Rory Sutherland, Elfried Samba and Timothy Armoo on the future for influencers

[Music] By the way, do you guys have a jingle?

>> A jingle?

>> A jingle?

>> Neck.

>> We need one. Sonic branding. Auditory branding.

>> We're going to just use your voice all the time to get started.

>> I would like 50% of all royalties.

>> It's going to blow up on TikTok.

Did you know there was a guy who you you remember that ITV I think it was ITV after about midnight?

>> would just have that weird game thing going on where people phoned up.

>> Okay.

>> Oh yeah.

>> And the music was playing in the background constantly.

>> Okay.

>> And the way they pay royalties is they basically have an arrangement with the performing rights society or whatever it is that uh they pay them, you know, quite a few million quid a year and then they just pay them royalties kind of pro rata.

>> Yeah.

>> And this guy because he although not many people were watching because it was like literally 70% of the music aired on ITV, the guy who wrote the really benile tune that was played in the background ended up basically retiring to some Caribbean island or something on the proceeds.

>> Yeah.

>> Cuz the whole thing was paid not in proportion to audience size. It was paid in proportion to time on screen.

Famously the guy who the channel 4 guy uh I can't remember what it was but he made like a hundred quid every time they played the Ident. There was I mean there are these com by the way there's an argument for wealth taxes okay which is nothing to do with the fact that rich people don't deserve their money it's the fact that there are a lot of people who've created a huge amount of value who don't make any money at all.

>> so like nobody made a fortune out of Wi-Fi Tim Berners Lee okay Tim Berners Lee logically should be richer than Zuckerberg, right?

>> Okay.

>> Yeah.

>> Um uh the guys who came up with penicillin. I I met the daughter of one of the four people who has Flory Chain, Heatley and um Fleming.

>> Okay.

>> And I met the daughter of one of those people and you know she's not destitute. But I remember thinking actually you should be on a in a thousand foot mega yacht cruising around the Caribbean.

>> Really?

>> Okay.

>> Oh yeah.

Oh, and funny enough, I know I know uh the guy that worked at the naming company for Wi-Fi, the technology, this guy called Lucian.

>> Yeah.

>> I met him and how they came up with it and the fact that actually they took inspiration from hi-fi cuz he's Cameroonian. So, it's actually the fact that it was transferable as well. So, it was like such an interest because the name was genius.

>> Okay.

>> The little logo effectively which I think they created. I don't know if anybody got rights from that. And but the strange thing is it's more useful than you know and you know the things that are useful and the things that people get rich off this is the whole George's thing which is people actually get rich out of a bottleneck.

>> Okay.

>> They create a defensive moat. They find a bottleneck.

>> Okay.

>> You own either a geographical location or you own something and then you can just extract money from other people.

>> Yeah.

But that's how like Apple and Meta and those guys do it, right? Whereas a lot of the people uh uh that are inventors and creators, they're almost like doing that for their selfless act and then everybody else ends up becoming rich off the back of it. But then really they all almost like learned from.

We're going to speak to him right now because this is Timu space. But I'm really really excited about this. A good friend of mine, Tim Armu, here on the Bottleneck podcast. Uh I'm not going to do um any explanation in terms of like what Timo has been up to. I'm going to let him do it for himself. But uh yo Tim, let the people know like uh who are you? What you've been working on and what's kind of like some of the bottlenecks that you've been solving or do you want to discuss today?

>> Okay. Well, I am an OG influencer guy. I started a company called Fan Bite when I was 21 in 2017. Basically found that there was a pocket of opportunity where brands wanted to tap into a Gen Z audience. And then I built a company in that space whilst in my second year of university. We grew the company to 80 people working with brands like uh Nike, McDonald's, the UK government, helping them do all their like social media influencer stuff for Gen Z. And then in 2022, uh the company then got bought by a holding group called Brain Labs and in a great deal. And then since then, I've basically started a a bunch of different companies, but the most interesting one is actually a company called Irrational Media, which is where we own and operate and buy hyper niche, hyper specific businesses, which are based around people's passions. So, if you're into like really niche stuff like horoscopes or knitting or crossstitching or that sort of thing, uh we own different media properties in antibbase and then we grow and scale them. So, it's been fun.

>> Seems like the walls and the niches.

>> Yeah, 100%. One of the things that I found um I mean we can go into it and I'm sure you have a take on this was like I found it so interesting that the scale to which we grew fan bites too. You would look at the brands that we work with the Nikes, the Samsungs, the McDonald's and you go all right those are the people paying well but they were not the people paying well. The people who were paying well were that like the gardening app that has 17 million people who use it every single day who are making like 90 million a year and they are willingly just spending5 million a year with you because it's like yeah let's see what happens.

>> if you own a gardening property then they will pay insanely.

>> exactly right or the company I I remember once I remember in one month it was in a month that We did about 2 million in that month and 500k of it came from a single client called Fishbrain. And Fishbrain was an app for people who liked fishing and they tell and it told you how to fish, where to find the best baits, etc. And I thought, Jesus Christ, these guys are willingly able to just spend hundreds of thousands every single month because they're just like, yeah, I mean.

>> if we find a fish, we like the attribution.

>> Exactly. Right. and they know that the long-term value of each person is so high because they're really tapping into these like passionate people.

>> So what we talked about just on the previous episode those uh that then form the thesis of irrational media and uh so far so good.

>> and so the kind of insight is that in any field of specialist interest >> generally there's a kind of winner takes all effect isn't there in terms of the content.

>> Yeah.

>> You know it's sort of James Hoffman in coffee is the kind of extreme case isn't it? Right. Okay, don't, by the way, don't go there. Okay, seriously, you know, do something safe like taking up crack or something because uh once you get into Hoffman on coffee, it's a massive great spiraling rabbit hole where you suddenly found you've bought a 600 grinder or something. Okay, so don't go there, kids. Seriously.

>> Um, guys.

>> it it is fascinating because you um a lot of people, not everybody, but a lot of people have one or two disproportionate interests.

>> Yeah.

>> deep interest which they identify with. That's a very big thing because part of our thesis was you know are you passionate about something right?

>> And yes you can passionate about it but do you identify with it?

>> And that's very different cuz we bought a few things which were just stop starts right so we bought uh a a site all about dogs but like specifically about Pomeranians right and we thought well people are very passionate about Pomeranians but when you meet someone in the first 5 minutes they don't say Hello, I own a Pomeranian. But you do meet someone who says, "Hello, I'm a Libra."

>> Right?

>> Or like, "Hello, oh, I've got to go to this knitting convention right now." You know, identity.

>> It's part of the identity. And so, like.

>> why we called the company now irrational media was because it has to be something that people are like irrationally passionate about.

>> Um and uh that's why I then formed that thesis and it all really came back because of fan bites and being like oh the stuff that's paying the big money is not the are not just the sexy brands they are the brands that people are deeply passionate about and they just keep spending.

>> you know.

>> But you also have a huge content advantage because the advertising is part of the content.

>> Yes.

>> So you know no one who's into quilting you know I don't know what the hell quilters buy presumably bits of castoff rag. I don't know. I've never understood that. But I mean, you know, in other words, if you talk to them about ways in which they can become more expert at quilting.

>> uh there's no kind of conflict between the the surrounding content and the ad.

But also one of the things and I think there's been a move especially due to social is like you want to have products or brands which have something that I call like a high reference. So if you are into quilting and you are using a tool or website, it's easy for you to then reference it to your friend who is also into quilting.

>> And so there's something to be said.

>> Joke about how do you tell when someone's a vegan? Don't worry, they'll tell you through.

>> why not tell you.

>> Exactly. Perfect example, right? Vegans hang vegans hang out with vegans. CrossFitters hang out with CrossFitters. And so therefore, if you get one, they get two and those two get four and those four get eight. And so I think in apps in like mobile apps there's something called the K factor. And the K factor is basically.

>> uh what is the likelihood that by you getting one person that person will then bring on other people?

>> And so for example.

>> R in epidemiology is the the replication rate.

>> Yeah.

>> To be honest I'm pretty sure they just stole that from there.

>> Um, but it's like Facebook at the beginning had a very high K factor when it was just focused on high schools because they knew if they got Sam, Sam would need to get Ellie and Ellie would need to get Phillip and then Philip will get more and more people.

>> So there's something to be said for I know that we're talking about influence and stuff, but I think like one of the key things when I look at people with deep influence or audiences with deep influence, it's like do they have high reference? Because if not, you just have an audience, you don't have a community, you know.

>> Yeah.

So we're talking about referenceability there and actually my first question was going to be obviously a lot of people are talking about influencer marketing still till this day. I'm sure that you're probably like saying oh my god we're speaking about this like 10 years ago right? So so the the conversation around influencer marketing around Gen Z is still a hot topic and I want to get your thoughts on.

>> what do you think is the current state of influence? What do you think is the current state of influencer marketing? It'll be great to hear your take. I think that over time the power has obviously shifted to it not being about how interesting the person is because in the past like five seven years ago it was all about how interesting is the person.

>> So one of my friends uh Dommails he ran basically like the OG YouTube talent agency. So they had the biggest YouTubers, Zoella and all these and they create books and IP and it did insanely well but people were interested in Zoella, right?

>> I think now the game has changed and it's less people being interested in a person and it's more people being interested in the content that you actually create.

What does that mean for brands? It basically means that like brands can effectively invent their own influence. like they can basically like all right guys we're going to get you you and you who are in the office and we're going to come up with this incredible piece of content in this format and that's going to bring people in and people are going to buy into us.

>> like curries.

>> like curries right or like Dolingo or like Ryanire they've invented their own influence which means that they don't have to borrow influence.

>> and it's it's not totally person independent because there are people who you know but it's how the person also relates to the subject matter it becomes really really important.

>> yeah Like I mean I would say to some degree right like if you look at say yourself Rory you would think okay in the last few years because of social because people have like taken the content and the stuff that you say by definition because when people watch your content they then feel smarter that's when they that's the reason why they then gravitate to you. But if someone then said, "Tell me 10 things about Rory's personal life."

>> I think most people would struggle. But if you said, "Tell me 10 things that Rory said that's interesting. That's made me think." A lot of people would gravitate to that. Whereas in the past, it was actually not delving into my personal reassuring Kardashian.

>> Yeah.

>> I don't I don't want, you know, stalkers.

>> But But in the past, it was more like I know your personal. I know how many siblings you have. I know that you love this sort of tea. I know I do that. So, I think you're probably actually quite without knowing this, I think you're quite a good embodiment of like where influencers go and where people are leading with content first and then afterwards they buy into the person. You know what I mean?

>> Yeah.

That's very in a sense there's a kind of horizontal and a vertical, isn't there? You know, you have the vertical thing which is about a thing.

>> Yeah.

>> And the horizontal thing is about the person and that still survives. I mean, it's always going to be big. Celebrity culture is never going to go go away. But there's the kind of Kardashian thing which is.

>> effectively it it doesn't actually rest on any particular subject area.

>> You know, he's famous for being famous is I suppose the phrase, you know.

>> Yeah.

>> Um and then then there is the content specific you know uh you know what's the is it Francis Bourgeoa on trains?

>> Okay.

>> Yeah.

>> And you can be actually one of the joys about the content specific area is generally the presenters are not from a central casting.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. Right. I mean, I I don't know this brings back COVID memories but Matt's RV reviews American guy works for an you know the guy right Matt Foxworthy.

>> Okay.

>> And you know you know if if you were doing central casting you know you wouldn't choose that guy. If you were choosing an advertising person you wouldn't choose a fat 59y old man. Right. Okay. And so there's something really interesting about this which is.

>> um that what what I like about it is that television got very very homogeneous because they're obsessed with the horizontal thing. There were exceptions. The only exception would have been Patrick Moore on astronomy or who was the guy who hosted one man and his dog, right? You know, there were those wonderful people who are completely out there who didn't look like other TV presenters but were known for what was it? I've tragically forgotten his name. The guy presented one sorry sheep sheep dog trials.

>> Ever seen it?

>> No.

>> Oh god, you're too young. It's best thing on TV. I'm Welsh, so I'm biased. Okay, cuz you know faintly pornographic if you're Welsh. Uh but it was sheep dog trials literally you know border collies hering sheep around competitively and you had those kind of people who have you the vertical guy and they were actually always slightly way more out there in terms of personality background whatever it may be and that that was actually always the best bit of TV.

>> Yeah.

>> M and then so what would you say is like an indicator of influence? Because a lot of the times people talk about like likes, talk about followings and actually on top of that what's the difference between followers and actual influence. What's a real indicator of influence from your perspective?

>> I think that the best indicator of influence is several examples of actually having like a two-way conversation with the person. So for example, whether they bring out a product or whether they host a live and then and then a substantial percentage of the audience show up.

>> you want something where you know that the audience also reacts back to what they say. That to me is a big indicator of influence. It's also the reason why people say.

>> the bigger that you get on social, the.

>> less authentic or less influence you have. The reason why in some very weird way is because when you're smaller, people just feel generally like less intimidated to comment on your stuff cuz they feel like they're talking to your friend.

>> But then as you get bigger, then it feels like, oh, you know, I've got this celebrity here, but really you might not be, right?

>> Um, so for me, it's like evidence of having that two-way dialogue is very important.

>> Um, but I do also find it very interesting because Rory, you talked about TV and I think about so many people who started off on TV and they still I mean like Jeremy Clarkson for example, right? He started off on TV.

>> He still has a lot of influence even though actually for a long period a lot of his career was actually a one-way thing. it was him creating content or him on Top Gear and just like talking at you and there wasn't that um two-way two-way dialogue. So in in some weird way actually like TV and the advent of like TV celebrities kind of goes against what I said.

He was always an outlier though, wasn't he? I mean, it still is okay Clarkson in the sense that I know that newspapers like the Sunday Times realized that he was there are very very few journalists who if they left their newspaper and started up on their own people would pay a pound a week just to read their column. That's true.

>> But he was one of them.

>> Um uh you know and uh.

>> I mean I think I think he's actually a much more unusual and remarkable talent than he's often given credit for because I think what we often get he's a very very brilliant writer.

>> Okay.

>> He's like the British equivalent of P sorry PJ Rock really who also wrote a lot of motoring stuff but also wrote stuff about other things.

>> and his capacity fundamentally to engage people in farming.

>> that was that was a decision made because as he said uh he was offered an extra Netflix series on top of what was of course the um sorry Amazon Prime he was offered an extra Amazon Prime series on top of the Grand Tour And his reason for doing a program on farming was nothing to do with his belief that farming was great television. He just said, "I'm sick of Heathrow Terminal 5. I don't want to make a program which requires me to go through security."

>> Okay.

>> And so I want to make a program from home and I live on a farm.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. So it was literally that was that was what drove the decision. And what is freakish about it is one it's done absolute wonders for farming.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. But also, I mean, the thing I I wouldn't have predicted, okay, it's big in the US. This is Cotswold farming and there are a load of Texan ranchers who are watching this [ __ ] right? This is it's brilliant. By the way, when I said, you know, but who would have predicted it? And actually that capacity to engage people.

>> Um, it's I suppose it's the quality of an incredibly good teacher at school. You know, there was always that one weird teacher who could make quadratic equations really fascinating.

>> Yeah.

>> And I think it's much rarer and needs to be prized much more.

>> actually than we do.

>> But I think he's an outlier. I think you know I mean it was him and aa the late AA Gil who are these two extraordinary journalists who just in my view were just.

>> basically better than everybody else.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

So so what I've always thought about from an influence perspective I think that always as marketeers as people in industries we always like to coin things with terms right. But if you think about then the the notion of influence that's been happening for since the start of time right if you think about and I'm not going to go too far behind but if you think about Michael Jackson with Pepsi if you think about Michael Jordan with Nike those things have been happening the platform just changes right? It seems like trust is the thing that change is the thing that evolves over time where the trust is right? It's almost like at first it's people on the big screens that we look up to and therefore the big stars and then you go to the TV show host like you feel like you know Will Smith cuz you see him on Fresh Prince all the time and now it's going more and more to the day-to-day of the influencer. But is that is that what we think is the the moving mechanism all the time?

>> It logically makes sense.

>> Okay.

>> Um in the sense that we know where you know the public aren't naive. They know that when a very famous person uh promotes a very famous thing um.

>> uh they effectively know that there's money changing hands. Now, what you have when you get into your area of irrational enthusiasm is the person doing the recommending.

>> has massive reputational skin in the game.

>> Okay?

>> Now, they might take money to recommend their second favorite something.

>> Okay?

>> rather than their first favorite something. But for the purposes of view as as a consumer, as a car buyer, okay, if Clarkson recommends a car, he cannot, okay, his entire business model would collapse if he took a million dollars to recommend a car he thought was [ __ ].

>> And we intuitively know that.

>> that when he's making a recommendation, he's got his entire effectively his entire credibility is on the line.

>> Yeah.

>> Now, you know, my credibility isn't on the line if I were a sort of randomly famous person who just chooses to recommend a cosmetics brand. is me, okay, me recommending cosmetics, okay, I have zero credibility to lose, okay, but if I were to give marketing advice that was genuinely atrocious, okay, I were, you know, I, you know, my neck's on the line and I think people in understand that that in areas of expertise, fundamentally, you can only be bought to a limited extent and therefore what you say carries just that much more weight.

>> Yeah.

So here's a question actually just following on that. What do you think is happening in the marketing slash advertising teams of let's say uh Volvic right and they say hey we are going to pair up with this footballer.

>> and we are you know we're going to do a billboard where it's like you know footballer X let's say Neymar. Do you know who Neymar is?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay, great. So, um, Neymar recommends drinking Volvic and you have a picture of him next to Volvic with some tagline there, you know, drink yourself to success or something. I don't know.

>> Um, do you think that they think that works? Like what's the psychology going on there? Cuz no one looks at Neymar and says this is someone who knows a lot about water.

>> Yeah, you might say this is the water I drink, but it's organized by the team. So what do you think is happening?

There is an argument for how that kind of advertising works which is pure costly signaling.

>> which simply says is this person is majorly famous okay therefore they're not cheap therefore a lot of money has gone into this.

>> advertisement and you might argue that of course in conventional advertising if you had you know a TV ad during the Super Bowl okay part of the way in which advertising works is that it's perceived to be expensive and therefore the amount you expend in promoting your you visibly expend in promoting your product is proof of the face you have.

>> Not necessarily that the product is perfect, but that you would put it this way. You the argument is that if you spend a few million dollars, okay, advertising a car.

>> Mhm.

>> You wouldn't do that if everybody who test drove the car didn't go on to buy it and thought it was [ __ ]. Okay. So, it's a visible costly sign of the seller's confidence.

>> Okay.

>> Now that that thing can be financial. There was actually a legal case, would you believe it, where somebody recommended something and didn't actually use the product. I'm just trying to remember that where literally the legal defense was the purpose of this celebrity is to be expensive, not to be credible. And that was a legal defense which was successfully made in the US in some case or other. And I need to I I'll try and find chapter and verse to put in the comments below here.

>> Um, and so by the way, that's not totally irrelevant.

>> Okay?

>> You know, if you spend a lot of money advertising something uh fairly obviously that will only pay if the people who try the thing become repeat customers or the people who test drive the car go on to buy it.

>> Okay.

>> So what that what the expensive advertising launch says for the car is uh this is a car that's worth test driving.

>> Okay.

>> It might be worth me looking at this thing.

>> Um, on the other hand, you could argue that when you have people who are particularly.

>> always believed that he was a great fan of testimonials when the person doing the so he would be a big fan of yours because David Ogilvy always said he he had great faith in testimonials when the person effectively doing the recommendation because that's actually a testament not a testimonial has actual.

>> sector expertise and reputational skin in the game in the area they're talking about. Now, the other thing that makes your category very credible, you see, is.

>> when I'm watching James Hoffman on coffee, I don't know that much about coffee.

>> Yeah.

>> But I know that a lot of people in the audience watching Hoffman know a shitload about coffee.

>> And if he if he talks [ __ ] not that he not that I'm suggesting that, to be honest, I think he takes it a bit far, I wouldn't weigh the beans.

>> instead.

>> Okay.

>> Okay. Right.

>> Cuz I think part of the pleasure of making coffee is you take a handful of beans and go, "Yeah, that's about right." Right. Bit of randomness. Build a bit of randomness in, James. But but nonetheless, uh I know that the So this is why if you do an ad for a wood uh let's say a wood planing product in a specialist carpentry magazine.

>> the reader can have confidence in that ad by knowing that.

>> um this is Don Marty again, by the way, that that enough of the people who will be exposed to that ad are sufficiently expert in woodworking to know if something's [ __ ].

>> Okay.

>> And therefore you can't expose yourself uh to a knowledgeable and expert audience and talk crap. And therefore the people in the audience who are not expert rely on the people who are effectively to police to police the honesty of a message.

>> Okay.

>> Now that that particularly applies in your field because the people watching Hoffman if Hoffman suddenly started saying you know to be absolutely honest it's best to make coffee at 50° or what you I don't know. you know, or don't don't grind the beans, just hit them with this expensive branded hammer.

>> Um uh he a he couldn't afford to do it because he'd be reputationally shot and b there'd be a hundred people who'd basically call him out.

>> So the comments of course are interesting in YouTube because TV ads didn't have comments.

>> Um, but literally if you So this business of credibility, so David Ogleby would have been a big fan. Now, now just to be clear, I think David Ogleby was a bit too um hard on ads that feature gratuitous celebrities, okay? Because that has a value, but it works in a different way.

That would be my point, which is I mean you you'll know this if you ever go to Japan because there are loads of celebrity bands featuring western western celebrities which never appear on American TV.

>> Okay.

>> So you you will and that is basically Look, we've got maybe I'm not sure Tom Hanks has done ads in Japan. I don't know. Does he do advertising? He does.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. But but um.

>> I always think that's very precious. By the way, the very very well- paid actors who go, "Of course I don't do advertising because now now you're making $15 million a movie. You can afford to do that virtue signaling." But the fact is, let's be honest, it's working in advertising that most a lot of actors got their first break and survived for the first five years in Hollywood by doing that kind of stuff.

>> Okay.

>> Sorry. But but but but you get that very it's a very Japanese thing. You just feature a major celebrity and it says basically it's sort of chest beating by the company. We got a lot of money to spend. Therefore, um we're rich rather than desperate and we'd rather do business with people. I mean, okay, if you were buying a car, okay, you'd feel much more comfortable buying a car from a rich person than from someone who is clearly desperate.

>> because you go, the rich person actually has a balance between reputation and profit. Whereas the desperate person only cares about profit.

>> Exactly.

>> And so you know there are there's an argument that you simply do it to signal corporate success that we're doing well. We wouldn't do well if our product. So there are all kinds of ways in which advertising works. That's the only thing to understand. But your way is a great way.

>> Okay.

>> Just describes. So a couple of thoughts. So the first thought is the thing you've described in Japan and probably Alfred you can testify to this is it's also hugely successful slash prevalent in the developing world. So like if you go to Ghana, Nigeria etc. just the combination of insert semi famous person here next to any category like any category you have made it. And then the second thing that you said is actually an interesting framework. I guess I can call it like decision by abdication. It's almost like you say, well, this group have said it's good. Therefore, there's no reason why that person will feel like he's um ripping me off.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, one of the questions I actually have for you.

>> by the way, the fact that you invest upfront in your reputation, okay.

>> is evidence that you're playing the capitalist long game.

>> long game,

>> not the short game.

>> Okay, so someone who's planning, okay, if I were planning to open a kebab van in Seven Oaks, give everybody food poisoning and drive away, right? Drive off to Oxford and repeat the whole process. This is why, you know, we trust in a way we trust a kebab shop more than the van because you're rooted in a community, okay? You you've got an upfront investment in your real estate and in your um in your equipment. And and so this is why if if you like a tourist restaurant can often be [ __ ] because they're not expecting anybody to come back.

>> Okay?

>> Whereas a country pub.

>> if you if you're not a destination, you're out of business.

>> Okay.

>> So you can trust a if you want a [ __ ] meal, go to a tourist restaurant with a great view.

>> Yeah.

>> Cuz they know that nobody's ever coming back. Now actually, okay, let's be honest, Trip Advisor probably changed the dynamics of that a bit because the person people generally didn't go back. They didn't go back home to Luton and go, "By the way, if you happen to be in Lanzerati, there's a great restaurant or a terrible restaurant."

>> Okay.

>> So, the feedback loop didn't really work.

>> Yeah, that's interesting.

>> So, the fact that you invest upfront in reputation, just as the fact that you invest upfront in real estate, is kind of proof of long-term commitment that you're you're planning to grow your business through investment in reputation and uh relational capitalism. You're not just a one-off transaction business. And we trust the latter. This is why I often say to people, look, I know you can go and buy a secondhand car a bit cheaper, right, by going to the direct person who's selling the car, but there is a virtue to a car dealer.

>> Okay?

>> Which is if if the car dealer totally screwed me over and particularly if you make it very public that you live locally, right?

>> And also if you're buying a car from a car dealer, say, and I will get my car serviced here, right?

>> Okay.

>> You you in other words, you suggest you're a source of future value, not just a one-off punter.

>> Yeah.

>> 100%.

>> Okay.

>> I when I'm in deal, I make it really visible that I'm not an Airbnb. You know, no, no, no, we've got a place just around the corner cuz then they go, okay, they need me to come back, right?

>> And so that business of what you might call long game capitalism and short game capitalism.

>> To be honest, if you go to a car dealer and they know you could go around town slagging them off, right? Whereas if you drive 400, you know, if you drive 300 miles to buy a secondhand car from someone called Dave,

>> basically.

>> it's not the same reputational protection.

>> So if you're going to a car dealer and somebody asks you where did you travel from, you should say locally.

>> because then they might give you a great deal because the villages are going to be around.

>> In fact, I'm very well connected to the local community.

>> Absolutely.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Absolutely.

>> I run the running club. We're on the right. Exactly. You've got it. Exactly. Yeah. Which is absolutely packed full of potential BMW buyers. But I always find so I always find that very interesting because I think we instinctively understand a lot of these trust mechanisms but they're never quantified. So they never appear on a spreadsheet and they never appear on a database but we instinctively understand is this is this guy in the repeat business game or is he in the one-off you know.

>> you know one-off transa there's transactional capitalism which seeks to maximize the value of the one-off transaction. That's your dodgy guy, right?

>> And um then there's relational capitalism which is I now have a customer. How can I maximize the value exchange between us over time? And the second kind is much better. I'll tell you a very funny story. A Brit friend who moves to Australia.

>> Okay.

>> And he wants to buy a secondhand car. And the guy says, "I'll meet you in the car park of the local supermarket, right?" The guy goes, "It's a bit weird, but maybe that's what Australians do, right?" Cuz he's new to Australia. And he's thinking, "Maybe this is Australian tradition where supermarket car parks are the traditional place." meets the guy, needless to say, buys the car. Total bloody disaster. What the guy was doing is, "I don't want you to know where I live."

>> Yeah.

>> Right. He's basically selling him the car in an anonymous location cuz there's no there's no comebacks.

>> Yeah.

>> And the guy, the British guy was suspicious, but what wrongfooted him was basically thought, you know, I'm in Australia, you know,

>> in maybe the whole of Australian supermarket retail is basically car dealers and no big mistake.

>> Yeah.

>> Interesting.

>> But this is really interesting because I think what that whole question of specialist expertise.

>> what you're doing with the rational media.

>> is a lot of it works because of those totally tacit and implicit trust mechanisms.

>> Yeah.

>> Do you remember yesterday when we were talking about how you'd sell perfume?

>> Yeah.

>> And so I've actually got a question for you because I think cuz I actually thought about this question after reading uh Confessions of an Advertiser man by David and then I also read uh Claude Hopkins my life in advertising. This was ages ago and I still use so much of this stuff. still do do you know complete side note but I think one of the godfathers of this whole like influence social game is um Edward Bernays like to me I remember reading uh propaganda and just thinking bro like you are the guy like you are the god of this right.

>> um but the question I have for you is actually about if you were starting say a perfume brand now right so many perfume brands And what they, you know, I never understood it. They do these like really amazing videos and it's like this supermodel and she comes in and does all stuff.

>> Let's assume Johnny Depp is out here doing like Savage for Sauvage. You're like what are you talking about? Right.

>> Companies are the same.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, but the thing about perfume that I find very interesting um is.

>> beautiful by the way was Old Spice Proctor and Gamble brand.

>> Okay.

>> Who did who did that extraordinary campaign? I'm on a horse.

>> Yeah.

>> Okay. And that was brilliant because it was total subversion of the conventions of the category.

>> Yeah.

>> How was that? Okay. So, I got two questions. Firstly, how was that a total subversion? And then secondly, how would you promote given where we are now? How would you promote a new perfume brand using like standard or uh old school advertising principles but on social media? And you can't do the supermodel Johnny Depp Sage Dior or whatever.

>> Yeah.

>> it's I think it's quite easy to do because what I would do is there are two things you can do in marketing in a way.

>> Um you can find a gap in the market or you can create one.

>> Okay.

>> And when I say that I mean by the way there's always a there's always a bit of advice I do give to people with new ideas which is there may be a gap in the market but is there a market in the gap?

>> Yeah.

>> Okay.

>> So there are categories of things which are totally underserved.

>> Okay.

>> An amazing phrase.

>> It's a brilliant. Not mine. I wish it was mine. No, yours. I can't remember when I first read it. Brilliant phrase. It's a brilliant phrase. There's a gap in the market, but is there market in the gap? And there are certain things where, for example, at a fast food restaurant, there's a market for food that's cheap. That that's usually, you know, your, you know, what you might call the, you know, the cheap wrap you get somewhere. It's the and that's for people who are going out to lunch. And there's a market for things which are surprisingly a bit expensive and that's the treat market. So there's the I want to save money and there's the I want to splurge. There isn't. So most supermarket sorry most most fast food chains have what they call a barbell strategy which is the food we serve is either the guy who wants to have a hot meal for lunch and doesn't want to break into a break beyond a fiver.

>> Okay.

>> Or it's the kid's birthday where people go it's a special occasion let's go a bit large. there isn't actually in between the two. It just doesn't work.

>> Okay.

>> So that's a really really important phrase. But one of the things I think you can do with marketing.

>> is you can create a gap.

>> Yeah.

>> By focusing now.

>> Okay.

>> I call this I mentioned this in an earlier episode I think reverse benchmarking.

>> Okay.

>> Now.

>> um what you do is nearly everybody in a in a business benchmarks against their competitors which means they become more and more similar.

>> Okay.

>> And the act of benchmarking usually creates an opportunity somewhere else.

>> But consumers may not find that space visible.

>> unless you focus their attention there. Now, let me give you a perfect example of this, which is probably the the $3 trillion example of this, which is loads and loads of nerds in the uh late '70s are making computers slightly faster, bit more RAM, bit more processing power.

>> Okay?

>> and they're all competing with each other because they're nerds to impress each other with the hardware.

>> Jobs comes along and basically goes in this process you've completely neglected aesthetics and usability.

>> But what you then have to do is direct the consumer's attention to where you are strong.

>> and where everybody else is weak.

>> Yeah.

>> And what we pay attention to we tend to ascribe importance to.

>> Yeah.

>> And by attaching people's attention, by being very very visible about this, okay, you create an awful lot of cut through attention and um salience.

>> and suddenly what you've got is a USB if you like a unique.

>> Okay.

>> And so this is a case where it's not enough necessary to spot a gap in the market. You actually can use communication to genuinely create one by direct. So the reason I call this reverse benchmarking.

>> um the brilliant book uh I really recommend Will Gdara. It's called Unreasonable Hospitality.

>> Yeah, I'm going out to New York to he's hosting a conference in September.

>> What an underrated book, by the way.

>> But so underrated.

>> Not by anybody who's read it. I mean, everybody who's read it. I agree. No, no, I completely agree.

>> But people don't talk about it because people hear hospitality and they go me. But actually, the principles behind it are incredible. the principles, the patterns he's so his lovely thing is he's number 50 in the world.

>> Yeah.

>> Uh in the San Podina restaurant awards I think it's 2011.

>> and he wants to get to number one.

>> That's him. I I wouldn't have bothered. I would go number 50. That'll do. Just go to the pub, right? But he wants to get to number one.

>> Okay.

>> I'm like that, you know, I'm a satisfy. Yeah, that'll do. Right. You know, um and he takes his whole team to the number one restaurant. They start copying the or making a note of Oh, we could do that. we could fold the napkins that way. At the end of the meal, he go interested in any of that stuff. He goes, "What about this experience was a bit me bit disappointing."

>> And they came up with two things uh that the beer drinkers cuz he taken a load of chefs and chefs tend to be beer drinkers, not interestingly the people who actually make the food quite often.

>> Uh the the beer drinkers got a really [ __ ] experience compared to the wine drinkers and the coffee was just a bit average.

>> So he doesn't copy anything from the number one restaurant. He goes back to his own restaurant, 11 Madison Park I think it's called and he appoints one of the guys a coffee sleier and one of the guys is a beer smellier. So if you go into that restaurant now most people don't you don't go to a three-star Michelin restaurant and go can have a pint but the people who did drink beer were bought literally a beer menu with pairing suggestions and tasting notes of all these craft beers.

>> Right.

>> Now, what you're doing there is brilliant because you're taking the your competitor's weak spot.

>> You're effectively and then in a very salient, noticeable way, you're doubling down on being brilliant at the thing where your competitor's a bit crap.

>> Mh.

>> And you double down on it both in terms of where you invest and where you promote. Where you promote.

>> Okay.

>> And I think I I think that, you know, that's basically Apple.

>> Okay.

>> Um, in Moxy hotels, I mean, you know, I always rave about them.

>> Um, I mean, the Dutch people get really angry because they go, "They stole it from Citizen M."

>> Okay.

>> I'll buy that. Fair enough.

>> Okay.

>> But it's a hotel where you basically the rooms are actually a bit rudimentary.

>> Yeah.

>> But the the ground floor is better than a five-star hotel cuz you can hang out there, hold, do video calls in a little room. You can do things on the ground floor of a Moxy that you wouldn't be able to do and 24 hours a day incidentally which you you know which you wouldn't be able to do in a five-star hotel or you.

Do if you did it would feel weird, right? And so those kinds of things where you, where, where you reverse benchmark, you literally say, "Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to be really, really good where everybody..." I've talked about this in cases like Bies, the Texan gas station chain, where the entire, entire business model came from what determines where people stop.

Yeah. Is often the female passenger in the car, and it's the quality of the restrooms. We're going to build our whole business model around getting people to wait another 25 miles with a slightly full bladder.

Okay. To create a destination.

Yeah. And it's again, what you know, take what, here, here's the example I'll give. Okay. I mean, literally, I think there are loads of ideas where people can do this. But one thing that occurred to me the other day is, if I book a taxi to take me home from Gatwick, okay, I'm paying them, I don't know, 70 quid or something, okay? Right, to taxi, pick me up, Gatwick. They come and meet me at arrivals, and if I want them to, I don't, 'cause I'm Mr. Democratic, but they'll push my trolley for me, and they'll meet me with a board with my name on it, and they'll walk me to the car. They'll put, put my luggage in the back of the car, and they drive me all the way home.

Yeah. If I'm spending 700 quid on renting a car, I've got to do all that work myself.

And then I can't find the [ __ ] car because it's in some weird offsite car park a mile and a half from the airport in like a 100-degree temperatures, right, where I'm dying and I've got three loads of luggage, and I kind of go, "I'd pay 50 quid."

Yeah. Yeah. For someone just to say, "And also, when I get in that car..." And this is now, I, I've never hired from Enterprise, who apparently are better than everybody else. So, I may be doing them a disservice here, okay? But there isn't even a laminated sheet of A4 that says, "This is how you open the fuel filler cap." Okay. "This is..." "There's the car." Hired in France. Hired a Cadillac Lyric, the electric Cadillac. Bloody fantastic car, by the way. But you open the charging port by pressing on the Cadillac logo that's next to it. Okay. Now, I literally could have been spending a month. I went on YouTube, as it happened, right? But there should be a laminated sheet of A4 that says, "These are the idiosyncrasies of the car. This is how you turn the lights on. This is how the..." You know, just a few basics. I mean, I had one American car where I literally, it was 10 minutes working out how to let the handbrake off.

Okay. I mean, so all you have to do, literally, any car rental company that adopted this saying, "Okay, we're going to be brilliant where everybody else is [ __ ]."

Yeah. Okay. And by the way, okay, the logic, the one way to do it is market research.

Yeah. But actually, you can use advertising to invent your own competitor weakness. You can basically just, you, you, so this is what I mean by creating a gap in the market rather than, rather than finding one.

Yeah. And I would add to that, because obviously the question was, how would you almost like promote a perfume brand once you understand what the weakness spot is? I would let the audience do the talking, not myself. Right. So...

I'll give you an example.

Yeah. Nobody in years has talked about the ingredients that go into perfume. Right. Now, I'm not suggesting that's a universal strategy everybody can deploy. But one person who did that, okay, probably is there is that weird online limited edition fragrance company, isn't there? It's called Creed or something. Have... you maybe they do this, okay? But this is the kind of thing where, you know, you can say, "Okay, what does everybody else do? There is no point in us being number 27 in this bonkers category."

Smell and everything.

Yeah. Well, I guessation...

Sorry, my thing is almost like, what is the outcome that everybody wants when they buy this product? Is they want people to notice that they're wearing something. It's almost like it's they want it to be unmissable. Usually when you wear a scent, you like it. You like the fact that people have noticed. Like, I have bought fragrances and then I would walk out and if somebody says, "Oh, you smell nice." I'm buy that's yours from now on.

The most complimented. I'll actually go and find like a page, right, that talks about scents and put a ranking of what's the most complimented scent. So I get other people around to just like build this narrative about the fact that this product contributes the most to, um, what they call it, compliments. That also commits to like your well-being as well, right? I'll just go that route. I would almost like keep doing what we're doing and get the narrative started from somewhere else.

This is actually an exceptional idea because, do you remember the company Panten?

Yes. And about painting, right?

Um...

By the way, very good joke about that which is a bit out of date because of inflation, which is, "How much does shampoo cost in Romford?" Pantan. Sorry. Anyway, park that one. But yeah, even if you look at Panten, or if you look at say, like the Michelin brothers, they did the whole Michelin Guide so they could sell more tires.

So actually...

That's the most beautiful example, and it's actually the Shell Guides, written by, um, John Berman, which are still sort of collectible. They're guides to the counties of England. They were done with the same intention. Based off what you just said, Alfred, actually, you could end up doing something similar if you are a perfume brand. You could effectively create a study or a leaderboard which is like the most complimented perfumes, and you also introduce like your other competitors, but you do it so that like yours is in the top.

And the influencers are all...

Yeah. And every number underneath you changes.

Yeah. But yours is always at the top. And it's like you become the Panten, or you become the Michelin of perfumes.

And it's all about waiting, right? And if it's a men's, if it's a men's um fragrance, I'd have women complimenting. If it's the women's side, I'll have influential women doing it. Women are influences by each other. Men are usually influenced by women. Right. So, like, we talked about the fact that if there was no women, we'd probably all live in cardboard boxes and not buy anything.

I live in a Travelodge. Yeah. Yeah. No, I wouldn't bother with all this housing stuff.

So, it'll be like, it'll be like social proofing from people that have high waiting. And it's all about linking to compliments and also things that just make people like, you see that ads all the time about like, "Oh, this is a thing that women are attracted to," or "This is a thing that people are attract." I, I would just go with that route and just...

One area where the perfume industry has been ingenious, by the way. I mean, I know their advertising is often bizarre and formulaic and everything else, although it can be kind of magnificent as well. I mean, let's be honest. It's, it's, it's a peacock's tale.

Someone should just do a parody of those ads.

Well, I think that's what, to be honest, that's what Old Spice was to an extent, wasn't it? You know, "I'm on a horse. I'm on a boat. Here are tickets to that thing you love." Um, the, um...

Um...

But where they've been ingenious is in brand partnerships. So, PNG, actually, it was the Hugo Boss partnership. Friend of mine, Da Shan Humza, was the guy who basically launched Hugo Boss fragrances, which was a brand partnership between effectively a fashion and clothing brand and a perfume brand. So, they've been very, very clever in finding brands that effectively.

So, those brand partnerships, one of the things I would say, um, is that...

How do you mean by that? Sorry.

PNG, Panten, to create books.

What? It's the equivalent of in, um, how would I describe it? The one of the greatest examples of that is Caterpillar moving into, uh, robust workwear. Okay.

So you have this business, by the way, which, you know, basically unless you've got a budget of 7 million pounds, you can't buy anything from Caterpillar. But the brand was everywhere because of these huge, whenever you had road works, you had these massive great road moving equipment. By the way, a really funny story. My great aunt's husband's father invented the Caterpillar track. And when I was about 19, I inherited a thousand quid from her estate. And I suddenly realized he had sold the idea to a, a company called the California Tractor Company. And I always thought, okay, well, he sold the idea and he lived, I think he lived off it fairly comfortably for the rest of his life, but he wasn't mega rich. Mhm. And then I realized that the California Tractor Company actually rebranded as Caterpillars. So this poor guy had invented the thing that gave rise to a billion-dollar company. And he, he had a nice life in Eastbourne. Okay. But, okay, he never really quite made the money he deserved. But what you do is you take someone who's got a brand and someone who's got a, um, possibly. So you've got someone who's got a brand and someone who's got manufacturing or distribution expertise in there. You may not know this, but the Starbucks Nespresso capsules are actually made by Nestle, who own Nespresso. Okay. Right. Now, that was ingenious because Starbucks has an unbelievable coffee brand, but no expertise in manufacturing ready-to-drink coffee or in distributing it to supermarkets. They don't have those relationships. Nestle has all of the latter, but didn't have a ready, you know, didn't have a premium ready-to-drink coffee. You could have done it with Nescafe, but they instead partnered with Starbucks. Now, one of the things I'd say for any company, before you start thinking about marketing, genuinely look at brand partnerships because in biological terms, it's equivalent to symbiosis. You know, those fish that, angle of what fish that clean the teeth of other fish? It's a mutually beneficial relationship where it's, it's the most pure form of capitalism, if you like. It's voluntary exchange, uh, of, of mutually complimentary skills.

Hey, so we talked about capitalism. So, I'm going to go into evil marketeer, uh, brain for a second.

Yeah. No, no. You've all got to, you've all got to be a bit evil.

Yeah. So, so I talked about the light version of how I do it. But then you just have to find a stat like, for example, these stats that say that actually people fall in love with your sin, right? Pheromones, all that kind of stuff, right? So, one, be like, "You know how people have, uh, uh, what they call it, um, stats about some like pheromone in like how many pheromone percentages is in here, right?" I'd start a figure like that about like, "What your F1 percentage is?" Or you'd go with, um, a stat that says, "70% of people," or whatever the stat is there, there will be a stat out there. And I'll start a dating show that starts with that. So we started this show because there's "Love is Blind," there's all this stuff. We started this show that we get you to fall in love because of someone's scent. And that nose, right? And actually, there's a stat that says 70% of people fall in love with the nose. So now, we're not, now you, we're going to cover you up, and what you have to do is pick your partner and make some, and then say, "What you're wearing, right?" And then I'd go with that. And then if you get people that are actually not attractive, quote unquote, visually, but they smell nice, everyone will be like, "Which one was that?" They'll start to list that out. And actually, you, you push the category.

It's actually a very high level because there's actually an ethnic and genetic component to it. So there are scents that work particularly well with Middle Eastern people. There are scents, shows. So, so, so you could actually, you could also segment that way. Yeah.

Yeah. I've always wondered about that, which is, you know, you, in other words, you, you know, you take a, um, I've always wondered why nobody's launched like a washing powder for hard water areas. Do you know what I mean?

What's a hard water area?

Well, if you, you only know this if you move from Wales to London, because in Wales the water's so soft. I didn't know what limescale was when I was a kid. When you go to London, your kettle furs up every, you know.

Interesting. And so, actually, you do need a different chemical composition.

Yeah. That's what Calgon's for, I think. Basically, I think it, it basically stops your washing machine.

Are starting to like do a lot of ads about like filtering water and changing your filter so that you can actually solve the problem.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. And there's actually, weirdly, they sell it as a cosmetic.

Yeah. So that super filtered water through your shower. They, they don't sell it on the sort of basis of, you know, the usual filtration thing. The idea is that super pure filtered water has cosmetic benefits, which is really. I met the guy actually at Heathrow who's selling that.

It's a shower head which you can, it's an aftermarket fit. Quite expensive, but it basically purifies your shower water.

Yeah. If you change people's attention, you change what they think is important.

Exactly. Consequently, you can make something important which was previously irrelevant. And I was making a point on the earlier episode that if you're a really evil oil company which wanted to distinguish, sorry, if you're a really evil oil company which wanted to extinguish the electric car market, what you do is you get everybody to focus on the one thing about electric cars that's worse than petrol cars, and well, one and a half things, which is apparently charging, basically range and charging time.

Yeah. Okay. Now, what always amuses me is by competing on the basis of range, the electric car industry has actually done itself damage. Because it's got everybody going, first of all, it means the cars are more expensive than they need to be. The batteries are heavier than they need to be. You know, there's a lot of wasted battery capacity in people who've got a car with 290-mile range where 99% of the time they don't drive further than 50 miles. Don't get me started on all this. But the weird thing is, what the electric car industry has failed to do is adequately convey to people who've never driven one that it is an inordinately pleasant, quieter, nippier experience. And that for the first time in history, without spending a quarter of a million quid, you can have a car that's a limo and a sports car at the same time.

Sometimes it can sneak up on you.

Yeah. Well, I was jokingly saying that we ought, you know, we ought to have a campaign which say, "I think we should ban petrol cars by 2030." Not, not for the environment, it's just they're too [ __ ] slow, you know, pulling away from their lights in their useless, asthmatic way, you know. But, but I mean, it fascinates me that because this is a case where utterly disproportionate attention is paid to this question of range and charging time, which, in, in particularly if you have in-home charging, is totally irrelevant. Okay. Really? Okay. 99.9% of the, nobody with a petrol car used to say, "Oh, you got, you, you got a Mercedes? What's the range like?" Right? Nobody talked about that. And so, what is weird is that fundamentally people think important. This is how media bias works, by the way. It's not really that you, it's not re, most media bias isn't what the opinion the newspaper actually expresses about a subject. It's the degree to which it either highlights it or buries it. Most really dodgy stuff that's done by mainstream media is burying things or artificially misdirecting people. It's not what they actually, it's not in the content, it's in the relative prominence.

Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to say, so you're starting to see a lot of brands, obviously we talked about brands like Gymshark, or there's brands like Cortis, there's Jack.

Gymshark, brilliant case. Gap in the market. Gym people, weightlifters particularly, right? Totally unserved by the rest of, you know, by the rest of the athletes.

Actually, even Gymshark had a bigger innovation. You talk about, you know, finding the gap in the market, and Alfred and I talk about this, which is, um, there were two big ones. One was actually the method of marketing. So when they started in 2015, it was like, "Right, we're going to use Instagram influencers." Right? No one else was using Instagram influencers. But I also think, and I don't know, Ben may not, um, Ben may not agree with this, but like, if I think about the category of gymwear, which for a guy makes you look bigger, and also for a woman makes you look sexier, because actually, before Gymshark, the whole, like, really short shorts, like tight clothing, that sort of thing, it wasn't in vogue, and they kind of like set the precedence, and now, you know, so many other brands have come in.

Lululemon, parallel, Melbourne, that yoga wasn't there.

Yes, exactly. So that was a parallel thing. The only difference is, is the, the body shapes were different, right? So Gymshark, the, the big challenge was making the bodybuilding industry more mainstream, right? It was more kind of like what the UFC tried to do with like changing all their uniform. First, they used to have fighters that had like sponsors all over. It was all based on the individual contribution of the fighter, and then they got them a uniform. They upscaled it a little bit. So basically, it's just about finding an audience on the rise that has no uniform and becoming the uniform, and actually creating a platform for them.

Brands themselves are having influence, right? And obviously individuals have influence. Brands have influence. But right now, who do you think has a better grasp on influence? Is it the brands or is it the creators?

It's none. It is a...

Very good answer.

It's none. It is... nobody knows anything. Yeah. It is, um, 16 to 23-year-old kids who spend every waking hour on TikTok and who understand every trend that's going on, and who are creating the waves. I am now...

You say streamers.

No, because even the streamers are amplified by these 16 to 23-year-old kids who basically know all the, all the trends, all the carousels, all the memes. They are inventing, pardon...

The clipping guys. The clipping guys, right? They are inventing new phrases and new things. And you know, there's now this new phrase called "aura farming." Yeah. Right. Aura farming. And it all came because, um...

You have to help me out on that one. Go on.

You know the guy that does the little dance?

So basically, um, a while ago, was it in Nepal or the Philippines? There was these, uh, there's this video which is these guys who are rowing. And what they did was that as part of the rowing, they had these kids on each boat who basically were just in front and just like posing and swaying and just looking effortlessly cool. And then the phrase "aura farming" came because it was like, "Okay, they have aura and they're like farming the aura," right?

And they edited a rap music to make it. Exactly. And so it's like, "Oh, now aura farming is a thing." Right? And if you think about the people who hold the influence, is that like, I offered this guy about three months ago, I offered this guy 200 grand and I just said, "Just come and work for me." In fact, I said, "Just come and work with me. I don't have a job title for you."

Or people, or...

I just want you to basically just like feed, feed me with different trends so that I can apply to any of the companies that were involved in.

By the way, that's a vastly underrated form of recruitment, which is, "Hire the person, then find the role."

Yes. I mean, famously, I, I was it Vince Lombardi, uh, in NFL, said, "Hire the best athletes. Don't hire for..." "Hire for a position." "Okay. Just hire the best athletes." And similarly, most companies are so siloed and constrained in hiring for a role, you actually miss out on all the other stuff.

It's like investing when they say, "Just back the founder."

Yeah. If you find the founder, you'll find the, the place massively influenced by the quality of the management.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think now, you know, like people, um, call them the "cracked," you know? So if you meet someone who is like a cracked person, it's basically a way of saying, "This is just an absolute go-getter. We don't know what we'll do with this person, but we'll put them somewhere and like, eventually they will succeed." So I think basically, to answer your question, like...

I don't think it's a brand. I don't think it's the influencers as we see them. I think it, it is like those, like, like 16 to 22, 23-year-olds who are obsessing over TikTok and Twitter and distribution, and then they are then like dictating what is actually then being seen.

By the way, the first time I noticed I was marginally famous was among kids.

Yeah. Okay. Now, now I get people of all age groups coming up to me, but the first time I started getting recognized was literally exactly the audience you described.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting, right? Because like, they probably saw you as, um, as kind of like their really smart great uncle.

Who has like...

Uncle. No, right? Cuz like, even from your fashion sense, it's like the, like the dude who just reads and is kind of like, doesn't really know what day it is, but if you ask him anything, he would know the answer to that. Like in stories, that is like the great uncle that people want.

Another fact, I'm totally chronologically dyslexic. I'm no, I vaguely know which month it is. Interesting.

Um, and so, yeah, and so I think those guys are dictating culture. In fact, I will go as far to say that I think, and I know brands are not going to do this because they're old and stodgy and they have absolutely no clue, but like, I think what every brand should do, every forward-thinking brand should do, is have a budget. It could be like, uh, 300 grand a year, right? And call it your "misfits budget." And all you do is just hire these people and you say, "Bro, I don't know what you're going to do."

Yeah. Do some stuff. Report back to me when you've got something worth talking about. But if not, just keep tinkering, and I promise you, 'cause a lot of these guys are in their bedroom doing stuff. One of them will succeed. And also, you may actually find out that it would be significantly easier to recruit them if you are...

If you are Pepsi. You still have the like legacy brand of saying Pepsi. So they would much rather work for Pepsi and be like, "I'm in charge of virality at Pepsi." Way better. So we...

We were just talking to Jordan about the fact that a lot of creators that are not going to be at the top of the top are going to actually start working for brands right long term in the future. Right. So actually, the current...

You have a stable, a talent stable.

Yeah. The, the current role of a creative director, a marketing director will change, right? It's got to be like this community, misfits era. And it's going back to the whole conversation around...

The fashion industry sort of has the concept of the muse, doesn't it?

The person who is not necessarily a fashion designer, but they, you know, they're a muse for the creatives.

Yeah. The fashion world is actually pretty, in this space, they're actually pretty forward-thinking. If you think about how the role of how like a Virgil Abloh or a, the role of a, uh, Pharrell Williams, right? I think that a lot more brands should be thinking that way. They should have this community person that's tapped into the culture that they create as the muse of the brand, and then people almost like buy into that almost like thinking. But I, I guess going into like modern day influence, like if you think about who are the ones that are hijacking the feeds right now, it's actually faceless pages.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Who are run by those 16 to 23.

Exactly. These guys are the ones. That's what Mr. Beast, Kaisenette, Andrew Tate, all those people are leveraging these pages of people that are clipping, uh, hot topic conversations, and they're just like feeding your feed. So actually, when brands talk about how to go viral by taking that approach, you can almost like guarantee virality if you keep the quality level authentic. Right? The issue with brands is what they will do. It'll say, "Okay, here's our really bad message that's very vanilla and very safe, and let's go to that space and almost like ruin it." But really, if you say, "What is it about us that people want to know about? Want to mimic?" Remember "Uncensored," was it Eddie Hearn?

And little clips of Eddie Hearn, the boxing promoter. He's gotten so famous because of those clipping companies, right? So, they basically just saw that he just says a lot of outrageous, funny stuff, and they just created pages and content. One strategy is you create a lot of very long-form content and then...

Clip it up.

Yeah. And then you find the best moments. And then that...

Very similar to a bit of advice from advertising copywriting, which is, if you're stuck for writing a headline, write the body copy, and then quite often the best sentence in your body copy is the headline.

Yeah. 100%. I think that's how they came up with a poor thing, right? Which is like, "It's so quiet..." "You can hear..." It's like...

The Rolls-Royce. Yeah. And the worst thing about is that it's too quiet, or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that came because they were writing the copy, and then they were like, "Oh, that's a good line. We should make that headline to be done."

Well, but then obviously the Facebook pages, the clipping companies, these young misfits that are obviously like killing it right now are the way to go. And obviously the bridge between, uh, uh, we were doing some of this, but the bridge between like brands and that space is what needs to happen. I think that the brands that actually start to step into there and have like a misfit budget to be able to try these new things are going to leverage from the upside.

But I think it also depends on... So it does depend also on the founders. And more importantly, I think we are going to see this in the next five years. You know, your business, or whatever, would have a ton of people queuing up because now the founders of the companies that are dominating are 25, 30. They understand this terminology, they understand the language. Quite candidly, if you're selling to a 60-year-old dude or woman or whatever, and she's like, "All they've known is media buying on TV, radio, Facebook ads." It's like, "Whoa, guys, we're doing Facebook ads now." Um, that person, the leap in thought for them to go from where they are to where they should be is so high. But a 27, 30-year-old, that person can easily get it.

By the way, what you've spotted here is also a fundamental failing of modern capitalism, which is nearly all chief executives and senior people within an organization are selected for their ability to talk to investors and shareholders, not their ability to talk to customers.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I mean, there are a few exceptions, you know, who effectively, you know, the Greg Jackson at Octopus Energy would be a great example of somebody, brilliant man, okay? Example who, you know, who definitely talks in both directions. I think he'd rather be talking to customers than talking to investors. Branson was a kind of, you know, an obvious example. You know, you occasionally get that, but I, um, I mean, fundamentally, large organizations have been, I think, wrong. And this is a way to cure this. What you're doing is a way to cure, which is actually getting, getting companies focused a bit more on their goddamn customers and a bit less on the shareholders.

Yeah. Because ultimately, it's the customers who give you money, right? They're the people who determine whether you grow. They're the people who determine whether you're in and out. Okay. You can replace your shareholders a lot more easily than you can replace your customers. And that, that's a, I think that's a fundamental question about corporate structure. So I've actually argued that, you know, every company should have a customer board alongside the...

Board.

Yeah. Absolutely right.

Yeah. Because it's, you know, the conversation in a board meeting is overwhelmingly financialized now.

Oh, yeah. To a point which is makes them actually utterly tedious. About...

But then everybody, but then every board meeting is having the same conversations, and no one's having a contrarian conversation. Right. And I think that a lot of it is because, so, so one thing that I realized is that often than not, I think I watched this on a podcast before. They said that the most dangerous person in a corporation is a smart person with a fixed mindset.

Yeah. Right. They'll always find facts and figures to justify their actions. Right. And, and, and then they will be right theoretically, but if you look at from a, until like you start to see changes in like wider culture, they'll just want to stay long enough for them to get out, right? They only care about the tenure. They don't care about the longevity of the brand.

Having a fixed mindset is actually advantageous if you're planning a short stay. Short, short stay. And a lot of times, you pick a few metrics, focus laser focus on them, refuse to consider everything else within a very narrow time frame, you'll look like a great guy.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, then that's what's happening. And I'm sure Tim, you've been in the industry of like buying and selling businesses as well. Like the same trend or metric or tried and proven almost like story to tell to investors probably doesn't work anymore. A lot of brands would scale up in the early days because they pumped a lot of money in paid ads. And now people realize that if you don't build the brand simultaneously, as soon as you switch off the ads, what's your brand? Right.

I mean, the fixation with out-of-date metrics is the biggest opportunity, biggest competitive opportunity for a competitor.

Yeah. It's exactly similar to that reverse benchmarking thing. Everybody gets fixated with the same [ __ ]. And then someone comes along and effectively...

There's a phrase I always use to illustrate this. This is where procurement can be, and the efficiency mindset and a rationalist mindset is a major block to innovation. So my example is, if procurement were responsible for buying your mobile phone, the first iPhone would never have got anywhere because, I don't know if you remember, the first iPhone, the battery life was terrible, right? I mean, literally, it didn't make it till, you know, past brunch. Okay. But people were prepared to put up with that because it was brilliant in some completely new dimension.

Yeah. If you had a procurement department with a list of pre-existing criteria, okay, they go, "No, I'm afraid you don't even get through the first round because your battery life's too poor. We'll award the whole contract to Nokia, as we did last year and the year before and the year before."

Blackberry.

Blackberry would have been. You're absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, and so generally, innovation, this is why I defend the electric car, will almost always mean you were worse in one or two dimensions than the competition. This is where benchmarking gets so dangerous. But what you've discovered is a completely new, as yet unheralded metric, which for the consumer is more important than any of the old stuff.

So, so, and here's a really interesting thing. It's almost like you need the innovation to stand out, but then you need the procurement slash, uh, data to refine and make quick changes, right? Because if, for example, the iPhone stayed at that innovation stage with no iterations, right? Because a lot of the times people say, "Oh, we can predict that every September or every two Septembers, iPhone is going to become marginally better, right? Instead of being like vastly better, right?" So it's actually, you're better off having like a really big dream and idea and get better over time, right?

And actually, I suppose Apple knew that battery technology would improve at such a rate that although in a perfect world you might have launched two years later, okay, actually they knew that this is a problem that's going to go away.

Yeah. Um, you know, absolutely right. In the same way, I think famously with Gmail, am I right about this? They said, "Look, if we actually offer free online email, we won't have the server capacity to handle it." And the person did the maths and realized that server over the future, by the time it became a problem, it wasn't going to be a problem. I think that's what it's called, isn't it?

There's there's another one, Wright's Law, which is that every doubling of manufacturing, uh, volume results in a 10% reduction in, or something. Yeah. There was somebody who invested in a Cardo on that basis, which is they said, "Okay, at a certain scale, this doesn't make economic sense." But our thesis is, and I think that was proved right, that the more Cardo you do, the cheaper it becomes to be a Cardo, fundamentally.

Yeah. So Tim, if you were going to start Fanbytes again and focus on an influence company, how would you structure it? How would you approach it? What would you sell to brands like now?

Yeah, if you had to do it now.

So, the initial premise of Fanbytes was connecting brands to influencers.

Yeah. In 2025, I don't think that quite worked. But you reverse it almost.

Yeah. I would effectively have a way for brands to become the influencers. And so that would involve things like the clipping stuff. It would involve a suite of products which is based of primarily distribution. So forget the people. Let's just like think about how we create really social-first content and then also give you ownership of distribution because you know...

IP. Yeah. An IP because if you think about it, right, when we sold the company, we had four people. We had four big holding companies want to buy the company. And I remember thinking, "Well, why are you spending this amount of money to buy us?" And it was because to them, they were like, "Well, you have the influencer part, and then we now have distribution, which we can also pair up with our paid ads, with our SEO, etc. So you have the content side of things, and now we can amplify through the other stuff." And I think that they were onto something. And now, if you can effectively show brands, teach brands, and create a system for them to just be able to just create content on the fly, um, and then deploy it through these clipping pages, through that sort of thing, I think that is where it wins. But I wouldn't do it based on personality as Fanbytes was, you know, like, man, we're having brands like Paco Rabanne pay us half a million for a campaign to like get the most influential people and the most like, frankly, the most like good-looking females to try and sell the perfume. Now, if they were to be a client of Fanbytes now, I'd say, "Right, we have this idea for a dating show which is all about that cool, and now we're going to just get an army of clippers to do that, and that's going to be the thing that we spend 500 grand on, and I promise you that would actually last much longer and be of better value than just like pairing up with 50 different influencers."

You're better off becoming an entertainment brand. If anything, if the game, if the aim of the game is attention, your competitor is now Netflix, right? Your competitor is now how you're basically now becoming Disney, right? And have different subhs. And now it's like, "Okay, how do we win by storytelling and baking in our values and maybe even our products inside that storytelling experience?" And then maybe the people you sell to then is not a bigger holding company, is an entertainment company.

C, can I recommend a book here? Um, not widely known, but also brilliant, a bit like Will Gadara's. It's called "Why Does the Peddler Sing?" by Paul Feldwick, who was a great actor.

Peddler sing?

Peddler sing. And it's the link between salesmanship and showmanship.

Yeah. Yeah. There has always been, he argues, there's a kind of innate thing in humanity. Okay. So the whole question is, if you went back to the Middle Ages, there'd be people coming and selling pots and pans through your village, and they'd be kind of troubadours as well as being pot sellers. Pot and pan sellers, just okay. And he argues, and he's, I would argue, you know, one of the three greatest advertising planners of the last 50 years, Feldwick. Um, he, um, uh, he argues in this book that effectively, there has always been this connection between the ability to entertain and the ability to sell. Um, and that a lot of people in advertising, he thinks, are discomfortable with the idea of entertainment, show, because you need to present to a load of very serious-minded people in spreadsheet jockeys, and you need to look really, really serious and talk about metrics like reach. And he would argue that, I mean, he was the one of the great brains behind the Barkley, Rowan Atkinson campaign, which of course, of course, gave rise to Johnny English, so it actually created its own spin-off off. Okay. Um, uh, and he, he just argues that the ability to entertain and the ability to sell are basically should be considered as if like two sides of the same coin.

What you just reminded me of was, uh, P.T. Barnum.

Yeah. And like, what a, what a genius. There's a book I read, I think it's his book. He wrote a book basically about, uh, just showmanship and sales. And I remember reading it. Thomas Edison was also a great example of this.

Yeah. Colonel Sanders.

Just a showman, right?

Actually, by the way, nobody ever considers the extraordinary attention Henry Ford gave to marketing and promotion. I mean, obviously, everybody writes about the, the production line because that's the bit that economists are comfortable with. But actually, the, I mean, this is this is my mischievous joke. My wife's a, a priest in the Church of England, and I always go, "You can't criticize marketing." I said, "Because no one would have heard of Jesus if it hadn't been for St. Paul."

Okay. Right. That actually, it's not enough to have a great idea.

Yeah. You need to... And actually, innovation and marketing are two sides of the same coin. Do you remember, I'm trying to remember this, and I think I, I've told you about this, Alfred, which was the guys who founded the lift company, like the elevator company, Otis, and they did that stunt.

State fairs. They did the stunt where they cut the rope.

Yeah. Yeah. Where they cut the rope. So, do you want to tell the story? Because I think that's one of the best stories.

We forget this because most of us, unless you're claustrophobic, not actually, yeah, most of us, but there, you know, if you're not frightened of lifts or heights, we'll get into a lift now without thinking about it. The very idea of it was utterly terrifying when it first came along. Um, we forget. I mean, by the way, in early, in the early days of Hollywood, if you had people go going to a cinema to watch a silent film, and you had a train coming towards the screen or someone firing a gun straight out of the screen, people ducked.

Mhm. Okay. Obviously, we become sort of inured to it now, but people, people were terrified if they literally saw a train coming straight towards them, and they hid behind seats and ran out of the side. And an elevator was terrifying. So he had to endlessly demonstrate to prove how safe it was by going to state fairs, putting people in the thing, raising it up, cutting the cable, at which point it would fall about 2 inches. So he'd invented the mechanism that made the lift, actually, to be honest, he'd made the lift safe, but more importantly still, he'd made it non-terrifying.

And there's a great thing in Wuppertal in Germany. If you ever go, there's a thing called the Schwebebahn, which is this. It's like an upside-down monorail where the trains hang from a rail above the river, and you travel along. And they demonstrated the safety of this by putting an elephant in it.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's clever.

I mean, there's a really, there's a really gruesome one, which is Edison as marketer, which is the reason the US has the electric chair. Okay. As a form of execution, is that Edison was competing with the rival Westinghouse system. Edison used DC. Westinghouse, which ultimately won out, used AC current. Okay. Edison wanted to convince the public that AC electricity was dangerous. And so he managed to engineer it that in certain states, the mode of executing people was by killing them with an alternating current. Now, by the way, I think that is the, literally the absolute nadir of marketing ideas, apart from maybe "Torches of Freedom" encouraging women to smoke, which is Bernays. Okay. Shout out to Bernays.

Um...

Yeah. I never deny, by the way, for one second that you can use marketing for evil purposes. Any, any argument to the contrary, I think, is naive. Okay. I think all you can do is call it out and be alert enough to notice it. Um, and, um, very strange. I occasionally say the Nazis were very good at branding, and people get really angry. They go, "But they were right." I mean, something by their own admission, you can actually go and find in, in museums, you can find Nazi brand guidelines on how a swastika flag, you know, the color, the, I don't think they had Pantone references then, but they had brand guidelines for literally, the whole thing was designed to within an inch of its life. And by the way, Hugo Boss designed the uniforms. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, well, all right. But, uh...

Yeah, I heard that.

But, um, you know, I mean, but that was literally a marketing. I mean, because when you think about it, it's an absurd way to execute somebody. Okay. I mean, you know, but that was literally devised, and it still persists. I hope in not many states, because I think it's a terrible way to execute anybody.

But they always say that the best form of marketing is a dramatic demonstration. We say this all the time. That's the only way to be able to demonstrate, uh, that something actually works and does what it says that you, it does what you say that it does. Right? So showcasing a dramatic demonstration. That's why before an iPhone came out, that's why the iPad was in a letterbox to demonstrate how thin it was. Right? These are all ways of demonstrating that. I think, um...

You know, the first Walkman, absolutely beautiful. Okay. All the salesmen to sell the Walkman were given shirts with actually slightly large pockets. Okay. Cuz the first Walkman wasn't really pocket-sized. Okay. But they were given shirts with these specially made large pockets. That's funny.

And I mean, what's my reaction to that? Fundamentally, sometimes to get something over the line from rejection to consideration, okay, you've got to play games with people. I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry, but it's kind of true. And usually it's demonstration or it's...

through waiting of who's the person of influence for that cohort group. Like, who's the person that their opinion perception weighs more than the other? And that's probably where the influence is. It's like it's not just a blanket conversation. It's actually very dependent on the audience.

>> Incidentally, there's a weird marketing problem with any real innovation. >> Okay. Which is you tend to have the early adopters of any new technology tend to be weird people. Yeah. Right. Okay. I mean, you know, veganism for example. Okay. I mean, the early vegans just went for vegans. >> Okay. Kevin said anything the earliest adopters of anything you know whether it's early stage Christianity or it's early stage um air fryers okay tend to be weird and unrepresentative and there is always a problem that your user imagery suffers in any now >> none of you can remember this okay there was literally a period from 1994 to about 1996 >> where if you were interested in the internet You were considered a bit of a shadow. >> Okay. Jeff Bezos was seen >> as no it was actually seen except you know so I was a very very early discoverer because by total goodness my brother's flatmate in Berkeley had 5 years earlier been Tim Berners Lee's flatmate in Oxford or something. So I got to hear about this de actually it was annoying because I got to hear about it too early >> because I would have thought of actually a business idea if I'd heard about it two years. But you spent so long in 1994 with people going yeah shut up about the internet. It's boring. Right. I'll tell you the funniest story. Okay. So, I was the first person in Britain to have my credit card details stolen online. >> You >> Yeah. So, nobody bought anything online. Okay. And I went to an American website which specialized in hot chili sauces and ordered a delivery of three of them on a credit card. >> Locked in from early. >> You couldn't buy that. You couldn't buy that [ __ ] there. >> Risky business. >> Anyway, so what happens? This is worth noting just because there was a punch cartoon. There was a punch cartoon in about 1997 which showed this sort of darkened room with a load of sados staring at screens and someone was saying Kevin's just found a way of train spotting on the internet because that was considered to combine two of the saddest most tragic nerdy things. Okay. Now, obviously the internet escaped that, but there was literally I mean, I literally had people saying it's like teletex for the 1990s and all this stuff. Okay. >> So, anyway, this is what happens. I get my Anyway, I buy this hot sauce. Weirdly, I never get a confirmation email. The um the order never arrives, but about a day later, I get a phone call from Nat West that says, "Did you try and buy £400 worth of RAM?" Okay. And I said, "No." And they said, "Well, we just had an order on your card for 400." RAM was like the dodgy. It was like the Bitcoin of the 1990s, okay? Which is you nicked RAM from companies because it was anonymous and valuable and it was like this commodity thing. People would break into your office and steal all the RAM from the desktop computers. Okay. >> It only lasted about 3 years. I don't know what stopped it. >> Anyway, so um uh and I said, "No, I didn't." So they cancel they canceled the payment and I never lost any money. It was no problem at all. I have to mention this at a conference. Okay. Nobody has to do anything else. I'd said because everybody in the newspapers wanted a story that said the internet is ter is terrible. >> Okay. Because you always get this sort of Daily Mail. There's a thing that's new. I don't explicitly blame the Daily Mail for this, but it is there's this thing that's new. Let's find a way to frighten people about it. Okay. >> Everybody didn't want wanted to interview me about this. >> I wanted to go and and then Radio 4 rang up and they go, I understand you've had your credit card details stolen online. and what they wanted me to say because this is [ __ ] you know radio for you and it's it's all news media for I know I felt violated right I felt you know I felt you know I I felt that life was no longer safe for me you know I'm still getting over the trauma and instead I said right before yeah it was no problem that west called up I just told them not to make the payment and nothing happened and at that point I I just said no no it's no big [ __ ] deal of course I'm it's not going to stop me going online what the hell are you talking about right and then 10 minutes later I can say uh you're no longer needed for the program and there's an article somewhere in the independent okay which refers to me having my credit on the picture of me um and underneath the caption is southerntherland colon still uses internet okay right okay now this is a really interesting thing in innovation because actually innovation brings a marketing problem >> which is the first um devotees tend to become fundamentally unrepresentative of the of the mass market and therefore it ends up with a kind of effectively a disconcerting user imagery problem. >> So that's one of the things why innovation needs marketing fundamentally. Well, there's this I mean >> yeah there's this phrase which is if you want to know what's happening in the future look at what the nerds are doing in the present right like Apple started with hobbyist in fact when we talking about this last night where we're talking about like some of the most like craziest innovations started from fringe groups like >> oh yeah >> the internet as you mentioned but like >> Helen Edwards which is start at the edge I think it's called >> a start you know where basically she says if you're looking to innovate go the fringes. >> Yeah, look at the fringes. Right. Fantastic. >> And and uh when we talking about this with porn that we said actually like >> like >> porn as an industry has probably been the biggest fringe um uh early innovator of so many things. It was the porn industry that like started using crypto first because of um using Bitcoin. Yeah. They they safe online payment. Yeah. >> Safe online payments. crypto in fact like streaming so many of the like latest innovations of the last 20 25 years has been driven by them and also other fringe groups. So now when I just finished reading this book called the empire of AI um and basically it talks about you know how uh Chai GPT came to be and you look at all the quote unquote misfits >> and you're like you know they were thinking about this in >> 2005 >> but it was in such like a very odd like awkward edgy way that that and someone's talking about AGI you're like yeah bro okay right and now just through that one breakaway product chat GPT now it's been like oh yeah this is been the thing we've been talking about for the last 30 years >> which always starts unfashionable I mean you think of people like it's Graeme Hinton isn't it the Brit who was the great AI pioneer and you had to spend like 20 years in the wilderness >> yeah yeah >> but I I got a friend who was a scientist who said that um uh there used to be this group of people she'd go to conferences and there was this group of people who studied pryons okay and no one would talk to them right I I'll explain. Okay. It's a very weird kind of thing that isn't a virus. It's a kind of mutation that spreads in the body and it's it was quite niche and basically no one would talk to them and they'd sit on their own at conferences and everybody would stub them and then mad cow disease happened which is a pryion. Okay. And these people were suddenly rock stars, right? Every conference wanted them there and actually everything important sort of starts at the edges and it starts weird. >> Uh abs I think that's absolutely true. 100%. So, we've come to time. I could actually have this conversation forever with two of my favorite people, but I guess to wrap up, Tim, like what you've been working on recently, where do you want to where can we get where can everybody find you? >> So, where can anybody find me? Well, luckily, one thing I learned from Fan Bites was that influence matters. And so I've grown a significant size uh social media audience nearing >> a million now across all our platforms. So that's really good. I'm happy about that. >> And what's exciting right now is just like really dovetailing into these hyper niche audiences. In fact, through this conversation, and people probably see this on video, there's been a few times where I've been like, so both of you have given me some very interesting insights that we can apply to the companies, especially the perfume. I asked because I'm just about to buy into a perfume brand consultancy >> and it's a >> cheapest brand partnership you could do. People have done it with car brands obviously >> perfume or just >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a completely off the flaming off the charts brand partnership you could do? Anyway, I'll have a think about that. >> We love you guys. Peace. Peace. [Music]