Episode 147 / Joseph Harper / Kellogg Company / E-commerce Marketing Manager - Western Europe
How User Generated Content Can Yield Big Results for Big Brands
Joseph Harper is the E-commerce Marketing Manager for Western Europe for Kellogg Company, focusing on the brand’s message across Europe after having worked for years in social media previously. With experience in the sports betting industry as well, Joe moved from sports to cereal and from social to e-commerce, with digital being the core anchor between these roles.
It’s through his experience of the digital world and understanding how social channel audiences connect with content that Joe has developed his interest in his Shiny New Object: user generated content (UGC). While UGC is not new by any means, it’s one of the sources of creativity that Joe feels that big brands are ignoring or at least not exploiting to its full potential.
When users are faced with company-generated, glossy, compliant and scrutinised creative content, their response on social channels is miles away from their reactions to spontaneous user-generated content. Especially in today’s world, where anyone can generate fantastic content from their phone, this makes a brand’s messages more relatable and more engaging.
However, Joe agrees that there’s a time and a place for UGC vs. company creative. While UGC can have a massive impact on social media and for brands that have access to hundreds of pieces of content (such as Pringles, which Joe sees as a great example of using UGC on social), it will not be great in other channels where more elaborate content finds its place.
This interest in UGC and recognising its full potential is linked with Joe’s recognition of the important role that young people can play in a big marketing department, too. His advice for students is to be aware of the immediate value they bring, simply by their close connection to the users a brand will be trying to target in social channels.
To find out more of Joe’s advice about how to make it in marketing after uni or college, as well as more details on using UGC in social media 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'm 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 some of our industry's leaders. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with Joseph Harper, who is E-commerce marketing manager - Western Europe at Kellogg Company, Joe Joseph, which ever you prefer. I can't get used to call you Joseph. If you could introduce yourself to the audience if they don't know who you are and what you do, and haven't already seen you on Advertisers Watching Ads, which were where we've worked before.
Joe Harper 1:34
We have, yeah, thanks, Tom. And Joe's fine. Yeah, hi. So Joe Harper, with Kellogg's Tom's explained my current role, looking after marketing for e-commerce across Europe. Prior to that I've been I've been at Kellogg's for seven years. But last two years, five years prior to that I was social lead for the UK, Ireland, Kellogg's business. And prior to that, I worked for Bet365 Sports gambling company, which people who are into sports, will probably know. And I did a couple of roles that the last one I did was, again, a social kind of content creation and lead role. Prior to that I worked in customer retention. So lots of sports, betting expertise, and then onto cereal, which is completely different. So that's me in a nutshell.
Tom Ollerton 2:27
And so how did you make the move from social to e-comm? Obviously, very closely related these days, but a few years ago, they were different parts of the marketing world.
Joe Harper 2:38
Yeah, they are. Yeah, it's the digital world word. That's the anchor, I guess. I had a very good relationship with my previous manager, who was the marketing director here in the UK. And Kellogg's goes through these kind of business restructures, every few years, where they look at the future and say, okay, we sat up to tackle the new and exciting and growing areas of, of growth for our business, and we hadn't ever had a European econ function prior to this latest restructure, we decided we needed one. So this is pretty much two years ago on the dark that it kicked in. And my experience with creating content for digital platforms, understanding kind of like new ways in which to measure and optimize content. And, you know, engagement and other elements of digitalization, we're seeing as the right set of skills to bring into this role is very different. But there are some kind of similarities, as you say, so you know, optimization, you know, consumer experience, and then, you know, equally as well, when you work for a big company like Kellogg's, a lot of the work almost most of the work, to be honest, is understanding and developing internal processes to kind of get value out of what we do. So instead of creating 100 different pieces of content for 100 different channels, even though I don't want to contradict myself, because I do like the idea of right content, right channel, but in some instances, you know, static lifestyle imagery of a beautiful bowl of cereal on the table, for example, how can we use that across all the channels and maximize our investment and kind of share creative and wealth throughout the business? A lot of that is kind of what I do nowadays. And then obviously data as well data interpretation to prove results and engage internal stakeholders amongst hundreds of other things that I won't go into on this very informal chat.
Tom Ollerton 4:36
So if someone wanted to follow in your footsteps, a student just out to uni really wants to make a big impact in the industry. What would your advice to them be?
Joe Harper 4:47
It's something that I say quite often I'm just looking out of our office window at the UTC Media City College, which had college 14 to 18 year olds and I've done a few talks with their students. big businesses can get massive immediate value out of students who are just out of uni, or even just out of college. And to be honest, remember, great example is love Bible, which is a business based in here in Manchester a bit, originally, an area and the founder really well. And I remember when they set up their Instagram channel, they hired 216 year old straight out of school to run their Instagram. The reason being is that young people are more in touch with digital platforms, social media, and basically what engages consumers and the right kinds of content to live on those platforms. And what I tell businesses like Kellogg's and others that I speak to, and young people who are looking for their first step is, there is immediate value that these people can add to that platform. As you know, we've recently been working in direct to consumer. And we kind of like a startup mentality. It's kind of south side of the color brand over into into much detail. But we've got an apprenticeship program here at Kellogg's and the lady, the young lady that was part of the apprenticeship program, who's worked with us on this program has done a far better job of moderating the channels, creating social contents, thinking about how to engage our consumers, than anybody else in the business, including myself could have gone because she is right in there as a target consumer, she knows what works, these platforms develop so quickly, if think about Tick tock, and everything else that's coming down the pipe. So I would say to students who maybe even students, who don't necessarily know exactly what they're going to do long, long term, you can really go into interviews and apply for roles in big organizations. And if you perhaps cover that point that I've just made around the fact that you can add an immediate value to this big company, then they be forced to not consider you for the role. So yeah, don't think that you're a million miles off becoming an important part of a big business because your youth and your kind of your natural consumption of digital content can be of immediate value to a company like Kellogg's, or any other company to be honest.
Tom Ollerton 7:17
So if that's your advice for would be follows in your footsteps, what is the all round bit of marketing advice that you cherish and give most often
Joe Harper 7:30
was quite a controversial one. And to be honest there'll be people at Kellogg's who don't agree with this, but I will say it anyway. And we focus a lot on ROI, and marketing, return on investment. It's the key metric. And the key performance indicator, obviously, of your investment and of how you're doing and I got an I agree with it. Where businesses make mistakes, in my opinion, is solely focusing on ROI as the pure be all and end all for how well something has worked or is working well with digital specifically in this instance, although you could apply across all the verticals. But speaking about digital, there are so many other deliverables and values that initiatives and processes and projects can deliver outside of immediate short term impact on sales, and efficiencies, what I mentioned at the start of the call, you know, if you're a business and I'm making these numbers up, this is not reflective of Kellogg's, obviously, but if you're a business, that's spending 10 million pounds a year in a market, I'm developing, like, say content, images, videos, you know, if you can find more effective ways, and it's going to be a theme of everything I'm going to talk about on this podcast, if you can find more effective ways to get that content, and it works better and drives you about an RL a better ROI. You're not just delivering that ROI, you're delivering massive cost efficiencies for your organization. And so that profit and loss at the end of the year is impacted more greatly by your ability to find more efficient and efficient ways of generating content. And that's just one example. You know, thinking about the long term benefits and impacts of investments that you're making. Now, again, with companies like Kellogg's, you, you are very much shackled to your data team work day to day, month to month and year on year performance. And again, I got that the nature of the industry and the structure and the type of our business. But if you can find a way to present the positive impact that your efforts and projects are having on the long term health and equity of your brand essentially. Then again, you're you're almost you could argue doing a more important job. And there are loads of other pieces to it as well. You know, a lot of the projects I work on are for multiple markets across Europe. And, you know, be very easy for us to focus on the UK as our biggest e-comm market in Europe. And but if if all of the strategy and contents and practices that I'm implementing are to UK centric, that and aren't considerate of the cultural nuances that make Europe the most beautiful and vibrant region in the world, in my opinion, then you're not again, if you can, if you can consider all of those pieces up front when you're developing strategy, and show the importance of that, and the impact and the utility and adoption throughout all the markets. If your ideas and your central strategies, then again, I think that's a massive value to businesses and something that, again, falls by the wayside because of this relentless obsession around ROI. And hopefully, that makes sense, Tom.
Tom Ollerton 10:58
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.
Well, we need to move things speedily along, and we need to get to that the title of the podcast, which is your shiny new object, you confess yourself isn't shiny and new, but it's gonna be new to you. And you've chosen it as your thing that represents the future of the industry. And it's user generated content. So something that was around when I first got into industry and doesn't seem to have gone away. So pretty new terms of the whole history of advertising, but why is it important to you now? And why have you chosen this as your shiny new object?
Joe Harper 12:08
Yeah, you know, I apologize in advance because it isn't shiny and new, and everybody will know what it is. But what I think is still a massively untapped area for big businesses is truly understanding the value. And part of that UGC can play for your business. And again, it's linked to everything that I've talked about in this in this podcast, you know, we've, we've had a number of, I've done a number of tasks of contact, where we've had very heavily designed, very extensive agency developed creative, which has been shackled to all of our guide our compliance guidelines, which again, are never important. When it's gone live on a platform. You can then compare it to when you've put a piece of user generated content live in the same environment with the same media spend to the same audience and the engagement rates. And the engagement rate and that kind of how well it's received, and the sentiment that it receives for consumers. The UGC, absolutely knock spots off the highly designed piece of content. And now that we're in a position where anybody can pick up a mobile phone and create fantastic contents naturally, to represent a brand or a particular initiative, I think the future will continue to move more more and more towards using user generated content as the bedrock of your content strategy. And that's not necessarily influencer marketing, which is obviously very well established in a bit Massey, as an industry. If you ask me. You know, it given you an example Pringles, one of our biggest brands, with over 100 pieces of content a day, or certainly was when I was working in social and being created with the hashtag Pringles tag associated with it. Some of this contents on prompted, you know, off brief, just purely capturing the mindset and the sentiment of the creator at that moment. It was absolutely incredible. Now I've got some wonderful examples. I was looking at them yesterday. And if that was the kind of content if we could find a way to embed that ongoing isn't always on content stream for our brands and our products long term. You know, there is no way in a million years we will be spending the time and the resource and getting the headaches that we got from going through Scruton this rotating creative brainstorming and creation processes with these big advertising agencies that we have a job to do for us Don't get me wrong, but and it just works so much better and the consumers appreciate so much more. The quite a bit back content when it's pointed front of the month, the variety of platforms that are available and not every brand that's going to listen to this is going to be getting 100 pieces of user generated content a day, granted, but for big businesses, I don't even feel like we're on the first page of what we could do if we truly integrated user generated content within our strategy. I'm really passionate about that.
Tom Ollerton 15:21
So I think that's a valid argument. But the thing that we come to a lot as a business is really helping brands understand what makes them different to the category. Like we have a big thing, always saying that we just behaved best practice best practices copying, everyone's copying each other. No one's marketing, right? And so I totally agree. And yet, thanks for sharing the data point that the unit the UGC outperformed like the beautiful, stylized, expensive agency thing. But isn't it? Is it the fact that it's user generated content? Or is it the fact that it's not studio content that matters? So for example, if you've done like an animation, which was equally as expensive, but labor, if no one else is doing animation, then the animation stands out? So is it is it because it's done by a real person? Or is it because it's not the norm, and the exciting thing is doing the thing, that's not normal, because that's the thing that makes you stand out,
Joe Harper 16:20
You got to be really smart reflection. And I always say, you know, my one marketing tip was gonna be that there's not a one size fits all rule when it comes to marketing strategies. And it depends on your brand depends on your audience depends on what you're communicating and what your ambitions are. There's not a standard rule of thumb, in my opinion, when it comes to marketing, because it's so ethereal, and how it relates to people. And I think the examples that I was looking at when I kind of put together this proposal for the business where, you know, very specific, I just think that I don't know really, you've thrown that question out anytime. It's a really good one, though, I don't think it's necessarily to do with the format of the asset, I just think it's to do with, I think that as human beings, with we can consume and process information that we see on our mobile screens, and PC screens, laptop, tablets, whatever. So quickly. Now, we don't realize how quickly we Georgian have an opinion on what it is that we're looking at. And I just think that naturally created content, which is quite clearly created by real person in that moment, spontaneously just naturally engages and creates a positive reflection from the viewer, far more than when you see something which is quite clearly been scrutinized, and, you know, optimized and iterated. And, you know, I don't know, I think a really heavily branded animation is a very specific time and a place for that, for example, in an out of home digital out of home placement outside of a store, I think, you know, you don't want to see a piece of UGC, necessarily in that space. But particularly for social platforms, I think. I definitely think that's the way to go. And I think it's more just because of the reaction that it triggers with the person who's viewing it and how much they can relate to it. Perhaps it's the relatability? I don't know. But good question.
Tom Ollerton 18:27
Oh, Joe, we're at the end of the podcast now. So we have to leave it there. If someone wants to get in touch with you to talk about UGC or anything else. How would you like them to do that?
Joe Harper 18:39
Yeah, possibly, possibly via LinkedIn as opposed to my work email, which people seem to be able to find great. Yeah, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, messages would be the best one, because that's
Tom Ollerton 18:50
And what makes a killer LinkedIn message to you to get a reply?
Joe Harper 18:54
Great question. And, I'd say, personalizing it, to have relevance to my brands and my categories. And if it's to do with e-commerce, and the retailers that I play in, so core grocery retailers in the UK, and in Europe, and fmcg case studies, as part of the pitch, as hard as that is often to provide, I appreciate that that's what will stand out versus the other hundreds of messages that you get across the platforms, you know.
Tom Ollerton 19:28
That's great advice. Joe, thank you so much.
Joe Harper 19:31
Cheers, Tom.
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