Episode 287 / Tom Fenwick-Smith / Three UK / Senior In House Creative
The Premium Human Input of Tomorrow’s Marketing
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In a world where everyone will be using Gen AI, “human is premium” according to Tom Fenwick-Smith. The Senior In House Creative at Three UK shared why the human element of AI is his shiny new object, while looking at his interesting and varied career achievements.
Tom’s always been “obsessed with storytelling” - so his first job was in the film industry, where he got to be part of features, music videos, and ads working with some iconic directors. He then retrained at the School of Communication Arts 2.0, which he credits with boosting his creativity thanks to “a melting pot of just brilliant people,” launching him into the world of marketing.
After a varied career in agencies (which are like “pirates”) and in house (which is akin to being in a political party), Tom’s top data driven marketing advice is to blend data insights with storytelling and empathy. “When you understand that human element, there’s often something on the other side of the fence you can grab on to, which then creates something really, really special,” he advises. Tune into the podcast to hear how he did just that by combining data about Alzheimer’s and the connection between music and memory to create “Meet Betty” - a unique project.
As for his shiny new object, we talk on the podcast a lot about how human input is key to making AI work for your marketing. Marketers need to create content that stands out, not relying on just AI to make things cheaper and quicker, losing originality. That’s why Tom thinks “human [will be] premium” in the near future and those who understand how to make people feel will make the best creative.
Listen to the full episode for more great insights.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 0:00
You have to stand up, you have to try again, you have to keep going. And I think that that mindset is super important in terms of building resilience.
Speaker 0:12
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Tom Ollerton 0:39
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 regular podcast about the future of data driven marketing. And it's my absolute joy, privilege and pleasure to interview someone new and exciting and interesting and talented from the industry. And this week is absolutely no different. I'm on a call with Tom Fenwick Smith, who is senior in house creative at three UK. Tom, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do, could you give us a brief background?
Tom Fenwick-Smith 1:18
Oh, yeah, it's great to be here. Tom, thank you so much for asking me. Currently I'm working with Three and we've been helping for the last three years to build their in house creative agency, although I'm sure it's no secret to a lot of people out there, we are currently going to be going through a merger with Vodafone. But the in house space is super interesting at the moment, and it's been a real, you know, it's been a real learning and a real change from the agency, I like, I often talk about how in agencies, it's kind of like a collection of pirates. You know, you're all kind of bandits, cutthroats, eccentrics, but you're all seeking the same treasure. My experience with in house is that you kind of have to get, get rid of some of that, that roughness, and kind of be a bit more skilled up. So it's a bit more like working for a political party. You have to kind of understand and get to know other people's ambitions, where they're coming from, and what is important to them in order to make the creative ideas succeed. So it's been a real learning for the last three years. My route into the industry has been a little bit varied. I kind of, I didn't get here in a very lineal fashion. I kind of originally, I started in the film industry because I was totally obsessed with storytelling and wanting to tell stories, even from very young. I kind of love mythology and everything that came with it. And so at 18, I kind of packed my bags and went off to go and join whatever film industry element I could. And ended up being a runner in Soho, as many, many of us did, getting people's lunches, working in Edit houses, doing all sorts of stuff before finally landing on the floor of feature films, music videos, commercials, where I did about 35 features, over 100 music videos and over 100 commercials, and in that really hone the craft of being able to tell stories. And I got to work with some incredible people from Sir Christopher Nolan, as of today, Ridley Scott, all kinds of different people from that kind of era, and watch them very closely as they put stories together. But the route I was going down there was an assistant director, and it was kind of, I was slowly being morphed into a sergeant major who was kind of.... my enemy was time and my creative output wasn't, was the creativity of being able to manipulate that time in order to get the best results, which is a handy skill to have, but not necessarily very creative. And then I retrained at the SCA, the School of Communication Arts, 2.0 I'm forever grateful to Mark and his team over at the SCA, because were the second I walked in the door, I fell at home, and I kind of knew I'd found my tribe of people and was able to really connect with being a creative and what it meant, and the kind of excitement that comes with being a creative, and the fact that you're kind of looking for these great insights that you can dig out yourself or find through data or anything to create a human insight, and then build great creative ideas off the back of that. And it was super exciting, like, it was a real light switch moment for me. And then from there went on spend some time at RGA, little bit of time at Google, some time at Havas, before landing at Poke, which then became publicist Pope, or Pope, Poke was absolutely incredible. Like, it was a place of real creativity, and it was right on the cusp of understanding digital work in a way which I don't think many people at the time were really like in the industry. Kind of could get and like how you could connect APIs and how you could build certain things, and all these social media platforms are being born, and the ways in which we could creatively manipulate them to tell stories. And everyone that worked there was an incredibly talented, like very specialized person. And it was a real melting pot of ideas, of people, of points of view. It was fantastic. And then from there Jack Morton, which was a fantastic experiential agency, and Rewind, where I did AR VR, all kinds of new tech and innovation learning to tell these kind of new stories in a new way. Before COVID happened, everything kind of dropped out and then ended up going to Three to help build their in house agency. Sorry, that's a very long answer. Tom, is that all right?
Tom Ollerton 5:35
Yeah, you didn't read the brief though, did you? Brief answer? But it was an interesting way, and it's funny, you mentioned Mark Lewis. He was a relatively early guest on the podcast. And when someone says, like, what was your favorite episode? Actually, it was probably Mark's in some ways, principally because he showed up with a Buddhist monk. He was like, Can Can this Buddhist monk come on the podcast? And I was like, yeah, yeah, sure. So, and that was back in the day, where you go for a few pints and then do the recording when I was sort of less confident, so sort of helped me. But he was talking about how he put creativity into a spreadsheet, right? So it's like, when you come up with an idea that's good or gets a good reaction, score the reaction out of 10, and then try and remember, what was the process of you arriving at that idea: Was it in the morning, were you in the bath? were you going for a run? Did you be watching a movie? Were you high, whatever, and to start to get your own data on where your your best ideas might come from? And I was just like, What? What is this? And then with this, think it was Ben the Buddhist, or something that came along with him, because it was all very surreal, but, and that was like, five, six years ago, or something, so that that says, lays testament to him as a character, and clearly the profound impact he had on you.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 6:45
Yeah. I mean, funnily enough, I remember Ben the Buddhist. He was like, I think when, when you first join you have like, I mean, lectures, is the wrong, the wrong? Like, people come and just talk to you, and they kind of give these great presentations. And the second I started that learning model, because it's so different, and being someone who's who's, like, dyslexic, and couple other neurological bits thrown in as well. The traditional learning model didn't work, and the way Mark managed to change it, it became so engaging and so fascinating. And Ben was, like, probably week three, Ben came in, and I remember his talk was just, it was, like, fascinating. And that was the great thing about the SCA it wasn't just learning a syllabus and going block by block, it was learning about exciting things in the world and how you connect them to what you're trying to achieve. So we'd have like people, you know, legends from the industry coming in, and then you'd have people like Ben the Buddhist, and then you'd have like, neuroscientists, and you'd have just this incredible melting pot of just brilliant people which were at your fingertips to be able to discuss stuff with. And out of that kind of mix comes the creativity. You know, it pops up later in in any kind of different way, whether you're trying to crack a brief or just having conversations. It's just, it was fantastic. I loved it.
Speaker 1 6:59
So we've gone so wildly off piece with this podcast, I'm going to try and struggle it into it. Into its normal format. So the question I want to ask you is, like you've had this really interesting career. I mean, in some ways, Tom it's got a lot worse. You're making music videos and feature films and now you're an in house creative but I understand your path, and I respect that. I'm just teasing, but in that journey, what has been the best investment of your own time, energy or money, your own your own stuff in that career? What, what's been good?
Tom Fenwick-Smith 8:29
I think I alluded to a little bit in my previous answer, but I think the the best investment I've made is, is my time with other people as much as possible, and any time I can spend with people who either know more than me, or come from a different background, or come from a different, you know, working background as well, anything to just to be able to discuss with them. And that can come in, like many ways, like I love constantly just listening to people and ask them about their chosen skill, their talent, their obsession. I love knowing people's obsessions, because you'll find if you ask someone about what their obsession is, they will be an utter expert in it. And even if it's a subject I would normally find quite boring, they will make it interesting for me to listen to 99% of the time.
Tom Ollerton 9:17
To me, that's one of our go to interview questions when you've sort of done the dance of asking all the things that you should I always say, what is your kind of crazy passion point? But then always gets, you always get that funny look on people's faces. And then, and then, like, should I tell them about this thing? But then, and then you see the real person you know. Then then you see how articulate they are. Then you see how creative or interested, or, you know, all that kind of stuff. So what's yours? What is your subject that you know most about outside of work?
Tom Fenwick-Smith 9:43
Currently, currently my, and this is the thing, I fall into obsessions. There's probably a new one every couple of years. My new one is, is Muay Thai kickboxing, and I'm a couple of years into that, and I sort of discovered it by accident after doing a white collar boxing fight, because I thought it was super important to do something that scared me, and I'd never been in a fight or whatever, and I realized how underprepared I was for such a meteoric event, because it is, it's quite a big deal. It takes a lot to be able to do it. It's quite scary. So I found a fellow in my local boxing gym who had the most crooked nose, and trained with him, and then he turned out to be a world champion Muay Thai and k1 fighter. And I was lucky enough to train with him once a week for the last three years, and it's been unbelievable. And it kind of not only just working with someone like that, who's got a mindset I've never seen, you know of a proper world champion like totally determined to go towards a goal. And it was fascinating just working with him and talking with him, and then he kind of led me into the passion I have for Muay Thai. So now I'm starting to learn all the fighters you know, all the fights I know when they're on. I'm very excited about One's partnership with Sky at the moment, because One is the biggest Fighting Championship in the world. But we don't really watch it here. We're more of a UFC kind of peeps, but if anyone watches One, it is stunning. And so, yeah, it's kind of become my obsession. It's not one for everyone. I totally get that. Some people look at me and they think I'm totally mad. But for me, it's been something that I've lent towards, especially to grow resilience as well. It's something I practice. I try my best, and I often go, and when you spar with a world champion once a week, you're going to lose, but you have to stand up, you have to try again. You have to keep going. And I think that that mindset is super important in terms of building resilience.
I'm now going to ask you about data driven marketing, because I think that is the kind of intellectual equivalent of throwing you a punch you're not expecting, but it is that podcast. So what is your best bit of advice to become a better data driven marketer?
I'd love to think that this was a gem which was fully unique to me, but it's the blend of data insights with storytelling and empathy. There is nothing I like more than finding a really juicy, incredible problem, which is, which comes from data. The birth of those problems is, is, is the thing as a creative which makes me excited. But what I see time and time again is people hang the creative on the data, rather than the human element that's that's developed towards it and how it's got there there's a project, and it's often about bringing because when you understand that human element, there's often something on the other side of the fence that you can grab onto, which then creates something really, really special. There was one project I did kind of as a interesting solo piece, and it was based on a bit of data, which I saw around Alzheimer's in the UK being one of the fastest growing conditions in people over the age of 50 in the last 10 years, and the spike of it is is increasing immeasurably. And I was talking to someone at a conference who was studying the proteins which lead to the plaquing of the brain, which which then helps to start certain forms of Alzheimer's. After this, I then was discussing something else with someone around how music triggers memory. And this led me to kind of connect these two kind of thoughts together and be able to build something which was a small project which we did called Meet Betty. And Betty was a digital box which anyone could use. And it was very, very simple, and all you had to do was put your date of birth into Betty, and Betty would bring back the songs that were most relevant from your age between the ages of 15 and 25 with the consideration and thought that those songs would be able to trigger some memories from some very core points in your youth, ie, your first kiss, first dance, the first girl you loved, etc, etc, etc. And we managed to build a prototype and test this with a few people, and kind of lean towards how we would kind of manufacture it. I really wanted to take it to M&S, who apparently have a great back catalog of fabrics and all sorts of interesting things. It's like real heritage stuff. So you could design a box, personalize it for any of your relatives, and we didn't quite get the project off the ground, but that sort of thing, that's what I mean. When you find these kind of data insights, and you can bring them back to a human perspective, I think you can find some real magic in being able to build things.
Tom Ollerton 14:34
Yeah, it reminds me of there's yet another Beatles documentary on Disney, would you believe. And there's an interview with Smokey Robinson of Miracles fame, and he was, and this quote really stayed with me, is that actually, except phrase, I think it's like music, it's medicine, right? That you when you hear a song, it can really heal you. I mean, if you stick your headphones in and listen to. Kind of like focus music on Spotify all day. You're unlikely to feel like that, but like music is unique in its power to to heal us, you know, heartache or exhaustion or be misunderstood, or all of that stuff you know. And that really struck me that that comment so when, when you said that, it's like, yes, a song. I think music, certainly, for me is, is the most effective time machine, like, you know, I'd listen to, you know, an early Oasis album. I'm 18. Instantly again, you know what I mean, I can see the clothes I'm wearing. I can see the street I'm walking down. I can see myself sat outside a pub smoking a fag, thinking I was cool, but not being cool, you know, I mean, it's, where is he? Yeah, whereas if you showed me a pair of jeans, I wouldn't have that response. Or I read a read an article in the newspaper from that day, I'd be like hmmm... but music, it fires off so many different parts of your brain and takes us to different places and heals us.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 15:52
100% I think, you know, smell does a similar thing, and we were looking at ways in which we can interact with that as well, but it didn't quite pull it wasn't quite as easy to access a database of smells, but with sound, it's so the memory that it connects to is so visceral as you as you touched on, like there are definitely certain songs I can I can remember where I was, I can remember what I was doing. I can remember how old I was, how I felt. You know what the feeling was behind that song in the moment. And it's very rare to be able to find something else that can do that and really connect. And it's not unique to an individual. Sometimes, you know, if you think of people that experience big festival experiences, you know certain tracks will really kick off emotional responses for them and genuinely connect their brain and make their body feel something. It's very powerful.
Tom Ollerton 16:47
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Once again, we're miles, miles and miles off track. So I feel like this. You know, the grown up here, which is rare for me. So we're gonna, we're now gonna talk about your shiny new object, not for as long as I'd hoped. But anyway, let's get into it. So your shiny new object is the human element of AI, what is that? And why is it your shiny new object, and if you can, let's try and keep it vaguely on marketing?
Tom Fenwick-Smith 17:46
Yeah, well, I think because I've been around for a little bit, and I've been lucky enough to live in a timeframe where I've seen the development of various bits of new technology, from like social platforms to things like Spotify and all these kind of new things that we kind of take for granted, and there's always a bit of a user cycle with them, of how people use them. With AI, it's become slightly different because the guardrails surrounding it are asking us to use it in a certain way, and I think it's there's a lot of concern around AI, and it's taking jobs and all those sort of things. And the thing I'm looking forward to within that is how human beings can reclaim the use of AI and how we can still own the storytelling. I think that I came into this business because I wanted to kind of make people feel something and similar, you know, that's always what I was trying to do with a lot of my creative work, and any kind of films I've ever made, and all that kind of stuff. And I think we're at a really interesting place now where we can explore how we can still make people feel things, given the power that we're going to have behind us with AI and we're going to have see such an explosion in projects development, all this kind of stuff, and it's going to be the cream that rises to the top. And I think that cream will be based on people that have been able to hack or understand how to make people feel, even having all this innovation around them, still, so human, the feeling of human and those things that come with them will become the premium. If that makes sense, that's my belief. That's kind of what I think.
Tom Ollerton 19:25
Yeah, I mean, it's not a million miles from from my thinking just came off doing being interviewed on someone else's podcast, and they're like, you know, how do you Automated Creative use AI? And our thing is that you should use generative AI to do things you couldn't do before, not to do the things you're doing before, faster and cheaper. Because everyone is everyone is going to use it to do what they're currently doing faster and cheaper, right? That's the sort of a base level of intelligence as goes into it. So like, right? We need to crank out a ton of banners in all these different languages for all of these different platforms in all of these different markets. Right? You can automate that stuff, right? You can use AI, you can crank that out, right? But then so can your competitors like, and the analogy I use is email, right? At some point, not very many people used email, and then there would have been a an innovator who goes, Do you know what I'm going to use email in my office? And when you know we're not going to like have meetings as much, we're not going to type stuff out, we're not going to send letters, we're going to use email. And someone would have been on stage at a conference saying this and be like, well, that will never stick, and all this kind of stuff. So eventually it catches on, and it was, it was a competitive advantage to begin with, but then as soon as everyone's doing it, there isn't an advantage, it's a zero sum game, right? So, and I think the same will be, the same will be true with with AI for average ideas and an average production, right? Everyone will save a certain amount of time and money in producing the thing that they were currently doing. However, our clients, the way that they're using it, in a very progressive way, is go, Well, what can we do with Gen AI that we couldn't do before? Right? So you've got brands who are going, Well, normally what we do is we put our shot in the foreground of a scene, like on a beach or in a bar or in a bathroom or in a wherever, and we could afford to do one, like four of those shoots a year, or one of those shoots, whereas now you can, you can do as many as you want. But what you can do with automation is you can test all of those different scenarios. You can set right, okay, so we're going to run all of those scenarios with our products in it, so all the audience, and then we can learn from the audience. How do they want to be communicated with? You couldn't do that before without Gen AI, because it would just be financially unfeasible. Whereas now what you can do is you can unlock new insights by using Gen AI to create ads at scale. Whereas I think everyone's thinking, right, brilliant, well, we'll we'll just get chat GPT to write our copy, but then everyone else is going to do that. Everything's going to sound the same. Then your, your job as a marketer is to stand out, not to fit in.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 21:50
And this is why when when building a team and when working with creators, I'm so I'm a massive proponent of neurological diversity and just different ways of thinking, because creativity is individual. It comes from lived experience so much of the time. And I think, as you say, you can have this base level of AI that can churn out a creative option. You know, you can do hundreds of different AB tests with very basic creative and I'm sure you can see results, but you won't have anything that truly connects and lives rent free in someone's psyche, because it hasn't connected, connected with them at a human level at the moment. And I think, you know, Coca Cola? Did you know they just redid their their ads using full AI? And I think it was a great technical achievement, but it did leave me not feeling much, right?
Tom Ollerton 22:36
Oh, no. I don't think it's a technical achievement at all. I thought it was like, like, I mean, as a Brit, I don't, we have people all over the world listen to this podcast, but as a Brit, like the Coca Cola advert, it was one of those kind of, like, it's the, it's a great it's a green shoot of Christmas. The first time you hear Mariah or Slade or have a mulled wine, it's like, it's the, it's one of the gate posts to the to the Christmas experience, right? But I saw the advert, and I just was going, Oh, Ah, I didn't feel Christmassy. Like, number one job of a Coke advert, like, if it was like, I don't know, some kind of thing with 3d influencers, and they'd really broke, broken the mould, fine, but what they tried to do was just like, deliver the same old right? But they, the insight I have for from a source who remain nameless, is that, apparently Coke have invested like a billion into Microsoft AI tech. So actually, that campaign was a B to B campaign from Microsoft, which gives a which gives it a very It wasn't, but it was.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 23:35
Yeah, I mean, it really comes back to this uncanny valley theory, which I know a lot of lot of the guys, if you probably got lots of listeners that kind of work in the virtual reality, mixed reality space. But there's something that those, those guys have been juggling with for a long time, and it's just, it's a built in human part of our brain, which just is un comfortable with something that doesn't feel human. It, and it's built into our evolutionary tracks, right? And nothing's been able to beat that yet.
Tom Ollerton 24:04
You'll go to a conference, marketing conference, and there'll be two tracks, right? For argument, say there's the AI track and then there's the influencer track, right? And the word everyone's gonna say over and over with influencers as they should, is authenticity, right? It's about having an authentic influencer relationship, and it's authentic activation. So when that person says this product's ace, it sounds like they actually mean it, right? If you remove the authenticity, you remove the effectiveness. But yeah, on the other hand, we're like, right? Well, yeah, we're going to use, like, Gen AI to completely synthetically make people, because it's cheaper, it's mad. It's the same industry. But we said, with like, pulling these in completely different directions, whilst putting ourselves on the back about how clever we are.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 24:44
Well, as someone who works with creators an awful lot, you know, their authenticity is really what makes our engagement and our you know, it sells our products in whatever way, right? And if you take that away, it just Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't feel right. I find it really interesting that the explosion of creators has happened at the same time as the kind of the growth of AI right? As you say, it's pulling in two different directions, and it'll be interesting to see where it goes. It kind of it leads back to what I was saying earlier. I really do think that human will become premium.
Tom Ollerton 25:18
Yeah, I absolutely agree. Because once everyone's AI production, then what's gonna be the differentiator is an idea. And if everyone's using AI to produce the same ideas, then it's the it's the human that can think tangentially, which will be the competitive advantage. I think, is your point. I mean, I saw a brilliant tweet on LinkedIn saying his guy was on a flight to New York or somewhere, and he said he watched an exec from one of the big four accounting firms use chatgpt to write every word of a 50 page report for their clients. It might not even be true. It might not be even be true, right? But it feels like it probably, you know, like there's some there's some truth in there. Maybe it's just a brilliant LinkedIn post.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 26:00
I don't know. You know, never let facts in the way of a good story. You know. Well, that's, that's it.
Tom Ollerton 26:05
Oh, never let AI get in the way of good story. Probably, probably a good place to leave it Tom, I've enjoyed this so much, man, and I feel we've, we've definitely not necessarily delivered on the promise of the podcast, but it's been a fascinating conversation. I really appreciate it.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 26:20
No, no worries. Thanks for your time.
Tom Ollerton 26:22
And if someone wants to get in touch with you, where is the best place to do that and what makes them what makes a message you actually bother replying to?
Tom Fenwick-Smith 26:29
You can definitely reach out to me in LinkedIn and just, yeah, tell me your obsession. I know that sounds a bit weird, doesn't it?
Tom Ollerton 26:37
but sounds quite sexy.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 26:38
It does doesn't it. Now I've said it out loud, it sounds a bit weird, but generally, obsessions are the way to pique my interest.
Tom Ollerton 26:47
Let's leave it there. Thank you so much.
Tom Fenwick-Smith 26:49
Thanks. Tom.
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