Episode 146 / Rory McEntee / Gymbox / Brand & Marketing Director
Why Brands Need to Set Themselves Up for Visual Search
In his rich and varied career, Rory McEntee has developed a talent for working with challenger brands and creating disruptive and unique brand messages. In his role as Brand & Marketing Director at Gymbox, he continues to do this, most recently with their rebrand campaign featuring Joe Wicks without asking for permission first. This “pirate” attitude has worked great for Rory so far and his Shiny New Object is all about being different, too: Rory thinks visual search is the next big thing in advertising and e-commerce.
By using images to drive the customer journey in the near future, Rory thinks consumers will move to visual search in great numbers. Over 60% of millennials and Gen-Z prefer to search visually. This links back to how our brains are wired, with a strong preference for visual over text ultimately.
What can brands do to get themselves set up for this? It’s early days, but Rory thinks that there are unlimited possibilities to connect e-commerce catalogues with images found online, as well as going further afield and creating new affiliated marketing opportunities. At Gymbox, his vision is to enable consumers to purchase items in the gym from the brand’s website, for example a stationary bike someone might use in a class that they want to also have at home.
Visual search is full of possibilities and links in perfectly to how Rory has built his own brand and career, following the motto: “Ask for forgiveness, nor permission.” Talking to Rory about what that means in practice, he told me that working at Paddy Power or Gymbox, he’s launched so many campaigns without actually going through the appropriate sign-off channels. This is what enabled the brands to look extremely quick and reactive, coming out with messages “through the back door.”
Does this approach work for everyone? Not necessarily, but it’s one that even new marketeers or students can adapt, by ensuring they don’t procrastinate, don’t involve too many people in decision making, and just go for it with the right projects so they’re first to market.
To find out more about Rory’s biggest career mistake, his favourite book and his advice about how to make it in marketing, listen to the podcast.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:51
Hello, and welcome to the Shiny New Object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton, I am the founder of Automated Creative and this is a podcast about the future of marketing every week or so. I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders and this week is no different. I want to call with Rory McEntee who is brand and marketing director at Gymbox. Rory, for those in the audience who don't know who you are and what you do. Could you give them a bit of an overview?
Rory McEntee 1:21
I will. And how are you, Tom?
Tom Ollerton 1:23
I am well and you are in the absolute minority of people that actually asked me that on this podcast, just straight to the top of the class.
Rory McEntee 1:32
I've been raised well I've been raised by an Irish mother. Actually yes so I'm I am the brand and marketing director of Gymbox and actually speaking of my mother, if you asked her what I do, she probably would say make posters and videos look crispy, which is as far as I kind of get what I but I think I'd probably say I do a little bit more than that. My background is I've got a mix of agency and brand marketing, 15 or so years in London now, and I really like to kind of create disruptive content particularly, you know, with challenger brands and you know, as well as Gymbox my my career highlights have been with Paddy Power, working on some quite controversial campaigns with them, kind of Nicklas Bendtner, Lucky Pants, to new euros, and also with Everyman Cinema for quite a number of years. So a real real mix of kind of leisure sport entertainment brands, it probably how I'd say so myself.
Tom Ollerton 2:31
Alright, great. Good to get the word on the pants into a career selection. So that is super impressive career wise. I had no idea, congratulations but I'm assuming outside of those, like high points would have been some low ones. What has been an absolute facepalm disaster moment in that career that you're willing to share on a public podcast?
Rory McEntee 2:57
No, I've had so many I've, I've made so many kind of mistakes and fuck ups over the years. I think my my highlight. Funny enough, it seems probably quite trivial now. But it's probably one one major fuckup was you know, it actually has set me up I think, quite early in my career. And probably about 12 years ago now when I worked for Everyman Cinema which, if any of your audience is aware as they're quite a unique, independent boutique cinema when I was with them. There were eight locations in London in the UK and looking to international so becoming quite big. But it was my first I moved over from an agency to a brand roll over to the dark side and I was a really cocky, cocky kind of young marketeer at the time. And I remember they were launching their first ever kind of coffee magazine. We were selling adverts to kind of Stoney and studiocanal and Fox and what a big deal actually. And I remember I was leading that my first big campaign and I remember putting a shitload of work into it. And the day the magazine was printed with so many rewrites and edits in there with printers. We sent it out. I sent a massive email to the whole company and it was a movie years ago called Invictus. Don't you remember it? Yeah, Nelson Nelson Nelson Mandela, the rugby when the rugby won and on the front page of magazine basically summed it up and it was Morgan Freeman stars in Invictus, the true story of Nelson Mandela. And it was a simple typo from story to stroy I just got the O and the R mixed up. And for somebody who is so cocky and bigging themselves up, it was the smallest, simplest mistakes but it was probably my greatest fuck up because I probably could have changed how I how I have now a little bit and I was just I was devastated. absolutely devastated. It didn't cost the company a huge amount of money but it was just a proper like, character assassination of me really It's just one of those things off. I just got it I still I still have it on my wall actually as a reminder
Tom Ollerton 5:06
Did it go out?
Rory McEntee 5:11
Yes, and the first one went to all the distributors who paid 1000s of pounds to get into their target audience and these posh cinemas. And I've never lived a doubt I still know a couple of the guys at Everyman, everyone remembers me of the man who couldn't spell story, which is quite ironic for somebody in communication to just pride themselves on a storyteller and doing great content.
Tom Ollerton 5:35
Did you? Did you go to like an Afrikaans, colloquial dictionary to work out if "stroy" was...
Rory McEntee 5:44
Trying to find a way to kind of, you know, swing it and say no, I did that on purpose. Actually, what it means is, it's you know, said African kind of term of endearment is gonna raise
Tom Ollerton 5:52
awareness, it's gonna, you know, you define best practice there.
Rory McEntee 5:59
And funnily enough, they actually did a throwback Thursday on social media to their first ever magazine about, God, I think, was six months ago now. And they actually took the time to Photoshop it over to make and correct the spelling error, which again, it just rubs salt in the wound that they all remember. It was I looked back at there, but it really helped me, you know, as I was about 12 or 13 years ago, but it kind of set me up in terms of just making sure I really kind of sweat the details that I like to call it ever since before I get really involved in making sure everything is path is my path, my death before it goes out. But also reminded me to not stress over the important stuff because you know, we're not trying to cure cancer here was selling, peddling kind of cinema tickets. And so yeah, it kind of kind of putting them in perspective, my career has gone on.
Tom Ollerton 6:52
So I feel weird asking you this question. Given that I know you can't spell but can you read he read? Do you read marketing books? Is that within your skill set?
Rory McEntee 7:02
I think it's only gonna be a common a common theme on this particular podcast, I hate books. And I particularly like hate business marketing books, I find them so bloody boring. You know, even more, so. Chicken for the soul health, self help books, and you know, read fiction and be on holiday. But just because you're laying on the beach, and you got to do something. And I like it the arts fiction book. But I do feel like there is one particular book that I kind of come back to again and again. And that's a book called Be more pirate by a guy called Sam Conniff. And he is a next certainly brand consultant. You know it, I don't know if you're aware of it. But it's really three different books for these kind of business books. I know a lot of books have challenger brands and pirates, but this one actually, you know, kind of tapped into my kind of ethos of doing things differently and challenging the norm, like the old pirate state of Blackbeard. And he kind of puts parallels in Elon Musk and Banksy. You know, like all these other books, it's actually really funny, that doesn't take yourself too seriously.
Tom Ollerton 8:12
And what's the main bit of advice in the book? What's the like? What's the thing you take away and use on a daily basis? or regular basis?
Rory McEntee 8:22
Yeah, you know, I think there's a few things that, you know, he references, all these kind of buzzwords and gimmick words, but he calls the pirate code, but there are things in there like, you know, an issue with like, you know, who do you want to take down so it's quite a workshop II style beers, like whether that's your ex colleagues or employee review left, you want to show you know, show off in terms of how good how you've made it to how you want to take down your competitors or you know, platforms like Instagram or it's quite clever in terms of it gives you an actual takeaways and you know, things around like what holds you back in life that makes you take an inward look of yourself What about your own habits or things you let other people get away with it? So it's quite a practical in its application. Actually, even though you know what, this this has held me back in this role, I need to change my mindset or in terms of get a campaign out, how do I break the rules? What would it be like if I wanted to break a rule? What would that rule be? And actually, for me working for a challenger brand? It's quite good. A good itos and they're kind of a good place to kind of look at and start with my thinking. It's great book and you know, really, really funny. Really funny and gripping.
Tom Ollerton 9:31
Now this isn't really maybe this is marketing. I don't know but I think pirates have done really well out of history like my daughter plays with like pirate toys knife pirates awful. Let's Let's like say what it is. They were murdering ship bags that went round like nicking other people's stuff. And yeah, they've sort of been a much, much nicer like, rounded in such a way that there's just it's more of a fashion statement and it's like, rep shorts and a stripy top and a parrot and you know, everyone loves you. But really like that, you know that? Nothing new marketing bit of a bit of a B for pirates? I think they've done quite well out of history.
Rory McEntee 10:07
Yeah, cuz they're Yeah, they're cool guys. But actually, if you look at them, they're pretty horrible. And we'd be ready to be a pirate, then they'd be in the Navy. So, you know, that's marketing for you.
Tom Ollerton 10:18
Right? So, we are going to now move on to your top marketing tip, have you got a silver bullet bit of advice for the industry?
Rory McEntee 10:27
I do actually, Tom. And you know, what this particular piece of advice came when I worked at Paddy Power back in the day, and essentially, it is asked for forgiveness, not permission. And that was a real, a real kind of focus off the brand, which I've taken with me throughout my career, and all the way now into into Gymbox, you know, an eye opener on the two areas offered, there was kind of people would always say, you know, called Paddy Power being so reactive, how do they get that workout so quickly? And I think it was kind of just born out of this kind of just do things and don't ask anybody, and we'll see what happens. Like, you know, we managed to get away with it most of the time. And I imagined that are on pants, or lucky pants idea when we gave stuff to Nicholas Bednar. And when he scored a goal, he showed our branding on his pants, and you know, we didn't ask UEFA for permission, and that we wouldn't have been able to get it through the right channels. So we just did this, and directly with them. And you know, didn't ask for permission. We didn't even really ask for forgiveness for that particular one. Because, you know, we nailed it. But, you know, we, we did ask Cheltenham, when we put signs up, we did this, we did tweets in the sky for the Ryder Cup. And that was always kind of on a macro level, like we're always going in the back door and never really asking for permission to go to the right channels. And I actually think, you know, taking that in with with Gymbox, we did our Joe Wicks campaign for reopening, which was, you know, we didn't ask Joe Wicks can we do we just plotted a name all over billboards, and didn't ask for any permission. And thankfully, He loved us. And we didn't have to get lawyers involved, which was, you know, woohoo for everyone. And so I think that other kind of macro level was, you know, the whole kind of asking for forgiveness, not permission. And I think for me on a micro level, it's kind of rough, put a few buzzwords in here, but you know it because it was instilled in a way back when it was almost like fuck the red tape, you know, don't if you involve too many people's, my tip would be don't involve too many people in decision making kind of dumb procrastination, you'll miss out on that kind of topical, quick turnaround of an advert that we were famous for an hour with Jim box. It's almost like kind of get that tail down the beach. Sometimes we, you know, we want to commit to something, we don't know how we're going to get what we're going to do yet. So we just kind of crack on see what happens.
Tom Ollerton 12:57
So it's all very exciting. And if I was like a 21 year old marketing product be like bouncing off the walls of the creative possibility of just not caring what anyone thinks. But what do you do if you're Unilever, or your financial services brands? Or, you know, someone who has 19 levels of signup? How do you bring that forgiveness, not permission attitude into your work?
Rory McEntee 13:22
You know, well, I think it goes back to culture, it goes back to the culture of the business, I've been very lucky to work for a smaller kind of brands where where that ethos has kind of come from the top down, I think you've got to get that from the top down, you know, some of the big big brands at Unilever. And it's a huge challenge. You know, how do you give autonomy to the younger, quick idea pieces to Specsavers who are quite a big, big, big brand, the big company, they've managed to do it. And I think without knowing the guys in there, you can see that they've obviously changed something internally to kind of give a you've got to give your your marketing team and your creative in particular your agency through Have you worked with the likes of popping up occasionally.
Tom Ollerton 14:10
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So we're gonna weirdly make the odd segue to your shiny new object which is visual search. So quite enough to start off this. The start this podcast has been pretty entertaining and very colorful. And we're going into search, which is known for its color. But anyway, tell me, what is visual search in your eyes? And why is it your shiny new object?
Rory McEntee 15:13
Well, I think, you know, first of all, to give a bit of credit, I think we weaved it in quite well with my lack of spelling and reading. So visual search feels like a nice kind of nice bit of flow. For me, visual search is not to be confused an image search, it's actually a way to upload images directly onto our, our worldwide web pull similar images to you in order to kind of identify or to potentially buy something. So you know, my my view, and by certainly me, I think people have always been visual that our brains are wired for images overtax. So, you know, I've always been a bit of I don't know why I want to see us kind of average,
Tom Ollerton 16:08
you must be a great client.
Rory McEntee 16:12
I've no idea what I do. I just want a great ads, I just want a great app. But you know, it's, it's something I must admit, I didn't know a lot of better up until quite recently, because, you know, my interest in it really piqued because I've been looking at my audience, Jim barkston, they are getting older work on a more premium, premium brand. And younger people, you know, there might be a bigger barrier to entry. So I've been looking at kind of new ways to attract people to our kind of targeted marketing. And I'd be looking at kind of Tick Tock and snapchat as yours. And this kind of area of credit really intrigued me, I'm still working out all the different ways we can use it. But it really intrigued me in terms of, you know, fact I think the fashion Homer brands do quite well. It's in its early, it's in its infancy, really, it's nowhere near its potential.
Tom Ollerton 17:08
need to be a bit more specific on like, how would a user use visual search? I know this might seem like an obvious question, but someone's out in their daily life doing a thing? How would they use visual search to connect with a brand?
Rory McEntee 17:21
I'll give you I'll give you an example of one that I've been looking at recently, so so on Snapchat, they've kind of partner with Amazon. So if you're on your phone, and you see let's say, say you and I are sitting there, having a nice cup of coffee, I go, that's a nice shirt, and I take a picture of your shirts, when you're not looking. And I essentially, Amazon will trawl through their database and find me similar looking shirts that I can then buy would have been one trick.
Tom Ollerton 17:49
And what's the Snapchat connection here?
Rory McEntee 17:51
It's not fair to the partnership the guys did in terms of I think everybody the leaders in terms of actually kind of the transaction purchasing, I think you can do it Google lens is essentially the big one, I think which is gonna be more mainstream, where you're gonna see a lot of the majority of people kind of going on. So Google Google lens is now if you go onto your browser, on your phone, you've obviously got the microphone for audio, I think you're going to see Google lens going on there very shortly. I think the idea is you can upload, you can upload anything to identify whether that is a piece of clothing. I think you can even take a photograph of a dog to find out what breed of dog it is, which is quite bizarre.
Tom Ollerton 18:36
But if you took a picture of my shirt on Snapchat, before you upload that to Snapchat, it gives you information on the shirt, or is it like once with people see that photograph in your within your profile? Does it then go Oh, you can also buy the shirt? How did that bit work?
Rory McEntee 18:55
Yeah, so you don't have to post it on your own shuttlers such it's a slightly different button, you clicks in the most simple terms. So another another way of doing it is, you know, let's just say you're, you know, again, we're in our scenario, we're having a cup of coffee, and I see that that lie in the corner, you know, lovely in my in my my bedroom, I can just take a picture on Google lens. So I have to open Google lens or take a photograph of that particular lamp on Google lens. And that will upload it into Google for me. And that will tell me that I can buy a lamp or a similar looking lamp on wayfair or IKEA it will give me all the different options of that. And then I can literally buy it there then.
Tom Ollerton 19:39
And so what can brands do to take advantage of that behavior. And I'm assuming that is a very, very small slice of the search pie. But as you say, if Google embedding it within the browser now that you can see that becoming more apparent, and with people using QR codes because of COVID I think it's you know Sort of physical digital interfaces seems to be a bit more apparent, but say if I'm, I don't know, like the Tom's coffee cup company, like how do I get people to my brands from a visual search?
Rory McEntee 20:17
I guess this is the better, I think whoever does that's going to, in my opinion, particularly like an e commerce world will clean up, I think, you know, the adoption is quite low at the moment, I think that's the biggest challenge within this, I think people are obviously you will help with SEO and will help drive business to state. But I think users kind of have this tendency to have a bit impatient for technology when it's first when it first comes up. And it is a bit imperfect at the moment. But ultimately, it'll be creating brands that create tags on images, for example, that, that light, actually being able to do your SEO, and meta data behind it, which is all kind of, above my paygrade are great agencies to do this sort of stuff. We're actually when you're taking a photograph of that particular lamp, and you're getting pulled into IKEA over wayfair. For example, I think it's quite quite novel as a novelty at the moment, I don't think it's it's going to take off for a little while, just yet, you got to remember a lot of startups do a bit of research and, you know, you got over 60% of millennials and Gen Z want to use visual search over all types of search, and they want to actually just purchase stuff via visual search because they're so visual. Now, every brands gonna treat it slightly differently. I think from from a gym point of view, it's, you know, a little bit odds, you know, how do I upload a picture for gym when I'm gonna join a gym. But I actually, you know, we build gym for people now, nationwide. And if you're in a gym, you take a picture of a, you know, a bike that you quite like you could actually order that from our website in the future. That's kind of my vision of where you could take us. But it's all it's all very similar in terms of SEO, tracking and tags that you will have to kind of beyond words and text, it's going to be about images,
Tom Ollerton 22:09
Or imagine it could be some kind of weird affiliate gig. So if you in your gym, you've got like, I don't know, instructors or whatever wearing cool Nike trainers. And if someone visual search those Nike trainers, someone bought them, you could get some kickback because it was in a sort of certain geography.
Rory McEntee 22:29
Yeah, that'd be great. Because I'd actually did what you touched on a really great point around the whole kind of social listening piece, which is, you know, that so many people who take pictures in the gym with their, you know, their selfies post workout or bike setup with your equipment. And if we can see what you know, apparel they're wearing, or what tech they've got on our water bottles, you know, we could kind of take all those learnings will give us kind of marketing and partnerships that you sell for the brand and how do we kind of retarget them and work with different partners like it's quite exciting. As I say it's it's piqued my interest. It's my new kind of shiny new object. I'm still I'm still learning about it. But actually, I think there's something really, really groundbreaking, you know, when when Voice Search came out years ago with Siri, and it was such a novelty with a lot of crap, your phone would accidentally ring somebody and it had no kind of place with no everything's audio voice notes and searches. I really think images in the next two, three years is going to take over.
Tom Ollerton 23:29
For me the thing that needs to get invented and I've seen Facebook cover another swipe late, is they did a partnership this week with Ray bonds where I bet it's got like the lightness Snapchat specs that were like yes, like we're connected to Facebook and you could record and post and I don't think there was any kind of visual thing over the top of the glasses like Google Glass and kind of fairly confident that wasn't a thing. But then when you look at Nicola Mendelsohn, the the Facebook, Primo in the UK, her talk mudfest was about like AR and VR. And you know, like head up displays and that is someone at some point is going to crack a device that doesn't make people look ridiculous, that doesn't break when you drop it that doesn't cost 600 quid that can give this like heads up information so you are at your box and you look at some look at a bike or look at a towel or or look at someone's trainers and you give the ability to be able to go Hey, can you search for those trainers and they would pop up but I'm not gonna see innovation directors the world over like imagining what those headsets look like you've had HoloLens but they're all too heavy. They're all horrible, feel ghastly, the too expensive. You look like an absolute Wally. But if someone at some point is gonna come up with the equivalent of the Nokia 3310, you know, a robust device that doesn't cost that much that always works, to not doing an attack for me is the massive, huge missing thing that I don't think we'll see in the next 10, 10 or so years?
Rory McEntee 25:01
no, you never know. And I think you're right. I saw the rebound one with Facebook and they do look a little bit odd and it feels like it feels like one of these movies like Minority Report they need to kind of get there until the future where these kind of glasses come in because I think you're absolutely right if somebody didn't the gym, they're able to kind of upload something whenever you see them. Everyone's staring at each other in the gym, like the gym barks and if you're able to kind of, well I want that device or I want that i think i don't know i might, I might quit here and get into AR and VR because this there's something huge in that what it is, as I say no idea. But But there is something bigger than us.
Tom Ollerton 25:40
So Rory, unfortunately we are at the end of the podcast now if someone wants to get in touch with you about their amazing AR VR visual search idea how do you want them to get in touch with you?
Rory McEntee 25:54
LinkedIn probably the best if anybody wants to reach out you'll find me really easily
Tom Ollerton 25:59
and I was asked this question how do you want them to write to you what makes a good outreach?
Rory McEntee 26:07
Oh, that's a good that's a great question. I like that and you know what I'll tell you what doesn't make it what anyone who sends me videos that are holding a4 papers dear Rory and then the bedroom got to go from page to page like love actually. Yeah, happened more than once. It happened twice. Actually, it might be the same company but anyway, yes. It was
Tom Ollerton 26:28
like an automated thing or
Rory McEntee 26:31
Yeah, it was it was like a they sent me a video of them in their bedroom with you know, 10 a4 paper saying dear Rory, great to meet you. They just flicking through the papers saying we was all real. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was it was strange. It was so strange.
Tom Ollerton 26:48
You cannot you can ask people to be more outrageous, like getting the half nude.
Rory McEntee 26:54
Yeah, it was really it was really creepy. So don't do that. Don't Please don't do that. And also don't don't anybody that has kind of emojis or rockets or unicorns or titles are they telling me they're gonna make shit happen? I struggle with that. I'll tell you just just make it my advice would be make an attempt to perhaps research me on the brand. So grab the attention I had this. Four years ago designer reached out to me and did did an advert for for something around Boris Johnson. And it just grabbed my attention. We ended up using the ad for I still work with a man. So he kind of did a little bit of thinking and you could tell it was it was really well done. Just a really simple attentive email. And, and something that added their value. You know what we still work together now, four years later.
Tom Ollerton 27:40
All right. Thank you so much.
Rory McEntee 27:42
Great to be on. Tom, thank you so much.
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