Episode 226 / Shaaf Tauqeer / easyJet / Audience and Martech Manager
Seizing Attention with In-Flight Branded Podcasts
Working with easyJet audiences has taught Shaaf Tauqeer about the importance of capitalising on consumers’ attention in a safe, trusting environment. At a time when marketing budgets are tight, he’s capitalising on this learning by launching a branded podcast.
It’s important to build consumers’ trust and brand loyalty by starting from capturing their attention. Shaaf is Audience and Martech Manager at easyJet and he shared how he will capitalise on this attention with an in-flight branded podcast, launching soon.
The importance of attention isn’t new, but the approach may be. After all, podcasts are a safe, honest, and generally unbranded space. This is what makes listeners tune in to them. However, Shaaf thinks he can achieve something similarly honest by sharing personal stories and travel tips from easyJet crew and celebrity guests.
He got the idea for a podcast when he himself was on a long flight to Barbados. Bored of all the other entertainment options available, he wanted to do some research on his destination, without having a guide or the internet at hand. That’s when he realised that listening to advice and inside tips from those who have been there before could be really valuable, especially at a time when the audience is captive and interested in the topic.
This approach may seem a bit rogue and off-topic, but it offers Shaaf the opportunity to add 2 ad slots per episode. He plans to offer those to ancillary partners that are logically connected to the trip, such as travel insurance or car hire providers. In a friendly context, the ads are more likely to land with the listeners and hopefully, generate more additional income.
Shaaf believes in testing and failing and in displaying unwavering perseverance in marketing. This is just one of the initiatives that reflect his approach. Listen to the full episode to learn more and hear his top tips for students and marketers.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Shaaf Tauqeer 0:00
I think perseverance is one thing you will get about 20 rejection. But you will get those too, so keep going and I just kind of learned through that just develop a thick skin this I know the final goal and move on to the next one.
Speaker 2 0:18
Jobs in ad tech, if you're looking for a new role in the industry, there's only one place to go. Free job listing for all recruiters and talent acquisition managers until September. Go to jobs in app tech.com. Today. Jobs in ad tech
Tom Ollerton 0:40
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton and the founder of automated creative the creative effectiveness and tech platform. And this is our podcast. This is a show where I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing some of our industry's leaders every week, and this week is no different. I'm on a call with Shaaf Tauqeer who is audience and martech manager at EasyJet. And as far as I'm aware, I think the first person in 250 odd episodes from an airline. So I'm very excited about this. Shaaf, for anyone who doesn't know who you are what you do. Could you give the audience a quick overview of your career today?
Shaaf Tauqeer 1:16
Thank you, Tom. That's a great introduction. Sure. I'm proud to be here. Thank you very much for the opportunity and invitation. Working at EasyJet as a audience and martech manager. I have been in the advertisement industry for about 12-15 years now. But prior to that, I was basically I started my marketing journey working for university sectors as like sales marketing, working on overseas market recruitment activities, but also sort of above the line marketing strategy, how to enhance the business. And funnily enough, I'm ended up in advertising industry as I studied my undergrad and master both in advertising and marketing. So there was like a long time coming, but I think I had a slight complication where I was reliant on the visas when I was a student here. And hopefully, uh, well, luckily, I got over that process and got my citizenship. I then at the age of 31, started, again, at the age of 30 actually started as a intern in an ad tech company based in London for two months without any pay, and that kind of opened up an opportunity for six months very basic sort of a salary, started at a mid agency called Audience Store, it was based out of Tottenham Court Road, just basically doing reporting like a junior exec. But sort of built my way through that, ended up at IPG media brands worked on a couple of great clients like GoPro, Canada Goose, ended up running the AMEX page and sort of won the AMEX pitch and part of the whole setup for American Express and IPG. Then I moved from there to MediaCom as manager, campaign manager. So I had about report of three to four people, and still like sort of a mid management role. And then the big opportunity arise where I then moved after getting married with my wife to Singapore, and we set up back to IPG, set up the whole Cadreon office there. And unfortunately, from there, then COVID happened. And we pretty much lost the job and had to move back with a big debt. And at that point, I started my own company, specifically, picking up a lot of contractual work, some work was becoming available, as you remember. End of 2020 in August or so 2020 August. And from there basically did a lot of auditing, EasyJet job came up as an audience martec manager and I was like, well, airlines hiring that is a bit odd, but nothing is flying around. So just apply for it and see what happens. And yeah, so it's three years later down the line. I'm still here and running on some really nice and exciting projects. We are part of a new media investment team just ran the whole pitch process across Europe. So we traveled across Europe, got to new agencies got some martech people onboarded and really sort of pushing EasyJet in a digital connected world where we can score really high on Google's, you know, the digital digital roadmap. So yeah, we're just pushing really hard for that and really trying to put a lot of incrementality and sort of streamline our marketing and media strategy. So that is basically me in a nutshell.
Tom Ollerton 4:44
What a story right? So question, what advice would you give to a student knowing what you know, and doing what you've done moving around country to country business to business, what advice would you give students to make a better job of it than you?
Speaker 1 4:59
This is a very sort of a personal question that kind of hit home really, really, on a sensitive note, just because when I started it I, as a student as well, I wanted to work in media and there was just not an opportunity available, because you know, you're aligned on the visa laws were changing. If you remember, back in the day, when David Cameron had introduced college, I had to do post study work, but then even then it was a bit sort of a difficult opportunity, because nobody would want to pay a graduate a 35,000 pounds annual salary with no experience. So luckily, I moved into the basically persevere. And then recently, when I started this media career, I used to go to LinkedIn and basically find sort of... there's an interesting story there as well, find somebody who I can just because I was so so desperate, and my wife also back then, girlfriend worked in a media agency and I didn't want to rely on her sort of pulling us a favor. So I reached out to I think, at that point, that point it was CMO, I'm talking about 9-10 years, 12 years ago, of group M, I came across a profile, I messaged him directly saying that listen, this is my experience, what I've been doing really keen starting at an exec level, I'm happy to take a step back, would you then be able to kind of get me in touch with someone and luckily enough, or I think he just he probably liked the message. He got me in touch with their data recruitment person, they then spoke to me. And I started basically the interview process. So when didn't go down that way, went a different way, but there was one thing, but one thing I would say is persevere. And please find the loads of people who you can reach out to by recruitment or direct to the companies. LinkedIn is a great way to do it. Some events are great to do is all of them are kind of most of them are free to sort of attend as well. Reach out to people, ask for advice and just take an internship because that gives you a nice sort of way or a step through the door, and you get to learn a lot. And then once you've got get that step through the door, then you can start to explore other opportunities. As I said, I mean, I started a month internship, just to understand the business, just understand what this advertising world is like. And it was quite different because I ended up in ad tech rather than being in media marketing. So learn... learn from... I mean, I, my studies were the consumer sort of behavior and marketing theories, right. And here, I was pulling reports and analyzing with the bare minimum Excel skills, but that literally gets polished and people in the industry as you would know that our industry is very helpful people it has that sort of family, you know, sort of camaraderie that people love teaching, and you do get to learn a lot, especially when you start an agency. So that will be a starting point. And that you can literally find exec level jobs, even at 18-20 there's not a lot, but you improve quite quickly. So I think perseverance is one thing you will get about 20 rejections. But you will get those, too, so keep going and I just kind of learned through that just develop a thick skin this I know the final goal and move on to the next one. It's a perseverance and just sort of willing to take a step back, I would say then everything comes together.
Tom Ollerton 8:18
Nice for a student, but now I'm going to push you for a marketing tip. What is the best bit of marketing advice that you pass on most often?
Speaker 1 8:26
Um, yeah. So this is what we have been doing at the moment at EasyJet, like basically understanding the audience and you can imagine at EasyJet as an airline, it was a first party data and e commerce website, right? You should know that well, you will have your audiences honed in. But answer to that is no. Because we didn't even know who our audiences were up until I came into the picture about three years ago and started like, well, we need to build some personas, who are even marketing or who is the audience, understanding their audiences. And that kind of simplifies the other processes because you can be very one dimensional, like a lot of people focus on PPC or SEO and it's nothing against that, but programmatic channel, for example, display YouTube video, you can reach out to audiences in the moment you know who they are, you know what they're doing, and you start to refine and automate. So what we started to do is basically simplify, I got rid of a lot of jargons because I'm bringing this new channel into the, into the, into the company and if I'm going to start talking about you know, the CPM, the CTRs, and all those four letter acronyms which we are obsessed with dropping them and nobody will understand how to simplify that I think simplify understanding your corporate strategy and then kind of aligning your media goals objectives by understanding your audiences and you can only do it by utilizing the data, you know, going down to the granular level as well. Just access to the data and don't be afraid to test and learn and fail, and then then learn from that, too. So we call it trial and error, right? So a lot of times I've seen marketing teams across the board would do a test just for the sake of running a test. And if it's not incremental, I'm not going to learn it, I'm not going to run it. Or if they go back, or they're coming from somewhere else, and they're like, well, this didn't work for BT, say, for example, I'm coming from I'm coming to him. And it doesn't work here. No, trends change, people change, consumer behavior change. But if you look at now travel sector, and the travel behavior that people had, in 2020, or prior to that, it's completely transformed. People are looking for post holiday blues, they land they start to look for holidays. I mean, the projection was that this industry is not going to go anywhere to 2025. But we did a massive here, like we broke our records of sales last year. So the trends always changed. So keeping up with those trends, understanding what your consumer and audiences are doing, and then simplifying those processes by the help of data, and open to trial and error. I think that would be my one advice, which I can sort of give to any marketer.
Tom Ollerton 11:12
This episode of the shiny new object podcast is brought to you in partnership with MADfest whether it's live in London or streamed online to the global marketing community, you can always expect the distinctive and daring blend of fast paced content startup innovation pitches and unconventional entertainment from MADfest events, you'll find me causing trouble on stage recording live versions of this podcast and sharing a beer with the nicest and most influential people in marketing. Check it out at www.madfestlondon.com.
So we're going to move on now to your shiny new object, which is a first I have to say, which is the easyjet branded podcast. So I think I know what that is. But could you specific guidance on what that is? And why it is your shiny new object?
Speaker 1 12:07
Sure, so, I think if you if you have taken an EasyJet flight at some point in your life, you would see that we are a low cost carrier. And we are pretty good at what we do. However, we don't have an in flight entertainment system, right? That's one thing. Everybody's talking about attention. Just to give you a little background at the moment and attention is nothing new, you need always been there. That's the whole point of getting an audience attention is to generate a sale. And that's the end goal of your marketing campaigns, really. But everybody's talking about attention. It's nothing new. So it's like okay, we can put a spin to it, we can test it. But what does that mean? does it drive goals? does it drive objectives? So what I'm going to do, I'm going to do it differently. And in order to keeping that attention in my mind, I as time went and did a couple of podcasts been on a guest like, for example, this is another one I've just recorded last week, Flight or fantasy. Spoke to someone and we came back with an idea Well, we call it flights of fantasy an EasyJet sort of podcast where we will have a celebrity guests like I went on to the podcast with Bella hull. She's an upcoming comedian. Very funny, very entertaining. So we'll have a celebrity we'll have a cabin crew, we will have a pilot, for example, as a part of the upcoming episodes. And we will talk about destination holidays, for example, for going from here to Venice, I went and we talked about what to do what not to do the quirks of the airport like how it can you really make your life easier at the airport, for example, don't bring like, you know, toiletries, or keep them wrapped up and at the top, what's your holiday hack. So it just sharing that information. And then also talking about top 10 Things you want to do or the food you want to try or the wine you want to taste like you know what's the different tastes, it's just kind of really gives you a perspective of person's own experience where they have been, or what's on their next fantasy to go to and what they're fantasizing about that holiday. So that then brings into a very sort of a nicer environment. And it's only going to be 20-25 minutes max. What I'm also going to be doing is basically putting into ad slots in there, which will be an in flight sort of announcement keeping it all sort of puns within the you know, the airlines business. And that will just kind of give them an idea of what that ad can fit in and how it would sound like. But I'm also talking about the KPIs and sort of providing that attention metric. The reason for that is, as you know that people who are listening to the podcasts are fully committed to it. They have this trusted environment. And it's really important if you want to gain audience's attention, you do it in a way where you have them and they are engaging and they are listening so that brings it a very good sort of a brand uplift there. So this is the whole idea that I came up with but the reason I came around this was we're going to Barbados with the wife and the flight and it was bored. It's about eight-nine hours flight right, bloody long flight. So I was just like bored of watching anything else on the TV so like, I wanted to do something in Barbados, what is there to do and a second time you're going there, family is there. So I just watched this video popped up, I think one was scrolling through said destination Barbados or 20 things to do there. It was very sort of heavily branded, commercialized. But that gave me an idea of listing down 5-10 things to do over the course of two years to two weeks. What food I wanted to try, where do I want to do have around punch in by the beach bar, whatnot. So that gives you recognize idea. And then you get to see a lot learn a lot of other cultures. So that was basically all incorporated into this flight of fantasy, my shiny new thing, which I've been basically working on recently.
Tom Ollerton 15:46
And how did you settle on the idea? Did you have like a long list of different routes, some serious, some comedic? This sounds like a kind of more like, informational, listicle advice type podcast, which sounds great, but what? How did you arrive at that? Did you do user research? Or was it based on I have a persona of x, this persona needs this thing. So therefore this podcast is going to satisfy that always come from a creative place where you're like, oh, this would be cool. Let's just do that.
Shaaf Tauqeer 16:14
It was mainly two things really. So I thought like we can... what we can do on the back of that, push people to download EasyJet podcasts while you're going, for example, here to Rome. So we'll have like, at least to start with 5-10 different destinations, popular destinations, right, of course, there'll be some research behind that, where we will roll it out. And because people don't have an in flight entertainment, we will have them into that environment. And the whole idea here is to keep the user engaged, busy, keep on coming back listening to the advice. So it came out just from a personal experience where I was like, going to Barbados, I've gone to a podcast, just listen to it and kind of came across it heard the benefits of it, how it can really engage your audience and with a with a trust factor there.
Tom Ollerton 17:03
So the podcast is only available in flight, is that right?
Speaker 1 17:06
No, it will be available via apps, via Spotify, which are still kind of discussing those sorts of elements, how we're going to launch it there, as well as you will be able to download it via push notification via our app. So we're working on those logistics. So it will be an option for them to download it. It will definitely get there. Because when you're in sort of flight mode, our onboard internet, isn't that great. It's just been so it would be a before thing to do.
Tom Ollerton 17:36
Right. Okay. And so are you planning to monetize it, you said you had some funny ad placements or tell me a bit more.
Speaker 1 17:44
So the thing is, of course, marketing budgets are set out. And you can sort of see where I'm going with this rogue approach where I tend to do it every now and then, it gets absolutely annihilated, it gets annihilated. But I've got a really good idea on what I want to do like push like two ads in that. So I've put two slots in there. And what it will do is basically, depending on how at the moment, I'm also doing research with with the company called 18 something, basically just speaking with them that how does this work, or even with the Spotify or things like that, that just we want to monetize it end of the day. But what we want to do is we don't want to put a tweet ad in there, it will be based on hotels, it will be based on, you know, our sort of ancillary partners like travel insurance, car hire, things like that. So we will basically focus on those elements and keeping it into the travel sector and then opening out later to other elements like you know, anything from like, I don't know Heineken or other branded products. So that's how we want to monetize it. The reason I want to do it is that I want it to create for its own self, like for example, net zero cost, cost equivalent, right, it will offset itself. So that's the whole idea here.
Tom Ollerton 19:07
How are you going to approach the fact that you have the corporate line to toe because I've heard brands do podcasts. And I'm sure this isn't true for all of them, but they can be very safe. You listen to them, you think, yeah, this sounds beautiful. The audio spot on it's got a really nice jingle. It's got high energy. It's been edited well, but the content has to deliver on the brand guidelines, right. And the brand guidelines, generally, unless you're some extreme company is to be liked by the target audience, right? You're not necessarily there to be challenged, challenging. Whereas the beauty of podcasts is when you find a raw podcast that just goes straight to the heart of the topic, because all it matters is the person who's talking and the person who's listening, and there's no brand as such, there's just someone talking from the heart about the thing that they care about. So how are you going to navigate that huge gap between you wanting to do a podcast, because it's fun and interesting. And you can tell a story and the fact that you need to toe the corporate line. But that's not the nature of podcasts.
Shaaf Tauqeer 20:11
No, exactly. And that's why I think the branding would need to be very subtle right there will be an easyJet sort of starting or like a music in general, which we have for our ads and then if you have taken an easyJet flight so like, the recently I have recorded the whole idea here to keep it subtle, keep it like very, very not brand heavy, because then that becomes like another TV ad or a slot ad that people will get bored of and don't like it. So it's just sharing experiences onto destination. And when you're going with EasyJet basically, you will get that pushed in. And it is a branded, you know, it will be branded via EasyJet, content would be subtle, content would be my experience. That's why we have a captain coming in where you from an EasyJet captain or a cabin crew member who will be as a guest. So we try and keep it bare minimum to a not too heavily loaded on brand.
Tom Ollerton 21:06
Are you going to pull in live dynamic audio flight prices?
Shaaf Tauqeer 21:12
No, we're not going to do that.
Tom Ollerton 21:16
Could you do that? I'm just trying to work out technically how you deliver that. But I'm sure someone's got a solution. But yes, that wouldn't be in the spirit of the podcast at all, I'm being stupid. Shaaf, unfortunately, we need to leave it there, we're at time. So if someone wants to get in touch with you about the podcast or about perseverance, how would you like them to do that? Where's the best place for them to get in touch with you? And what makes it an outreach message to you that you will actually respond to?
Shaaf Tauqeer 21:40
Sure. I mean, just like a general advice, heard about, you know, if you have heard about what I have been on a couple of panels in here, and just a very general light message, rather than having sort of email is probably not the best way. LinkedIn is great, because you've got loads and loads of emails, you're just trying to get through it. And it will be just like a light hearted, you know, easily just like if you need an advice or speak to me on a topic or anything like that LinkedIn, probably the best. I do read that I do reply on that. And basically, we recently a student reached out as well for me after the Madfest, you asked for advice. And I'm like, Well, I'm in London x y z happy to arrange a call or, or some time with you. So we have I do tend to pick that up quite quickly.
Tom Ollerton 22:20
Brilliant. Shaaf, I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Shaaf Tauqeer 22:24
Thank you, Tom. Absolute pleasure.
Subscribe to the ‘Shiny New Object’ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and Soundcloud.