Episode 153 / Gareth Turner / Weetabix / Head of Marketing
Inspire Agencies to Do the Best Work for Your Brand
Gareth Turner is the Head of Marketing at Weetabix, where he brings a wealth of experience from previous roles at Arla Foods and Heineken. Gareth is passionate about mutual respect and collaborative work between brands and agencies, so that the best possible output can be achieved for both sides. This is why his Shiny New Object is honesty in the client-agency relationship.
Although the idea of honesty in a bilateral relationship might seem fundamental and self-evident, research into the relationships between clients and their advertising agencies suggests differently. Gareth has looked into what causes the breakdown of these relationships: the answer is most often lack of respect or mutual trust between partners. Moreover, a third of agencies talk about unrealistic timelines and client briefs that are not good enough.
However, other pieces of research into how briefs are produced suggest that a staggering 80% of brands belief they produce great briefs, while only 10% of agencies would agree. So, how have we reached this disconnect and what can be done about it?
The answer, Gareth believes, is to go back to fundamental relationship elements. Trust and mutual respect are essential to building a great client-agency interaction and to creating the best advertising off the back of it. Gareth’s Shiny New Object, although a fundamental aspect of relationships, is therefore honesty between clients and agencies.
Honesty means challenging when briefs or expectations are unrealistic or impractical. It also means speaking openly from both sides and creating an environment that fosters creativity without stopping either side from having a healthy work/life balance, too. Ultimately, this leads to inspiration, which Gareth thinks is the goal of these collaborations anyway: “By inspiring people and working collaboratively wherever possible, you get the best out of people [and] you get the best people in the agency wanting to work on your piece of business.”
To hear more from Gareth on the client-agency relationship, as well as listen to his favourite marketing tips and his book recommendations, head to the full episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
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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 privilege of interviewing one of our industry's leaders, and this week is no different. I'm on a call from Automated Creative's new office. And so if this podcast sounds a bit different than normal, it's because I'm in a completely different room with a completely different mic setup. But if you can bear with me for one week, normal service will resume. But anyway, it's not about me, it's about Gareth Turner, Head of Marketing at Weetabix. Gareth, for anyone who doesn't know who you are and what you do. Could you give the audience a bit of an overview?
Gareth Turner 1:31
Yeah, thanks, I'm Gareth, I'm Head of Marketing at Weetabix as you've said, there, I run the Weetabix brand team at Weetabix. And along with the customer services team, and the NCIC report, into my little, little part of the world. Before that I was at Arla foods for seven years or so where I was, amongst other things, head of the Arla brands in Europe, and I was the interim marketing director for a while, where butter so things like Lurpak and Anchor were part of my remit. Then before that, I was at Heineken where I did a range of marketing roles and sales roles. I was in a shelter, except before I saw the lights and moved into marketing.
Tom Ollerton 2:19
Fantastic. Right. So first off, are you a reader of marketing books? Or do you shun them?
Gareth Turner 2:29
I'm really not a shunner and I'm on, I wouldn't go as far as to say I'm a reader. I do have, if you could see to my right here. So I've got a little called a myth, maybe overstating it slightly, I have a mini inspiration library, to my right. And I've got books like The Choice Factory, Building the state of brand assets, and he brings etc, and go knock yourself by your name. That's a good one. The my, my go to book says, looking through it right now is How not to plan by Les Binet and Sarah Carter.
Tom Ollerton 3:12
So for anyone who hasn't read that book, Could you summarize? What are the main points what's stuck with you? And why would you recommend someone else?
Gareth Turner 3:21
Well, it's just a brilliant set of digestible chapters that each chapter is well, a couple of pages long. There's 80 odd I think chapters in the book. There are a series of case studies like two page case studies that are instantly, relevant, instantly usable in support of real life examples that are data filled case studies. It's got tangible things you can do to implement in your day job. So when I when I first started reading, I was on a flight to Denmark, I was working alone, I should open a book, I started reading the first chapter and I think I'd written down like three or four things I could be doing in my in my day job that week, then the half dozen pages or so. So it's it's super about everything to do remarketing.
Tom Ollerton 4:22
So can you give me some examples of those case studies? Could you sort of flick through and find one that has really resonated with you and give us a sense of a couple of those things that are worth listening to?
Gareth Turner 4:34
So it's all sort of centered around how not how to do stuff framed in the way how not to. I don't know I've randomly got randomly opened one here, page 168. Your buyers are not my buyers, you've not just crossed out to see what to say or macro. Each of the chapters is basically here this chapter talking about the theory of how brands grow that there's everyone has a portfolio of brands and that you are just temporarily renting your, your, your buyers opportunities off of other brands that everyone has a portfolio range of products of their choosing, going from zero to one is the way you get your brand from a tree shop. And that's how you grow.
Tom Ollerton 5:30
Nice. Jump across to another one.
Gareth Turner 5:33
Let's find another one, numbers do not lie. So there says yeah, there's a simple fact and the numerous people who predominate in Advertising Research don't seem to grasp it's that numbers to the innumerate seem infallible? I'm sure we'll go. This is Chapter Two, only. About how to assess numbers. Don't be bamboozled by numbers. Just because there's a number attached to it doesn't mean it's valid or relevant. Don't take numbers of research numbers at face value, ask how these numbers were made. Find out exactly what questions were asking or who in what context issues, use this checklist of things. You can fall back on when you're thinking about numbers and how research data is being presented.
Tom Ollerton 6:24
Well, that was a lovely testimonial for How not to Plan. Thanks for that. So suddenly, my next one question, as always, is what is your top marketing tip? And you've given me two or any? So what is the top marketing tip that you give your team or people you meet on podcasts or wherever else? And what is that silver bullet bit of advice that you always fall back on?
Gareth Turner 6:50
Loads of this stuff about about singularity message, this being a simple single minded message stuff around separating creative ideas and execution.
Tom Ollerton 7:04
So you can't I'm sorry, Gareth, I can't let you go. You can't just gloss over them, give me one.
Gareth Turner 7:14
The biggest thing for me is it's super clunky, right? But the biggest thing for me is that there are four P's of marketing execution, right? And when you're when you are thinking about your plan, go right back to basics. Just think about how have I covered the four P's in my in my marketing plan? I use it all the time. So when I'm looking at a brand plans for the year ahead, I'm thinking have we touched those four points? Have I got enough in each of those buckets? Am I doing enough on price? Have I thought about price I thought about how I'm going to unlock promotional space in store like what about all the parts of the mix to make my brand as compelling as it can be. So the best marketing tip I can give anyone in my team or anywhere else is to go back, go back to theory, get back to the basics, and just see have I covered everything in my practice to have a considered full 360 strategic approach to my plan. Rather than being caught up in what the TikTok video's gonna be. It needs to be bigger than that, it needs to be more rounded.
Tom Ollerton 8:40
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 a 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.
So we are loosely at the halfway stage now. So we're going to talk about your shiny new object, which is one we've never had before. And it's honesty in client agency relationships. So why have you chosen that is your shiny new object and tell me why you think it's the future of this industry?
Gareth Turner 9:40
Yeah, that's a stretch. Let's call it a shiny object. This is it should be pretty fundamental to human behavior, right? But there are two things that come together at the same time to really bring this into focus for me. The first thing is some research I did on the client agency relationship. So once I wanted to find out about why is it when it goes wrong, why is it going wrong? How can people having clients and agencies work together to improve that? So I did some research and things that came out as reasons for core relationships were that there was a lack of respect from the partners lack of trust in the client, that the client wasn't honest in the relationship, that they weren't honest with timelines. A third of agencies are saying that the timelines were unrealistic on borderline design. So that's theme one that I've put together and then there was this is a word from the Better Briefs project that came out recently about the shock, the importance of briefs and how important that is to getting great work. But the stat that stuck out to me was that 80% of clients think they've written a great brief, and 10% of agencies would agree with that. How's that? How have we got to a place where there's that sort of disconnect between what agencies believe is a good, brief and what kinds leave is appropriate? So it's not just about where the client's honest with their agents and partners, I think there's honesty, both ways. There's a human respect, there's a decency, which is required from agencies saying, I'm sorry, that brief isn't enough. It's not gonna you haven't put the budget in, you haven't been single minded in the way you've where you've written your benefit, or what you're asking. So there's a mutual respect, mutual honesty that will get us to better work, and more sustainable, happier relationship between the two sides. You see, I'm getting aggitated and quite passionate about that.
Tom Ollerton 11:56
So why has this situation come around? Why do clients ping off emails going yeah, brilliant brief, and then the agency going oh, OMG. This is not a brief. This doesn't make any sense. So why has that happened? Why are we in this situation?
Gareth Turner 12:15
Great, great question. I'm not sure, I think there has to be something perhaps around an imbalance of power, in that ultimately the client is paying money to the agency. And so is there just there a reluctance to challenge the client when, when they get they've got stuff wrong? And the reality is on that research, is that I asked a big question about when there's relationships going well, what's the number one theme? What's the theme that's making those relationships more than a quarter of clients say that the most positive relationships are driven by challenge from agency. So sometimes you have to ask him for that challenge. And I think there's also some behavior from clients, which potentially is, is that they actually don't want to be challenged, they certainly don't want to be they do feel insecure, there's pressures that they're feeling that there's they're getting passed on to their agency partners, that there's a short term isn't that that's creeping into some of the things that we do each year for a lot of the awards, the awards. Often, the deal was often won by brands that have long term well established effective relationships with between brands and agencies. So there has to be a relationship between effective work, and long term relationships. And those relationships, I'm sure would have had some sticky periods over over time. So how can how did those brands get through that, how did they navigate through those choppy waters to come out the other side and still be doing effective work?
Tom Ollerton 14:08
And how much of it do you think is down to budget?
Gareth Turner 14:12
In terms of not having enough budget? Or what do you mean by budget?
Tom Ollerton 14:17
I mean, if for argument's sake, when I was in agency land, if Red Bull showed up with a, you know, 30 grand budget and said, like, we want a response to this tomorrow, you do it, right. You sort of you throw it, you know, and then we'd be late night pizzas and coffee and beer trying to work and you give them orders this premium. What's it what's it all about? Whereas if it was, if it was like, Oh, well, yeah, we're going to do a five way pitch, and we're going to appoint the agency in three months time, and it's going to be worth 3 million quid or whatever. Then then you get a very sort of different response and so, actually, I'll rephrase the question is budget and time? What is killing briefs? Because if you're short of both of those things, then it definitely makes it harder to do a great response on a variety of different levels for the agency.
Gareth Turner 15:17
Yeah, quite possibly. I've now been fortunate enough to work on well funded brands or with the choice of my career say? It's there are smaller briefs that that come in that we issue which are, which are low budget, I don't think there's any excuse for not being clear about that upfront. There's no excuse for for being disrespectful with time I, I would hate to think time that any agency that facing towards our agency is working overnight on my house. Request, I made basic feel free to call Tom and let me know that's true or not, I hope that I've created an environment where in that example, you gave a report complex brand pitch and say overnight, I would expect my execs to say no. And I would want them to say no, that's not reasonable. And I hope I wouldn't ask for that in the first place. And I made up example, right. But I would expect me to say well, no, we can't do that. And this, we've got home lives. We've got families and friends we want to see as well. So I genuinely wouldn't have a problem with that.
Tom Ollerton 16:32
So was there any sense in your research about the difference between a brief in a new business sense or a brief in an existing relationship sense? Because I think the situation I pulled up was very much a new business one. Whereas if you've got like, an ongoing client, over many years, many markets, many projects, did you get any sense that there was a difference in the accuracy of the brief in those two different scenarios?
Gareth Turner 17:00
That would have been a good question to ask, I didn't, ask that question. So actually, it would be interesting to know but I didn't ask that.
Tom Ollerton 17:10
So not that I've done the research, but from my experience, I was a new business guy, for most of my career, actually. And obviously, I still do a bit of that at Automated Creative. And I saw like, especially at We Are Social, just week after week, after week, brief after brief coming to me first pretty much for for new business pitches. And, and I got to the point where these things are often so bad, that I just thought, I'm never going to put my own business in a position to have to respond to something like that, so what we do, being quite candid here. We do a thing called a collaborative brief. So if we were going to work together, we'd have a conversation about what it is you're trying to achieve, sort of strategically, what was going on with the project. And then I would just take notes, either automate that or combination of written notes, and then I would write a brief in a Google Doc and send it back to you and go, Is this the brief? Have I got this right? And then and then you as the client would go, Oh, actually no Tom, we totally missed the point there. And then you just change it in the deck, or I've put TBC you can drop in, you know, timings, budgets, contacts, whatever, so that we collaborate on the brief to begin with. So from day one, I'm not translating a potentially poorly written brief, I'll show that I've listened. And I've showed that I can articulate what I've heard back to you. So on day one, but even before we start work, we are partnering. And that was my solution to the problem of receiving bad briefs. And that has worked for four years to a greater or lesser extent happens always value us as a business. But that's our solution to it, have you seen any other innovative solutions to briefing?
Gareth Turner 19:00
I couldn't agree more on that. Elsewhere, a piece of paper, email, whatever, however, is nowadays, should be a summation of weeks, days of collaboration between clients and all agencies. If you're writing a major agnostic, broad, general brief, a workshop with with all your agencies, be your agency, creative agency, digital agency never uses is what it should be. So that's the very least it should be you shouldn't just be Tada, here's an email, incoming email. A brief that I've trotted out as a client in five minutes, that's rubbish. That's not respectful. It's not and you're not going to get great work with the best. So the best reason to be collaborative, you need to be inspiration. I still want the best, the best brief that I wasn't personally involved in but I, I was close to was when I was at Heineken. And the Foster's team when they appointed Adam and Eve to the Fosters business, they ran a pitch brief in the pub, they, it was a pitch process of being quite as collaborative with the agencies for very valid reasons. But they, they immerse the agencies in the world of young trade, they had employee nights they presented stuff in the pub, they got the new bolt, it was a fun, exciting brief and by inspiring people and working collaboratively wherever possible, you get the best out of people, you get the best people in the agency wanting to work on your on your piece of business, because you're doing things properly, you're fun and inspiring and engaging.
Tom Ollerton 20:54
So going back to the honesty point, how if someone's listening this podcast, and they're an agency or a brand, and they're inspired by your view and your research, what is the immediate step that you can take to make things better?
Gareth Turner 21:12
Take some ownership. So if you're a client, if you're a brand owner, I think we should be creating safe spaces, I think the relationship between an agency and a client, the agency should be extended to the brand. So if a member of your team was saying that you didn't feel those teachers trust or respect, or you weren't being honest, so you're being unrealistic, and that you have a big problem with that. So why is it okay to have that situation with agency. So, create a safe space for, for your agencies to be an extension of your, of your good brands to, to support to, to make, make it okay to turn to make challenge seem less challenging. That makes sense to make it may encourage it to, to not just just make it okay for people to challenge you without getting defensive. At Weetabix, we have a crazy thing called "autopsy without blame". It's a similar thing to sort of black box thinking that Maggie side talks about in this book, this idea that it's okay for stuff to go wrong. It's okay for us to make mistakes. We all learn from that that was we have to drive. That's not. That's not that's a safe environment. That's not actually a creative. That's what clients can do. Tomorrow. Now, agencies can take a deep breath and challenge. Things won't change unless they will take a deep breath and challenge things. Challenge stuff that isn't acceptable to think or what's the worst that can happen? If clients are asking for challenge in their most positive productive relationships then challenge? I certainly, within reason this certainly could come back to haunt me, I certainly respect an agency that says no to me. Unless someone says no, I don't know where the boundary is. So I'll keep pushing until, until a nice, rational reasonable ban. Nice, that's totally fine.
Tom Ollerton 23:27
And that is a lovely place to leave it. Gareth, if someone wants to get in touch with you to talk about honesty, or your marketing books, or anything else you've mentioned on this podcast, how would you like them to get in touch with you?
Gareth Turner 23:43
The best place is on is on LinkedIn, I think I'm on LinkedIn, probably too much. I enjoy knowing what's going on. But if you're going to Linkedin with me, have some respect for me, don't try and sell to me the first thing. The amount of times I get someone connect with me, I connect then some automated selling thing comes in within five seconds. And then I disconnect straightaway. It'snot a good work. So I'm more than happy to engage with anyone on Linkedin. But please don't sell to me straightaway.
Tom Ollerton 24:20
Gareth, thank you so much for your time.
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