In this episode of The Build Up podcast, Ryan Jones — managing director of SLG Agency, the construction marketing specialists now top of the CMA agency league table, and The Build Up's first-ever returning guest — comes back two years on to argue that AI is the biggest chance marketers have had to do the job properly. His problem with how the industry uses it: they reach for efficiency and more output, when the real prize is using AI to understand their audience well enough to earn a seat at the board table.

Ryan makes the case that efficiency and innovation pull in opposite directions, so cutting time and cost quietly kills the space you need to think — and with only about a third of people who call themselves marketers formally trained, he sees a reset on offer. He and Dan get into synthetic data hitting roughly 90% of the accuracy of six-figure research (SLG won best use of AI at the CMAs for it), the “cost of dull” finding that a boring B2B ad has to spend 600% more to land, and why only about 14% of paid-social spend actually works.

Along the way he covers SLG's Horizon 2026 report — four years of data now — where brand awareness has overtaken leads and marketers say buyers are harder to reach despite more channels, the 95:5 rule (nearer 99:1 in construction) that makes the first brand recalled the one that wins, and the post-it note he thinks every marketer needs: “they don't give a shit.” It's a grounded, numbers-first argument for using AI to understand people rather than replace them, and a reminder that whoever can't show their value is the one AI puts in trouble.

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Website: https://www.slg.agency/

Ryan Jones (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanjonesslg/

SLG Agency (LinkedIn): https://uk.linkedin.com/company/slg-agency

Horizon report: https://www.slg.agency/horizon/

Stay connected with dissident creative agency: https://linktr.ee/dissidentagency

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is that innovation and efficiency are diametric opposites.

You cannot have both of those things if you're optimizing for any kind of saving,

I think this is the biggest opportunity that marketers have had to do marketing properly.

but you have to have deep pockets.

You have to spend 600% more to have the same effects, so you can be dull. It's going to cost

Get off your backside, go and observe. Go into a builders merchant if that's your audience. Watch how people purchase, watch what they do and interact with when they go and pick up their order in the morning.

Hello and welcome back to the build up. I'm Dan, the creative director at dissident. And today I'm joined by Ryan Jones from SLG agency. They are an amazing construction focused marketing agency. Been around for I think 46 years. Ryan's worked his way up to the MD and we've he's actually the first returning guest of the Build Up podcast.

And today we talk about AI in construction marketing, how it's utilized, where it should be avoid and whose jobs are in trouble.

We also look through the horizon report, which is a report that SLG do every single year, I think since 2021, where they survey lots and lots of marketers within the construction space to get a sense of what's going on in marketing within construction. So we dive into that a little bit and figure out, like the differences between last year and this year and what's going on.

So really, really exciting, really interesting. This is definitely an episode for the marketers, the hard core marketers and construction. So hope you enjoy please.

Ryan, welcome back to the build up. Thank you so much. You are literally our first returning guest of the build up. And I had I had such fun on our last episode. You were literally one of the first people to ever record in in studio one of the podcast. And for a lot of the the guests that that come on here, it's about delivering value to your deal and and sharing knowledge and stuff like that.

And on your episode, you were just delivering values to not just the audience, but to me. I was like, I learned so much when you came on. I was like, I was infused by construction marketing. And so this is very much a podcast for me. The audience gets in front of them. Well, thank you for that. That's a that's nice fact.

Check it all afterwards and make sure that I am am about right. But as long as it feels okay and that's that's probably fine. But last I love this love this new setup. Yeah. For the for the the audience that only listens to this. Shame on you YouTube. And you get to see our cool new studio and and you can see our legs and I crunches sometimes, but who knows.

But yeah, thank you so much for coming on, mate. It's been maybe two years. Two years since the first. Yeah, you came on. We in the previous episode. Go check it out if you haven't already. A lot of that was focused on campaigns and positioning and research, huge, huge topics of conversation. And there might be a little bit of that in here.

We're going to dive a little bit more into AI and all sorts of other stuff, and kind of what's happened in those, those previous two years, but just give us a kind of whistle stop tour of like who you are first, what you do, and then we'll go into kind of what's changed in the last couple of years.

Yeah, sure. So, I'm managing director of an agency called SLG. So we're construction marketing, and I'll come on out. It's going to sound really, really based and stupid. I'll come onto a bit more about what what that means. So we've been around for 46 years this year, so look great. Thank you. Yeah, I've been there for most of it.

I feel it feel it feels longer. Yeah. And for most of that time, the almost all of that time we've been focused construction, manufacturing and the industrial sectors. And I think because we've had that, we've decided to specialize by vertical and market served. And that gives us a bit more license to be a bit more broad in our service offering.

And yeah, the last couple of years, I mean, what's changed for us in the two years since, since I was last year? AI I don't even think that was it was a thing, but yeah, and it was kind of a gimmick. It kind of kind of I think we're obviously you are seeing that mature and the money going into that.

It's not it's not going to stop, is it. And yeah, we were really fortunate actually, with the business plan that we've been working to, we're probably at the back end of a 4 or 5 year cycle for us, and I can't pretend it's because I saw AI coming and therefore we pivoted because of that. We were more focused at the time.

This was kind of Covid, just at that post sort of pandemic era. There was a little bit of a bump for us out of that, but it was for most people. I think it was a bit of a false read. But yeah, we had a bit of a conversation with clients on why us? Basically, there are thousands of other marketing agencies.

Why would you deal with us? And specialism was important to them, and we'd sold ourselves a lot on creative output. That was kind of a primary offer for us, and not to denigrate my colleagues because the work they do is fantastic. But, yeah, a lot of the reason why you're not under the creative agency was strategy. You understand our market, you understand the fundamentals of marketing.

So yeah, because marketing to jump back, it's quite a broad term. But yeah, we found a lot of agencies or a lot of practitioners say marketing and actually just mean comms or just mean sort of one part of. So so that's something that we're really, really big on is trying to be across the the mix of marketing across marketing as a, as a discipline.

And yeah, try and work with brands in the construction space that want that. I hate the phrase holistic, but but a more consultative approach that starts with, as you say, research and starts with insight, an audience. I think that's the most fundamental thing, and it's something that I will stay the conversation back to several times today, I'm certain, because I'm a bit of a stuck record for it.

But but yeah, so so we pivoted and sort of doubled down on on that positioning, mainly because of nature and because of, you know, things going in-house. There are certain services that we offered that were core for us that start to become commoditized. AI is just an accelerant for that. So. So yeah, so we've been really, really fortunate in that respect that the calls that we made, I think they fit really well with where I think the industry is going.

And yeah, we've been subject to the same market conditions as everyone else. But yeah, it's been a good couple of years. We're number one on the CMA agency league table now. So so yeah, as a metric, that's what we we're not on the league table at all a few years back to then fourth to to second to first.

So yeah that's that's a massive not that I was the be all and end all. But as a as a yardstick for measurement. That's a it's a pretty good one. It's one that the team have been focused on. So yes. No it's a it's all good. And there's a lot of exciting things on the horizon. So interesting times

I guess my next question is.

How are you seeing AI being utilized both in your, I guess, in our sector? I guess we could put this like two fold. We could go our agencies kind of benefiting from AI. And then I guess what's the downside of that to some extent like are we seeing are we seeing things happening. That's just like this is concerning because there's always that that we discussed it just ever so slightly before.

The episode of AI is taking jobs, and there is an argument for that, but also not at the same time. What's your take on it, broadly speaking? Yeah, if we start there from a broad point of view, because from a broad view it's double edged. And I think for the industry and for our, our role, I think it's double edged.

I can't pretend I don't have concerns about, the societal implications for AI on a large scale from a security point of view, and also some of the things with, with deepfakes and various other bits like I can't I can't tell them that's not happening. However, I think if we as a nation in further nations, you know, we everyone seems to be obsessed with continual growth.

We need a catalyst for that. I think you've alluded to it, but if you look how crazy macro conditions have been in geopolitical conditions have been for the last 20 years, it's been shock, aftershock, aftershock. They're not conditions for sort of creative thinking and innovation and everything else. So I think this is for me, that's what's really exciting about it potentially, is that this has the potential to really be a catalyst for all kinds, of all kinds of growth.

I think what you're seeing at the minute, at that point on fear, I'll pull this down to marketing in a second, but from a larger level is that the minute people, I think are using it more from an efficiency and a savings point of view, rather than in an innovation point of view. And there's a chap that I'm pretty evangelical about called Blair Ends who has a thing in general terms called the inefficiency principle, where his argument is that innovation and efficiency are diametric opposites.

You cannot have both of those things if you're optimizing for any kind of saving, whether it's time or cost, that's the the detriment of the time and headspace and create space that you need to be innovative, which is to some extent a lot of people will be like, well, that's that's counterintuitive because I'm trying to save time so I can have more creativity.

But actually what happens is people are just filling that time with more stuff. Yeah. And I think that's again, that's one of my to speak from a marketing point of view. That's one of the things that I'm seeing at the minute. I think there's there's been a bit of an incubation period for AI adoption where the LMS ChatGPT is like the retail offer to the sector, but the potential for it is so much bigger.

It's absolutely enormous. It's like, you know, the popularization and how widespread and democratized the internet became. It wasn't just websites. It was everything else that came with, you know, computer networks and so on, and then the TV before that. And it feels like another one of those leaps on. It can't just be that we use it just to make more links, impulse slightly quicker.

You know, from our point of view, from the things that you can do now from a research point of view, audiences that you wouldn't be able to speak to otherwise. Just getting back to the fundamentals of start with audience, start with kind of for marketing. Some of the things that we're able to do now on pricing strategies that would have taken months and months.

And frankly, there's not many brands in our sector that would have the time or the budget or see the worth of doing something like that. When they say marketing, they think comms and therefore more stuff. And that's fine to an extent, but I think it misses the this is the big opportunity here. I think this is this is game changing.

If you if you seek for it to be. And what I'm seeing at the minute and this is purely anecdotally for the most part, but the number of layoffs at the minute that I'm seeing people on LinkedIn within my network that are open to work, they're mid senior level marketers, and it kind of feels like organizations are looking at the balance sheet, some of the the big holding companies, for a marketing point of view, there's been a lot of big mergers, a lot of huge agencies all coming together, but it's all being run by consultants who I think are just looking at spreadsheets and going, do we need that headcount?

Do we need that? Not what can be done? How do we use these tools to achieve something that is even more seismic? How do we how do we reduce? Yeah, I think I think that's a massive I understand it again, can't be naive to the way that the market is. And conditions aren't great, as we say. But yeah, if you're looking just to make efficiency savings today, I think that's a really, really short sighted way of doing things.

And as an agency or as an in-house marketer, if you are just thinking of making more stuff. Yeah, I'm not I'm not certain that's the best use of the technology either. Again, it's such a tempting thought, isn't it? Because you just go, what? Hey, listen, we're we're a business that want to look and grow. We're looking to optimize.

And if you if you're a manufacturer and you're building a marketing team and the person is building marketing team, let's say they're not a marketer, they go, well, you know, a good example is, well, I can get someone who's strategic, let's say, and, and then and then I can get an implementation. So then but then there's this bit in the middle which is AI.

I think it was kind of like you get the implement. It kind of just, you know, do a lot of the kind of the busy work around marketing. But this bit in the middle of which is the AI can do everything in the middle as opposed to getting those kind of mid-tier, mid-level amid seniority marketers, creatives, whoever they are, to actually be creating a lot of stuff.

There's there's a creation kind of gap in the middle, and we kind of go over the good examples of copywriters, you know, as I think probably within our sector, one of the areas is trusting hit hardest because now when I read one for my company, but it's, you know, within obviously like in theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's oh, this is really hot off the press because as we're recording this, we've just responded to the government's call for consultation on the construction product reform white paper.

I mean, for anyone that I mean, a lot of people listen to, this will be in the construction product space and we'll understand the code for construction products information. So for those that don't that's been around for several years now, it's come out of the back of the hack. It reports that dangerous hack it did into Grenfell. One of the things that came out of that really sadly, was the role that marketing played in the fire in products, information not being correct, sometimes just through inaccuracy, sometimes through slightly more nefarious means of people manipulating test data and so on.

But we as marketers have a role to play in that. And again, not not to derail the conversation massively, but one of my concerns with AI is, as you say, if if jobs are being lost because we don't need a middle person to perform this task or this task, you have to really, really be certain that the person prompting the AI and the person that is reviewing the output knows they're not from a marketing point of view, but from a technical construction systems point of view.

And it's that thing of rubbish in, rubbish out to be polite about it. But that would be if I were a business just looking from an efficiency point of view and thinking that efficiency comes from headcount removal, you'd better have some pretty robust processes in place for making sure that material is correct, because while all that's happening, you know, channels need content and you need to be out there communicating to your audience.

So you need a robust strategy. You need to understand the framework in which all of that exists. And you need good people. You need to be certain that what's going out there is is accurate, because freezing up in inertia and not communicating is not an option. So yeah, I would say in the age of AI, that is one of the things that where I in-house, certainly that's one of the things I'd be concerned about is you can't lose that expertise.

You know, there's going to be quite a lot of people that listen to this. So what is so to that marketing begins and ends on like content or media, stuff like that. But it goes way better than that. There's a, there's a elements of marketing like let's say white papers, and technically it's in the same sort of bucket, but then some of this stuff is kind of like if we get that, it's not entirely architecture, just thinking about this stuff.

If that mentality is is but all different elements of communication from a brand. But then. Oh, I completely agree. But let me flip it to a positive. I think this is the biggest opportunity that marketers have had to do marketing properly. There's a big, big push at the minute for I think I saw a start the other day that from Ipsos and Marketing, we could work together on a on a report that of everyone on LinkedIn that has the word marketing in their job title.

Only something like 35% have actually had any formal training. So we've got a lot of untrained people running around doing marketing, whatever that may mean, to to them in their organization. And, and at the same time, we then have people on the other side of that coin bemoaning the fact that marketing is not taken seriously within our business.

You know, we can't get a seat at board level. It's just seen as the coloring in department. Just just go and do more stuff. This is a potentially a really big reset opportunity if you strip away everything, if you can use AI or if AI can be a useful tool to you, being the part of the organization that can demonstrate you best understand the customer.

Forget job titles, forget business functions. Just I know our audience because I have this set of data that tells us this. I know more about our market and our competitors than everyone else in this organization because I understand this. I think that is huge. Forget communications. Forget what that leads to. But just strategically as a kind of North Star to pin everything to.

I think that is absolutely massive. And there's again, this is my frustration slightly with people running into the LM side of things. There's the tools now to do that. They're accessible. They're becoming more cost effective like everything else has more competitors. And to market these things tend to. But yeah, I think there's that's where I get really excited about this, is that there's a chance for marketing to wrestle back some control.

You know, we'll look at the four piece marketers listening to this should be involved in pricing strategy. They should be involved in channels and routes to market. They should be involved in leading on product development. All of that couched in market orientation and understanding of audience. And I feel like we've let a lot of that go over the years in favor of communications and the shiny, fun stuff, and we should still be doing that as well, by the way.

But yeah, I think this is a really big potentially if, if we grasp it, I think this is a really big reset opportunity. I love that, yeah. It's you getting this kind of and this has been happening for ages. There you go through like phases and ways. But I'm I'm really excited about this and I'm scared of this.

And and as new things come out you go. This is amazing. I'm like and then you go, oh my God, that's actually terrible for the industry and all of this kind of stuff. It's all about the implementation. Right. But completely that and we spoke about a little bit of Mike and we've alluded to it on this. You've got to make yourself indispensable.

Whatever your role is. You might be involved in the delivery and implementation stuff. Don't allow yourself to become obsolete. If you figure out how to use this, this software to deliver better than anyone else may mean that you have to produce more. It made me that there's more assets or more channels, but so be it. But make yourself the person that either your organization or your clients go to.

For that it may mean a slightly different model, but we have to adapt. We have to evolve. And I would say, yeah, if were I working in house, that's where my head would be, is how do I make myself strategically indispensable so that it's not just we can get a junior with a Canva account to do X or Y if you allow yourself to be pushed into that position.

Don't be surprised when that when that happens. But the positive here is that you will now have tools at your disposal that you again, would your organization have spent a six figure sum on, you know, field work? As useful as I think that would be, the answer is probably not. You know, do you have six months to give up to research?

Are you going to commit to doing a brand tracker? You know, periodically speaking from experience here, most brands in this space won't. And that's it is what it is. You've got to be pragmatic about these things, but I think they should. But but they're not going to for the most part. And that's the world that we live in.

But you now have tools where not that they replace those things completely. I think the two can and should live next to each other. But yeah, you can certainly be much, much, much better informed on. Again, I would start with audience and then I would look at marketing competitors. And yeah, you can build out a really solid map of what are we measuring and why are we measuring it and why does that matter?

And what do we need to see move? What are our what are our leading indicators that purchases are coming down the track? If I do this, then this happens. If we want to talk to CFOs and PhDs and look like a grown up business function, we need to understand how sales work in our business. We need to understand how profit works in our business and show that marketing is a core part of that.

And if we can't, don't be surprised when we're not invited to the table. And don't be surprised when marketing is seen as a junior function that that becomes slightly disposable at that point. And that is a really, really good point that marketers as a whole has always struggled depending on the type of marketing, because to generate or to display ROI, it's always one of those difficult thing of like, don't ask me, don't ask me about the Roy on this particular thing.

But now we've got the kind of tools and resources, at the very least the predict model. I really comfortably and easily on on the stats that you have, because you've got all of these different processes and tools available to you that go, if I do this, this typically moves the needle in this way. What if I double down on this?

What does that do. And start to be predictive on those kinds of things. And I think that's probably a bit of a slapped on use case of AI is not just creating the marketing, but demonstrating the value of it to some extent, because, you know, the conversations I have all the time with marketers is about our why and how they defend what they're doing.

Yeah, based on that. And I think that there's plenty of tools available now that that make it easier and more effective and probably more accurate to at least predict it. Completely agree. And it sounds really counterintuitive in a conversation about AI to keep talking about humans and audience. But I think that's that's the that's the key bit to all of this.

I mean, some of the things that are happening within synthetic data at the minute, I'm really, really excited by that. I think the potential for that to for democratize research and democratize us being able to to get closer to our audiences, and particularly within construction and manufacturing. We'll talk about our horizon report. But one of the big things that song out to me this year is because you're absolutely right.

We have more tools that are disposable than ever. We've more channels at our disposal than ever. And yet the thing that jumps out this year is that the thing that marketers are most worried about is how fragmented their routes to market are, and decision making units are becoming more varied. I think one of the things that has happened with all of these different economic events that have happened, you mentioned it before this.

Nothing's gone away but the speed of decision making now, the fear that's kind of built into people. Yeah. With more data, with more channels, with more kind of touch points. Common sense says that that should be getting easier. But marketers are telling us the opposite, that it's much more fragmented now and much more difficult to get from A to B than it ever has been.

And that could be because sales in market are just harder to convert anyway in kind of in down markets. But yeah, that's the drum for it. But that's why I'm so obsessed with getting to audience particularly hard to reach audiences. And if decision make its decision making units are becoming bigger and more complex and more fragmented. Again, traditional research and field works going to make that even harder.

So yeah, synthetic data. I don't know how up on that you are, by the way. I mentioned that, but I was so I was I was going to be my next question. So my understanding of synthetic data comes from I podcast. I listen to calls. Oh my goodness, what's the CMO podcast. Uncensored. Yes. And he spoke to two guys that were like ex LinkedIn.

Yes, it's Pete Weinberg. And Jeff, I forgot this is the company that they've set up, vaguely rings a bell and they were talking about this concept and stopped me. If this is the complete wrong kind of topic, because this is way it was our level of understanding. But at the same time I'm like, that's cool. They were talking about a like a tool that they were developing where essentially you could get market research level data not quite as accurate, but very, very close based on based on this AI tool.

Yeah. So, so evidence is the yes, it's Lombardo and Weinberg are the two guys behind it. We've had a couple of conversations with them and they're they're incredible. So so yeah. So they were running the B2B Institute at LinkedIn. They've jumped ship to to do this. I think Mark Ritson is an investor in it as well, if I'm not mistaken, because the kind of pitch was or synthetic data is, is it's easier, it's quicker, it's cheaper then sort of field work.

Ritson I heard an interview a couple of weeks back was saying it's better, okay. Which is which is interesting only in that with if you're doing a lot of like qualitative data with humans, sometimes they can answer in a way that they think you want them to answer, or they get self-conscious about. I need to sound better or more knowledgeable and more important, and therefore it's slightly edited.

You don't get that with AI. It's kind of like, you know, give me the facts. So the principle is basically where they started from. Was that a lot of their clients, you know, their audience might be chief execs of fortune 500 companies. You're probably not going to get them to do an online survey for a 20 pound Amazon voucher.

And therefore we can find a solution to this. So they pull as many data points together from a, you know, a, a thermographic and a demographic. And then all these different, all these different things to build basically an AI replica audience. So you can speak to that audience on a 1 to 1 basis for things like things like testing creative things like sort of asking its opinion on, on various bits, or you can replicate that at scale.

So you have something like a, you know, a decent sample to be able to, to test against in a way that might not be possible. So as I said before, I don't think it replaces traditional research and field work. But as a quick and this is the thing that they were getting to, is I think they've tested it.

And in most instances it gets something like 90% accuracy versus traditional field trials on the same the same question sets and same audience types, which is which is great. Their thing is, would this get you to make the same decision that a commission piece of research would? Because if I've just saved you six months and I've saved you, you know, a six figure sum and it's gotten you to the same business decision that you would have made anyway, how much confidence do you need to be able to carry out this action?

Basically, we've been using it a lot. So we again took the horn time. We want our best use of AI at the CMAs last year and it wasn't for output stuff, it was for it was for this SM client that couldn't afford. I would not that couldn't afford but but it wouldn't stretch to. We need this piece of research and we need this out in market soon.

So so yeah. So we use synthetic and the stuff that came back was incredible. They tested it with with their audience and again, high degree of kind of crossover with answers and stuff like that. So it gave them enough confidence then to be able to move forward. It's yeah. And it will get it will get better.

So we hadn't the written the recent thing of if it's better than field work, I don't know if I'd go that far. I still think there's a case for both, and I don't know if he's saying it's probably. It probably is both rather than one or the other, but, by God, it's impressive. Well, the fact that, yeah, it's great.

Right. Because that the fact that it's available and cheaper and.

Effective means that that might be the difference in research and no reason at all. Yeah. And you guys, you know, so focused on research where we can't make the decisions when we have the data. That's a that's a really key point. The other thing that's enabling us to I think I alluded to it a little bit earlier, if you think about the traditional for peace, it's not just, you know, we need a marketing strategy or whatever strategy, it's pricing, its recommendations on that kind of stuff.

And again, if we're going to talk about marketing like a proper grown up part of the business, that's what matters. You know, you talk about more measurement at our disposal. If you're talking to a CFO, yes, I can show them that, you know, mentions on social have gone up. And, you know, we're getting more engagement on this. And they might be able to understand that.

Well, that probably means that we are more well thought of and therefore people are more likely to purchase. If I can demonstrate that we have some flexibility to charge a price premium, and therefore it's going to have this much effect on bottom line, that kind of matters a little bit more. Not to denigrate things like reach, not to denigrate things like engagement or whatever else.

You need those softer metrics as well. But the key part of that sentence there is as well. And yeah, like I say, stop record a little bit, but this is the bit of AI that I'm personally really excited about. Some of the stuff and the creative output. Great. You still need a human for that stuff, but this is the bit where I'm personally, I no doubt a little bit as as will be coming across, I'm sure.

You know, like when we put you guys into the perspective of like where you kind of sit within marketing, within construction. It's at the start, right? It's it's that we have we have a problem. Let's, let's go from the beginning of the research solution, strategy, things like that. When when you get to dissonance level, we're kind of like quite a few runs down from there, down in a negative thing.

But we're further along. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're looking into like other elements. But a lot of the time we're not, we're not working to a strategy that in depth, you know, we sometimes we get lucky, we get to work with with with brands and agencies like yourself. Sometimes they don't have the resources to do those things. And we're being brought in as a, as, as something that needs to happen.

But there's not been a lot of data kind of come through about what we need to talk about, how we talk about it, what's what's most interesting. And when I first listened to that episode, I was like, you could use that. That's kind of really, really well informed. Like comes just in general, which is a simple thing. Like it's not we can't, we can't have any say on price or, or anything like that, but it's massive but for those kinds of things.

And so if that becomes widely acceptable and useful then it's going to. But I would guess from, from your point of view, again, it's that that market orientation voice of the customer bit. Right? Even from a content point of view, it's when you guys produce stuff, it becomes less. The pass fail metric isn't do I think this is cool or do I think it's on brand or whatever?

It's, you know, we have the data that says that this kind of content should play well with this audience in this channel, and therefore, why don't we produce this? I still think, you know, again, where I in your position, that's where AI becomes becomes really useful. It kind of informs what needs to be created and builds a case for it, which I think is helpful, isn't

I'm taking over the interview here, by the way. But do you have clients kind of concerned about you guys potentially using AI in finished products? No, not really, I think I, I think there's an element of wariness around copyrighting an AI in the fact that and this is why we really careful about like how we utilize AI in our output.

But I'm still on the fence about like, what needs to be for social media marketing because there's a there's no reason and it's just an SEO tool. Right. And it's actually the visuals and the creative LinkedIn maybe a little bit different, but for the kind of end consumer platforms and stuff, it's actually I'm not here to read unless it's unless it's Warren's reading.

So I'm sort of I'm in this kind of bracket now where I'm like, maybe, you know, I and this is me just being maybe facetious, but maybe we just let I run with it doesn't matter because we gives a shit. And we focused heavily on the creative and the and the and the visuals and kind of the script and kind of what that looks like.

I don't think that's that's the answer, but it's part of what's the point in us anymore in terms of like actual social media management. It's all in the creative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, not particularly I don't think, I think if anything weird more the people who have to rein in our clients on their use of their lives to some extent, because I think, again, is the kind of the shiny object syndrome of like an in-house marketer that's really stretched, finds a tool that makes their life a lot easier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're the guys that comment periodically to be mad campaigns that require a lot of budget. And then and then we kind of have to go, probably should stop thinking about agencies that doesn't work and stuff like that. Again, when we tried it, were guilty of all of the things that you shouldn't do with AI.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah. So I think it's more the opposite. We have to kind of reign in our clients. That's interesting. You maybe shouldn't do that, because a lot of the time we have more of a force on the market. And maybe yeah, because of that, they're social media. And there's an argument now. I mean, we know that within construction and manufacturing that humans tend to be quite risk averse and sort of default to the media in any way.

But I think particularly in our world, you know, the kind of clients that you and I deal with that that will be truer than in other sectors, I would guess. Yeah. If were I in their position, I'd be concerned with generative AI about copyright in terms of our IP and our brand assets and so on, or using other people's IP and assets, I've noticed.

Have you seen it? But C2 P.A. I don't know. Again, it's the coalition for for content provenance, blah. I always get the acronym wrong. Basically, if you noticed on LinkedIn, now you're starting to see these little icons on people where they've got still images. If you click on that, it's like a digital watermark that will say produced using this software on this date by this individual, it's going to get rolled out mandatory.

So I think initially it was a getting ahead of legislation, basically, particularly around deepfakes, that we need to understand who was the creator of this content. Is it legitimate? You can imagine the potential ramifications if someone you know, a fake Keir Starmer video saying something that is potentially harmful and dangerous and so on. For example. And so it started there.

But you've got a lot of the big media companies, a lot of the big the likes of Adobe and so on, the production, software brands, they're all on board with it now. What is going to happen eventually. And they've just started now with still imagery and on the occasional LinkedIn post. But eventually any stills image, any video, any audio file being pushed out through media, whether it's been AI generated or not, will carry this watermark that says, on this day, Dunmore produced this piece using this piece of software, and then any edits that are subsequently made will just be added onto.

So I think it's brilliant. I think it's real, particularly for brands that are creating original content, because I think there's an argument that eventually human made content is going to carry a premium. Brands that are seen to be producing that stuff are going to be held in higher esteem than ones that have just gone to an LM or image generation thing and just gone crack on with that, like a new age of analog.

Yeah, like real raw rough like proper craft. Yeah. I think TikTok's kind of gone that way anyway really is a platform where it's the the content that performs best is the stuff that's like, got it is on the lens. It's not being lit particularly well. Not to say that you shouldn't always. It is like, okay, I'm a brand, I should only produce low flying content.

But you're starting to see that actually, it's the human interaction, human stories and stuff, right? And what's appropriate for my brand in that space. And if if I'm not appropriate to be in that space, then I shouldn't be. There's a Tom Roach and Doctor Grace kite produced this thing last year. I think it was called Lots of Littles, where if you're if you're brand and brand strategy and your distinctive assets are all solid enough and you've got a really solid plan, use AI to produce as much as possible.

So it's appropriate for those channels again, because you can prompt it accurately on the brand has to do this. It will only ever say this and so on. Have a human check it and make sure that the guardrails are all there. But it's about proliferation. You can reach audiences in more ways. That's a horizon. That was why that kind of took us back a little bit, that Marx's feel like they're having a harder and harder time sort of getting to decision makers and so on.

It's like that should be easier and easier, right? But talk about horizon because we mentioned it a couple of times now. I've had a good I had a good read through. I'm not an article reader, obviously it's yours. I had. So I had to have a real scan through and I understood a good chunk of it, which was great, but I didn't see some of the nuance that I've missed with the implications of what what's happening, what's going on, what's led us to those points and stuff.

So every year, right. Do you bring up horizon? Can you talk us through what it is, how you get it, what you do and who's. Yeah, I'll give you a bit of background where it came from actually. So we're in our fourth year of running it now. And how it came about was, 2021, we're into our third or fourth lockdown by that point.

And it was an offhand comment by one client. They'd had budgets frozen, and we're committed to this, but I can't touch it at the minute. And what became clear was they didn't have an inbuilt peer network within construction marketing. They were a product manufacture that serves the construction supply chain, but there was no one they could compare notes with to say, are you having the same thing?

Have your board put budgets on freeze? Have you stopped doing X or Y? So they were coming to us. What are your other clients doing? And it was like, you know, that's that's that's an interesting thought. So obviously we're having conversations amongst our client base but then thought that's not quite the full picture. So we just threw it out as a survey, you know, tell us what you think is happening.

Your marketers are the ones responsible for taking these brands into market again, stock record again. But they should theoretically be the ones that best understand customer. And therefore what what are you seeing? And that was how it started. And then it's just it's grown from there year on year on year. So so this year has been really nice because we've got four years of data now to be able to compare and contrast and see what's moved over that period.

As we said at the start, it's pretty wild from a geopolitical and a macro point of view. I wonder if the numbers would be slightly different now because we commissioned this back end of last year, prior to its everything that's happened in the Middle East. And again, to look at some of the ONS figures and the S&P data.

It's fun. So maybe that do slightly different. But yeah, that's kind of where it came from. It's always trying to to speak to marketers as the the front point for their organization to understand how they see the year ahead. You know what? It literally came up in conversation with the day I was on a chat with one of my clients, and we were talking about a strategy for TikTok and kind of what that looks like.

And before we do that, I already got some ideas of what that could look like and stuff and, and, and how I think we should push the project, because I'm always a contrarian and all these kinds of things that I'm going to try and try and advances. It is a better idea. And if if there isn't, great. So but my thing was like, to your point earlier, is Tik-Tok even a valid platform for you?

Have you spoken to any other brands or businesses or marketers in your sector that do very similar to a few, perhaps indirect competitors compared to might be, it might not be a useful resource to see if TikTok's even worth doing. Who's had success in this area. And it's okay that if no one has, maybe we can have a go at it.

But let's just get the data before we put any kind of resource into it. And no, I don't speak to anybody. Yeah. So this kind of thing is a great tool. But but I mean, I was kind of a very kind of micro level, but at a macro level, it's it's it's fascinating to see where stuff going. And I've tried to push as many people onto the report as possible.

So for this year, but lately report came up 2026. What I've been the standout kind of stats data for users, the most interesting or the most surprising. We've touched on one at that point on fragmentation. Because while I understand more channels, more complexity, you know, market conditions being what they are, again, just just the tools that we've got at our disposal, I thought that would be less of an issue every year.

Marx's sellers that their budgets are are going up. And maybe that's true for the organizations that are taking part. I will say that this year has been interesting in that in terms of respondent demographics, it's more senior marketers than has been the case previously. There's been a better spread in previous years, so that that may be skews results slightly.

One of the big ones is that there's a much better balance this year. I think it's around 56% of respondents said brand awareness was their their top goal for their brand this year. Normally that's leads okay and MKL do do appear in their skills. Not at all. Which is interesting. But yeah, again, that could be that it's more senior marketers that are therefore, you know, it's within their remit to take a long view rather than people that are more performance oriented, or whether it's just the reality of the market is that there are fewer buyers in market now, and therefore people are using what resource they've got to kind of cultivate tomorrow's leads rather

than just desperately trying to convert what's there at the minute. So I'm not I'm not 100% what's driving that? I can have a guess on a few bits, but but that's interesting. I like that as well. That's fun data for me. Like, yeah, brand awareness is like it's when I think about there are literally I mean there's there's more categories in this.

But when you think about KPIs and it's brand awareness and lead gen, the brand awareness is a way more creative and fun exercise than, than leads them. Although lead gen is a.

Fun, challenging concept in terms of like how we do this, I think it was also look over here in front of where it's it's my favorite place, and the brands that win ultimately are the ones that do both. Right. You know, if you're extreme example, but follow following the 95 and five rule, which is probably more like 99 and one in manufacturing and construction.

You go hell for leather at performance, you mop up all the demand that's in market today. What happens? What happens next week? And again, away from from sort of manufacturing and construction. There's some huge examples of brands like Airbnb and Asos that built enormous organizations just on performance marketing and just on on sales conversion, and then have hit a plateau and have had to focus on brand building, because you can't just keep piggybacking on the demand in market because at some point, but for for reasons beyond your control, that demand will not be there.

And if you think how slow buying cycles are again, that we've touched a couple of times, the data that we've got about how hard it is to reach decision makers at the minute. Yes, go hell for leather on the sales that are there, but have a plan to to make sure that tomorrow's sales are yours as well. Yeah.

Again, the term both ism is getting used a lot within marketing spaces at the minute. And I think, I think that's the way it has to be. I understand the desperation for, you know, cash sales now. Yeah. Don't lose that. But just keep one eye on what's coming down the road because that's the brands that really, really not just get through this, this period, but the brands that really accelerate are going to be the ones that are able to to focus on tomorrow.

And so to put some time into brand building now,

do you wish that I have this conversation with somebody who were doing and that do you think about lead gen and kind of lots of different ways of getting these gen. But I always think of lead James is this is a sales activation like we never learned CategoryTitles in sales and stuff like that.

There's a part of me that's like as a marketer, the thing that Wishes Legion was done by a sales team in some respects, and the fact that they got that, you know, there are going to be an old school way of getting leads going out and getting them right. And that was a sales process, not necessarily marketers process.

There's just a part of me that was like, has this fantasy of just like marketers never lead, basically. And it's like, because for me, when it when I think about lead and I think about high performing ads that are tricking the algorithm, checking your brain. But also, I mean, it's the kind of thing if you you can create a beautiful campaign that's creative about brand awareness, which is, you know, taking all the right boxes for a creative.

And then you make an ad which is basically breaking all of the rules and making something terrible. I've always found that it's not always the case, but but they kind of sit in different categories where an ad needs to be horrible to watch. Yeah, but trigger something and a like a brand awareness campaign used to watch. But he's a slow burn.

Yeah. It's interesting I think because we've been in positions before where we've been the quote unquote lead agency for a client, and that will be kind of doing the strategic piece and then doing the creative to the point of conceptualization and ideation and then over to someone else. And it's never been a it's never been a wholly comfortable position in that we've lost control of the sale at that point.

And going back to my earlier point of being able to demonstrate our our value in literal pounds and pence terms, we've lost that at that point and everything becomes a not necessarily a gut feel. Do I like it? Personal taste, kind of a thing. But my interpretation of our brand within the context of guidelines and strategy, does this piece work so it's more fun?

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally, totally with you on that, but I'm I feel a bit uncomfortable about totally letting go of the reins on that. I want us to be involved in at least demonstrating value. I think with the brand building piece, if we've got strong enough metrics to demonstrate that we have. Because this is the other thing with performance marketing, isn't it, is that last touch point is always over index.

There's a lot to talk about like last click attributes really people over indexing on. Well, that must be the channel that's got the sale. It's like what about all of the touch points that led that individual to that point? So as long as we can evidence all of that, that we have primed that individual and primed that audience for, for that long in order to to drive that sale, I'm good with that.

But how many brands can confidently do that is. There's another school of thought as well, and I'll share this with you off mike later on. There's there's a really good piece of research that says that often the best brand building ads are also the best sales as well. So so you can produce something that is creatively strong, that speaks to audience, that, you know, it's the reason I did that at the minute.

I've just invested in that Timothy Shalom, a five minute epic film around. Well, you'll struggle to say, I saw that advert and therefore I made this purchase of Adidas, but they've seen enough merit in doing that. Yeah, there's a really good it's probably system one, but there's a really good piece of research around. Again, you don't have to have one or the other.

It's not sales or brand building. It's that often the things that build brands in the strongest way are also the things that lead to sales ultimately as well. So I think I think I come at this as well. I just realized I can't just throw much to a straight consumer to consumer point. I think B2B is a slightly different beast when it comes to lead gen.

Yeah, I think, but if I think about all of the ads that we actually create for Instagram and TikTok, they're essentially just like creatively kind of rot. Yes. Just we're just kind of like pulling out all the tricks to trick people into pressing a button, but not but but all of the stuff that we're creating, not all of it, obviously, because we push back on a lot of this stuff.

But sometimes you just have a look at look at an added bonus. Although that's a horrible piece of creative that technically worked. Yeah. And and I probably feel like we ought to replicate that somehow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's where I'm coming out from there. And, and I'm with my with our clients. I'm pushing back on that element a little bit to be like, well, I feel like we should make more brand specific pieces that, that are, less about kind of clickbait and stuff and create something that actually is meaningful.

And although, yes, you might not get results as quickly as you wanted to get, I think it's that a long term for brand over the next 12, 24 months. And we'll keep you sort of top of mind in that respect as opposed to quick. But but I think it's that kind of thing. If I only had if I had the choice to create only one of those things, that would be like, yeah, it would be that created an entertainment system as well.

Yeah, I think I'd be much happier person. But actually, when it comes to the B2B, I think, I think it can be a little bit more.

Targeted, more niche, longer buying cycles, long consideration. But I'm completely with you. It's a again, I can't think maybe in the B2B Institute, I can't think who it was to credit the study. But there is still a thing in B2B, so it's not this isn't construction or manufacturing, but B to be more generally that in 80 plus percent of purchase instances, it's the brand that was first recalled is the one that that gets bought.

Yes, there's that old cliche of no one ever got fired for buying IBM. It's like, if that's the first brand that I recall in this category, I might consider 2 or 3 more. I might speak to reps, I might sort of do my homework. And again, I was talking at UK Construction Week on a panel last week that started off being about Geo and the effects of AI on on search and how brands are kind of responding to that.

So I might even do that. I might speak to my my life choice and ask it for its thoughts. But fundamentally, again, risk aversion kicks in. I'm going to get in trouble if this goes wrong. Again in B2B, these purchasing decisions, a lot of the times they carry a lot of financial way. They carry a lot of reputational risk.

You almost need a reason not to stick with incumbent supplier in a lot of instances, because as long as you can turn around to the person that you're accountable to and say, well, you would have made the same decision on the basis of all of this evidence, that's enough for a lot of people. There is that kind of confirmation bias.

So so I'm with you, I think, yeah, there's probably fewer opportunities in construction of manufacturing for that impulse purchase in a lot of because I keep talking about like they're kind of uniform things, but there's a lot of discrete supply chains within those as well, isn't there? But yeah, I think it's right. I think again, it's why the 95 and five rule of 95 people out of market, any one time, five, 5% of people in market at any one time, I think it is more like 99 to 1 in a lot of the markets that we serve.

So to be focused squarely on that 1% of sales is kind of folly, isn't

there's this thing me and you care about campaigns and you on the on the previous episode, I want to just go back into the services slightly. We talked about this concept and we can address this a lot of these longer term campaigns.

And I kind of like reiterate some, some information on those, because.

I mean, you said you said it amazingly in our previous episode, we get more tired more quickly of our creative than our work customers market does. And as the brand, it's the same kind of thing. Can you talk to us about kind of what that looks like? And do you are you seeing, based on the data from the report, more emphasis on long term goals, campaigns, things like that, and not just on subject change movement?

Yeah, for certain it feels like it's improving. I would say in the context of horizon last year, I think it was this we ask these marketers every year, how many campaigns are you? Are you thinking of running over the next 12 months? And the second most popular answer, I think it was just over a quarter of respondents said they were looking at running ten or more campaigns, and it horrified me and it shouldn't have.

Again, back to our old business model. I'd have been rubbing my hands because ten plus campaigns equals more assets to be created equals more, more revenue. But such bad practice for a marketing point of view. And that kind of got me thinking. Is it a semantic point that what we would define a campaign to be, which is your big investment, multi-channel, you know, one big idea kind of thing, and that's different to people that are managing on a B2C footing.

For instance, where it may be month to month this month, our sales guys are focused on selling this system, and therefore that is our campaign for this month. And yeah, so, so so if that's the case, then I understand that a little bit more. What's been heartening, given the sort of audience that we're trying to speak to with horizon and what's been happening this year is that that's dropped.

That's drop right down, people. It's been one and four is kind of the, the median. So that's great. It's fewer stuff that Sarah Carter, who's a planner at Adam and Eve, has her writings. Brilliant. There's a book How Not to Plan that she's done with lesbian. I think every marketer should own. I think it's essential, essential reading.

And her advice from a planning point of view was that we as marketers all need a post-it note on our computers every morning that says they don't give a shit. Yes, that we need to remind ourselves, our brand and every other brand. And this is where the opportunity exists. Our brand is not that important to the lives of our customer.

They have a thousand decisions to make every day, either consciously or unconsciously. We we have to respect that and understand that they maybe give us one brain cell every so often. But to that point of 80 plus percent of B2B purchasing decisions, it's the first brand that gets recalled. Our job is to be that first brand recalled. Not that they think about us all the time.

And this idea of brand love and love marks and whatever. Like we don't need our audiences to go and have tattoos of our logo on them or anything that we're not that important. But none of our competitors are either. That's the good news, is that it's a level playing field in that respect. And and so yes. So being respectful of that, understanding that we're easier to recall if people are familiar with things and if they like if they like things, it's just again, that's again the psychology of it.

But people build memory structures of things that they enjoy much more easily then otherwise. There was a piece of research I think you really like actually called the cost of dull. Okay. Where so again, I can share that with you, said Adam Morgan and Peter Field, the two guys behind that. And he's he's written several books, like The Pirate Inside.

He's got an agency called Eat Big Fish. There you go. So again, he's he's done a full a full load of I think there's two issues of the research on this that he's run at can and loads it. There's a podcast off the back of it. Let's make this more interesting, which is again highly, highly recommended. I'm not sure mate.

I don't I might be thinking of a different I'm not sure. I feel like it's like create a directory or something if that doesn't know. No, no, no. He's British okay. Yeah, yeah. I'll share again. I think if you want to share with the listeners as well, I think you'll if you like this, you'll get a kick out of it.

But the key headline start from year one of that was that if you had a what they term a dull advert which had no emotional resonance, not, not not seeking to try and sort of make the audience feel something. It's just features, benefits, facts, B2B and you can make it work as hard as a more interesting advert, but you have to have deep pockets.

You have to spend 600% more to have the same effects, so you can be dull. It's going to cost you. Yeah, absolutely. Essentially. So, so yes, that means invest in their campaign. That is going to be around for some time that you're good with. Again, there's another piece of research that's very recent, the creative dividend that basically talks about the right brand asset, the right brand campaign.

It acts in the same way that compound interest does. It just builds. And I mentioned the Coca-Cola Christmas advert that the cultural capital builds year on, year on year is people look forward to that coming around and it's out of our world. But, Yorkshire Tea is the one that they hold up as like the gold standard that they've got this, proper brew like Yorkshire done proper sort of campaign and they can change up the creative.

They've got the Kaizer Chiefs thing, Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean. But it all comes back to the same idea. I just need you to retain this brand for this thing, and then make it more likely that you will purchase it when it comes up. And the same is true in our world. In fact, I would argue it's maybe not more true, but if you get back to that point of conservativism, of risk aversion, established brands that people don't mess with for years and years, budgets being tight and uncertain, you know, do it properly once and just let it build over time and have things that you can come back to as well.

You know, we did some work years ago with poly pipe on a, a character that we developed. It was a plastic plumbing campaign, which initially was just a fun character to help sell more of this product. And then it was kind of retired for a little while, and we brought it back and it was so commercially successful. The purpose was to drive samples into the hands of plumbers, and we had to pull the campaign prematurely because we couldn't keep up with sample demand.

And it's not none of that keep coming back to this. None of it's rocket science for all AI and other tech is moving on lots of things in the way that we can deliver campaigns and the way that we can develop things. The fundamentals of how the human brain works haven't changed in millennia. And the fundamentals of marketing are the same as we're documented, like a century ago.

Yeah. So the delivery mechanisms are different and what we can do is different. But the answers are all there if you choose to go and look for them. I love this. I mean, I've got confirmation bias on anything that I'd like to sound off that makes my life more fun and more easy in my team's more fun and more easy.

And the idea of having fewer campaigns but more focused on them is brilliant. It's it's a thing that I, you know, since you said that and I think there's probably like 3 or 4 anecdotes from your previous episodes that I use regularly and YouTube's, it's just because it's the way the idea was always there. It's just the way that you articulate them.

But the fact that you're like our audience, first of all, most of the time doesn't even get delivered to the creative that we would go again, focusing more on social media and kind of ads and stuff in that respect. But the fact that we've seen an image on a social media platform, and therefore that image must never go back on that platform, it's ridiculous.

Yeah. Because then I to explain to you today, you know, I particularly poorly performing image or whatever. Let me go if you don't have any answer, if it's pure organic, let's say it gets to 600 people or $12,000 or 20,000 followers or whatever. Only 600 people have even seen that content. Yeah. And and notoriously so people on social media don't scroll back.

No, the platform's own data tells you this. The links in a matter are definitely done. This. There was a recent LinkedIn survey and they were they were super transparent, that of every dollar spent on their platform on only about $0.14 was was working for people because people in two parts, one people couldn't remember seeing the ad full stop.

I was just scrolling through feed. And so these are in platform in feed adverts, display ads. Couldn't recall seeing it. If I could, I could remember an element of it, but it was under branded. And either I credited it to one of your competitors, which is horrifying that you're spending money in order to increase the likelihood of them getting a sale.

Or I could remember the logo was red, I think, and I remember someone saying something, but yeah, it's yeah, we properly, properly overestimate just how much time and headspace our audiences are going to give to us. And just because we've had an exposure doesn't mean that person down to us and went and made a purchase straight away, and certainly not getting off at the scene that.

No, sorry, you said something at the very, very start of this where we've got the data now to see where that's happening. I would challenge anyone to because I'm not saying you shouldn't refresh the creative, but it doesn't mean a new idea produce more assets by all means. But it has to come from one strong core core message that you're going to leave for as long as you possibly can.

But you should have the data on an asset by asset basis or a channel by channel basis that says, we're starting to see a drop off here. I bet most people aren't that that would be my challenge to anyone listening to this. I would go and have a look at your performance data on those assets. It goes back into the kind of thing of a quick buck lead gen stuff like that.

You know, we're battling this, and I understand all of the processes around this and the decision making. But you know, we we have these brands that are like, now try this thing now try this thing now try this thing. Because we're desperate to get sales in. We need to try every possible thing. Yeah. And but what that means is we created this brand, how to communicate to this audience.

Because if there's no one core theme or message that we're kind of putting through to the point where we had a conversation with some end users as of the day about this particular brand, and they didn't know what the brand did. So they'd seen a lot of the content, but they didn't know what the brand. Wow. Because the messaging was so all over the place.

And that was just one individual. Yeah, yeah, there's lots of individuals that know exactly what the brand did, but it was a really interesting people. I know that brand, but I honestly can't figure out what they do. And that was a real deciding moment in my head. Like, we need to figure this out. Yeah. Because if you don't know other people that don't know.

So we were spending loads of money and loads of resources putting this brand in front of people, and you still don't know what it does, which is insane. They're just an entity, a logo in this space. So could people recall brand though, where they would? Yeah, okay. Brand, but not what the not what the brand did. Yeah obviously.

So that's great for brand awareness. Not great for Legion. But at least you've won that first battle. There was a Andrew Tyndall from from canned last year. There was a study that he'd done on him at seven. Didn't necessarily need to be the name said several times, but bought seven identifiable brand assets within comms. Was the magic number that you had 100% brand recall at that point?

Because there was a thing about people being two too cute with their creative and under branding things and making these beautiful, normally film, these beautiful film pieces, and then audiences being pulled afterwards and being like, yeah, it was lovely. It was really, really nice. But yeah, what was, what was that? So yeah. So at least they were calling the brand.

That's your one step on. Yeah. But yeah, it reminded me that we need to communicate with what this company does. And it led me onto another thing of like when it comes to social media marketing, when it comes to this sort of, you know, content creation and delivering it to an audience, organic for the most part, pretty dead for in terms of like if that if you're if if it's a primary focus of sales and is social media organic, it probably needs to happen, but it needs to be supported by some serious performance, you know, activation.

So ad spend and because you delivered a stab to the move trying to figure out how we can fix this problem and you optimize the Social Security compliance. And we saw that the averaging average reach was 4.64.7, 4.64, 4.7%. And I was like, oh, it's horrible. And then then one of my team members looked at the averages and like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's actually 3.5 is the average reach for a brand like this. I'm like, oh my god. And then I looked at the sum of the things from one of our brands who has a modest ads budget and

And purely around brand awareness, like they're not trying to convert. They were 46%. Yeah. So the difference between the modest ads budgets and nothing for was 43.4. But then this has been this sort of from from an investment point of view. This has been the argument the platform has been having for a while, isn't it? Is that cool idea.

You know, we've hit a billion users and how do we monetize this? But how does this actually start to turn over? And yeah, the says they're not going to let you achieve everything you need to commercially using organic. Yeah. How do we how do we get weighed in on the back of this. So bound to bounce up. And again not to be to sort of scaremongering about it.

I have some concerns about that with AI, particularly as paid recommendations and sort of, you know, in feed ads and different sort of subscription levels start to come through. I'd already, particularly in low search categories, although domain authority categories like some of the ones we serve, I'm already you'll have done it. I've done it. Everyone's done it. Kind of looking looking at your category, something that you know a little bit about and asking it for recommendations, kind of knowingly to test it on that.

Some of the stuff we've had has been shaky at best. And yeah, there is a part of me, there's more cynical part of me that says that. I think that may get slightly worse as they start to look for other ways to monetize their reach in their audience. So again, something to be aware of and another reason that humans need to be involved in in that process, because I wouldn't just take the recommendations at face value.

We were talking about it last week in a construction product safety point of view. If you're dealing in pacifier protection, for instance, which is just it's front of mind because of Grenfell, please God don't. And I don't think anyone in the right mind would. But don't just take recommendations from, from from anywhere but from AI on, you know, this system or this organization like it still needs a credible human voice in

part. Let's end on I'm going to give you two options because we we need to do this. And I think both of these questions are really valid, which is like as an agency like how are you utilizing kind of like AI in terms of your workflow and kind of what, what what for the for a marketer in-house or an agency that, how can they gain the value from that in terms of processes and stuff like that?

Or you can have the who's who's who's in trouble in the in the industry because of their life. You can choose between one of those two things. I can probably do both quite quick. I think we've probably touched on elements of both. I would say who's in trouble. I think it's anyone who's whose output, be that deliverables or be that consultancy and thinking if that can be commoditized and or you can't demonstrate value, whatever value may mean in your role, I think you're I think you're in trouble.

I think the focus at the minute, as we've touched on several times, is on the production of stuff. And I think if that's all all you've got in your your bag, if you're either as a marketer or as an agency, whatever your offer is, if you're not differentiated enough that you are clearly adding a value beyond the thing you produce, I'd be I'd be concerned.

So I think it's less. In fairness, there are certain parts of the marketing mix where if we were just solely in that, I'd be concerned. I think. I think there are bits that are becoming commoditized quite quickly, but you'll still have practitioners and agencies in those spaces that do well because they've already there, built a brand. They know their stuff, and they add a value beyond just race to the bottom on price on this particular thing.

So I think that's who's at risk. Whether you're in-house, whether your agency, if you can't demonstrate the value that you're adding and you are just a producer of things, I think you're in trouble. I think those it is completely that. Yeah, it's it's that kind of thing of like anytime that something becomes commoditized. Yeah. The sort of the guys that have just been kind of hanging out at the back of the pack, they're the ones who are always, well, if we pick one, you know, we spoke about vibe coding and stuff, like my head would go straight to web development.

There are going to be a whole swathe of web dev agencies that are going to be in trouble, because if you just want a basic brochure site, maybe that's less appealing to to outsource that now. But you think there's some security critical industries where website is just the front office function for all of this stuff behind it. Do I want a vibe called that?

Do I want to be the person responsible for probably. Probably not. So. So I think that's that's what I would say. Expertise is the thing that won't be commoditized quite as readily. So if someone's looking for some advice, regardless of your role, that's where I'd be. That's where I'd be thinking. And then in terms of us as an agency, I would say we've worked over the last five plus years to really codify what our processes are like.

So, so it is a bit more organized. We've got Kevin, our production director, that's kind of the fulcrum in the middle of all of these different. We've got four main service offerings. So understanding how all of those interact and being more process oriented, I'm not saying we're perfect and we do tend to deviate from these things, but having that as a basis has then meant that we can go well of these.

If you think of kind of a classic flow diagram, where could you drop an agent into these various sort of processes to make those a little bit easier? And that's what I said before about us jumping to, I'm going to say making stuff. I don't mean assets, but jumping into developing tools and developing apps, whether they're for commercial release or for us.

I would say start with, how do you work now? What elements of that do you like? Back to that point of freeing yourself up to to add more value, to be more creative, to better understand your customer? Yeah. What could you speed up by dropping an agent into? So don't don't start with the agent. Yes, I would say start with how your organization works and then think of what is sensible to to let go of the reins on, because again, there is a false economy to these things.

You've alluded to it several times. It does take time to figure out prompts. It does take time to figure out processes. It does take time to train. And it is training. And training is an ongoing process, just as it would be for a human. So yeah, these things do take a little bit of time, but just trust that it will it will ultimately pay off.

But yeah, that's where I'd start process. Right? Yeah. It's that kind of thing of just getting going in the back end of the business and just being that, okay, what are the things that you don't enjoy can make us more efficient and free up more time for creativity as opposed to what you mentioned earlier, as like using the AI to do the creativity, to have more time to do all the points.

And my guys will, if they've made it into this long, my guys will be howling at this because I am the worst. If you give me an opportunity to circumvent process in order to do something creative over here, I will do it 100% of the time. So that's where agents are good for me, is that it? It makes it easier for me and therefore removes excuses to circumvent process.

I think also for a lot of time, I can only speak as someone who owns, for the most part, creative agency with a marketing element to it. Creative process. Yeah. Just inherently. Yes. You might find some, some some outliers, but for the most part, we don't we didn't get into this industry to use computers and do stuff in between the fun stuff.

And so yeah, if you can, if you can find a way of making them happier by minimizing that, but also magnifying the creative that they do into into the next process as opposed to like a lot of the time you lose a bit of the of the of the creative because of the well, for you as a business owner, and I would say the same for any, you know, heads of marketing, CMO, whatever in-house that are listening to this.

Where do you want those people utilized? Every single person carries a cost, has a value attached to them, and it has an inherent value they bring to that organization. Where do you want that going? I'm not saying admins not important. I'm not saying process isn't important. I think in our world it absolutely is crucial. Again, that's a product safety back to to sort of documenting things properly.

But yeah, ultimately why did you hire those people. What do you want them to do and what would your organization look like if they were doing that more frequently than they are now? That's the opportunity to love that. Really, really cool. Ryan. This has been another whirlwind. I've learned so much about. Like, I guess I guess the last two years, because that's a lot of I only get only get my information from you in the report, basically what's happening in the industry, because again, we're further along the chain where we're we're kind of like mopping up the stuff that's been decided eight months ago, you know, and then actually kind of like delivering on that

kind of thing for marketers, specifically who you are in our industry, if you could give them something to do with in the next 90 days that could be related to AI, could be related to any of the things that we've talked about today. If you could give them one thing that they should look into or do or whatever.

What would you say? Take one step. AI is a great place to start, but it doesn't have to be one step to better understand the audience you're speaking to. That could be AI and synthetic data. As we've touched on, it could be a rough and ready survey monkey thing, whether that's your customer base, whether that's through a media partner, whether that's through a chartered institute or some other trade body.

It could be ethnography, which sounds really, really fancy. Get off your backside, go and observe. Go into a builders merchant if that's your audience. Watch how people purchase, watch what they do and interact with when they go and pick up their order in the morning. Listen to the kinds of conversations that are being had. Go and speak to people.

And yeah, it doesn't need to be expensive. It doesn't need to be time consuming. It doesn't need to be an academic, peer reviewed sort of research piece. Go and find one thing that would make you better understand your customer. Don't even worry about marketing. Just go and understand the people that you're speaking to, and I guarantee there'll be something in there.

There'll be something in there. It may not be a big sort of evidence data piece, but it might just a kernel of an idea that might give you a different way to communicate, or something you can bring back to the business that it may not even be a marketing thing, something you can bring back to your colleagues that would make your business function better than your than it did with prior to starting that.

So yeah, don't even have an outcome in mind beyond we need to better understand this this customer I remember. Do you know if you have the author of standard lock out. Oh is it Grenier might be French. Yes. Yeah yeah yeah. He uses the term insight farming I think. So he spoke at It's funny on the subject of AI.

I was at an event probably this time last year. The whole day was tech firms that made me want to quit marketing, because the future of this industry is just agent talking to agent to agent to produce. I count me out. I don't want that. He was the final speaker. On what? Tonic on. Oh, it was just what I needed was just.

Yeah, I hear what they're saying. They all have courses or software to sell you, let me tell you as it really is. And confirmation bias, of course. But yeah, I love that guy. Honestly, if I can if I can encourage any marketer, especially anyone, any market is interested in differentiation. Basically I just I will read all of the books around the 2018 figure out.

But yeah, he's he's got some. Turns out I followed that up with SAG. That was also good. But the way that Linwood writes, just in a in a big way and it simplifies everything, but the idea of being able to just understand not only what your, your customer wants and needs, but also how you need to let us the way that this is your net, kind of the next step, and also different types of people that you're not going to institute because they're just informs everything.

After that. Yeah, yeah. Massive a beautiful a place to finish. Was there anything that I, I feel like is there anything that's not asked you. Anything that you feel like you wanted to discuss? No, I feel like we've probably done a full series here. And Tom's only on 2 or 3 times, so we've done. We've done. Okay. We've still got to do the, the the the the intro, the.

Thank you so much. No thank you. We'll get you on the next season whatever. And and by then we everything could have changed again. But I really appreciate your insight mate. Go and check out SLG agency for anybody that's listening and watching. Also please going down load the horizon horizon. I tried to say insights report. Then go and check out the horizons report.

Really really valuable for anybody in construction marketing or likewise any anybody that's making any decisions. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Thank you.