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Transcript

with Columbia Threadneedle's Ross Duncton · Two in Twenty

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to another episode of 2 in 20.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Twink Field.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: I am the host of these podcasts.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: And today I'm delighted to say we're talking to Ross Duncton.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's the head of AMIA and D2C at Columbia Thread Needle.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And he has a really interesting background coming into our industry from D2C, really leveraging and bringing a lot of that learning and thinking into his roles today.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Our conversation strays from sustainability into brand, into investment trusts, and finishes as ever giving tips for everybody listening.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: I always feel I learn loads when I'm talking to Ross.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: So let's jump into that conversation now.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Ross, it is great to have you here chatting today.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for taking the time.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Before we get into some questions, I would love you just to kind of walk through a bit of your background, your career, because one of the things that I am deeply envious of is your D2C background and how you pulled that through into your role.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think so many marketers would love to have had that exposure and think about those practices.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe you could just waltz us through kind of some of the different phases of your career and where you are today.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And very happy to be here as well.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Drew.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I started my career in the world of technology.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the biggest PC manufacturers at the time.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this was when home PCs and the internet was taking off massively and all of those sorts of things.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: So technology in terms of PCs, mobile phones, DVD players, was involved in one of the first launches, or one of the biggest launches of an internet service provider.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we were a big advertiser and fast-growing business.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: So learned a lot in that sort of very direct consumer-focused business, learned a lot there.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I then moved into financial services.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I moved into the world of uh retirement income products in financial services, right?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So from tech through to that.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it was for a challenger brand and it was a fast growth growth business as well.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there we went from zero to market leader in our particular area within five years.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And but applying a lot of the knowledge that I'd learnt elsewhere, similar principles, just applying it in a different area, had really big uplift and really big impact overall.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Then went to credential, so big household name, doing similar sort of products and area of focus in terms of, like I said, audiences and whatnot.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: There predominantly was involved in launching a new business line, new business in a very fast growth area as well, lifetime mortgages, so equity release, and those sorts of things.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we went from zero to market leader within three years, really utilising brand and those sorts of things.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So at the first place really understood digital from there, carried it through through other parts of my career.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, prudential, really around proposition, those sorts of things, really honed in on that.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: From Prue, I then went over to Saga, so over 50s, big over 50s brand.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, Saga was part of the AA as well, so automobile association.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: So very big data business, uh, really sort of focused in on a broader range of financial services products, credit cards, savings, financial advice investments, but really heavy in terms of the data.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there went into FC, the asset manager at the time, predominantly to look after direct consumer, which became FSC, then became BIMO, and BIMO, more lately, has become a Columbia thread needle and sort of been able to take those that digital, that data, the proposition side of things.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, the reason I joined asset management in the first place was because the opportunity is huge to implement those sorts of things.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where I'm at today.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think also not always do we, from a marketing perspective, get involved in the kind of product side to own the product piece alongside the marketing piece.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder whether that is quite a typical thing from a D2C structuring point, and sort of what you've enjoyed kind of leveraging from that knowledge and what you then expect, I guess, within your team in terms of that sort of digital understanding data piece, audience as well, to your point around saga and being very focused on the particular audience.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think whether product sits within marketing or not, and you get you know, different businesses, different industries have different ways of working and all of these sorts of things.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: What I would say is from a marketing point of view, and obviously I went from areas that you know, from technology into retirement income, didn't have any idea around retirement income.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't anywhere close to that sort of area of the market in terms of age and whatnot.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to understand it, you have to learn about the product because how how, from a marketing point of view, can you translate that from a customer perspective if you don't understand it yourself?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: So even when I came into asset management, I remember one of the key interview processes, I was at the last stages, and somebody uh the chair, I think at the time asked me, so Ross, what do you know about asset management?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, well, this is gonna be a bit awkward, right?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because I didn't know anything.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so I said, no, no, but I do know about but I do know about marketing.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, he was like, that's exactly what we need.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's the print I I fundamentally believe that from a marketing point of view, you can take is so transferable, doesn't have to be, there's benefits of up, you know, clearly there's benefits in all sorts of ways, but you can transfer the principles.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And every time that I've moved from one product set or industry to another, I've been able to take principles and approaches from from the other and apply it there, and you get big benefits in terms of because you're looking slightly different perspectives and that sort of side of things.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: So the areas don't need to sit necessarily within marketing, but the marketer has to be able to understand it to be able to pull it together, would be my take.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so then maybe thinking about the BMO brand, and that became really synonymous with sustainability.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess again to your point around bringing together all of the things that you had learned, all the things you were exposed to, how did you bring that together and then then really ladder it into that brand positioning around sustainability?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what were the key factors to really making that such a success?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the I think it's it's probably like 2018, something like that.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, the CIO and the Global Edit Distribution sort of called me in and said, we don't, you know, what do we stand for as a business in terms of from a brand perspective, right?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it I hear this regularly, not you know, through different businesses and what people don't know what we stand for.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, actually, internally, we wouldn't necessarily if I asked everybody individually what we stood for, I'd possibly get a different answer from everyone.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And therein lies the problem.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and actually at a sales conference a couple of years ago, I I got one of the sales team up and had a basket of balls and was you know throwing one at a time to him, and he was obviously able to catch it, and then I took the rest of the basket and and chucked them all at the same time, and he wasn't.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the point.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: You if you're all going out with different perspectives as to what we stand for and whatnot, they're not gonna land, right?
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: If we're all really tight behind one, we can really land there.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And from uh from the BMO perspective, we I think there's like 50 plus different stakeholders.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And the first, it's a balancing act in some respects.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: We want it to be, it's got to be authentic fundamentally, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to understand what is it that the what's the consistent element that we can pull out uh within the business that sort of gels it all together from a brand perspective, and then how does that resonate within the market?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is it and in terms of the competition, in terms of the positioning, in terms of cut-through, all of those sorts of things.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we were very fortunate from BIMO perspective because everything just started to align really nicely.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like it was all just fortuitous, right?
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was very deliberate, but it all started to align really nicely in terms of you know, BEMA had fantastic, or well, through the FNC acquisition, FNC, I think, was responsible for launching one of the first ethically screened funds in Europe back in 1984 or something.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: We and had a really, really strong credentials in terms of responsible investment overall.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: We just weren't talking about it too much, and and that was something that cut across everything.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we went through all the different stakeholders, that came out as a real theme, as well as other stuff, but that came out as a consistent theme, and then it was about getting really tight behind that overall.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Bemo as a group overall were getting tight behind that as well for for broader reasons, you know, sort of business positioning and whatnot.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, the market overall was really started to resonate in terms of ESG and responsible at that particular point.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it it really sort of all aligned.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And our brand awareness of the.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I think one of the hardest things when you talk about being really tight behind internally behind the positioning, how like how did you achieve that?
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that is some of the thing that is almost gets in the like how you take it to market, you can get kind of quite you can bring process and creativity potentially, you know, hopefully.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but actually that getting tight behind that positioning is one of the hardest things.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: What were the what were the key learnings there to make sure you've got these 50 different stakeholders absolutely talking the same language, consistently reinforcing the same key message?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I uh have always sort of believed, uh I'm not the only, you know, lots of people talk about these sorts of things.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: I always think if you can't articulate it on one sheet of paper, it's not clear enough, right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's and that's a very in some ways, that's very purist and idealistic, but it's really true as well.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And once you can do that, everything else sort of falls from it in terms of people will subconsciously talk about something and they'll appreciate how it associates with something else.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So that comes through in their own individual interactions or and how they might be talking about something or putting something together.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say, you know, it's got to be like I said, we went around 50 different stakeholders and we understand what are the facts, what are the elements that that hang together, then then it's it's for us to try to determine what that looks like and uh how we put it all together.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then in terms of being able to articulate it out, so if it's not clear enough in the business, there's no chance externally, I'm exaggerating slightly, but it's very hard.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do we communicate that internally?
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, we we very much had a I think the CIO at the time said, so what does good look like when you come back, right?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, if I walk back in here and I've got something on one sheet of paper and your response is something like that's obvious, what took you so long, we've done a good job.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately for us, that was the sort of response, right?
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, but because then that starts to you know really seep into other areas and the way that you might label products, the way you know, it it starts subconsciously to feed into lots of other things.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: So simplicity, and I always say simplicity is not easy, and that's that's part of the sort of beauty of it in the skill.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's getting into that simple articulation, that's where the the real difference happens.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, I would say within asset management, we overcomplicate stuff.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Typically, we overcomplicate stuff, it's a complicated industry.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: How do we bring it into that simple articulation?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder, you you're saying you talk to the sort of CEO, the how much influence do they have in the success of something like this?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I to your point earlier, I often talk about fragmentation as the enemy of being known for something, but actually getting the right stakeholders to really understand what that means in terms of behaviour and ownership can be really difficult.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I I you know we we had very clear, very clear and consistent support from the top, which is really fundamental because otherwise it's you you're sort of trying to change something by going, you know, pushing up, and that that's hard.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got the support on you know, um very clear visible support, then that makes you know the the success of it much, much more likely.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: At the time Bima Global Asset Management had new CEO, she was very passionate about this particular area and could and could see that that was an area that actually, you know, our positioning and our credentials was extremely strong, and that really helped in terms of getting that getting that buy-in and actually being able to achieve that.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: So then thinking like BMO, then into Columbia Thread Needle, there was then obviously kind of a kind of refresh, kind of bringing that business those businesses together.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I'm right in saying like obviously the F and C brand still continues from an investment trust perspective.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe you could just touch on a little bit of how you manage that, and and maybe that's a whole nother stakeholder and board that maybe is worth just expanding upon and and how you kind of balance those different stakeholders and brands.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to good um good question.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: So so basically the FNC that I joined originally was the asset manager, which is now effectively Columbia Throne, BEMO make Columbus Ray Needle, but FNC, the trust, at that particular point up until about 2018, was still called Foreign Enclonium.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in 2018, they FNC talk about the trust now, it's FNC.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: FNC is the oldest investment trust in the world.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was launched in 1868, so it was fundamental in terms of investments overall, particularly investment trusts, but overall, and it was 150 years old in 2018, and the chair at the time said it was a beautiful brief, quite daunting, but beautiful brief in terms of it's been around for 150 years.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: How do we make sure that it's positioned well to for the next 150 years?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time, we you know it's about getting those fundamentals right.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there was some stuff that we needed to change in terms of how the trust was uh positioned and those sorts.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: The naming, for example, we we we updated that.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for me, we took the FNC brand, you know, foreign colonial to FNC as a very logical sort of uh transition, and we then put that onto the trust, uh, which all sounds very simple, but it's quite, you know, it was quite complicated at the time.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: And with FNC, that's that's obviously now what it's known as, and it's it's really clearly recognized as as the oldest investment trust within the you know in the world, frankly.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And to your point around stakeholders, there's each of the investment trusts um that we have, so we have a number within our stable, uh, as do many other asset managers, all have very independent, completely independent boards.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: And their role is around making sure that from a shareholder perspective, so the ultimate investors perspective, that the trust is doing what it should be doing, that the manager, i.e.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: in our case, Climbing Threat Needle is doing what the what the trust, yeah, what's in the best interest for the investors and those sorts of things.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got seven, eight different trusts within our stable, they're all very different stakeholders in terms of um how we manage that.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, today, or now one of my team typically manages that on a day-to-day basis, and we have very good relationships um with them from a you know from a marketing perspective overall.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: But that's changing, you know, the mark the role of marketing with investment trusts is changing significantly, you know.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's becoming increasingly important for good reason.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And F and C, like I said, going back to 2018, but also slightly before that, we've probably ahead of the curve in terms of really recognizing the importance of that changing role.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, and and now today we've got some you know really exciting activity that we do for FNC to ensure it remains relevant as well.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, maybe just to kind of for those that don't necessarily know the structures around investment trust, so essentially to your point about having those independent boards, they give that remit of managing that trust to you, to Columbia Thread Needle, and you are then the service provider essentially to deliver on the investment management and the marketing and the sort of distribution, etc.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's notoriously well considered to be quite a sort of stuffy, outdated part of the market, but you've obviously really challenged that with your kind of marketing strategy.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you could, I know you're being a bit bashful because I know this the kind of F and C has had award-winning campaigns in the in the trust space.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe you could just share a bit more around that and how you have kind of really made marketing so much more of a strategic lever with an industry that hasn't necessarily come to marketing to be that partner.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So F and C, like I said, 2018, it was around how do we make sure that we remain relevant.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you look at the landscape of how people invest in investment trusts over the last 10 or 15 years, that's changed fundamentally.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've had platforms, cut you over a longer period, arguably, platforms that play a fundamental role in that.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look at the proposition of something like F and C, F and C's proposition is, you know, we we talk about the target audience for FNC, or the typical investor is the everyday investor, which is broad.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: So how do we make that and and then you how do we make that relevant consistently for those for those individuals and how do we reach those individuals?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we've over the last five years, you know, we rebranded, like I mentioned, we changed the name and those sorts of things.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: We solidified F and C as the as the you know the world's oldest investment trust and got the real foundations in place around the 150, early 2000, uh 2020 rather 2021, something like that.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: We changed the whole branding, so we made it much more distinctive.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we used Pop Pink, which is very deliberate, very thoughtful, very cut-through in terms of the market, and to your point, often seen as quite stuffed.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pop pink is not classically seen in that sort of light, so yeah, we didn't do it for that reason, we did it for other audience reasons very much, but you know, it makes it stand out and those sorts of things.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: We do direct response TV, we launched that probably 2022, something like that.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's working very well for us.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've done out of home and those sorts of things.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: We do still use some print, not a huge amount.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: When I say print, we do a bit of print, we do you know, national press, a lot of it's digital that we do nowadays on those sorts of things as well.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: And most recently, social media and with FNC, it's been around for 150 years.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons, there's many reasons, but one of the reasons is because it looks at today, but it also looks at the next five years, next 10 years, next 15 years, and whatnot.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And social media for tomorrow's investor in particular is an absolute fundamental in terms of how we will reach those audiences.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's increasingly important for today's investor, the people with the investable assets right now.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've been across Instagram, Facebook, but the big success has been TikTok from our point of view, and we've got we've had huge engagement through TikTok, and TikTok and social media as a whole is not the easiest thing to succeed on, to be honest.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a very complicated sort of area, and the the team have done a fantastic job in terms of really getting that to work and and being very clear in terms of who our audience is, what our proposition is, how do we how are we going to engage and resonate with audiences in a platform native manner, if you like.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, we've won to your point, we've won this year, we've won feeling awards, I think, largely to do with the social element, uh, social media perspectives.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Over the last five, six, seven years, we've won a number of awards, really recognising that we've I I and I would say this, but from a marketing point of view, we've really been pushing the boundaries in terms of how um we go to market with that particular trust.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And mindful that not always are we getting the kind of backing or approval, not just from an kind of a board from an investment trust, but just more broadly for out-of-home or TV.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that was that part of your mindset, which is they are not clustered.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: We can really make a difference.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, I think people are increasingly doing social, but maybe staying within the limits of LinkedIn as opposed to kind of really looking at other platforms.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: So again, was this part of the strategy to go where others didn't?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I I think there's there's obvious benefits of going where others aren't because you get a better impact in terms of cut-through and uh and whatnot, as long as you're successful, of course, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: The success is the or is working effectively as a really key piece.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, if you look at, you know, we were very, very clear in terms of who our audience is and who our audience isn't, or primary audience, I should say.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, if I go back from my own career, well, as a saga, saga's notorious for over 50s, right?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's and anything and anybody under 50, it's not that's not the primary target market for saga.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: So very, very deliberate in terms of who the audience is.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: F and C, I said, as I said, is everyday, the everyday investor, so people who have potential assets to invest, but there's also within investments how do we educate, not educate in a patriser way, but how do we show them the benefits of of investing and those sorts of things.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, if you look at that, then so starting with the audience very much and the objectives and the proposition and whatnot, then TV is a really oh but I should say, you know, trust is extremely important in investments.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: TV's fantastic for generating trust.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: And TV these days is very different to what it was 20 years ago or whatever, in terms of linear TV, you don't just have to do ITV South and those are you can be extremely targeted in terms of how you're doing it, but you can do it on a mass scale uh on a on a very big scale.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when you look at today's audience, as I said, social media is really important in terms of people with the investable assets today, it is really important.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow's audience, it's fundamental.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that kind of I always think that if you've got the the audience of the proposition, the strategy really clear, the media to a degree will show itself in terms of where you should where how how do you need to engage with those those um audiences.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would say the the fact that others aren't doing it, that's a benefit, definitely.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's not necessarily the primary driver.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: The primary driver is because that's how, for today and tomorrow, that's how we will be able to engage and talk to those audiences in an effective manner.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: That was that's the prime driver, really.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: That ties in nicely to the question we're asking everybody in the in this series is what does success look like for marketing and financial services?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels like there's a sort of neat sort of segue there, if you're able to just answer that for us.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think you'll get some people who are say it's all about the customer, which of course the customer is fundamental, I'm not suggesting otherwise, right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And some that will say it's all about the return of investment.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually, I think, a balance between the two, and making sure that you've, you know, ultimately to be successful for a customer, the business needs to be commercially viable, right?
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to balance the two in terms of making sure that we're getting what the customer is expects, what the customer needs, is competitive, all of those sorts of things.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the aspiration should be absolutely you know, uh the leading sort of market, go-to-market or customer experience that people have.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Of course it should be, but we do need to balance that with the commercial objectives of the business as well, making sure that we get that balance right in a competitive manner.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: That would be my sort of take.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Fabulous.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then to wrap us up, um thinking about some tips for people listening, how they can take some of your principles or some guidance and your experience as to how they might think about their careers.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Any any tips for us?
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: I would say so.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: From a thinking of it as a from a marketing perspective, I would say don't underestimate the value of having the commercial perspective on things.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think all too often within marketing, people will run to the tactics like the advertising or the social media or whatever it might be.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And those, I'm sure, you know, that's it's not always the really fun bit, but that's that's really high visibility and all of those sorts of things.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: So people often run to that.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget that the commercial basis as to why we're doing that and the return on that investment, you know, with are really fundamental.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's businesses, the language within businesses typically is is financial uh is numbers, if you like.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do you translate what the marketing is doing and how it's supporting that bigger picture that the business has?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it needs to do it in a customer-focused way, of course.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's just good marketing, but don't forget the commercial element of it.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's really important.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And being able to translate marketing into commercial aspect or yeah, the commercial relevance, I think, is a really, really powerful skill.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Ross, thank you so much.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: I always feel I learned so much talking to you, and I 20 minutes is definitely not long enough, but thank you so much for your time today, it's been such a treat.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Pleasure, thank you.