Episode 279 / Caroline Cockell / Student Roost / Marketing Director
How Marketing Instincts Get Better With Age
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Marketing is equal parts art and science, says Caroline Cockell, Marketing Director at Student Roost. Working with younger generations has opened her eyes to the importance of genuine messaging, while refining how she relates to marketing data. This is why her shiny new object is “finding the intersection between data and instinct.”
“The challenge of marketing is we are dealing with human behaviour,” says Caroline, “and it is not black and white.” Understanding the grey areas takes a lot more gut instinct and less crunching numbers, which is why it’s so important to trust your instincts in data driven marketing.
Her target audience is the younger generation of students looking for accommodation. They are savvy and interested in how a brand’s values align with theirs. “They don’t just want personalised advertising… Whilst the data can tell us a lot about their preferences, I believe that it is our instincts that help us to navigate the kind of emotional, cultural, ethical nuances that resonate with the younger generation,” Caroline explains.
How can we combine data and instincts successfully? Instinct isn’t a “mystical force,” it comes from years of experience and accumulated knowledge. It’s also anchored in the ability to empathise with an audience - something you can’t just find in the data. So, be ready to back up your instincts with data, and where that doesn’t show up, don’t dismiss your gut. Create a hypothesis, test it, and generate the data that can guide you forward.
Learn more by tuning in to the full episode.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Caroline Cockell 0:00
This generation, they value authenticity. They value creativity and purpose. We need both security and sharpness of data, but also we need the nuance of our own instincts.
Speaker 0:18
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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, the creative effectiveness ad tech platform, and this is a weekly podcast about the future of data driven marketing. And it's the absolute joy of mine to record this every week with one of the leaders in our industry who can help shed light on what's coming next, what is their shiny new object and why that is powerful for data driven marketing. I'm on a call with Caroline Cockell, who is marketing director at Student roost. So Caroline, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give us a bit of background?
Caroline Cockell 1:29
Of course, absolutely yes. Hi Tom. It's really, really great to be here talking to you. I would say I'm a career marketer. I have done nothing but marketing my entire career. I went to uni to study it, and did what a lot of us did, and started right at the bottom, essentially cold calling. I was trying to sell people video conferencing equipment. However, I have had the joy of working for some brilliant and diverse companies. I've worked in marketing roles, advertising roles, planning strategy. I've done a bit of agency side, a bit of client side, lots of client side, in fact. And I've worked in sectors such as travel, hospitality, FMCG, retail, I feel like I've done a bit of everything. I did a little bit of a stint as a consultant and a digital marketing trainer at one point as well, while my daughter was little so... but now I am director of marketing for student accommodation brand Student Roost, and I've been there for four years, and it's hugely exciting, because it's such a young, dynamic audience that we are obviously marketing to it. It makes for a very interesting job as a marketer.
Tom Ollerton 2:40
And can you just give an overview of student roost for anyone who's like, not UK based and might not be familiar?
Caroline Cockell 2:46
Yes, absolutely. So we are a it's known as purpose built student accommodation. So we effectively provide private halls for students. We've got 55 properties across 20 cities, over 20 cities in the UK, and it is nothing like what student accommodation looked like when I was at university. These accommodations provide students with everything from gyms and cinema rooms and karaoke suites and lots of lots of kind of events and well being activities.
Tom Ollerton 3:21
Are there karaoke suites, are you kidding?
Caroline Cockell 3:23
I'm not kidding.
Tom Ollerton 3:24
Because I was when you said it's nothing like uni, I was like, yeah, it's gonna be different. But karaoke is that? Is that necessary?
Caroline Cockell 3:31
Honestly, it's wild. We're all about well being, it's all about having a fantastic time at university and being able to build connections and friendships, and that doesn't happen sitting in your ensuite bedroom. It happens when you're enjoying events with friends and meeting new people. So it's just such a huge part of uni life, isn't it? It's not just about the education, it's about it's about the relationships you build and the life skills you develop. So we're kind of all about that.
Tom Ollerton 4:01
And what's it going to be like 20 years hence, if karaoke roomsare the norms now?
Caroline Cockell 4:06
I dread to think.
Tom Ollerton 4:08
Helicopter pads or something submarines.
Caroline Cockell 4:11
We've literally just built one that's got a rooftop running track, so yeah, I mean, anything's possible.
Tom Ollerton 4:16
So I'm really interested, and glad you did that, like hardcore phone based selling bit, you know, because it means that you've got that full understanding of everything from the kind of brand building top end marketing piece all the way through to the hard line rejection dealing with doing that phone stuff. So it's a really interesting and broad career there. But I'm curious to know, with the level of responsibility that you have, there gonna be times when you get overwhelmed. So how do you deal with that?
Caroline Cockell 4:49
I mean, yeah, absolutely. I think we all get overwhelmed, and I don't even know that it comes with responsibility. I just think it comes with being human. Sometimes we are probably not good at saying no all the time. So for me, overwhelm comes from that feeling of really not knowing where to start. So if you've got a very long list of things that you've got to tackle, and you're staring at it and have no sense of where to begin, that's where the overwhelm kicks in. For me. And I find myself, if I don't, if I don't tackle it, I just work kind of frantically and jump from task to task, and I end up crawling to the weekend exhausted. And I think we can all relate to that feeling. But actually, it was weirdly becoming a mum that made me realize that there is a much better way when you're looking at somebody else's overwhelm and in the mind of a very busy, effervescent seven year old. When my daughter's overwhelmed, I know exactly what to tell her to do, and sometimes you've got to turn that on yourself. So the kind of things that I it's kind of three things, really. One is take yourself out of the situation. So when I am feeling overwhelmed, there is no point me just staring at the list, trying to figure out where to start and panicking. Take yourself out of the situation, change your scenery, go for a walk, make a drink, go and chat to your partner, if you're working from home or whatever that is, just walk away from it for a bit, and then when you do come back, I think, minimize distractions. So it's really important to tune back into what you were trying to achieve, and that's really hard when emails are popping up and teams is pinging and WhatsApp is going and LinkedIn messages are coming through, we're so available. In this day and age with all of the technology, I think you have to kind of close all your tabs and put yourself on Do Not Disturb and reprioritize, and once you've done that time blocking in your diary and stick to it, just create the space to, you know, tackle that reprioritized list without letting other things come and, you know, hijack your list and add more into it. And, yeah, it's funny that I only really learned this through helping my daughter through her own overwhelm. I think I've probably spent too long just trying to juggle everything and exhausting myself. So yeah, that's, that's, that's my top tips, I suppose. If you're feeling overwhelmed, how do you get back on track.
Tom Ollerton 7:16
Right. So tell me more about how you do this with your daughter, like she's go look, just take yourself out of the situation, turn off the slack.
Caroline Cockell 7:27
It's slightly different, isn't it? So my, my seven year old, is incredibly full of energy. She has a very, very busy little mind, and she can find it that very difficult just to focus on a task that she doesn't want to do, so that could be getting undressed, or it could be doing her homework, or whatever it might be. And the thing with her is that if I keep pushing, she will just get very overwhelmed and start screaming rather than doing what she needs to do, or she'll just kind of run away from it. And actually, it's that running away, that makes me think it's much better to take her out of the situation, do something she enjoys, with the promise that if she does this thing she enjoys for a second, then we'll come back and do what she's been asked, and she's much happier to do it then, because you kind of framed it and given it a little a little bit of a boundary. So yeah, there's a lot we can learn from our kids.
Tom Ollerton 8:18
So I wonder if the kid analogy can help with the next question, which is, what is your bit of advice for data driven marketers that you find yourself sharing most often?
Caroline Cockell 8:32
Okay, so this, for me, and it actually kind of links a little bit to what I was going to talk about later on as well, is that I think it's about mastering both the art and the science of marketing. I think it simply comes down to making sure that the science of collecting, analyzing data, doing the research, creating and testing hypotheses, and you have to balance that with the art that comes with intuition and interpretation and creativity and innovation. I think the challenge with marketing is always that we are dealing with human behavior, and it is not black and white. There are gray areas, there is nuance. And so to be a better data driven marketer, I think you have to get as comfortable with that nuance and the art and of marketing, as you are with the black and white of the data, we can find comfort sometimes in data, but what it doesn't necessarily do is immediately jump out at us with that kind of creativity, or that kind of there is that gray that we have to somehow find in all of that. So yeah, I think that is the secret to being a better data driven marketer. Get comfortable with the bits that you can't find in the data, too.
Tom Ollerton 9:47
Brilliant. Okay, so your shiny new object is finding the intersection between data and instinct. So what do you mean by that? Why is that your shiny new object?
Caroline Cockell 10:01
Okay, so it's something that I am really fascinated by, and I think it's become much more apparent the longer I've worked in this brilliant career we call marketing. So the intersection of data and instinct, it's why the balance is especially critical, particularly now when a lot of us are marketing to much younger generations that are much more savvy, I work for a student accommodation companies we've established, and my core audience are Gen Z, and I have become painfully aware of two things. One is that I am getting older and keeping up with this wonderful dynamic audience is getting much harder. And two, when it comes to this generation, they value authenticity, they value creativity and purpose. And I think that we need both the kind of security and sharpness of data, but also we need the nuance of our own instincts and getting the balance right in that is key, and that's where that art and science comes in that I was talking about a little bit earlier.
Tom Ollerton 11:17
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So I love this tension between you yourself getting older, and you're dealing with this like endless supply of young people that's getting bigger and bigger, and you address the needs of authenticity and purpose from this audience. So how are you using data and instinct to make sure, as you get older, and they say the same age, that you are able to deliver your marketing with authenticity and purpose?
Caroline Cockell 12:17
So that really gets into the kind of practicalities of this idea for me in that actually we need data to inform authenticity. That is absolutely true. They have a very keen eye for it. They do not want just personalized advertising. They want brands that align to their values. And I think that whilst the data can tell us lots about their preferences. I believe that it is our instinct that help us to navigate the kind of emotional, cultural, ethical nuances that resonate with the younger generation. So if we use the data to find the trends, but then we can use some of that, the gut and instinct to create messages that feel genuine. And I guess when I talk about kind of gut and instinct, I do feel like it's come from this idea that we have become a world that's quite kind of obsessed with data. And I think that instinct probably has a bit of a bad rep, because it isn't provable. And I'm not suggesting that we should rely on instincts alone, but I think instinct isn't like a mystical force. It comes from years of experience, the accumulation of knowledge, and it comes from an ability to empathize with our audience, and that empathy is really hard to find in the data. That's the gray. And I think so for me, in kind of trying to create authentic brand messaging or authentic brands, we have to be able to use that kind of human behavior and understanding of lived experiences that other people have had. To inject the data with the power of of our of our experience and our understanding of people.
Tom Ollerton 14:11
There's so much stuff in there, and it reminds me of an interview that I did for a book that I'm writing on data and creativity with a lady called Tiffany Rolfe, who is the chief creative officer? I think something like that in RJ, in the US. And she said, as marketers or marketing people, we have a very limited data set, which is our own experience, as you say. But that data set gets bigger as you get older. I thought, brilliant. Of course, it does. So I thought that was quite a nice way of like referring to what you're you're talking about, and your gut instinct actually should get better as you get older, if you stay attuned to these cultural and emotional elements that you're talking about. But what I love is that you're talking about instinct comes from. Empathy. So if you're curious about your audience, you're curious about these cultural and, like, emotional shifts, then you will have a view of their experience become empathetic, and then you can actually make marketing comms that that talk to those things. So what I would love to know is that you have, like, an example of when you've done that, when you've taken data to identify trends and then done the gut driven piece to produce work that has worked.
Caroline Cockell 15:26
Oh, absolutely. I mean, so when I first started where I'm working right now, I think that we'd, and I say we as a brand, the brand had got a little bit bogged down in the way things had always been done so relatively new sector actually, probably pbsa has only been around for 15 or so years.
Tom Ollerton 15:48
Sorry, what was that anagram?
Caroline Cockell 15:47
Purpose built student accommodations only been around for about 15 or so years, and so the the marketing sort of strategy was very much rooted in what we've always done, and there wasn't a lot of innovation going on. And one of the the kind of downsides to this was that it had become very promotionally driven, very kind of price driven. And again, understanding this audience that I'm talking to students Gen Z, price is really important. They're very price sensitive. Of course they are, but actually it is not top of their list when it comes to how they're making their decisions, because they expect more from their brands. And so for us, needing to find this emotional connection was the way that we were actually going to be able to sort of sell more efficiently, more effectively and and, you know, convince people to move from that kind of consideration list into the into buying what is a very High Value, complex purchase decision, they're effectively signing up to probably their first ever tenancy agreement. So it's a big decision, and so I could see that there actually wasn't a lot of data. There actually wasn't a lot to tell us what was actually making a difference. But what we knew from talking to customers was that actually they didn't have the why. They didn't understand why choose Student roost over somebody else. You've got accommodation available in in the same city by somebody else. What's the difference? And it became apparent that we needed to connect on an emotional level with this audience. And it's funny, just going slightly off, off track here or off piece with something that I was reading earlier this week, there was a great article on LinkedIn by the CEO of grocery insight, and it's been years since I've been in FMCG or retail now, but he was talking about Asda, and talking about how shopping Asda's isles, it's become overrun by branded promotional point of sale. So the ends of the aisles are covered in the supplier brands. And for me, that's an example of where on paper, more commercial money is propping up the sales, money from the suppliers, but in turn, it's turning off customers because they don't know why shop at Asda anymore, because there's very little of Asda left. It's just the brands on the shelves. And I found that really fascinating, because it's that it's that same premise, that it's very easy to get kind of caught up in the price element, especially when you're talking about a price sensitive audience. But it doesn't mean that that audience don't need to feel the why, the the why this brand. How does this brand connect to my values? And so, yeah, that's, that's kind of why this, this, this kind of is a constant questioning in my head. How do we always get back to the why? The kind of the purpose, the empathy with the audience?
Tom Ollerton 15:49
What are the data sets that you use to make sure you're on the right track with your your own data driven marketing? So I'm just curious to know, like as a business, what are the data points that are important to you to make sure you're doing a good job?
Caroline Cockell 19:24
It's really poignant at the moment because there is a lot of conversation in my sector, and I'm sure in many other sectors, about the sort of, maybe overspending in the bottom of the funnel, in kind of Google, PPC, particularly. And what we found over the last few years is the more that we've invested in our brand, the more that we have invested in communicating through a kind of video first, more emotional advertising approach and paired that with consideration marketing that kind of takes people on the journey to conversion, the less we need to spend at the bottom of the funnel to actually convert it. So the you know, we're spending a lot of time looking at, okay, we're getting lots of people to the website, but are they the right people? What is the quality of that traffic? Are they doing the right things on our website that show us that they have intent, and the more that we have invested in understanding our audience and driving the brand, the lower our CPA becomes.
Tom Ollerton 20:34
So you've given me some practical examples of where instinct fits in. But given that this is your shiny new object, I would really love to know about any other examples where that data and instinct pieces work really well for you.
Caroline Cockell 20:52
I think probably the real shining example here is around speed and agility. I think we've all been in a position where we're so so busy, kind of focused on the precision of trying to prove something that we might have missed an opportunity. And I think a good example of that, particularly when we're talking about this kind of world of social media, is that trends on social media come and go in the blink of an eye, and by the time the data tells us something is trending or something is working well for another brand, the moment's probably already passed, and actually that the instinct that's born out of experience becomes really crucial here, because it is your gut that's going to tell you that you should be jumping on a trend. Because before it becomes obvious before the data is telling you that it's getting lots of engagement, and it allows you to stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant. And so for me, this is where it really kind of supercharges the data that you have got, if you can bring in some of that experience to almost be the trend setter rather than the follower.
Tom Ollerton 22:10
Yeah, that's nice, and it sort of ties back into that idea of the older you get, the more data you have in your own head. Whereas, like, if you've got a 20 year old social media person who's like, Oh, this is the trend. You're gonna jump on it, whereas with 20 years more experience, might go well, it is just that it is a trend, and we don't need to be a late follower of that thing. Then, as you say, you put it really nicely, set those trends, set those content trends, as opposed to following best practice.
Caroline Cockell 22:36
Absolutely, that's it. And I think you know, you do? You do need to listen to your gut. You know, as marketing is a profession that inevitably comes with a certain amount of passion and creativity, and I think that, you know, we we should be listening to our instincts. I'm not saying we should be acting on every single one of them, because that's an oversimplification, really, but I think listen to your instincts. Be ready to back it up with data, you know, and if the data doesn't back it up yet, don't dismiss that gut, feel that intuition, turn it into a hypothesis and test it, because quite often it is born out of the years of experience that you've accumulated, and there's a reason that you your gut is telling you that this is something to go after.
Tom Ollerton 23:26
Brilliant. Well, look, unfortunately, we are at the end of the podcast. I could talk about this all day, but I've got other jobs to do. So if someone's to get in touch with you about intuition and data or anything else that we've talked about today, parenting tips, perhaps, where's it? Where's a good place to reach out to you, and what makes a message that you will actually respond to?
Caroline Cockell 23:47
Oh, do reach out to me on LinkedIn, for sure. And I am always interested in connecting with other marketers, people that are interested in marketing as an art and a science. So I think, yeah, sorry, that was probably not a great answer.
Tom Ollerton 24:09
What was wrong with that? That's great, brilliant. Okay, well, we'll fortunate to leave you there and we'll see you all next week.
Caroline Cockell 24:16
Thanks very much.
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