End-to-end outreach workflow
Table of Contents
- Data becomes useful when it’s translated into everyday language people can act on, not left as spreadsheets, KPIs, and jargon.
- The biggest mistake is drowning in the details; strong data work starts by zooming out, understanding the user journey, and then checking whether the right data exists.
- Internal (first-party) data is the best starting point because it’s unique, brand-relevant, and fully owned, with external sources used to supplement it.
- AI helps most when used like an intern—within a standardized prompting framework to sense-check, explore audiences, and spark ideas—rather than treated as an autonomous strategist.
Data has a reputation problem.
It often feels like it’s an elusive secret buried in spreadsheets and reserved for people who “get numbers.” (I’ve always excluded myself from that camp under this podcast.)
But the gap between those who work with it every day and those who can tell stories should be getting smaller.
The real challenge with data isn’t access, but knowing what to pay attention to, what to ignore, and how to turn numbers into stories that actually land.
That’s why I sat down with Thierry Ngutegure and George Sinnott from Six Chillies, a data-led agency built around the idea of data translation, to understand how brands can make sense of what their data is really telling them, and how to use it in the real world.
Here is a slightly edited transcript for those who prefer reading.
Where does the name Six Chillies come from?
Thierry
Yeah, so there are probably two answers to this. One of which my mum can listen to; the other, I probably can’t say out loud. ⁓ I guess the first answer to that is, or all we can say is that the name came upon us in Ibiza with copious amounts of tequila. So that is a story I’m sure would tell you or anyone else kind of offline.
But the my mum friendly version is that ultimately we wanted to differentiate ourselves a little bit. So the space that we occupy is that we believe there is a bit of a gap that is and a divide that’s kind of getting a little bit wider with time in terms of where pure play, you know, data analytics lives. So these are the individuals who understand data from a technical perspective. And then there is like the rest of the world, right? So these are people who want to use that data, who understand its importance, its strength.
and how it can galvanize people and unite stories and all kinds of beautiful stuff. And we think that that gap is getting wider and wider because with the emergence of AI for example, anyone who is a practitioner and is in it, you are absorbing it, it changes every single day, but not everybody is a practitioner and so then that gap of knowledge starts to widen. And so then we wanted to be the individuals who sit in the middle of that and kind of be…
as we’re calling ourselves data translators. So helping individuals understand what is it that you should pick up and what you should put down.
And so then in terms of the Six Chillies, we really wanted to create a brand that stands out from traditional data brands.
So then when you, we want you to hear, Six Chillies is coming onto this call. You think, ⁓ I didn’t know a creative agency was coming.
And then boom, there you go, right? And so it’s demystifying this whole notion that data is boring and this is this traditional slogans and terms are used around data like agile and fast and this and all this kind of stuff and we thought you know what?
Yeah, let’s them.
Let’s bring up a little bit of creative pizzazz into the data world.
Why has data gotten so boring?
George
Yeah, to be fair, think data’s had a bit of a bad name for a while, it still does, to be honest. And I think it’s not always the most exciting thing to go and look at. A big spreadsheet, a lot of numbers, it kind of takes you back to school doing maths sort of thing.
And it was never anyone’s favourite at the time.
So it has that bad stigma around it. And yeah, people automatically sort of think it’s boring.
But I think when you kind of unwrap those layers a little bit and start to see that it’s everywhere, it’s kind of what’s building and making a lot of the decisions and formulating the stories and everything we’re doing, it actually has a lot of good and it isn’t bad as well, it’s not boring. It’s got the elements in there that kind of bring out the interesting insights that people are after and look for.
So I think the key to doing it all is to kind of help translate that data into something that’s more human, understandable, and people can relate to, really.
And I guess that’s hence why we’ve kind of fallen into the fall, really, of becoming data translators, as we keep saying. It’s kind of taking that language of numbers and maths into everyday English really and translating it into something that people understand and also can use.
So it’s not just about getting the data, they might see a figure or a KPI, but it’s also how they should use that figure and KPI in the real world, or how to actually help them rather than just being a number on a page.
What did you learn at an agency that you’ve brought to Six Chillies?
Thierry
Yeah, so over the years I think that we have held data on a pedestal as the objective truth, right?
So if I can find a number or a stat to pin against something, I can call my idea real, and this is what we should go forward with.
Now there is also, there is a bunch of nuance around there, you know, that kind of come into the whole thing that George was hinting at there where it’s like, you know, sometimes it can be bent to people’s will and some people see it as boring, but I think one thing I’ve really seen within agency world is actually the level of data literacy is not equal across all boards, but we assume it to be so.
So we hold data to this really like high esteem and then we assume everybody has the ability to understand it.
And that’s really not fair because ultimately everybody has different brains.
The way you think about stuff and see things is vastly different.
The way George and I see things in a singular view of data is vastly different from each other, and I guess that’s why we kind of work.
But that level of data literacy, we still apply the same pressures of excellence and performance across the board regardless. So what’s happening is we’re saying data is the be all and end all. Everybody within their role has to have the ability to have the same data literacy and understand how do I clean data and read insight from it and then use that insight for business growth, whether that be internally or for my clients, et cetera.
And so then when people have the inability to do that then, we then go, well, this person’s pants, right?
And I don’t believe that that is fair.
And so hence why we keep calling ourselves like data translators, in the way that we’re kind of here to help people get their head out of the sand and show them that actually the data that you hold isn’t overly complicated, it’s just that we’re trying to consume too much at any given time.
We’re not quite sure what to pick up and to put down.
We’ve become hoarders over years where we just collect, collect, collect, collect, and actually we’re like, where’s the TV remote?
I have no idea, it’s in here somewhere, right? And so our job is really to bridge that gap and show individuals that your level of data literacy is completely valid.
If you want to educate yourself, absolutely, hear the resources and the way to do so.
If you don’t believe it is something that brings you energy, that’s absolutely fine.
That’s where we then up our ability to translate that for you and help you tell that story. And so I think that’s why I think our positioning has done so well, because we’ve been vastly honest with something that maybe a lot of us are maybe too prideful to admit to ourselves about data that it is difficult and it is hard, and actually saying I don’t know is just as powerful as having the right stuff.
Is AI making telling stories with data easier for people?
George
Yeah, I was going to say that we might both have two opinions on this one, me and Thierry, but we do like to treat going back to the first bit, I think it definitely has helped and made things a lot easier in areas, but it’s complicated it in others. I feel like AI coming along is a bit like the invention of the calculator or the invention of Excel and that kind of thing.
It’s a huge tool that is going to change a lot of stuff, like you wouldn’t dream of now doing long division on paper, but you now have that tool to do it for you, to formally calculate it.
So I think the way we kind of treat it in our world at the moment is sort of a bit like an intern, as in it can do some really great things, it can really take off a lot of work from your plate, help you with a lot of the tasks like that, but it’s not a super genius full member of staff, if you know what mean.
So it’s kind of treating it in the right way and using it for the correct jobs, really. If you want to do a few percentage difference calculations, go for it, it will certainly help you there doing building a huge KPI dashboard to track all of your main metrics.
It technically has the capacity to do it, but that’s definitely the areas where it kind of falls down.
So yeah, we use it a lot, but it’s kind of used in the right areas a lot. It still doesn’t quite have the full capabilities of being a calculator that does its own maths. You still need to be putting in the right stuff.
How would you recommend an agency use AI in their data studies?
Thierry
Yeah, so, think it needs to be firstly in a standardized way.
So for example, let’s take like ideation, for example, right? let’s take, yeah, coming up with data led ideas. I’ve seen a lot of discourse online, especially within the kind of content marketing and digital PR and data led campaigns about, know, I could tell from a mile away when a brief has been written by AI or there has been a human plus AI, you know, interaction.
I think within that realm really, a lot of people have thought that have overestimated the fact that we use, like I actually think the problem is because we call it AI.
So everybody then thinks that this is a thing that has its own autonomous thinking and has its own rationale, can truly devise novel concepts.
It’s really not, right?
So it’s almost a regurgitative machine from that perspective, right? Of saying like, whatever, it’s only as good as what you put in and it’ll only ever really assist you in that sense. So if you understand that that is case, you can build frameworks around how you prompt it.
Or even when you’re sharing ideas across business. within an organization, how you’d like to idea as a business, if that framework sits at the top and then everyone else is kind of working from the same model, that’s really clever at least.
And so then you’re all kind of ideating from a similar thing where you’ve briefed it, you know, what is my audience?
What is the brand?
Who is the brand?
What do they want to be?
And what are the do’s and don’ts?
What are the things we can and can’t say?
What are the opportunities that we foresee within the next five to six years, et cetera?
So then within that ideation aspect, really, the way we kind of use it is to kind of firstly kind of sense check certain things.
So, for example, a large proportion of our framework is telling our model who it is and then querying it.
Right. So let’s say we are working for ⁓ a brand that, like a supplements brand, right. And they’re launching a product anew in January, and they’re trying to understand how they differentiate themselves within the market versus their competitors.
So let’s take, for example, we’re launching creatine, right? So it’s a widely researched product.
Everybody’s in the market with creatine.
So what is our angle as a brand and so then what we did there is go.
Okay, brilliant.
Well, who is our target customer and then build a persona around that for our model and then we’d query again against it and say, okay, we know that we are not in sports performance, but we are in well-being and kind of daily consumption.
How do you typically take this product?
Why would you take this product?
What are your beliefs of its benefits?
So not what we know its benefits are, but what are your beliefs towards its benefits?
And where are you getting this information from?
And so that allowed us to then go, actually, there’s a real opportunity here to position ourselves for like creatine for women and the idea being it’s all about muscular kind of growth and endurance and then the kind of mental capacity in which that creatine has as a benefit for this specific audience type.
So there I’ve not gone please give me three ways I can sell creatine to these things and generate ideas.
No, I’ve used it that thought process was framework to begin with, I’ve given it a very strict parameter in which to operate against and then I’ve used it to soundboard and inspire me.
And I think that’s actually the best way, outside of obviously whipping out the world’s longest formulas and things like that, I think that’s probably the best way people should be using it specifically from a content and digital PR ideation.
Where should brands go to get data?
George
Yeah, like to be fair, I think this is the it’s almost a simple answer, but looking internally, looking at all the data they have themselves, it’s by far our favorite data sets. If you like, if they have they will have data on their customers, on their products, everything that they’ve got on the website.
Like, having that data is, first, unique, and completely relevant to the brand, obviously. And it allows you to create some really great stories that are fully owned by the brand themselves as well.
So it pretty much ticks all of the important boxes at the beginning.
There’s obviously some brands and industries that are much harder to use the internal data for one reason or another.
So it can be difficult, even just on a client base.
Sometimes they’re not too sure about sharing, but if you can get hold of internal data, it’s 100% the best bet.
Because yes, obviously there are lots of public sources that we use and we obviously rely on them a lot as well, but they always come with their caveats of…obviously other people can use it. It’s normally free data out there somewhere. They all have their own agendas on how the data was collected and how it was used. So there’s never the perfect mix out in the wild, if you like, but internal data itself very much ticks all of the good boxes. And if you can at least use that as a 50 % or majority of your source, that’s great. And then maybe supplement it with the external sources, not trends, ONS, anything that you kind of have out there and build on it.
then that’s great. yeah, have internal data at the source of it is definitely the most ideal starting point.
Vince
Yeah, Terry, anything to add there?
Thierry
The only thing I would also add is without a shadow of a doubt, that’s our favourite. And I guess there’s a conversation to be had there around.
giving the business the confidence to be able to relinquish that data. That’s a whole thing that we kind of work around and we work with teams on. And also some people host, have data, but don’t believe they do have data. So we did a campaign a while ago with Adzuna, who were a jobs board aggregator, and you could basically submit your CV and it will check it for you and check for grammar. And we kind of said, do you guys hold these on file? And they were like, yeah, yeah, in a compliant way.
Yeah, we hold them for a certain period of time.
I said, well, how many have you got? said two million. I said, sorry, you’ve got two million CVs on your back.
And they went, yeah, it’s just, don’t really do that. thought, excuse me. So then that’s when that spawned a whole different thing around, like how much is your degree worth? How much is my name worth? Like how long do people stay in roles before they jump? Like what roles are adjacent?
So if somebody was a nurse, what other jobs are they then going to do? Not in that same sector. So you can kind of see what’s going on. Like so much, right?
So yeah, absolutely there is You always kind of do have it in some format whether you believe or not You just kind of need the confidence to look at it And then if you’re ever just ideating there are more data sources than we’ve got seconds in this entire podcast to be able to kind of tell you but I guess the way I’d kind of see it is if you see an awesome campaign that is out there read the methodology go and have a little look at the methodology and the amount you can gleam from the excellence that others have created is absolutely phenomenal because otherwise as I say like there are millions of data sources and millions of places that you can kind of go to get it.
But if you are plugged into what is good within your industry and within your sector and you can collect quite a quite novel list of data sources.
Now it’s not to say that you then create the same campaign, but the way we look at it is like a kaleidoscope, right? you collect a bunch of different sources that maybe a lot of people have used in your industry and you create a novel story from that different view that you’ve created, that you’ve collected.
It’s not like you’re creating like-for-like, but you’re taking a little bit of inspiration, mixing it with your own kind of spark, and creating a whole new view.
How do you find stories in the data?
Thierry
Yeah. funnily enough, the, the, um, the kind of riff I was going off there, all of that came without actually looking at the data.
This is the interesting thing.
Cause I think people believe that they need to open up the spreadsheets and see 19 columns and go, God, and they think I’ve got some magical power where I go that one. And I picked like cell 344. You have been selected. Like, yeah.
Yeah, too many people watching movies. feel like it’s too many movies. Yeah, I blame the matrix, right?
But yeah, so like people think that that is a thing, all I did to truly understand that was go through the user experience of like put myself in the position and go, by the way, like even for the fact I could ask the question as to do you hold these CVs, I kind of went through my clients, like our target audience is like user journey.
And I went, it submits my thing.
That’s really cool. And then it does this.
At no point did I actually see the data set, I just kind of went through the experience and said, I think this would actually be really cool.
And I think that’s a way easier way to actually come up with the idea.
And then we are then looking as to whether that data therefore exists.
Because I think some people maybe get lost too much in the data and actually can’t zoom out anymore now.
And you’re kind of drowning in the spreadsheets and the story is kind of lost from there.
George
Yeah, like to be honest, it’s the only thing most of it on the head to be honest.
But I tend to look at it from a higher point of view. So, really zoom out and take a look at it from a top-line perspective.
As you say, it’s not about opening the spreadsheet and looking at all the nitty-gritty details. It’s you’ve got data on CVs and just having that information in itself. can then it’s then that’s a good time to start doing your brainstorms and talking with people and even go back to AI potentially and using it there and kind of chatting about.
We know about CVs, what could we do with them, what could be interesting to look at, and kind of have those ideations of the different areas to look at, and 90 % of the time, the data will probably tell you the story. I think that’s the other thing to bear in mind here is that a single figure or a small amount of data, it could be a tiny table, it can tell 10, 20 different stories. So yes, having a huge data set is great at the same time, but if you can zoom out and understand what the kind of overview of it is.
you’re likely that data will tell you that story or help you find that angle. And if it’s not that exact one of how much is your name worth, it could give you something similar, but you’ve kind of already started going down that path and started looking into it. Like say, it’s definitely not a dig through thousands of lines of data and live in a spreadsheet for a week. We literally never do it. And I know our names, our job title is enjoying the data and enjoying that. don’t thrive off living in spreadsheets. We thrive kind of on understanding what data can show you and therefore kind of just knowing where to look.
But yeah, it’s been a top line and looking at it from above.
What makes it an enticing story?
George
Yeah, like I think the answer to that one is from my point anyway is a fairly simple one like if you personally think it’s cool or you personally think it’s interesting that’s probably going to get you halfway to be honest like if you’re just dragging yourself for a sheet and you’re like oh that’s a stat I don’t really care about it like as in it’s just a random number that is probably not going to be cool it’s not going be interesting but when we’re going through things it’s kind of sad to be honest but we’ll look through data sheets we’ll be doing a campaign we’ll probably ping it to the person like oh cool did you know this or did you see this and
That in itself is probably quite a good highlight.
I guess being a little bit nerdy in data kind of helps. But when we find things interesting, it genuinely will work. But then the other point that you kind of said there Vince anyway is just how you frame it. Like you could say 2000 people have said this XYZ and it’s kind of a bit factual and a bit like descriptive of the data.
But if you can then frame it in half of the UK is now doing this instead of this or the way you frame it, like you say, the way you look at the cube from underneath or above, that is what also can help make it interesting. I wish I had a good example off the top of my head. Terry maybe I’ll have this, he’s quite good at thinking of one, but if you have two stats next to each other, it could be the same stat, but just the way you’ve said it or phrased it would probably make it interesting to 100 people and to another one it’ll make it interesting to thousand people.
So yeah, it’s the framing and also just naturally if you think it’s cool or not.
Thierry
Yeah, yeah, so I just think in there’s also like them the tactical element of it so and a lot of times I think what George isn’t giving himself credit for here is that there is a large like there’s a large piece there’s a large piece that we spend on understanding our audience and like what is it that they’re physically searching?
And understanding what those motivational drivers and intent pieces are so like anyone kind of works within the performance marketing space will be very akin to kind of keyword tracking, right?
And so they’ll already understand what like the common FAQs are and what questions people are asking.
So in that kind of jobs board piece, we already know in a sense of like, you know, there are people who are trying to gain more skills, for example, or there are people who want to switch jobs and therefore we can understand, they have the inability, like not everybody has the ability to see everyone’s CVs.
It’s like…that kind of human truth of being like, what are the Joneses doing? Right?
And looking over the fence and going, they’ve got a new patio. I need a new patio kind of thing.
Right? So there is a, what are people kind of searching?
And then to bridge that then gap is we read a piece a while ago, which was like, think, I think it was like Kelsey from Fractl wrote a piece on it as well around the emotional drivers. I think it was commonly held cycle. Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, it’s a commonly held psychological principle around if you can have either lead with an emotional driver or use an opposing emotion to create two almost arguing points. And the UK media is fantastic at doing that, to tell you that right now. But that’s also quite a tactical way of understanding. I’ve taken something maybe that isn’t cool and making it cool and being like, OK, brilliant, I’ve got this stat around like…
People typically stay in that no there was a stat around Jet this generation is gonna have like seven it’s like six or seven careers or something like that not even jobs It was like careers like will change complete career. All right, and and then that was a really interesting piece that they kind of got out there but then and it’s then how do you make that relatable to a wider audience because “Great, you’re saying, okay, maybe like Gen Z and Gen Millennials, et cetera, are gonna be changing so many careers.”
Great, they’re gonna be now interested around like, well, what do people do?
What are those cross skills, et cetera? And then I guess there is the opposing emotion on the other side of maybe an older generation who are like, these guys can’t remain consistent.
Do you know what I mean?
And immediately we’ve created two points of like distinct, like two points of interest for two different audiences with the same piece of data and it’s cool for for both individuals just by kind of using emotion as a connecting string.
Can you talk a little more about the strategy behind formulating ideas?
Thierry (31:50)
Yeah, it’s a really interesting one because with a lot of these, with a lot of those types of ideas, like top 10 or must haves or the best of this. is once again still leaning into that kind of audience psychology, like, we want to look, do we want to see if we are in the top 10 or if our behaviour is within the thing, right?
So like if I say like here are the top five things you should be doing for your daily routine. I guarantee you probably won’t absorb most of them. You’re looking for confirmation bias, right?
To be like, I do three of them great, I am not a horrible human being, right?
And be like, I’m okay.
And it really kind of tugs on that, hence why those tactical pieces seem to work really well.
And YouGov knows that hence why they do their daily polls, right?
So they know immediately if there’s something topical happening, they’ll get it out to a nationally representative audience and then get that data back. And it’s really kind of topical and in the moment and it allows you to place yourself on the ladder of expectation in life and whatever kind of ⁓ angle, but when it comes to like. Let’s say let’s accept back. We’ve got a couple of frameworks to be fair that we we use around how to pitch a data led idea firstly as well and then how to then present it.
Yeah, so when upi pitch for client you can pitch it because ultimately you’re to be pitching it — so whether it’s to your team right or to a client—that kind of helps take those tactical elements of like search behavior for example or something that’s trending and then build it into a bit of a strategy.
So that it’s like it shakes each other’s hand, and it kind of it works in tandem so the first one we kind of stole from Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle because it’s just a fantastic framework anyway but it goes like this: why, how, and what.
So this is for pitching ideas and the why is kind of like well why should I care ultimately right so from our perspective if we went all the way back to that creating piece over like why should I care?
Well, creatine has seen like 60 % increase in demand over the last 12 months and we think this is really important and it’s actually seen a 80 % increase within the female market.
Aha, so that’s why I should care, right?
And then it goes, what, how, sorry, why, how and what? And so then the how is then like, well, how did we get here?
How did that even happen?
And it’s like, well, actually creatine is now one of the most researched supplements and so therefore there’s a bunch more credibility around this and it’s something that a lot of people are leaning on and actually not a lot of brands are doing it well.
So there were some brands that got tested, and they didn’t have the right dosage amounts, et cetera.
That’s how we’ve kind of arrived here.
And so then the what is then, it’s like, well, what should I do about it?
Well, you should therefore reposition your creating product to be focusing more on a female demographic because there is a more holistic health and wellbeing benefit to this than it is for men and abs, abs, abs, abs, which is no longer the conversation that your audience is having.
So that allows you to then weave in that kind of search behavior and audience insight and all that.
Actually quite tactical.
So you’re top 10 and must have this and that kind of stuff.
Then actually build a bit of a strategy around it and be like, that’s why we’re going to go for this idea.
And then I guess there is then a thing to be said around like presenting that data, right?
Because it’s actually quite tough to present your data in such a succinct way sometimes and it’s like you just have to think about and then it’s reversed almost because this is then like who, what and how.
So who is it that I’m kind of presenting to and be very specific.
I am sick to death of seeing reports that are built for everybody.
Be very specific and intentional as to who it is that you’re speaking to and that kind of data literacy piece we were talking about.
Not everybody can understand everything.
So who is it I’m pitching to? What action do you want from them?
Be very intentional so are we do you want more budget do you want it signing off do you want them to look at something?
Do you want them to actually take a specific action as to we’re gonna shop this product?
Like what is the action that you actually want them to take?
Then that helps you dictate the how which is then the format as to how that’s kind of given across so no at that point with with creating it only needs to be three slides I don’t need to have I don’t need to have a white paper showing them the citations and growth of creatine within the last decade and how it shifted from performers to health and well-being.
Contextualize it for me, right?
I know the who, I know the what, so the how can be wrapped up really nicely and neatly.
George
I think Thierry’s nailed most of the points on that one to be fair but yeah like I guess to summarise in a nutshell with survey data and angling it is about the who you actually want to get to read it and do stuff from it.
So yes having the two sides of X thinks this, Y thinks this and kind of how they they combat each other.
It’s I guess going back to previous question to be fair just how you frame that angle and how you frame it and word it and you could have the same stat word in two different ways and it’ll appeal to two different groups. So it’s always better in that mind.
When a campaign earns links and national coverage but doesn’t reach the client’s real audience, is it still a win?
George
Yeah, to be fair, as you say, it depends on what the overall purpose of it is.
It has its benefits and its cons in doing the same thing. yeah, SEO wise, that’s great.
But it can also be part of the longer term game as well.
So yeah, right now it may not be too relevant or it may not have that. B
ut as we go into things like as AI and all that, we’ll start to change how we search.
It knows that that gym has this much relevance over there, and then people are in London and they’re searching for it, it can help in that way as well.
It’s not that it would have been a bad campaign or that it didn’t quite hit its mark.
I was purely what the goals were really.
I guess that’s kind of where we kind of do a lot of our foundations is how you frame things.
We have a bit of a skill really of framing it in a positive or negative way.
That’s kind of why I like data really because it’s the one truth, two plus two is four, no matter how you look at it. But you can equally frame four as being great or four as being bad. yeah, that case really is kind of what the overall goal was and what the aim of it was, depends on how it was, good or bad.
Thierry
I find it really funny at times, to be honest with you, because we get a lot of briefs.
Like, we get a lot of briefs and a lot of individuals who come to us for just even just the ideation perspective, right?
So like when they kind of come to us and say, I’ve got this idea, I think it’s… And we’re kind of looking at the brand and then going, who’s it for?
And then we read the audience and we’re like, I’m not quite sure you’re going to…but then that’s for us as I say to kind of help with that data translation and be like actually this idea you’ve got is not relevant so much to this audience.
So we can either help you navigate to change that idea, or you know we need to kind of be targeting a whole different individual.
So one industry I find over the years has been probably one of the most prolific ones for stuff like this is the gambling industry.
They’ve kind of had their hands tied behind the backs in a lot of mainstream media channels, right?
So there’s only so many things that they can do and say.
And so then it means that that pressure creates campaigns that have… Like I’ll see this campaign and I’m like, this is really, really clever. It has to be a fashion brand. And you’re like, it’s a gambling brand.
And you’re like, how is that connected?
But you can tell that it was for the tactical kind of link building as opposed to, you know, your brand awareness and audience.
It can be quite funny.
I do understand that the pressure applied upon them and the restrictions applied upon them means they have to be creative in an industry that doesn’t belong to them sometimes.
But yeah, it is quite funny to see.
What are some common mistakes people make?
George
Yeah sure like I think the biggest and easiest mistake is getting too lost and too drowned in the data as well.
Like I said previously kind of go for that overarching view.
You don’t need to be a numbers guy to kind of get data and enjoy data and get things out of it.
So take it for what it is.
It’s there to help and support you so feel free to kind of take that that higher approach.
Yeah and don’t get lost in all the numbers and the formulas because that really isn’t what it’s about.
It’s about having that stat that can help support what you’re after at the end of the day.
Thierry
I mean, even that sentence right where you said, I’m gonna challenge you here, Vince.
So like even the sentence where you’re like, I’m not a numbers guy, right?
I am a firm believer in like, you become what you kind of say about yourself.
So a long time ago, a long time ago, anyway, long story short, a long time ago, I used to take pictures and then I’d look at them and go, my God, I look horrific.
And it made it like, dented my self-esteem by the very nature of every time I looked at a picture I thought, I look horrible.
And then I got to a point where I kind of went, actually, do know what?
I’m never gonna say a negative thing about a picture and I’m never gonna delete a picture of myself because I think it’s awful.
And it does wonderful stuff for your self-esteem.
And I guarantee it is the same for the way we talk about data.
So we go, oh, I’m not a numbers person. Then you have zero chance of like lifting your head out of the sand and like, you know, trying to help yourself navigate that.
And I truly like that whenever we’re working with people, one of those things is immediately, as soon as they say that sentence, we’re like pit bulls down their throat.
Like, no, you are believe in yourself.
You kind of think, don’t you dare speak about yourself like that.
Like you’ve got here, you’ve got an incredible job and you’re doing and you’re doing amazing.
You’re doing everything that you can. So like that’s one straight away.
Another one I would say is brainstorms. Quite funny. So we worked with a client who was spending about 10, God, I’ll spend about 20 grand on surveys every month.
We managed to get them down to two and a half a month and the only thing we changed there was turning up to brainstorms and stopping people saying, I think we should do a survey on.
Immediately, your idea, no matter what idea comes out of your mouth, it’s gonna be a survey.
So then what we say is within brainstorms, do not talk about the format at which your idea will be delivered.
Speak your idea into existence.
And then, if we like that idea, there’ll be a feasibility period where we go, “Okay, how is this idea best delivered?”
Is it actually in an FOI?
Is it an index?
Is it a search thing? Is it a, like so, do we have to go out and get first party data? Actually a survey is probably best.
But the moment you say survey, then you put the lid on your idea and yeah, it’s gonna be whatever you put out into the world.
What are some brands that are nailing this?
I always leaned on Monzo. It’s just I’m obsessed with them.
I think I’m just going to keep talking about them until they not even hire me until I’m working in their offices or something.
But the reason I like Monzo is that banking has been a general like an industry that’s been around for hundreds of years and they came with a really fresh perspective of truly understanding your audience and what they care about to the point where they are.
When you go on holiday, when you come back, they’ll say, they’ll literally send you an email that says how many paellas you’ve bought on holiday, what equivalent of that is, like how far you’ve traveled, how many currencies you’ve bought stuff in.
Now imagine your traditional bank, like I’m not too sure about your US banks, but over here, like I can’t imagine, if Barclays or NatWest or HSBC sent me an email about what I’d spent on holiday, I promise you now I’d close that bank account. for some reason, Monzo is like, you have.
Monzo is almost like a Spotify Wrapped report for your bank, and no one else can touch them because they are transparent, honest, and out there in an industry that is historically shrouded in secrecy. It’s genius. Specifically data-led and I love it.
George
Yeah, to be fair, it might be the slightly cop out answer, but it’s the brands that are being just creative at the end of day, it might not even see it as as data.
Like I see obviously Monzo, you’ve got your stat and it’s like, yeah, 20 % more spent here and there and everywhere.
And you’ve kind of got that immediate data point there that shows you that they’re using data creativity.
But basically most brands or any brand really that’s doing something cool and creative out there will have had data that’s behind the scenes somewhere.
So it’s kind of the ones that you probably haven’t actually noticed doing cool stuff with data are probably doing cool stuff.
So yeah, the entertaining brands really in a nutshell of you were kind of Yeah, they’re, they’re not yo.u Your typical data guys.
They’re translating it into a way that people want to see and read.
They might not land with a percentage figure, but they land it with a cool story instead. yeah, it’s those brands really that stick out. In terms of actual brands themselves, that’s where I’m going to start falling on my face.
But it’d be things like, even like, the one that came to mind was something like Aldi.
Aldi, they obviously have in the UK with their, Chris Sudvers are very well known for their carat but also all their stuff they do with &S and how they kind of go back and forth with each other.
Now it looks like there’s no data there, it looks like they’re just trying to have a bit of a laugh with another brand and just get a bit of publicity but behind the scenes they’ll have been looking at how people are kind of relating to those stories and how they are have two different customer groups there and how they kind of view the stories and all of that information is what’s feeding their strategy and I guess that’s where they’ve used the data in an also data obvious way.
Thierry
And also data doesn’t have to be a stat.
That’s another thing that people keep forgetting. There is a qual. Yeah, hold tight my qual queens, right?
There is the qual end of this, right?
Which is just as powerful because it is interesting.
I do agree that, like when George said, you know, one plus one is two, or I’m sorry, two plus two is four, whichever way you look at it. But you can say four is high or low. Like I think that objectivity of like that quant side is why people lean to it because it’s like it’s black or white, is kind of what it is.
And then avoid Kual because they’re not too sure how to measure it or like what do I do from it.
But some of the most creative brands actually lean into Kual way more.
So there was a poster I saw, can’t remember whether it was like boots or Vaseline or Dove.
And they had this kid who was being moisturized by his mom, this young black kid has been moisturized by his mom.
His face is like all contorted and then it had like a typical like African.
I remember what language it is in, sorry, that is like a native sentence above it.
But what it really struck on was like, that to that specific audience, that cultural truth that sets in, because I remember my mum absolutely demolishing my face to moisturise it as well in that way.
And even though I didn’t know that African dialect, I truly understood exactly what they were trying to get at.
And I was like, my God, my mum did that to me too and they’ve just discovered a commonality, like what makes this audience the same within its own bubble, but different other audiences without using data, without using quant, they’ve used qual there to, you how did you first use this product?
What did your parents do?
Oh, did your, oh, your mom did this, right?
Oh, is that a common thread between all of it yet? Do you know what I mean?
What haven’t I asked?
George
I think you’ve covered a lot to be fair Vince, but I think I guess the final point I’d like to just make really is that data is for everyone.
It can be used everywhere, every place.
You don’t necessarily, it might shoot yourselves a little bit in the foot.
You don’t necessarily need people like us to kind of help you do that either.
Like you can do a lot of it yourselves. It’s about the confidence in yourself to know that you don’t need to be a mathematician to get data. You can get in there.
Think of what you want to know, what do you want to find out?
It’s likely that a dataset will probably hopefully have that in there for you.
Just have a bit more confidence in your own abilities with numbers because they aren’t too scary.
There’s just another language that just needs translating it.
And that is where we do help. But yeah, I do think that people can do it themselves.
Thierry
No, but literally that is, if anything, just riff off what kind of George is saying that ultimately we believe that when people feel empowered to use data and kind of understand data, it has like a really unique ability to transform communities, businesses and as we saw with Vince, your sense of self as well.
Is Gok Wan popular over there in the US?
No, he used to have a show anyway, was all, was, you know, he would dress people up in different clothes and things like that and he’d be like, he always ended with, it’s all about the confidence.
And it truly, truly, truly is.
Check out the BuzzStream Podcast
