Episode 259 / Steve Seddon / Ice Travel Group / CMO
How Not To Let AI Churn Out Average Ads & Dilute Your Brand Message
For Steve Seddon, using brand and distinctive assets in performance marketing is more important than ever.
As the CMO of Ice Travel Group and an experienced travel marketer, Steve warns against the temptation of using generative AI to churn out content just to tick off platform requirements, losing the connection with consumers that distinctive assets can create.
Making Marketing More Accessible
Reflecting on what advice he’d give a student looking to join the industry, Steve shared how passionate he is about making marketing more accessible, regardless of background and schools you’ve been able to attend. There are lots of free resources out there, and social platforms like LinkedIn and X, despite their shortcomings, can be a great way to learn and follow the people you want to connect with.
Steve’s tip is to always “just be you” and do things to stand out, but being true to yourself so you don’t get “caught out.”
Speaking of top tips, Steve’s top data driven marketing tip goes back to the basics - know your consumer and your product. It may be basic but, as he puts it, “you’ll be surprised at how many marketers haven’t tested their own product.”
Why Brand Assets Matter
It may seem strange to say that brand distinctive assets are not being used in performance marketing, but Steve is warning of the danger of brand and performance teams becoming increasingly separate as marketers search for ROAS and ticking off what will make their content perform well on social platforms.
For PPC and meta, using your brand’s tone of voice and your human creativity is what will set you aside from those companies that just resort to AI to get optimised, impersonal messages out. Don’t let the A in AI stand for “average” when it comes to your messaging, but use tech and data to inform creativity and ensure you continue to stand out and build meaningful connections with consumers.
Tune in to the podcast to get the full conversation.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Steve Seddon 0:00
We sell package holidays, and I always encourage my team to go and hang out in Leeds Bradford Airport, where one of our offices is, and just like sort of absorb the customers and go and have a pint in Wetherspoons with them and see what they're talking about.
Speaker 1 0:18
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Tom Ollerton 0:40
Hello and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform, and every week or so I have the pleasure and the privilege of interviewing one of our leaders about the future of data driven marketing. And I am here at Creative X's Villa thing in Cannes. Thanks guys for hosting the podcast. Yeah. Really appreciate that. But more importantly, I am here with Steve Seddon, who is the CMO of the ice travel group. So Steve, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, can you give us a bit of background?
Steve Seddon 1:17
Yeah, sure, Hi. Thanks for having me on. It's good to be here. My first time in Cannes. It's pretty spectacular. So apologies if you're listening to this in rainy, rainy Britain, but yeah, it's great here. So thanks for having me here. I am the CMO for a company called Ice travel group, which has two main brands, one's travel supermarket and one's ice lolly. And I actually realized when I was preparing for this that I've been doing marketing, and more specifically, travel marketing, for 25 years now. So made me feel pretty old, to be honest. But yeah, I started on the TUI grad scheme. I've worked for monarch, shearings. I was marketing director for query, marketing director for shearings, and just prior to this job as marketing director for on the beach. So, yeah, I've always, always stayed in travel, but this my first time away for like four years. So my eyes are squinting in the sun, but I'm enjoying it.
Tom Ollerton 2:13
And how was last night?
Steve Seddon 2:15
Last night was great. Yeah, I arrived late. Yeah, I won't say which holiday company delivered me late, because we work with them, but yeah, two and a half hours late into Cannes and already feeling a bit overwhelmed because I haven't been here before. I just got taken along with Brave spark who I'm here with for some dinner. We went to this Lebanese restaurant. I actually this is how surreal this place is. Well, firstly, I, uh, today I got caught up by the Olympic, Olympic flame. So that would that was going down the street, and there was a big traffic everywhere. But last night, I ended up having an argument with Andie McDowell in the queue for the toilets. So yeah, she was in there. She was in the same restaurant, and she came barging over and essentially decided she wasn't going to queue for the toilet. And I, there's this young French girl in front of me, and I was saying she's next, but yeah, I ended up arguing with Andie McDowell, and then, yeah, she was waiting for me to come out the toilet. So it was a bit surreal, really. Yeah, well, she was just waiting to go in after me, right. Okay, yeah. So, yeah,
Tom Ollerton 3:27
Do you know who I am? So to go from Andie McDowell to the, you know, the serious business of data driven marketing...
Steve Seddon 3:35
Yeah, that's it, yeah.
Tom Ollerton 3:37
So other than hanging out with celebrities in toilets in Cannes, what advice would you give to a smart, already driven student that wants to get ahead in this industry?
Steve Seddon 3:49
Yeah, I think, I think there's a lot more information out there than there used to be, and I think it's really helpful. But I also I listen to a lot of podcasts, including your own, you know. And the advice is always really good, but then it's like, halfway through the advice, and it's like, oh yes, of course. My father owned so and so agency in the 80s. And I was thinking about this more from my background of growing up in Liverpool and in a town called Seaforth, in quite a working class part of Liverpool, and looking at this from a sort of state school, no nepotism point of view, I realize I'm saying this when I'm sat on a balcony in Cannes, which is good irony in it. But yeah, I think, I think I'm really interested in how we get more people from state school, and particularly more people from non London into marketing and into advertising. And there's some, there's some great avenues in these days, the Marketing Academy do the foundation, there's the marketing meetup, Brixton finishing school, all things like that. So I think my my first piece of advice would be take a look at all that, you know, there's a lot out there. My second piece of advice would be, well, just thinking back to when I was a student, I did a marketing degree, and I think it was like two years into the degree before I really realized what marketing actually was. And it suddenly dawned on me, when I was doing this, like consumption, what was it, the title of the what the lecturer was going on about was basically consumption and how and the psychological effects of marketing. And it really gave me a wider view of marketing, other than just advertising, which, which, I guess, for the first two years I'd considered it to be so where I'm going with that is, I think that we're really fortunate these days. You know, LinkedIn gets a lot of lot of stick, as does Twitter, or whatever it's called these days, but both of them are free. There's loads of information on there. And I think just go in and access it and, you know, sort of enjoy it and read it. And the analogy I had in my head was take it to be like pop music, you know, don't, don't feel like you've got to go in and wade in on the big debates between the long and the short of it. And, you know, one camp saying, do one thing, and the other camp doing the same, doing something else. I think, just read what you enjoy and get into marketing that way, and then follow the people that you want to follow. And then, obviously, LinkedIn is a great source for introducing yourself to people and meeting people. It's a great way of connecting. And my advice to people there is, you know, take time to just be you. Bear in mind, you know, if you're a, 20 year old grad or whatever, or still in uni, or perhaps haven't gone to uni at all. You know more about social media than 99% of the people who you're talking to. And I think just be you be relevant, but be really specific in what you want to say. An example of that I read on the way over is the, do you know what? You know the site Vinted, where you sell your old fancy clothes? Well, somebody put all their old clothes on a Danny DeVito cut out. And it's just bizarre, right? But it's got loads of traction, and people have picked it up, and people are talking about it, and they're basically selling old shit next shirts, and they've got hundreds of 1000s of views, and my link there is just, just do something to stand out, but, but do it that is true to yourself, otherwise you'll get found out. And also, I think my other point would be that it can be a long game. You know, I met a CEO, ex CEO, of a marketing agency. Seven years ago, we had to chat about a pitch that didn't go anywhere, and seven years later, he's changed businesses, changed industries, and is working in working creating podcasts now, and we've just started working with him. So I think establishing those connections is really key. And then if you're lucky enough to get a connection and meet up with people, just remember the softer skills, I think. Remember to the basics of, you know, having resilience and having confidence in your own, in what you want to say. But also, like the basics, you know, like, put your, put you, if it's on, if it's on Zoom, or wherever, or teams put the put the camera on. You know, I don't want to sound like a 46 year old fellas sat in Cannes, but I interviewed someone the other day, and they like chewing gum all the way through it. It's like you can still you can still be you. But I think just remembering some of these basic skills. I've been helping Manchester Met set set their course for 2026 that sounds that seems like a long time, time away, but only a couple of years away. And one of the things they say, is their students don't know how to use a phone. They don't know how to make a phone call on it. And I think, you know, brushing up on those basic skills is really key too.
Tom Ollerton 9:02
Well said.
So moving on now to the job itself. Like what what advice was your kind of top data driven marketing tip? What's a thing that you find yourself sharing most often when it comes to the comes to the world that you work in for your team.
Steve Seddon 9:25
And so, yeah, this is the question I forgot to prepare for, which Tom, let's kindly prompted me earlier, but so comes back, see what comes back and totally off the cuff. And I imagine, and I hope, there's a marketeer and somebody who cares about the marketing profession that this has been said 10 times already, but it's research and understand your customers, and know your customers, the old marketing bit of making sure that you understand that you're not the customer, trying to convince the rest of the business that they're not the customer, and you. You have a unique, unique thing as a marketeer, which is access to this data, and you've really got to use it and try and stitch it together. I mean, it's not about like letting that data dictate everything, but I guarantee there are, there are brands out there where marketeers haven't tested their own products. And you know, you just got to get to know the product. See what. You know, we sell package holidays. And I always encourage my team to go and hang out in Leeds Bradford Airport, where one of our offices is, and just like, sort of absorb the customers and go and have a pint in Wetherspoons with them, and see what they're talking about, and you know, you'll get so much from that, along with the along with the specifics of the data that you've got to go alongside it.
Tom Ollerton 10:49
I love that story. You're sending your team for a pint in the airport. Yeah, I've not had that one before, right? So now we are going to come on to your shiny new object, which is using brand and distinctive assets in performance marketing. Yeah, that's right, yeah. So I understand what all those words mean. But can you?
Steve Seddon 11:12
Yeah, yeah. I will explain it, because I want to give like, you know, I'll say up front that this isn't me talking about the long and short of it, so, you know, that's been done to death, so don't, yeah...
Tom Ollerton 11:27
Not everyone's going to be as familiar with that.
Steve Seddon 11:28
Yeah? Well, yeah. I mean, the long and short of it. In short is to two stage marketing of doing longer term brand building stuff and short term activation, which tends to be so called performance marketing, but I'll get into that a bit more. But what I'm talking about specifically is using your brand and your distinctive assets of what sets you apart as a company in your performance marketing. Be that PPC meta, it's kind of that middle of the Venn diagram between performance of brands and making sure that the two worlds collides and and you're getting across everything you want to say, every business I've worked in has been siloed in terms of, there's a brand person or a brand team, and there's a performance person or a performance team, and the brand team, you know, it's like they're completely alien to each other. The brand team are schooled in Burnett and Field, who did the long and short of it, tend to be backed by agency. I guess if we're being harsh, we could say that that that's the sort of you'll have heard the coloring in department. Then that's associated with brand. It's something that I'm really passionate about. So don't mind saying that. That's what we get called from time to time. And then the other side of things, you've got the performance team. And, you know, again, being very stereotypical, they are more focused in tends to be on ROAs and chasing that conversion. You know, there's ambassadors that get a lot of bad stick in that industry, like Gary V and Stephen Bartlett, but I think you know each to their own and and understanding both parts of that's really important. You know, I think there's probably more predisposed to be the sort of people who get up at 5am the performance marketers. I'm joking, deliberately there, but in a previous company I worked at, it showed the sort of gap between the two departments, because heads of performance used to start at 5am it was like reading outside, reading this book in the car outside, waiting for the security guard to open the office every day at five, the brand team like came in About 10 o'clock and you've already, not only not collaborating, you've got they're not even in the office at the same time. But anyway, like I was saying, different objectives for the brand team and different objectives for the performance team. But what I'm getting at really, is this simple but nuanced thing that if you use performance marketing, be that PPC or meta ads or just programmatic display ads, it's making sure that the brand cues that you'd have in your above the line, TV, radio or website all follow through into that. And that can be that can come across in as little if you take it to the smallest example, which is probably, you know, a PPC listing the sort of tone of voice that you use there, and it can really help to relate the brand back to your marketing. And the reality is, like, certainly in my industry, people are more exposed to performance marketing than they are brand marketing. They have more touch points of performance marketing. And I think if you're missing that opportunity to get those distinct brand assets across, then you're missing a trick. And obviously, what I think the trick that you would be missing is it's. Creating that, creating that what we know back to the long and the short of it, creating that long term association with the brand, so that you get the mental availability stored in somebody's head, so that they'll come back to you and purchase in the future. So it's about the familiarity that the marketing messages will will create. It's about the recognition by being distinct in what you're saying, and hopefully that will all lead to increasing consideration.
Tom Ollerton 15:32
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So just to, like, pull you up on one point there. So if I'm hearing you correctly, you've got your distinctive brand assets, yeah, your tone of voice, your logo, your color palette, yeah, your your, you know, mascot, your visuals, yeah, all those things that are yours that you've, yeah, backed. So like, when is that not showing up in, in performance stuff? Tone of voice I hear, because the PPC team will just write any old to get, to get, to get, get the sale. But on, like, you know, I'm thinking back to the travel brands that I know they think they do a decent job of that. Who do you see not doing well?
Steve Seddon 16:47
I actually don't. I think it's, you know, if you look in PPC at the most sort of performance related and then the meta stuff, I think we're moving because people are chasing the ROAs so abruptly, right, that we're moving to a state where the algorithm decides which is the best performance ads. And unless the brand cues are put in as a prerequisite of the advertising, they'll get dropped in favor of the ROAs. And I think it, the reason I wanted to talk about it is because I think it's more important than ever. The two reasons for that are kind of interlinked. I think that, you know, Google have got this massive fucking display network that nobody's buying, so they've created this product called p max. And p max requires design assets, and what's happened is the the the design assets needed thick and fast, and you've got the emergence of AI as well. So I've seen lots of occasions where people are using AI outside of the sort of established brand marketing ads that they're creating to create the ads that are needed by Pmax, and therefore you've got these ads that don't have this link. So I think that's, that's what I'd be concerned about. You know, p max isn't going to go away. It's going to be copied by by others. And I think that that's why it's for me, it's more important now than it's ever been.
Tom Ollerton 18:23
And so then tell me about the AI piece. You see people just using generative production, yeah to produce an ad, yeah. They need a something to fill out that inventory. Yeah. And they're ditching all of this stuff that's built the long term memorability from the top of funnel stuff, just to get the thing out to try and drive, yeah. In the extreme example, you're, yeah, so you're, you're breaking, I mean, I think that's reading up a lot on, lot on AI. And I think that the reality that I'm sitting talking to people here, on, on, on the beach is, is that it's like the A's almost starting to stand for average now, right, yeah, right. If you want some average copy or an average image, just crank There you go. You can crank it out. Yeah, you know, you get that. You get that super fast, you know, like, if you want some average music or an average best man speech, or, yeah, average recipe,
Steve Seddon 19:15
yeah, if you want to be the same as everyone else...
Tom Ollerton 19:19
It will crank that out. And, like, you know, with this AI and lots of our business, and always has been, but our thing is, is understanding that the soft part of that long and short of it, right? You know? So how do you bring those cues, those themes, those emotions that are present at the top of the funnel all the way through? Yeah, so, you know, I'll build on that it's as well as the assets, you know, you need to bring that feel and that and that brand essence all the way through. And AI allows you to do that at scale and learn from it, as opposed to using AI to to just averagely churn out some stuff.
Steve Seddon 19:54
Exactly, yeah, and I think that's that balance, isn't it? And, you know, I definitely point out the obvious, that AI is as bad as it's ever going to be, and it's only going to get better, right? And it, but it's how, it's how we use it as marketeers. It's how we use it as humans, really, and how, how. And I think it goes back to what you're saying, really, that you need to put that intelligence in otherwise, and the creative asset in otherwise. You don't get them out. And you're just getting this sort of vanilla approach. It's exactly what I'm sort of, it's the whole thing I'm talking about, really, is just warning against that. I think it's very easy just to create, to get AI, to create these average ads, or average songs, or average work recipes, whatever your other examples were. And it's, it's using that creativity alongside it to make it better.
Tom Ollerton 20:42
So how, what's the kind of Steve Seddon guardrails? Like, how, if a market is listening to this going right, I've been doing this. Like, how would you set up to make sure it doesn't happen and that you do use your distinctive brand assets in your conversion?
Steve Seddon 21:01
Yeah, I think it's just the boring stuff, isn't it? It's like process. You get a process to create these ads and that, and well, firstly you explain it, and you get an understanding. You get buy in, and get people to understand why. And it might be that you see a slight degradation of ROAs in the first instance. But, you know, I'm confident of sticking to your guns with it, and it'll pay more dividends with the lot in the long term. But I think explaining that is obviously the first point, and then, and then, yeah, the other point would be to establish a process of how the ads are created, whether that's in house or through an agency, that there's prerequisites that go on the ads, but also they go past somebody, and that might be somebody in the performance team who sort of gets it and understands it, or it might be someone in in the brand team, or in smaller companies. It might just be one person, but I think not letting the machines go crazy and letting the humans have a look along the way is probably the answer.
Tom Ollerton 22:08
So might be an odd question. Have you have you seen examples where you've flipped it around and you've learned from the performance to inform upper funnel in terms of what, what gets made. Have you seen that the data run in that direction as well?
Speaker 2 22:24
Yeah, I think so definitely. You see it all the time, really, because what you're getting is an instant response from, you know, like I said, we sell package holidays. Well, we're package holiday price comparison sites, and we work with partners to sell package holidays through our sites, and with performance marketing, you get an instant read from a very wide customer base and you get the demographics that go with it, of what's important. And you get to know which destinations are trending. You know, like a couple of years ago, Turkey became really popular. Now, Tunisia is becoming popular. And you get that, you get that information in real time through performance marketing. So it's not, it's not like brand is best here. That's not what I'm trying to say. It's like a convergence of the two in a world that will increasingly allow sort of robots to create your adverts.
Tom Ollerton 23:19
So I think the final thing to ask, and this is really rattling around my head, because I interviewed Peter Field for a book that I'm doing, and he said, Are you sure you want to interview me about data driven marketing? And he and his point was that it's very rare for a performance ad to take someone away through the funnel, right? I've never heard of this company. I'm now aware of the product. I would consider buying it. I am going to buy it. I'm going to click on it and then go to a website again. I mean, there's examples for cleaning products on TikTok or whatever, that happens all the time. Yeah, it's not. It's not the certainly not the larger chunk in any stretch. And so I have this idea that there isn't really any such thing as a performance ad, because it doesn't. They don't exist in their entirety on their own, but they're part of the long term play of brand build and the short bit of it like so for that audience that were going to buy from you anyway, that's, that's an ad that hasn't performed. Actually, it's cost too much. Do you know what I mean? So I'm curious to know, like the distinctions that the industry's built around top, middle and bottom funnel. It's a nice model that works for everyone, yeah, but it's that always the case.
Steve Seddon 24:37
Well, brands like the sticking within my industry, Love holidays have become phenomenally successful through performance marketing, and they only recently have started doing brand marketing. And I think their success has been ubiquitous in the SERPs, and every time somebody searched for Cyprus, Tenerife, whatever love holidays would come up, and people would get that recognition. And I think that's an example for me, they've done really well, you know, the third biggest operator in the UK now, and that grew from performance marketing.
Tom Ollerton 25:16
But my I think the argument there would be, tell me, if I've got this wildly wrong, is that the awareness of the product, a holiday in Crete, yeah, is already there, yeah, it's not like guys, there's this new country we've built, yeah, you know what a holiday? Yeah, you know what Crete is. You know what a short haul flight, yeah, and a cable or whatever. So actually, someone coming in with a with a great search strategy. Yeah, actually, that the product is Crete, yeah? And so, yes, you can build a performance business, I guess, in a sense. But if it was like Tom and Steve's, I don't know, like weird thing that we've just invented, you've got to create that awareness.
Steve Seddon 25:58
You've got to create that awareness. Yeah, yeah. You've got to create that awareness. But also, you, you know there's, there's plenty examples out there. Isn't there of creating that awareness through social media and tiktoks a really interesting example you mentioned earlier, because it actually is, in some ways, the flip of what we've been talking about. Only organic content is going to work on, on on Tiktok, really. So getting that brand out there and talking about it in social media, particularly Tiktok, requires being authentic. And I'm sure that'll go the same way as meta, and it'll become an ads platform. But then something else will come along that the shiny new object, you know?
Tom Ollerton 26:39
Yeah, looking forward to it. Well, look, we're coming up on time now. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, where is the best place to do that, and what is a message that you will respond to?
Speaker 2 26:50
Well, I can't, you know, be picking up LinkedIn in my previous answer without giving the same answer. Really, just get in touch on LinkedIn. And I think what I said earlier about I'd encourage people, if they want to, I'd love to chat about whatever, but I think the most specific people are the better response you get from people. If you if you go in with a vague request, then it's difficult, because you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of there's a lot of shit on LinkedIn. So you got to cut through that.
Tom Ollerton 27:22
What a lovely place. Thanks so much.
Steve Seddon 27:25
Thank you.
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