40:50] Danny Denhard: So I think if we were to wrap up, I've got some tips that we, we've talked upon over and over.
So I think it'd be good to, to summarize and if I've missed any, definitely jump in. So [01:41:00] distribution think first before, like, it might even be the way for you to think about how to generate content and, and actually think about where, where content actually should live. Yeah. And then think about how you create content for, for that channel.
Whether that be, you know, live, whether it be delayed live, or it'll be something that could even be an image or a gif. Don't, don't overlook gif. 'cause there's still super powerful, especially in email. Yeah. High quality audio first I think is, is really important.
[01:41:28] Chris Hutchings: Just, sorry, Danny, just to interrupt, going back to that distribution first, think in so many people, brands will create one piece of content and their strategy is Right, right.
Upload that to Facebook, upload it, TikTok, upload it to Instagram, upload it to. YouTube upload it to, like, it doesn't quite work like that, right? As you well know, the, the different audiences on different platforms expect different things. So I think what you said is a hundred percent spot on. You should think about that side of things.
Otherwise, it's, it's almost a bit of a [01:42:00] waste of time. A
[01:42:02] Danny Denhard: hundred
[01:42:03] Chris Hutchings: percent.
[01:42:03] Danny Denhard: High quality audio is gonna be essential. There's gonna be far more audio platforms coming out as in, through AI and, and that, and having natural conversations. So I think that's gonna A, be really important to plan for.
But b, get in front first, especially with chatbots and agentic come in, that's gonna be super critical. I think actually number three would be learning storytelling. So more than just hook and authentic, understand the problem you're trying to create or solve, think around the hook that you're getting people to buy into, or the person that might be the hook.
Think around how authentic it is and how, how good the quality needs to be. Obviously it should be good enough for, for people to wanna be connected to. Something that we touched upon and flirted with, but we didn't say more, most specifically was the, the sweet spot right now might actually be mid form content to be created.
Not short form, not, 60 seconds or less [01:43:00] and not super long actually. Mid form might be the way for you to gain cut through, create your characters and people to buy into enough. And I continuously say this to people that talk to me, coaching, consultant advising go mid form because that's, that's underdeveloped and will go across multiple different platforms and create content where.
It will live natively. So can it be a short video? Can it be an image? Could it be an infographic? All these things that are circular will come back. Can you create something that'll be on it? As we said, when you re-jig CRM, can you add an image into it? Can you create a video for it? Is it something that you can just be, you know, a ten second looping gif that tells 'em the steps to take?
Easy to learn the product, easy to use it, then it's easy to wanna share it, and then easy to personalize so people already land with it and understand what you're trying to trying to get through. And then I think the overarching thing is here is number six, and probably the biggest takeaway for people is [01:44:00] brands.
You're gonna have to take a punt and being a little bit more creative and understand and be the leader and saying, here's what we're doing, why we're doing it. Let the team work out how, and then your job is to say the why and understand and, and map out the, the success and the performance metrics.
[01:44:19] Chris Hutchings: Yeah.
[01:44:19] Danny Denhard: And then report, and then educate, educate, educate.
[01:44:24] Chris Hutchings: Yeah. I agree. I I I think the golden rule is, is if you can, if you can stand out in this sea of, I mean, like we, we've never seen more content, right? Ever. And we're, we're getting used to just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. I think if you can stand out in that sea of content, I, I think it'd be really powerful.
And I think it's, it's, it's almost what us consumers are craving is content that actually makes us want to consume it rather than just this like [01:45:00] dystopian zombie ification of just scrolling through things. Right. I think we want, we want stuff to buy into, we want people to tell us stories we want.
Interesting things and I think if, if you can stand out and do that, I think the world's your oyster.
[01:45:15] Danny Denhard: And just a last sort of take is we're consuming content on completely different devices. If YouTube is, is consumed on TV as it's one of the used platforms, think about how when you're creating content, how what device is gonna be understood on and then and consumed on.
And then what the actions they might take. Yeah. So whether people are streaming, whether they're shopping, whether they're scrolling or subscribing, or whether they're actually understanding that they can go and then shop. Think about it in those different areas and I think we'll be onto a to a winner.
[01:45:49] Chris Hutchings: Futures bright for content. Danny, definitely.
[01:45:53] Danny Denhard: Chris, where should people find you? Reach out to you and be useful to you?
[01:45:57] Chris Hutchings: LinkedIn I guess is probably the [01:46:00] easiest place. Chris Hutchings and my consultancy is called It Better Go Bang. Great name. Thanks so much, Chris. Cheers Danny. Appreciate it mate.
